I vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's word. Good morning and Happy New Year. I thought it would be appropriate this morning to talk about beginnings and beginners which are not the same thing and strictly speaking Neither one exists, but we won't be so strictly speaking. I found a poem yesterday that I thought it would be good to start the talk with, to begin. This new book by a wonderful poet W.S. Merwin. I'm forgetting what the name of the book is. I just bought it.

[01:00]

Just beautiful. So this is a poem of his. I guess it's a sonnet of sorts in couplets but it's called a momentary creed. I believe in the ordinary day that is here at this moment and is me. I do not see it going its own way, but I never saw how it came to me. It extends beyond whatever I may think I know and all that is real to me. It is the present that it bears away. Where has it gone and when has it gone from me? There is no place I know outside today except for the unknown all around me.

[02:04]

the only presence that appears to stay, everything that I call mine, it lent me. Even the way that I believe the day for as long as it is here and is me. Should I read that again? I believe in the ordinary day that is here at this moment and is me. I do not see it going its own way, but I never saw how it came to me. It extends beyond whatever I may think I know, and all that is real to me. It is the present that it bears away. Where has it gone when it is gone from me? There is no place I know outside today except for the unknown all around me.

[03:09]

The only presence that appears to stay, everything that I call mine, it lent me. Even the way that I believe the day for as long as it is here and is me. Pretty good. It's like every time I read this, I find different places where you can kind of bend the inflection and the syntax, because there is no syntax. It's completely without any. So it leaves it up to us how to make this poem come alive. So the watchword of our practice given to us by Suzuki Roshi via Dogen and all the old Buddha ancestors is what we call beginner's mind.

[04:29]

And Suzuki Roshi says, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. So a poet is always a beginner. And the reader is always a beginner. And I like, in this form I like, Because he leaves out all of the syntax, you have many possibilities. Doesn't block it in. So, this is a new beginning. This is the first Saturday of our new year, 2009. which is okay with me. It's the first year of what's going to be a new presidential administration which is really okay with me, although we really don't know what it's going to bring, but it's pretty safe to guess it's going to be different.

[05:49]

On the other hand, I think a lot of people in this room have seen a lot of what they had accumulated over the last 15 or 20 years just disappear. And that's, how do we start? How do we begin to live with that? and the one thing that we can say is that to some degree everybody is feeling this, but it's also true that people feel it in different degrees, people who are closer to the edge may find themselves in really, really dangerous circumstances.

[06:53]

How do they keep their composure in the midst of this? How do we? How do I? So really in terms of beginning, everything is new. It's new again and again and again and this is actually the experience of Zazen. The breathing, the renewal, everything being born and the completeness of that, everything passing away. And the challenge is to find our composure right in the middle of that, with every beginning. So in the midst of the newness of 2009, we have our hopes, we have our yearnings, we have our grief.

[08:06]

There is much to grieve. And we have our joy and celebration. And the deal is we actually have all this stuff coming up together. And it all comes up together in our lives as we transact that. It comes up together in our Zazen. And it's different from time to time. Were many of you here Wednesday night for New Year's Eve? It was really, it was wonderful. There were a lot of people. I think my experience is that when there's trouble in the world, the zendo tends to be fuller. And there's some compelling reasons for that. But it was wonderful, quiet sitting. And I was thinking back

[09:09]

to the beginning. I realized at some point in the evening, I realized, oh, this is my 25th New Year's here. I'm not sure if I've missed any I think I'm just part of one when I was playing some music and it was so disconcerting that as soon as we were done, I came back to the Zendo. But, oh, 25 years and I remember the first New Year's Eve sitting that I did because it was not so long after I'd come and it was the first multiple period of Zazen evening or day that I had done, and it was like, oh, it was like five periods of zazen. And I went out in the zendo, we had a little party as we usually do, and then I drove back to my

[10:13]

apartment in Oakland and I thought I better be really careful I don't know where I am you know I know where my head is after sitting five periods of Zazen but it felt very comfortable and I felt very comfortable really wonderful on Wednesday night very deep a lot of new people and I just thought oh this is so sweet and restful which it was at that moment and Then we began our sitting in our regular program again yesterday, Friday morning. And I came to the Zendo and I was thinking, oh yes, it was so restful and peaceful on Wednesday night. It's like, oh, this is great. And I sat down and it's just like, Nope. Busy thought after thought and plan after plan that I was trying to make.

[11:17]

It's like, okay, set it aside. And then something else, come back, set it aside. And so you don't get to say how it's gonna be. And each beginning is new. I had this whole Okay, this is a real digression, but you'll excuse me, maybe you won't, because I was thinking about beginning and then I was thinking about Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the earth. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light.

