I wanted to talk about our Zazen practice today. It's a little ironic because I'm experiencing an unusually long hiatus in my Zen Do participation, but Alan said, why don't you talk about family practice? But I still feel like Zazen and Buddha Dharma and Sangha are my true home and my refuge, so that's what I wanted to talk about. And I want to talk about zazen just for today as a two-part thing, two-part practice. The first part is our tremendous effort getting to the zendo, moving towards stillness in the zendo, sitting with pain or those kinds of things. And the second part is letting zazen happen to us. So, getting to the Zen Do often takes quite a lot of effort.

[01:08]

It's kind of early in the morning if you're coming to morning Zazen. It's kind of hard to organize your life to include it and sometimes our life can be a real storm and we have to kind of harness the energy of our life towards our intention to come to the Zen Do. And even if, you know, whether we're coming once a week or twice a day or every Sashin or one Sashin a year, whether we're sitting at home, there's a, it still takes a lot of effort in our lives to get there. Right now I'm having a hard time because hormones coursing through my system and having taken on too many projects and trying to spend some time with my daughter and get enough sleep. So, but still the effort, even though it's not making contact, there's for me a constant effort in that direction.

[02:18]

And for the people who live here, it's easier because they live upstairs and they don't have to get in their car, but still it's a big effort So I just want to acknowledge that before I move into the other part of my talk, which is about how we really need to let zazen happen to us. Zazen is our direct experience of reality, our direct experience of emptiness and suchness. And you may not feel like you're having a direct experience of reality, but that's because it's not going to feel like what you think it's going to feel like when you have it. It's not going to fit our idea, and it's not going to be an experience. Sazen is our direct experience of dependent co-arising. I always want to say co-dependent co-arising.

[03:22]

also called conditioned co-production, which for those of you who aren't familiar with Buddhist philosophy, to me it's the core teaching of Buddhism, the teaching that makes Buddhism different from other religions. And what it is basically about, it's kind of hard to explain, but it is that things don't really exist inherently. things don't have inherent existence. Things are appearances based on causes and conditions that come together and the thing appears. And then when the causes and conditions aren't there anymore, the thing disappears, whatever it is. And inherent existence isn't like a philosophical idea. It's what we think things have. So we We try to, in Zazen we just try to keep looking at what's appearing and coming near to it and keeping our eye on it and we can see this and it may not be seeing it the way you think you're going to see it but it's what's happening.

[04:44]

They use the expression in Buddhism, dharmas. Dharma is also this big word meaning the teaching of Buddhism, but dharmas are also these momentary appearances. It's anything that's happening as long as it's momentary. So it's like the sounds, you know, in the Zen, the sounds of the birds, the sounds of the people next to you. It's your anger, your idea popping up, your preferences popping up. It's the feeling of the Zafu, it's just everything, everything is dharmas. And I've been studying in preparation for a class, Al and I are going to be teaching this text called The Perfection of Wisdom, 8,000 lines, and one of the things it says is, perfect wisdom neither gains nor abandons any dharma. So what that means to me is We don't use our effort to mess around with these appearances.

[05:51]

We don't try to use the same effort that we brought in with us to get us into the Zen Do and keep our back straight. We don't try to mess around with the Dharma. And we don't think, you know, that person sitting next to me is keeping me from seeing what's happening. They're squirming around, is keeping me from concentrating on what's happening. Their squirming around is what's happening. And if you're getting irritated and angry about it, your irritation and anger aren't keeping you from seeing what's happening. Your irritation and anger are what's happening. So, you know, you can't escape from what's happening. So, in Zazen, we try to let what's happening happen to us. And sometimes it's hard to know what to do with the tremendous effort it took to get us here.

[06:58]

And I think, especially at the beginning, but at different times, we kind of, we're trying to use brute force to get ourselves to concentrate. We're trying to bludgeon ourselves into sitting still, holding still, keeping our back straight. And it's partly because, you know, we just came in with that. Maybe we didn't have to use brute force to get ourselves here, but maybe we did. And we do need to use some effort to keep our back straight, to maybe sit with the pain, to keep trying to sit still. But we also have to We have to let the stillness that's happening all the time happen to us. So in this dependent co-arising these things are constantly appearing and you and we keep being aware of these things appearing and sort of reading between the lines of that is where emptiness is.

