San Francisco. In Tassajara. In Tassajara. And we see Hill Valley now. And there's a priest, a layman, a council. Thank you. I really appreciate being able to come over here and appreciate the practice that you have here at the Berkeley Zendo. It's a real jewel of a place. And I know many of you have worked years put your energy into creating this place.

[01:15]

I think that's a rare and wonderful activity. And for myself, these days it's a kind of a refuge and sanctuary, the times that I'm able to come here and join you. So I don't think you should conceive of the Berkeley Zendo being some out-of-the-way place. Although it's nice that it's set back from the street a bit and it's quiet, it's also very much a center. Of course, the way of the Buddha is ineffable.

[02:26]

It's not capable of being expressed in words. So, for 40 years the Buddha talked, and for 2,500 years since, Buddhists have been talking. Today, driving over here in the rainstorm and now stepping out into the bright sunlight, I was reminded of Dogen's expression, Dogen Zenji in the 13th century, who said, not advancing, not retreating, not real, not empty, an ocean of bright clouds, an ocean of solemn clouds.

[03:36]

So, a poetic expression like that gives us some sense of the vastness and the possibilities of practicing the way. But we also need more of an everyday maintenance kind of understanding. So what's been helpful for me is to remember the words of Gary Snyder's teacher, which are simply that Zen is two things. Zazen and sweeping the garden. Zazen can be understood two ways. One is the way of form.

[04:47]

that we take a particular posture. We restrain ourselves from jumping up and running off to do whatever occurs to us. We restrain ourselves from speaking. We sit up straight. So zazen has a particular form. And that's one side of understanding zazen and we really need that. We need to make a daily practice of putting all our busyness aside, even just for a few moments, and taking a particular form which expresses that which we can't say. And the other side of understanding zazen is that of shunyata or vastness or sometimes called emptiness.

[06:03]

And that is that zazen has no boundary. Any form it may take is a tentative form. and may take a form, but you realize that that form is not permanent, not substantial. So zazen, understood that way, has no boundary, it has no particular form. So while you're sitting zazen in the zendo, The people who are shopping over at Safeway are also engaged in zazen. And your friend who is sleeping in this morning is also engaged in zazen. Many years ago, one friend of mine who was a student, who wanted to be a student of Suzuki Roshi's, called up the Sukoji Temple

[07:16]

This is before San Francisco Zen Center was established. He wanted to find out what time the Zazen period would start. So he called and someone answered the phone, so he said, what time does Zazen start? And the person who answered the phone said, it never stops. and started laughing. Only later did he realize that was Suzuki Roshi. So Suzuki Roshi wanted to impress upon us very strongly that Zazen was boundless. Zazen is boundless in time and in space. And at the same time, we need to take this particular limited form or we forget the vastness.

[08:26]

Sweeping the garden, then, may be our compassionate activity. It's as in, is our wisdom practice. Compassionate activity may be literally sweeping the garden. And actually it's a traditional Zen practice to take up the broom, sweep the garden. This morning some of us were cleaning after the morning sittings and after breakfast. And we were sweeping the little dust out of the corners Sweeping the garden may be a very physical practice. Maybe something that you do for yourself, to take care of yourself.

[09:35]

Maybe something that you do for your friend or some person in your family that you're responsible to and for. Any particular thing that you do may be viewed as compassionate action. And it's certainly an aspect of living this way. Now, sweeping the garden may also be a particular refinement of how you conduct yourself, how you practice in a formal sense. Realizing that there are certain kinds of activity that are conducive to an enlightened state of mind, you may make a particular effort to sweep that kind of garden.

[10:53]

You may make a particular effort to be aware of what you're doing moment after moment. And we call this mindfulness practice. It's wonderful to realize that in the midst of confusion, bewilderment or fear, if you simply stop and pay attention to your experience, to your physical experience in your body, to your emotional experience, your feelings, to your state of mind, And to the thought constructs in your mind, that slight effort of paying attention is called cultivating the way. It's called sweeping the garden.