[12:18]

And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness." So my question was, is God a beginner or an expert? And in the beginning, seems like he's doing a lot of playing around or she is doing a lot of playing around with duality. Maybe that's because God herself is unity. First off, she created heaven and earth. which seemed to have a closer resemblance to each other than we customarily think of heaven and earth now. But that changed pretty soon because while God might have been clear about the distinction between heaven and earth and light and darkness, Adam and Eve were not.

[13:20]

So they mistook this shiny apple of ignorance for wisdom because they were not yet aware that wisdom lived in and through and around them. They thought it was something else, something that you could get. And God let them do that. which is a little confusing, but I think it's because that God knew that wisdom abides everywhere, that it has to be seen, it has to be discovered, and she couldn't give it to them. They had to work it out for themselves. And in fact, if we want to put it in Buddhist terms, they had to work it out for themselves here in this Saha world, which means the world of things that have to be endured, the world itself that has to be endured.

[14:44]

So we've had to figure it out ever since. So I wanted to talk, that's my digression. I'm not quite sure where it leads me. This is the religion that I was raised in, and I think many of us were, so it's in us in some sense. These notions, the language itself, And I think I have, I know I have an ambivalent attitude towards it. And yet there's some resonance. But when I read Suzuki Roshi, when I first came to Zen, which was in 1968, this was after taking a lot of psychedelics, which quite a few of us probably did, and we read Philip Kaplow's book, The Three Pillars of Zen, and came out here to California to escape from New York for the summer, and began to sit, actually, in Dwight Way, and at Sokoji, the

[16:13]

Suzuki Roshi's temple which was also the genesis of San Francisco Zen Center. And I think he was at Tassajara that summer, right? So we didn't meet him and we didn't know what we were doing, but that was okay. But when I read his Zen Mind Beginner's Mind later, there was complete resonance, even though I really didn't understand it. I think we talked about this during our Aspects of Practice. The language of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it's so welcoming and open, and you're reading along, and it's like, yes, yes, this is really familiar, like at a cellular level. And then you think, what did he say? You know, that's really hard or I don't understand it.

[17:19]

How can I understand this? So, in the prologue to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, he begins, there's this, you know, the epigraph, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities but in the expert's mind there are a few. And the prologue itself begins, people say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged position. Well, that's a difficulty for some of us, but that's not the essential one. Or to attain, it's not difficult to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our minds pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.

[18:22]

And then he sort of veers away because he doesn't ever say pure means such and such. So I think it's left for us to try to understand What is that purity? Because of course if you feel that in our customary language where we have purity paired with, purity implies impurity, if we try too hard to be pure, then we're gonna have a really big problem if we try to be pure in the ordinary sense. And he goes on and says, the Zen school developed in many ways after it was established in China, but at the same time it became more and more impure.

[19:27]

I think what he means there is, As it became an established religion, it became more and more beset with beliefs, concepts, rituals, we're very into our clothing, various forms that one could fool oneself were essences. but that wasn't it. So then he gets in the second paragraph, it's a lot clearer. In Japan we have the phrase Shoshin, which means beginner's mind. The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. Suppose you recite the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart Sutra, which we chant every day, only once.

[20:34]

It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times, or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. The same thing will happen your other Zen practices. For a while you will keep your beginner's mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind. I really love it when people show up here for the first time. I came in, I had to have some exchange with Andrea, who was giving Zazen instruction, and there were a bunch of people for Zazen instruction. And you can see on their faces, on people's faces, in their bodies,

[21:43]

It's like, we don't know what we're doing. We don't even really know why we've come here. Which is, that's very cool, right? That's beginner's mind. It's like, why have I come here? Or just why? And linked to why is how. How do I do this? I don't even know what it is I'm doing. How do I find, how do I observe? So their minds are very open. They're looking at everything, they're trying to take it in. Usually there's always some voice of judgment, unfortunately, saying, you know, I'm probably, oh, I'm not doing it right. But what, if you can step aside from that, when you come into a situation new, if you can sort of turn away from the inner critic, you see, oh, this is full of possibilities.

[23:01]

And it's possibilities, and I don't even know what they are. That's really miraculous. So I think that's what he's talking about as beginner's mind. Suzuki Roshi says then, our original mind includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. That doesn't mean isolated or self-enclosed or selfish or self-centered, it just means that because we are connected with everything, and I think this is what Merwin is talking about in the poem, because we're connected to everything, we have everything that we need

[24:09]

our lives. We have access to it in one way or other. It may not be what we want, it may not be what we wish for, but it's there. When you're sitting Zazen, it's there and there's a mysterious thing because however you are feeling in that moment when you're sitting Zazen, if you're feeling In some sense, we think there's nothing I can borrow from this person I'm sitting next to. It's like if I'm feeling that way, well, I can't borrow anything from Sue because you're in your skin and I'm in my skin. But actually, that's really, it's not quite true.