[08:06]

So emptiness isn't when you get rid of all the things that are happening and then you have emptiness, but right there, sort of between the lines of our lives, is where emptiness is. And so in Sāsana we want to try to let that stillness that's there happen to us. And we want to We don't want to just, you know, keep coming up with our idea of a straight back. We want to have the straight back that the whole universe wants us to have. And we don't want to just have our little idea of being concentrated, but we want to participate in the concentration that the whole universe is having at that moment. So if you try to If you're bringing too much effort, you know, there's too much you, it's not real.

[09:10]

Because that's not how things happen. Things happen from all sorts of causes coming together. So, you know, what is the upright posture that all beings want you to take right now? And, you know, we have to make an effort to remember to return to our breath. And we have an intention to return to our breath and return to a still posture. But I think, you know, remembering that moment when you remember is also, it's kind of the grace of Zazen to me. And it's not just something you do. It's not something you can control, as we all have discovered, if you've ever said a period of saasna.

[10:18]

And it's caused by all beings, you know, if the bird sings or the person next to you sighs, those are part of the things that make you, help you to remember, to come back to awareness. Let's see. And we also, we can let saasen happen to us as we're getting up from the zendo and leaving the zendo. We can let reality, what the reality that's there, happen. We don't have to necessarily pick up our persona, oh yeah, I'm a depressed person, right, now I know who I am, and leave. I mean, you may feel sad when you get up, because the causes for that are still happening, or you may feel depressed, or you may feel angry. But one of the causes for us is our sense of identity. We hold on to things because of that sense of identity.

[11:22]

And you don't have to pick that one up. You can wait. You can, you know, get up from Zazen and wait and see who you are. So, in Zazen we have some experience, whether we know it or not, of our interdependence with all things and our connection with each other and with all things. And maybe it doesn't feel like your idea of community or your idea of feeling connected to other people. But, you know, you don't have to put on that sense of alienation and that isolation when you leave. you can just, you know, the reality of how connected we are is still there.

[12:29]

So I wanted to also talk about this kind of two-part practice in our daily lives. To me, one of the ways the zazen of our daily life, in a way, is to practice the precepts. Precepts are, well, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, if you are a Buddhist, but also the precepts are not killing, not stealing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not intoxicating ourselves or others, not being greedy, not harboring ill will. Did I miss any? Not speaking ill of others, not talking about people behind their back, not raising yourself up by talking bad about others, not harming the Three Treasures or defiling the Three Treasures.

[13:48]

We don't, in our life, we try to hold ourselves with some effort to these precepts. And, you know, it can take a lot of effort for some of them. I know, I have friends who, you know, used to shoplift as a kid or something, and they still, you know, even though they don't need anything, it's like the hand goes out. And that may be an unusual one. You may not feel like You have to worry about not killing. You may not feel tempted to kill anybody, but there may be something in your life that you are killing, you know. And, you know, for myself, the hardest one is not speaking. It's not so much ill of others, exactly. It's just sort of not talking about people behind their back. So for me, I really have to make an effort. And that's sort of We can't just sort of be ourselves and expect it to all work out. Expect our true nature to shine forth.

[14:55]

We have to, that's why the rules are out there. They're like, oh, this is what your true nature is doing, if you can get in touch with it. So we try to align ourselves with that by following these precepts. And also, you know, dealing with the causes that are making us want to violate them, which is, I think pretty much comes down to a feeling of separation between self and others and self and objects and feeling somehow maybe that we need to protect ourselves from others feeling anyway that the self and other are not the same and are not connected to each other so we have to look at those causes and try to you know, deal with those causes, but we also, you know, so we're practicing that, and at the same time, we need to do this other side, which is letting the precepts, the real precepts, which is not our idea of the precepts, even though we can't have anything but our idea, and we keep bringing forth our idea, we have to let the real precepts of the universe come forward.

[16:15]

shine, you know, in between the lines of our effort to do it. And, you know, the real non-harmfulness, the real non-grasping, the real kind speech that's there in us and in everything. We have to somehow listen and not, you know, not just cling to our idea of kind speech, but listen really well and let kind speech come forth from the whole universe. So you might think, you know, well, you might be really making an effort not to I remember, you know, one of the hardest things for me has sometimes been, like, taking stamps from work, you know? It's like, it's so easy, you have a letter to mail, and there's a stamp there, and it's just nothing, it feels like. So you might be making an effort to do something like that, but then, you know, the voice is saying, you're stealing from your children with your workaholism, you know?

