Full Transcript

I'm going to start with one of the brief stories from Master Dongchun that Bill Powell worked on a long time ago. Number 110. It goes like this:

When Yushan was walking in the mountains with Yan Yan, a knife in his belt made a noise. Yan Yan asked, "What made that noise?" Yushan drew out his knife and made a powerful slashing motion in front of Yan Yan's face. Later the master Dongchun described this incident to the assembly and said, "Look at Yushan. He inclined his body to deal with this matter. If the people of today want to clarify this supreme matter, they must first experience this kind of mind."

As a footnote, in the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha said, "Those who see me by my form are not able to see the Tathagata." What is it to clarify the supreme matter? I think that's something we want to do every day. We're in the midst of shifting sands and undulating waves. And how to clarify this matter?

When I was a child, I was driven by curiosity. I was driven by a determined curiosity. I'd ask, "What is this? What is that? How does it work?" And endless questioning to investigate the matter of existence. And sometimes just too many questions for my dad. And I think that's something we can do every day.

There are so many different views. Differing views. The top to bottom. The bottom up. To the horizon. Even what is held in the palm of my hand. These amazing images from the Webb Space Telescope of galaxies with more stars in a grain of sand held at arm's length than sand along the Colorado River. All these views, which view, which views are the right view? The wonder of this practice to experience these views and to let go of them, yet be with them. In that there is magic, even majesty in this.

For most of my life, I have resisted and avoided competition. As a youngster, I was able to watch the successful playing out of intense competition and the competitive spirit in my older brother, in his vigorous and competent involvement in baseball and in his studies. The goal of the game was to win, to get the top score or the best score in class. There was always something to get. And for me, it was always difficult and elusive. When I would win, the gut that I had never gave me any lasting stability or confidence. There was always the next moment to screw things up.

Once I had a younger neighbor friend. He was a couple years younger and he had two pair of boxing gloves. And he wanted to box me. So we put on those massive gloves on our tiny hands. And we started to box. And at first it was kind of fun because all my other previous experience of fighting and wrestling was with my bigger older brother. And suddenly I could hold this youngster at an arm's length and pound him on his ears. So there was a moment of like, wow, this is fun. And then I panicked and got completely lost in the haunting feeling of damaging another, of possibly giving him cauliflower ear and permanently damaging another being.

So how it is to figure out the way. For me, it wasn't through winning. It seemed to be more natural course through many anxieties and frustrations and disappointments. And then somehow finding my way. Finding out how to get by. And often it was through helping out, helping others, being useful. That's partly how I came to know this self. We each have our ways of functioning and finding what self we manifest.

Sidney Poitier in his autobiography, The Measure of a Man, he wrote this: "I'm always at home. Thanks to the more fundamental legacy my parents gave me, I'm always at home because I'm the same person no matter where I am. I am the same person at some Hollywood dinner that I was when I was being hassled by cops in Miami or sleeping in a paid toilet in New York. The fundamental legacy is that consistent definition of self."

Now in Zen, we talk about no self or disappearing self or changing self. To me, it's helpful to look at what our own fundamental legacy is. What it is that we've learned when we grew up, when we grow up. There are so many standards and expectations that we have for ourselves and for each other in so many different situations. Somehow immersed in our families and the conditions of our existence, we come to know these myriad aspects of empathy and honesty and dependability and fairness, thoughtfulness and thoroughness.

Delving into these definitions of self, there is a remembrance of a self that consistently appears flowing in many countless contexts we pass through. When I look at this definition of self in the context of my life, this life, I see its shifting quality, shifting qualities. A sense of pride in one moment can in the next have deep angst and even feel for another human being who might be in the midst of suffering of some kind, even humiliation or terror.

In the morning, I can slip on my work pants and tighten my rope belt. But then later in the day, they all come down, up and down, up and down with a myopic view of self, this daily cycle sometimes shows the rich meaning or lack thereof of this life. And what is it that persists? Sometimes it is a sense of commitment and enduring determination.

When a father and husband, it was the measure of providing for my family day in, day out, to keep providing support and the material goods to sustain the family, self and family, which mingled with providing support for others in the community in its myriad ways. I had to figure out what my next job would be, poking into the world, the universe for what could possibly help keep this sustenance going, not just to sustain me, but also for the miracle of this life, of this family and world. And somehow things have worked out to where it is and where and how does it keep going?