[25:13]

This is why, in our tradition, we sit next to each other. We sit side by side. And we face the wall, but it's not so important whether we face the wall or we face in, we sit side by side. We're constantly borrowing. each other's energy, each other's zazen. We're constantly supporting each other, even though we can't name or really point to what that sharing or exchange is. So our self-sufficiency is not sufficiency within this narrow, limited place, but it's actually the self-sufficiency of this entire room right here. This room right now is self-sufficient. Everything that is needed in our world at this moment is right here.

[26:22]

And the challenge in beginner's mind is and in this practice is then to recognize that that's always the case. That there's always something the availability of connection. Not that we always have everything we need to survive necessarily, but that somehow we have everything we need in that moment. So Suzuki Roshi says, you should not lose This doesn't mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it was always ready for anything.

[27:24]

It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. In order to be able to do this, we actually have, what we're doing, one of the things that's happening as we're sitting zaz and as we're cultivating our capacity for composure, we're allowing ourselves to include everything and seeing that capacity expand. Even though, in a moment to moment sense, we may feel uncomfortable or irritable or distracted or at peace It doesn't matter. At some level, that's the surface of the water. At some level that goes deep underneath that, we're in contact with this long and deep stillness.

[28:30]

And that is emptiness. which is always humming. There was something else I found by Suzuki Roshi. He said, in the beginner's mind there is no thought, I have attained something. All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. So the vast mind is the mind that encompasses and is created by this whole room. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. So as I said in the beginning, well, we're never

[29:33]

We may feel we're never true beginners. And we may feel that we're never quite rid of this vestigial thought of self. And yet we keep changing. He says, then we can really learn something. We do. That's what we do day by day. He says the beginner's mind is the mind of compassion, the mind of feeling with, the mind of connection to. This is the aim of our Bodhisattva vow. But sometimes This begins in a somewhat intellectual way. And I found another talk looking through Suzuki Roshi's lectures where he gets down to the physical side.

[30:40]

And that I want to emphasize, that zazen is something you do with your body, all of this work. The work of compassion is not like some wonderful glowing cloud in one's mind, but it's actually something that we have to do in relation to our own body, using our own body, body to body with those around us. So Suzuki Roshi says in this other lecture, if you are always lazy and drowsy, spiritually and physically lazy, you actually have no chance to live truthfully to yourself. That is why we practice various practices. But if we stick to old way of practice, it is not so good also. So it is necessary maybe to change our way of practice sometimes. And then he starts talking about New Year's time.

[31:42]

And he says, for instance, at some monasteries, they start to bathe in cold water from January. All the monks get up about four o'clock, go to the lake, and bathe. And he says, and you will not catch cold. He said, recently flu is all over. But if you make up your mind to bathe every morning and evening in cold water, your mind does not accept sickness because you are so physically and mentally very active. He says, it's rather difficult to take cold water bath and more difficult after working hard because you work hard in a monastery. This kind of practice is not orthodox practice. But according to the situation of the monastery, we also apply various ways of life to renew our mind and body. Especially people who live in San Francisco where climate is always the same.

[32:50]

It may be necessary to have some pool for Zen students to take cold baths. may be exciting practice for us and it will give pretty good stimulation for San Francisco people. I heard an interview with Steve Martin the other day on the radio and he was talking about how early in his career he couldn't end a show. And he couldn't figure out how to end it, and people were just sitting there, and it wouldn't go away. And so he came out in the audience, and ultimately, he led them all out to an empty pool. It was an empty pool. And he said, okay, everybody get in the pool. So if I really had chutzpah, I would lead you over to the king pool right now, and we'd all jump in, except it's heated, right? Yeah, well. But this, we have to keep changing our environment.

[33:54]

We have to keep beginning again. This is how we cultivate our practice by just coming to the, it was really cold. Speaking of cold baths, it was really cold in the Zendo this morning. I came in and I wanted to put on my hat. But I did ask Ross to try to turn on the heat. But it's like, in that coldness, actually, I felt very awake and alive, even though I didn't actually like it. But it didn't matter, because this was my, it's like, here I was. This was my intention to practice, to sit. If it's cold, it's cold. I'm going to have opportunities, it's warm in here now, right? I'll have opportunities to warm up, but if it's cold and brings life force forward, then that's good.

[35:06]

how can I say, it's hard, you know, you can't talk about Zazen, you can't quite characterize it. It wasn't calm, but it wasn't agitated, it was just, the cold was just getting a lot of energy moving. And we all felt it, I felt there weren't a lot of people here, but it looked like everybody was cold, was cold, right? But there we were together, and I just said, wow, this is great. This is like the new year, and here we are. And I felt this great sense of connection. It's like we're ready to go forward. So I'd like to read you one more poem, and I've been warned I have to be done by 1110, so I will. I'll read you one more poem. Because I think this poem is about the extension of our beginner's mind and of our Bodhisattva vow.