[17:20]

You've got to listen to the voice, too. Which isn't to say that you have to drop, you have to keep making your effort based on your limited idea of what's right and what's good. But this listening and this sort of offering ourselves has to be there too. Now we're going to have the family practice part of the lecture. So the same thing I find is true in parenting. I think, at least for me and most people I know, I need to have some philosophy or some idea or intention of how I'm going to be a parent. There's this kind of storm of the pain of your own childhood and remembering your own childhood or not remembering it.

[18:25]

kind of, if you just let things, you know, just be spontaneous, you open your mouth, and the thing that comes out is, you know, what your mom and dad said to you, not your true nature or your, you know, bigger sense of the universe or whatever. So, you know, I think all of us have some, or our parents have some philosophy, maybe too lofty sounding, but, you know, either we say, I don't want to scream at my kids the way my parents did, or I don't want to hit my kids. It may be more developed than that. It may be, you know, I'm going to acknowledge and accept his or her feelings. I'm going to listen. I'm going to support and respect their own individuality and struggle. So you have these things you're trying to do, and they can even come down to, you know, I have this book I really love called How to Talk so that Kids Will Listen, and it gives you, you know, sort of like phrases to use, and it feels a little artificial, you know, at first, but it's something that, you know, you have to have something to say, right?

[19:40]

So you have this thing, and it gives you a way to kind of ride the storm of your own emotions that are coming up from your own childhood. or from whatever, your bad day or whatever. But, you know, I think at this some point, it's not like, I don't think the rules exactly drop away, but it's like the real love and respect of your true relationship with your child is like so much more powerful than the idea of the rule, you know. And even if you're still saying things by the the phrase that you're supposed to say, it's because that is really the truth, you know, and I think that we have to let that happen, and it's a little bit of a scary moment, because it's not quite like this, it's not the spontaneousness of just letting whatever pop out of your mouth, it's, you know, it's some other kind of offering yourself to something, and

[20:49]

to, and you know, in particular with children, they may be full of desires and attachments and everything and all the normal things, but they're also, they're ready to, they're very ready to play in a spontaneous realm where there's, no one has any idea what, beforehand, what is going to be happening. And you can, you can let that be what's, you know, be the thing that's, that's happening. and, you know, still have your maybe idea of how you want to be a parent, but the sort of truth of the situation is coming forth. So... I'm saying this a little bit like it's a two part...

[21:52]

thing in time like first you make the effort and then this other thing comes forth and in a way I feel like it's like that and in another way it's kind of simultaneous or they're both happening at the same time. It's just one of those things like as I began to think about my talk and look at it, it was kind of dissolving into space but it's kind of like two legs walking and we never give up our effort, we have to still keep trying to get to the zendo. And at the same time, we have to let the universe take over. And it's not, as someone said, it's not like a matching grant. It's big. You bring your little effort and your little idea, and you offer yourself, and it's bad. So, you know, that's about all.

[22:59]

I thought it was going to take longer to get through that, but I hope we can have maybe a nice discussion. Anybody have any questions? Dolly? Laurie, thank you very much for your talk. It's really wonderful to see you sitting there in your robe and your rucksack. We appreciate it. Every one of us, thank you. The one phrase you used just now, I wonder if you could expand on what you said, and I like the image. We have to keep moving our two legs and get ourselves to the endo. But as you know, many people, whether they live far or have crowded schedules or for whatever reason, would like to sit at home and maybe would like to What do you think about if there is a difference between sitting here and sitting at home? Just comment on that, if you would.

[24:01]

Well, I think it's definitely different, but I wouldn't say one's better than the other. I mean, I think maybe there's something a little easier, if anything, I think, about at least being in the Zen Dojo, maybe not getting here, but the sort of external emptiness of the room and quietness and that you don't see your own things that remind you of various things. I think it's easier in that way to be in the Zen Dojo, doing Zazen, but I think I think it's really a great skill. I wish I had it. I mean, I've been trying to do some sitting at home. I find it's hard because it just I've been leaning on this for so many years, you know, but, and I don't, you know, in Theravadan cultures, they just sit in their, I mean, you know, the monks all have their rooms, and everybody goes and sits in their room, so there's nothing inherently Buddhist, I don't think, about sitting with a group, and you're just as connected to all beings when you're sitting in your, you know, room as you are when you're in the zendo.