[11:57]

It seems as though we're not doing anything when we do that. It's a subtle activity. But it's that kind of subtle activity that brings us into very close, intimate touch with what is really going on. Investigating these states, investigating very carefully the content of your experience. What is it? in itself is realizing the way. And pretty soon you find out that you run into some resistance, some obstruction, some habit.

[13:02]

For example, today, as I was driving over here, I suddenly found myself in the midst of a very heavy downpour. And I was driving along at my usual speed, and I realized that I should slow down. I tell people, I sometimes do a workshop or a class in teaching people how to bring consciousness and awareness to driving. So, I immediately felt impatient. I knew I should slow down, but I was just sailing along and I had some resistance to slowing down. So I had a habitual speed. I was moving along at 60 miles an hour and something in me wanted to keep going 60 miles an hour.

[14:12]

Our habits are as simple as that sometimes. It's a kind of inertia, or a kind of familiarity. We're familiar with a particular way, and as soon as we think about changing it, well, we don't know. We're just a little conservative. So I had to work with myself for some moments to actually get that foot to come up off the accelerator a little bit and watch the speedometer go down and have all these other people pass me. I didn't feel that I was an obstruction to them. So it was okay to go slower. I did feel that it was responsive, actually responsive to the conditions, to the situation.

[15:22]

So in our effort to sweep the garden, to cultivate the way in our changing circumstances, there's a responsiveness that we have to be willing to create. Then when I was close to arriving here, I remembered that Mailey had sent me this little brochure from the Berkley Zen Center this week, which gave the morning schedule and also indicated that we don't park right over here in the neighborhood, that out of consideration for the people who live in the neighborhood, we park over on the main thoroughfare where there are not so many residences or over at the Safeway parking lot.

[16:27]

Well, that caused me a little problem also because some time ago someone gave me directions to come here and I always came, I just followed their directions and parked right in front or as close as I could. So today I was just a little irritated. I guess I better follow these instructions. But I didn't know exactly where to go and it would take a little longer. And so, again, I had to make a little extra effort to do a compassionate action of parking in a different place than I was used to. So these are very simple examples. And you may think the pain of having to go an extra block is not so significant, and it wasn't. But that's the way we make our decisions in our everyday interaction with people and things that we come in contact with.

[17:39]

Now Bob, what time did I start talking? Last Monday night at the discussion after our sitting group, someone talked about this and her example was in the case of an addiction problem that she has, how to practice with a habit that's very powerful.

[18:54]

when you become aware of a habit that's actually damaging to your own well-being or to some person around you. And the most fundamental Buddhist practice is, again, the practice of awareness. But in order to stay with awareness, you find that the pain increases. So someone said, Well, they sat Zaz in, and at first they had a very good feeling about sitting Zaz in. It felt really nice to have a little peace and quiet. But then something else started happening, and they became more and more aware of their anger. And their very busy, distracted mind just went on and on and on, and it was very difficult to stop. And the person who was working with stopping her habit said that she's finding if she can just stay aware of the desire a little longer than she normally would without trying to do anything about it, but just stay aware of that desire.

[20:21]

it'll fade out, it'll become less intense, it'll increase to a certain intensity which is almost unbearable. And the feeling is that she had to do something about it, right? She had to... My own analogy is when I stopped smoking. Many years ago I stopped smoking and there was a point where I didn't know what to do. You know, my hand wanted to pick up the cigarette. Actually, there were other people smoking around me and my hand picked up the cigarette and I put it in my mouth and I go, oh, I stopped smoking. I have to, now what do I do? I had to put it down. It was very hard to do and then I'm lost. You know, what can I do with my hand? What can I do with this desire? But simply having some awareness of it, the pain increases. There is a suffering that you endure But being able to sit with some stability gives you some strength.

[21:28]

Being able to hold that concentration, that awareness of mind, then you come to the other side of it, and you realize that that desire was a habit. It wasn't really so important. Again and again, you know, Habits need to be carefully trained. You can't just pretend that it's not going to come up again. It's a kind of a problem that eventually subsides, but still years later may come up. Now we have habits like this in all aspects of our karmic configuration, our character, our personality. Sometimes I stop talking when I'm giving a talk because I talk partly out of habit and partly out of awareness.