[36:14]

And then we have time for some questions. This is a poem by Denise Levertov. It's called Beginners. And it's dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood. People know who she is, right? And somebody, I did a long search, Elliot Grala, who I have no idea who it is. I did a long, I searched for about 20 minutes online and I just couldn't find anything. It kept referring to, dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Elliot Grala. That kind of circular logic of Google, you know. So, beginners. But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope? So much is in the bud. How can desire fail? We have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, only begun to envision how it might be to live as siblings with beasts and flower, not as oppressors.

[37:24]

Surely our river cannot already be hastening into the sea of non-being. Surely it cannot drag in the silt all that is innocent. Not yet, not yet. There is too much broken that must be mended. Too much hurt we have done to each other that cannot yet be forgiven. We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle. So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture. So much is in the bud. So we have a few minutes for questions or comments. Floor is open. So.

[38:29]

Well, actually, this is like, you're like a plant in the audience. Well, first of all, I think as we really become aware of ourselves in practice, what we see is that actually the environment is changing all the time. That's what I was saying when you know the environment the the the weather and internal environment that I experienced on Wednesday night Was very different from the environment that I experienced on Friday morning Or this morning that it was different and if you were really attuned to yourself then you perceive the difference. If you think you're doing, and this is I think what Suzuki Ueshi was saying about Zen becoming impure in China and Japan, that when it becomes repetitive as ritual, say, when you think you know what you're doing, you think you're doing the same thing every time, you kind of killed it.

[40:34]

And so if we see that, if we're tuning into our bodies and our minds, that each time we sit down it's different and that the form to me is a framework in relief, against which relief I can actually see the difference. But then I think, that's here, but then I think if we went around the room, we would find everybody has this tremendously different life. And people's lives are changing all the time. And what Suzuki Roshi is talking about here is actually, yeah, how do you jump in the cold pool or the cold lake and keep your composure at the same time, not be thrown off by it. So this is, I would say, beginning actually on Tuesday, I'm going to start doing every few months what's called council practice, sitting in a circle.

[41:46]

It's a very horizontal, non-hierarchical, communal communication process. where people just speak from the heart and listen deeply. And actually the subject of the first one, I'm going to give some instruction on how to do it, but the subject is broadly self-care, which means some of us are getting older, which is really better than the alternative, I think. As our bodies age, As circumstances change, how do we keep vitality in our practice? What does it look like? If you think it looks like I have to do this every day in the same way, then you're going to run into a wall. How do we keep it fresh and breathing? So I don't have the answer to that question. You have to answer that question. But I try to notice how things are always

[42:51]

changing within myself. So, Annette? There's a constant that we assume that we have control of our bodies, that it could be normal things. I think that underlies some Zen practice. You can come to the Zen room and sit down and take a position. But my husband is Parkinson's disease, as you know. Yeah. And from one minute to the other, he can pick up a glass or not be able to move at all, or he could go all over the place. Right. all these assumptions are gone. Simple control of the body, getting up and going to the bathroom. So, what was the question? Well, I don't see Peter every minute of the day. But we saw him last night. And I think that for Peter, I would guess, we haven't talked about this exactly, there's a challenge of how do I keep my composure?

[43:58]

Not how do I control my body because I can't. Neurologically, he can't. But I feel when I'm with him, he's a deep person and he is working consciously, unconsciously on keeping that composure. Wouldn't you agree? That's all we can do. And that's... It's okay. Zazen may not be the practice for Peter. Zazen is not the practice necessarily for everybody. It's not the cure-all. However, you can create a sense of composure for yourself. I think that's really important. For me, I know what I was like 25 years ago when I walked in here.

[45:04]

And for me, I would just say without Zazen, I'm not sure I'd be alive. And Zazen was never easy. It's easier now. But I had faith in it. And it worked. And I see it. I mean, I know so many of you. And I see people change from year to year. I can hardly talk about it, actually. I see people change from year to year, month to month, and it's not like, oh, Zazen is improving them. It's how we throw ourselves into this practice, which is the one we're sharing in this room, and there are other practices, but I believe that if you enter it that way, and you keep applying yourself and you keep looking at beginnings, you know, it's just, this is a good place to end, it's just, each of us is like this.

[46:17]

So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture. So much is in bud. So if we believe ourselves that way, if we believe There's a gesture to complete, whether it's a gesture of extending one's hand to another, the gesture of sitting down, the gesture of taking care of oneself. The bud is this potentiality. This is what Suzuki Roshi was talking about in emptiness, is possibility, potentiality, if we can open to it. Thank you very much and let's enjoy the year as it unfolds.

[47:09]

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