[25:16]

I think the important thing is, you know, to try to come up with something that you can do and set your intention on that. So if it's come to the Zen once a week and sit at home two other times a week, or it's sit every morning at home for 20 minutes and come to one sashimi or whatever it is, try to come up with something that's maybe a little bit not just, you know, a little bit hard, taking some effort, but not so hard you can't do it. And, you know, this is what Mel said to me after my daughter was born, you know, he said, oh, two times a week is pretty good, you know. The thing is, you know, try to be, try to come up with something that's a little hard, but you can do it. So that it's an unconditioned thing, that you're not, well, this week was too hard, I couldn't do what I said. It's kind of just, you do it unconditionally. So try to come up with some practice that you can do unconditionally, and then try to do it, unconditionally. Well, I have a couple of questions. I really enjoyed your talk.

[26:17]

Thank you for that. I wonder how your experience of Zazen has shifted since you were pregnant. If you have a sense of what Sylvie thinks of all this practice. You know, she doesn't have much sense of it, I don't think, as any particular thing. She's not really curious. She hasn't asked us. about it, you know, we talk about it, I'm like, oh, dad's in this endo, where's daddy? This house, and where's mommy? And she comes in and helps me clean the altars, and, you know, we used to come in to service a lot more and bow and stuff, and she'd throw herself down with the best of them, but, but, um, I don't think it's, it's, it must just be, I mean, I imagine that it's so much a part of reality that, you know, it hasn't hit her that other people's moms don't do this, you know? And the other thing you said is the pregnancy. Well, I think one thing in relation to the thing I'm bringing up that both parenting and pregnancy has done is I don't have as much... I mean, let's see, how can I say this?

[27:27]

I think one of the reasons that we're attracted, those of us who are attracted to Zen practice, are attracted to Zen practice is partly because it takes this huge effort and we have a big self. We have a big idea of self. And so we have the wherewithal to do this, and I think that's kind of ebbed away for me. I think being a parent and being pregnant, I don't have, and maybe the other parents here can either corroborate or disagree, it's like I don't have the same thing I used to marshal to get to practice. I have to really rely on, well I have to really rely So does that make sense? It's like I'm not the same self I was or something. Yeah. The effort you make is not... It's as if you're taking care of yourself in a way that eliminates perhaps some of the force because that may not be healthy for your pregnancy.

[28:35]

Yeah. And maybe it wasn't healthy before, I don't know, but it was just the way I lived my life, so it was the way I did my practice too. And I think those of us, I don't want to speak for everybody, but I'm going to, that we're sort of attracted to Zen because we like the idea of doing this really hard thing, that we do it ourselves, kind of thing. And I've talked to other people in other traditions, it's not like they don't have that, it's just, it's not as big of a feature of it, you know. So there are periods of Zazen that aren't hard times to get to, and they do things to make it easy to do, you know, instead of do things to make it hard to do. I was hoping that it was going to come up through your talk, which it has.

[29:51]

Unfortunately, the last question, there's more clarity that actually you're pregnant now. Some people might have thought that you're not pregnant. You had this lovely child, and now you're trying to figure out how to incorporate practice in that. Well, or you could say, how do I accept my upright posture that doesn't fit my idea of upright posture?

[31:15]

How do I accept my crooked posture as my upright posture that the whole universe is giving me to take? I think that's it. And it's like this tricky thing. And the same thing is true of saying, well, I can't get to this end right now, but I'm still practicing because I'm still keeping these questions in front of me. You know, there's a little danger in there, you know, and I can sort of feel that around the edges of my life that I could just let the zazen practice slip away because everything else is so vital and following the precepts and parenting and all this. But I think, you know, we have to hold both, we have to... There's something about zazen that's mysterious and I said, you know, it's direct perception of reality and you could say, well, everything, all the time is direct perception of reality and it's true but not to the extent that you shouldn't come back to the zendo. And I think we, for me, I just accepted that it's a mystery, that it's not, I can't explain why it is, but, you know, everything is direct perception of reality, but zazen is like the door to see that or something.