[22:42]

Sometimes I think if I stop, it gives me a chance to get a fresh start. So I'd like to stop now and give any of you a chance to say something, give you a chance to have a fresh start. So if any of you have comments or responses or questions, now's the time. Steve, can you say a little bit more about how it is for all the people in the same way now who are there, how it is that they are doing Zazen, and the difference between their Zazen practice and the mindfulness Zazen practice that we started in here?

[23:57]

Kind of hard to figure, isn't it? I suppose so. Might as well. Go shopping, of course. That's the reasonable thing to do. Yeah, we have to be careful with that. We catch ourselves thinking, because we need to encourage ourselves to sit zazen, We begin to think, well, this is a little different than some other activity. And we begin to create a division. But actually, zazen, completely understood, has no purpose. It doesn't, it can't serve our self-interest. In that way, it's not like shopping.

[25:05]

And zazen, well maybe an image would be that we're through taking this form, we're entering a gate into a vast ocean. And as soon as you take this form completely, as soon as you take the form that you're sitting is completely, then the form drops away. You actually have no edge. You're completely connected with all beings. You're connected with the floor, the ceiling, the whole universe. And you realize that the people who are pushing their shopping carts in a safe way are walking in this paradox.

[26:13]

And they're beautiful, pushing their shopping carts. Now if you can go to Safeway and walk with your Zazen mind, and just be there in Safeway, you can begin to appreciate the fact that people are all just being there. But it doesn't occur to them that they're just being there, because they're so busy thinking about, what else is on my list? I don't have enough time. I'm afraid that they're going to run out of this, and it's the last half gallon of milk, the kind I want. So, because people are caught up in their selfish mind, and most of us are, most of the time, at least 90%, we forget. that we're actually doing zazen. Does that help?

[27:20]

Yeah? It seems like there's some danger in thinking that shopping and sitting in the zendo are the same, but there's also some danger in thinking that they're different. There's danger in any kind of thinking. It's that people are wherever they are. I mean, if they're sitting in a reservoir, that's where they are. If they're in a safe place, that's where they are. And that's a problem to start thinking about how good it is to be sitting here. Practically speaking, I want to encourage you to come and sit zazen. For thousands of years, human beings have found that just because of our karmic tendencies, we get pretty confused if we don't stop and have a practice to clarify our minds.

[28:39]

Because most of what we do is attaching to things and grabbing at things and trying to form some mental construction that'll give us some security. Because we're so involved in that all the time and we forget how wonderful it is already. How much is already given to us before we think that we have to grab it and hang on to it. So we really need this practice because the job of letting go of all of our karmic attachments is so great. It's such a big project. We really need a spiritual practice that's going to give us an antidote to all that. And taking the form of zazen is that. You said a particular thing that was very helpful to me, and I just want to mention it.

[29:49]

You were describing the car ride and speeding, which is something I identify with a lot. And your use of the word responsive was very helpful to me. of dangerous though it is. And I thought, well, OK, well, I think the difference is between responsiveness and reactionism. And I guess it seems to me that being responsive is more in the line of making a free choice to respond to this particular situation in the present, whereas reaction seems to be a knee-jerk response to something that really happened a long time ago anyway. And so now I thought, well, how does one keep on top of knowing the difference between responding to what's going on now and reacting to what happened 30 years ago?

[31:02]

And the best answer I could come up with was be as aware as possible. And I'd like to hear what Dustin might say about that. That's good. in itself is not a problem. It's completely wonderful human activity and is also zazen, but forming thoughts. The problem comes when we identify, when we attach to a particular thought, hang on to it past its time. And what you're saying is, raises the whole issue of, well, what is its time? What is appropriate? What is the right thought for the right moment? And, of course, your way of continuing to be aware is exactly right.