The buying of property, the selling of property, the transferring of property. I had the opportunity to live at Jikoji, a place that was not mine. It was a very helpful time. I could be helpful there at a place that did not belong to me, a place to dig into the earth and a place willing to receive my efforts all in its wild and diffuse ways. And I've always felt this temporal quality of my life, how interim this existence is, how interim my path is.

As a father, I worked myself out of a job of being the useful, supportive dad to one receded to the sidelines and beyond, to be out of the way to allow the young ones their full manifestation. My time of being useful at Jikoji has morphed in other ways, even old and in the way. Now here in Oakland, in essence, I manage a museum of sorts, a playground for others. Maybe it will even be my playground now.

The responsibility ties to unique relationships. Relationships to beings and relationships to Rupa form to matter. And at times stepping into these situations, there's little room for diversion or change other than the change of focus that is ever present in this field of play. We weed, we trim, we water, we fertilize, we generate more stuff. Some of it becoming works of art and other parts becoming trash or sweat or excrement or product that where do we put it? Where does it belong? What value is it and to whom? To find value in each thing and each act.

Where is the self in this? The self that Mr. Poitier talks about. The same self as at a fancy dinner or shivering in a warm spot where one can find refuge. What self is the same? In the core of it, it is cultivation of being more civilized and upright. It is through these efforts of cultivating and refining our life and helping those lives around us that we become more humane. And it is also through this more civilized and humane work that we see our own humanity and also the ways we falter, where our community and country behaves inhumanely.

We practice this life. We experience this breath connecting this body and this mind. There's the struggle between what ought to be and what is. And for me to meet this struggle is through this sitting practice. Through it, I can see more clearly what is. There is such fluidity in being awake just as we are.

In a high mountain stream, a rock can get stuck in a vortex hole where the surging water turns the rock round and round and carves the hole in its momentary existence. While the hole itself smooths the rock spinning in it and its chasm. Sometimes thinking that that's the point of this whole thing is to have a really round, smooth stone. There is a pure aesthetic to it. And then the stream conditions change and out pops the rock out of its place and rolls downstream banging into what's large and what's small. A place of what is stability. Miraculous stability at times is so temporal.

So who is this character keeping this body going with this sense of self? To be a provider, to be a model for others, to be an example to students and children and grandchildren. To be an example of what my notion of quality being is. Authentic in failure. And fortune alike. How to act. How to react. How to move and navigate through all this. Moving through new situations. New relationships to people and to people. New relationships to people and things. Relation to property and ideas.

And we practice learning to use and wear again our values. Discovering greater depths to empathy and honesty. The meaning, the vibrant meaning of integrity and of kindness and thoughtfulness. All of these values can be found in each paramita. To try on and wear these in new situations.

We are each actors. And each situation is fresh territory. For some of us, speaking for myself, I'm sometimes a major actor. More often a bit player. And always an interim actor. With every new situation to wear the garments and armor of the station I'm in. Some imagine that the garments are actually what's primary. That the forms are what are primary. Some find that the situation they're in gives them a sense of sovereignty. Regality. Even maybe imperial power. That is tried to be held onto.

Whether sharing a fine meal with important people or sleeping under an overpass in central Oregon out of the rain. What is it that remains the same? What sense of self is it that remains? A self that is self aware of breath and the condition of this body and this mind as it is in this moment. Maybe humble in elegant circumstances. And regal in a most simple camp. Regal in the sense of knowing how to be in all conditions that arise. Perhaps this is how to remain true to the values that manifest our being. That enrich us deeply and connect to the ancient ways of being that feel true and make us feel whole. These shifting sands and undulating waves.

I'm going to end with a short paragraph from the Heart of Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh:

"Understanding a feeling is the beginning of its transformation. We learn to embrace even our strong emotions with the energy of mindfulness until they are all calmed down. We practice mindful breathing, focusing our intelligence and our body and mind. We practice mindfulness until they are all calmed down. We practice mindful breathing, focusing our attention on the rise and fall of our abdomen. And take good care of our emotions. Just as we would take good care of our baby brother or sister. We are able to open up our mind deeply into our feelings and emotions. And identify the nutriments that have brought them into being. We know that if we are able to offer ourselves nutriments that are more wholesome, we can transform our feelings and emotions. Our formations, impermanent and without substance. We learn not to identify ourselves with our feelings. Not to consider them as a self. Not to seek refuge in them. And not to die because of them. This practice helps us cultivate non-fear. And it frees us from the habit of clinging. Even clinging to suffering."

Thank you.