[32:24]

And, you know, in this case, you know, if you just have this slouchy posture, you can't just say, well, Lori said that this is the posture the all in the whole universe wants me to take. You know there's a certain, I don't know whether it's like your real integrity or your real strictness and honesty with yourself that's really listening, you know. And you know I think if you see everyone else as not having upright posture then you're clinging to your idea of upright, you know. And If you're sort of looking at everyone else, that's the sort of way you can see that there's something weird going on there. But, you know, how do you take care of your knees? How does the universe want you to take care of your knees? Does the universe want you to sit full lotus? Do your knees want you to sit full lotus? I mean, you know, there's a listening and there's still, there's this integrity of bringing your best, so far, the best way you've been able to think about it.

[33:25]

And that, you know, you study what upright posture is and you study yoga or whatever. So you're bringing your best thought of what it is, and you're also listening. And that's the two part thing. You're listening to what all beings are telling you. And sometimes, you know, you realize you really haven't been listening and you hear something really loud coming your way. But maybe not, but I've had that happen quite a lot. Yes? How do you mean? And that reminds me of something else I was thinking about in relation to this talk, is there's this expression, plight your troth, that used to be used in marriage I guess,

[34:40]

I always thought it meant pledge your truth or something, but what it really means is you plight your truth. You put your truth in plight for the other person's truth. You put your own idea and truth in danger for the other person's truth, and that's part of the way we help each other, is we plight our truth to each other. We say, okay, I have my truth, I'm not going to give it up, but I'm going to put it in jeopardy because I'm going to listen to everyone's truth, and I'm going to hear everyone's truth. And, you know, so I think that's one of the ways we help each other. We fight or try. Does that answer your question okay? Did you have one more? Okay. Yes? Can you talk a little bit more about children and how we introduce them to our kids? My son meditates, though.

[35:42]

How old is he? He's six years old. I'm giving him the biography of Buddha. I heard him talk to a friend of his the other day to explain to Buddha how he was a hella good meditator. Well, that's true. You got that right. And is there support in this community for kids learning more or I think we all want there to be more, you know, those of us who are parents, but whenever we've tried, I don't know the past, we try to get together, it just becomes like this one more hard thing we're doing as parents. We haven't figured out a way to come together in a way that supports and makes our practice more easy. We had these family practice meetings, but it was like, you know, well, gee, I don't know, I'm too busy, you know, you know, it's sort of like you leave your kids at home with a babysitter so you can come to the family practice meeting and, you know, maybe that's okay if you have to spend a lot of time with them, but, you know, when you get into this realm where It's like, you know, the eight to five babies, you know, childcare, and then the evening thing, and then you want to go out one night.

[36:47]

I mean, it just, so we haven't figured out how, and I think like a Dharma school, a lot of centers have like a Sunday, but you know, what we used to call a Sunday school, and I wouldn't even care. It could teach all religions. I wouldn't even care if it was just pushing Buddhism or what it was doing. But so far, it's been beyond anyone's power to organize. Yes? Just to comment on that, last month I actually talked to Mel, who was here a long time, about starting up a program like they have in the city on Saturday luncheon. He liked the idea and told me to just, you know, cheer on. I was supposed to get and over to the community and having volunteers of entertainment over there.

[37:50]

Yeah, it's a really great thing. I've been sort of not wanting to organize it, and I still don't want to, but it is a really great thing. I need to talk to Alan about it. Yeah, I think we need a critical mass of parents and kids, sort of the right age or who are interested, and we haven't had that yet, but it's really just waiting for that one final cause. Could be you. And as far as what you, you know, tell them or something, I don't have any idea. I really don't. I'm more, you know, right now I'm just trying to concentrate on, you know, how do I speak to her, how does she speak to her friends, you know, how does she deal with when her friends speak to her in a way that I don't like, and I don't want her to learn and stuff, you know. Fran, and then, purple shirt. You know, what you just said about how you listen and how you talk to the kid and listen to her friends and stuff, my experience is As far as I can tell, that's the best you can do.