[32:08]

In Buddhist practice there, there's a first practice of stabilizing the mind in meditation. is a chance for us to let our old habits and assumptions kind of clear so that we can then have a fresh response. And that response is predicated upon seeing exactly what is in front of us. If you don't know what's there, it's hard to respond appropriately. So, part of what we need to do is really, really have a kind of spirit of inquiry that we say, what is it? What is this experience? Or what is this person who's in front of me? Even if you've seen them every day for 20 years, you know, they're not the person they were five minutes ago. It's hard to do. So, you've suggested a way to work at it as an individual,

[33:15]

I'd also like to suggest that we can help each other. And that's called communication. And that one value of having a sangha or a group of people practicing together is that we share our intention. We say, yeah, I'm really sincere and I want to live my life in accordance with the way things really are. And that kind of, if each of us says that, it gives our friends in the Sangha a kind of permission to say, hey, I don't get it, you know, you said that you were sincere, you said that you were going to live in a certain way and now I see you doing this, I don't get it. So, we each have a responsibility then to each other to point out where someone's reacting rather than being responsive, or someone is being a person who's acting out of their habits and assumptions rather than actually being in accord with what's happening.

[34:29]

And each of us can also not wait for someone to come and hit us over the head, but can say, here's what I'm feeling or here's what I'm thinking. How does that sound to you? And it's very valuable because we all have a different perspective. And each of our perspectives are valid. And if you just take your own perspective and don't listen to someone else's, you're really in danger of living a very constricted life based on reactions, rather than living an expansive life in which you can respond. So I think communication is really, really helpful. We don't know. None of us know by ourselves. It's a relative world.

[35:30]

None of us know whether what we're doing is really quite right or not. So we all have to do the best we can Follow some guidelines sometimes. And then listen very carefully what comes back. Does anyone on this side of the room want to say anything? Yes. I was thinking earlier, you're talking about Then it occurred to me that he was talking about the forms. One form was sitting up straight and jammed. Another form was pushing a shopping cart. But then if I thought about it more, I realized that he would be sitting in the side of that foster and shopping.

[36:41]

When we find ourselves doing that, when I find myself doing that, and I say, oh, you know, whatever soundless sound it is, oh, that, whatever, would you say something about the space? This is something I've wondered about a lot. There's a space between what you become aware of, be more accurate when you become aware that you haven't been aware. Then you become aware of being aware and that's a curious space for me. Do you understand my question? And then what do you do in that curious space? Is that your question?

[37:49]

Then what I think I do is something that can't be put into words. It's sometimes in this reflective mode of meditation we find ourselves in the the Hall of Mirrors, where we get an infinite regression, right? So you can see yourself watching yourself, watching yourself, watching yourself. And behind that, well, who is it? Who is the ultimate observer of all this? Where is the origin of consciousness? It can be kind of dizzying sometimes. So I suggest that you work with that and continue to find, ask the question of what is the source?

[38:53]

What is the source of the arising mind? But if it becomes too dizzying, then return to your awareness of your body. Say, oh, I'm getting lost. time to check my posture. Am I sitting up straight? Are my thumb tips touching? Is my tongue behind the teeth? And you can then expand your ability to remain stable and at the same time investigate that situation. But you can't really helpfully investigate it unless you can unless you can continue to sit with stability. So the physical posture is a big aid for that. And it can be very fruitful then to sit with an awareness of

[40:04]

a very open field, and just precisely where is the beginning of your thought, the beginning of your distraction, where does it begin to take off? So the sutras talk about this, returning to the source, returning to the source in your mind. And sometimes it means finding the beginning of a train of thought. Yeah? But I don't know what you're describing, or before it. There was a point, early, where I thought that somehow you got to something. At the stage where I'm at now, what you're describing is more wave-like. It isn't a continuum. Or a continuum. Well, I think probably what we need to do is talk this one-to-one because we're getting into quite a bit of detail here.

[41:20]

The effort to continue awareness is the practice that we always return to and the first most fundamental practice is to return to awareness of your body and check your body posture and you'll find your mind is doing various things and it takes some experience to be able to sit completely balanced with your body and at the same time cope with all the mind's material without losing the body. But that does come with time. Speaking of time, we're out of it. Thank you all very much for your attention.

[42:21]

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