[38:58]

And that's really it. You can't teach your kids anything about practice, but you can show them something about how you practice. You can practice with them. And you don't really have... If practice is part of your idea of who you are and what your life is about, you kind of don't have any choice but to practice with them. And they're always showing you how it is. And they're really close to how it is with them. Especially little kids don't have a lot of fancy ideas. And as they begin to develop enough wherewithal to have fancy ideas, they tell you what their ideas are, and you just can investigate with them what the relationship is between their idea and reality, and how they get stuck in painful places. when their idea and reality are different. And it's a wonderful exploration.

[40:00]

I used to feel real bad about not doing more with my kids, and we tried, you know, we tried chanting at meals and stuff until they protested and, you know, didn't fight with anybody. Yeah, the thing that I keep thinking of, though, is the sort of mythology aspect of the thing in the stories that isn't ostensibly teaching, like I was raised by totally agnostic parents with really religious aunts, you know, so we would go to these Bible classes and we learned, and what I remember really, I don't remember it as a, as a sort of philosophy or, I remember these little, the flannel board with the little stories of, you know, this good Samaritan and the, you know, all the different little stories I know about Jesus and they were, you know, I think they're in me in this kind of evocative way about how he was, you know, someone who gave everything, you know, or these, you know, these kind of, not the Christian ideas that are so much the philosophy, but really the story, and I keep, I think, if anything, Buddhist stories must have that even more wonderfully, you know, the stories of Buddha's life, and how great it would be, because she doesn't have anything, you know, I'd rather almost that she had the Jesus stories rather than nothing.

[41:18]

Well, it is a big vacuum, and I've noticed that, especially with my oldest one who's in college now and trying to learn European history, he hasn't a clue about, you know, all this God stuff, you know, and why there were all these, you know, kings and lords and philosophers and stuff, because it's, you know, he just doesn't have a clue about why that was important to be able to speak out. Yes, purple shirt. Did you have your hand up before? No? Yes. Just a quick comment. Depending on how you look at children, I have a grown son who wouldn't think that he's a son sometimes, rather he's an independent entity. And I recall not doing very much conscious practice of any kind because I was in between many traditions except Druid stuff for some reason. It's because my birthday is on the Solstice, so I kind of thought, oh, that must have some mysticism in it.

[42:19]

Anyway, recently, as we've talked, and I am receiving my practice in various things, he comes up with a discussion, comes into a discussion with me, and he seems to feel quite proud that suddenly he's a Buddhist. And I don't know where he's, this is coming from, or It's certainly not coming from me directly, nor is he practicing in any conscious way that I know. San Francisco culture may have just permeated. And I don't know what he means by that, but he's very involved when he says that. Right. And how old is he? He's 26. So he's like we were when we came to Buddhism in a way. Yeah. And he sort of wants to bring all, you know, several people who he's friendly with into it. Oh, well, when Peter says such and such, that's being a Buddhist, and so on and so forth.

[43:21]

I mean, it just totally surprises me. Because... But he's not asking you, is this what Buddhism is? Oh, hardly. He tries to direct it, if anything. I don't know if that's hopeful or not. Yeah, well, I don't really care if my daughter becomes a Buddhist. I mean, I don't try to make her a Buddhist, but I do want to give her something about the mythology, overall world mythology, and also indigenous people's mythology. I mean, I wish I could share it all with her, just for the stories, you know? I wish I knew more about it. Well, just the striking thing is that I don't know what I was doing because I wasn't filling that vacuum with anything but confusion. This is what he pulled out for the moment. Yes. Hmm. I wouldn't, I don't know, that doesn't sound so great to me right now.

[44:24]

Say a little bit more about what you mean. How about if it's just a constant trip that you're always taking even though you never are prepared? I mean, you didn't want to go up here. I don't like the idea that you never take it. That's kind of like you're always preparing yourself and you're never experiencing it. when you're not sitting? Well, there's, you know, there's the sitting where you're actually sitting cross-legged silently in the zendo, and I can tell when I'm not doing that. And then you mean something else, like how to tell when you're not in direct contact with the reality or when you're not practicing or something? I don't think you can. I think you need to check with your friends, too. I think you can tell all by yourself. But you may sometimes feel like you're not, and then sometimes you may feel like you are, and you may check with your friends and they say, uh-uh, I don't see it. So it's a group effort, I think.

[45:25]

Is it time? Okay, one more question. Okay, thank you so much. It's been nice being here with you.

[45:56]

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