Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Berkeley Zen Center. Today's speaker is David Weinberg, a long, long, long time practitioner of Zen Buddhism. David started his practice at San Francisco Zen Center and held many practice positions over there, including treasurer. And he moved over to the East Bay in practice a number of years ago and began practicing with Sojin Roshi. and recently retired from three-year tenureship of Treasury here, taking care of the BCC finances. David received Dharma transmission from David Weinberg, I mean David... Steve Weintraub. Steve Weintraub, I'm sorry. Steve Weintraub, who is also a student of Sojin Roshi's. For his career and livelihood, David runs Stress Care, which is a mindfulness-based stress reduction methodology done here in the East Bay as well as Contra Costa.

[01:04]

It's based on Jon Kabat-Zinn's work and he's been at it for quite a while, so if any stress arises in your practice that's not taken care of in Zazen, maybe you see David in another venue. Thank you very much, David. Thank you, Ross. The name of my talk is Bumblebees Can't Fly. Well, hello, first of all. Thank you. It's really nice to be here. for the person who's sitting up here.

[02:08]

I appreciate that. Yeah, bumblebees can't fly. When I was a kid, my dad told me that bumblebees can't fly. My dad was a pilot and aeronautical engineer, and he said that engineers had analyzed the wing structure and musculature of bumblebees and determined that they can't fly. However, bumblebees do not know this. So they fly as they have for 30 million years. You can check out many interesting facts about bumblebees on www.bumblebee.org.

[03:13]

It says on the website that they can fly, but they're bumblers. They're really not very good at flying, but they do fly. enjoyed when I was a kid and now and then I reflect on the joke and see more than one dimension to it. I'm going to talk a bit about flying, in fact I'm going to talk quite a bit about flying. Here we go. So, my dad took me out for my first airplane ride in his Monacoop when I was five months old. He hand-sewed a little cloth helmet for me with powder puffs sewn in to cover my ears.

[04:26]

put me next to him in a seat. The mind-coup was a little So he took me up for my first ride and climbed very, very, very slowly and descended very, very slowly to take care of my ears. I don't know whether it was on that first ride or the subsequent one, but I was sitting next to him on a ride and we were flying along, the airplane was all trimmed out and so on. And all of a sudden, the airplane pitched forward.

[05:32]

And like Dad said, his heart just went right up in his mouth. He could imagine a hunk of a horizontal stabilizer breaking loose and falling off or something like that, the kind of thing that goes through the mind of a pilot when something unexplained like that happens. But he, you know, retrimmed the airplane, got everything squared away. And flying along, and again it happened. But he saw out the corner of his eye that I had my foot resting against the control stick. Babies, you know, like to flex their feet and push. there. When I was 10, I began flight training with my dad and by the time I was 12 he deemed that I was proficient to fly solo.

[06:47]

But the FAA wouldn't allow this because of my age. Later I did solo and got a private pilot's license and flew around upstate New York from rural airports and hayfields in a 50 horsepower Piper Cub. Like my father, I was a natural stick and rudder pilot. Then I stopped flying for 50 years for various reasons. Last summer, I renewed my license. It was still there on records in the FAA. I was amazed. And resumed flight instruction. Some things have changed in flying, and some things have stayed the same.

[07:50]

My new flight instructor is named Mike. And he's a very exacting and good-hearted man. Like my father, he's pretty tightly wrapped. So relearning to fly is uncovering some buried traumas that originated in my earlier training. The difference is that I can talk to Mike about these things. He's also working on himself. He's 60 years old. He has a seven-year-old daughter and he doesn't want to get in her way. So for a man who's tightly wrapped and controlling as he must be, he's trying to stay out of her way. I think any of you who are parents appreciate what that's like.

[08:55]

So the challenge for both of us, really, is to be rigorous, which both parenting and flying require, and flexible. Flying and parenting are life and death activities, so it requires openness. Klein shares many of the characteristics of Zen practice. Rigor, for example, adherence to established forms. Trungpa Rinpoche said, in the Zen tradition, the basis of discipline is accuracy. Zen is very black and white, he said. The same is true of flying.

[10:00]

The pilot is always working to achieve perfection. Good enough is not good enough. As a policy, good enough leads to cumulative errors that can kill. So flight training begins with precise instruction, followed scrupulously. Naturally, at the beginning this precision is mediated by conceptual knowledge, aerodynamics and meteorology and rules of the air, as well as discursive thinking. If this, then that. Eventually the discriminating mind must be sufficiently at ease to work harmoniously with body sensations and really a wide appreciation of the total situation.

[11:04]

Any self-consciousness, any strained imposition of goals interrupts the flow. Ultimately the best, safest flying is non-dual activity. The pilot, the aircraft, the actions called flying, the air mass, the ground, other aircraft, the rules of communication and conduct, all one undivided flow. Many accomplished athletes and musicians and Zen practitioners know this territory, the groove, the zone. The Tao Te Ching uses the paradoxical terminology, the action of no action, wei wu wei.

[12:10]

This doesn't mean no action, a static state, and it doesn't mean dualistic action as we usually conceive it with an agent, an action, an object of action, all this happening in an environment and so on. Each one is a self-sufficient entity or a process independent of the others. So it's not that either. It doesn't mean some lukewarm averaging of the two either. Rather it is action from emptiness, no hard and fast separation among conceptually distinguishable things, dharmas. Nothing is done and yet nothing remains undone, as the Daoists like to say. Nothing is done as a separate, distinguishable activity, but everything is accomplished.

[13:18]

The action of no action is characterized as soft and yielding by the Taos. We might call it, I might call it anyway, appropriately responsive. This suggests that even a small action, in the right circumstances, can have powerful effects. Moreover, one should deal with small problems promptly, before they become big problems. When flying, if I diverge my movement from checklist or altitude or speed, Mike points out these discrepancies unless he can see that I'm making prompt corrections. Any problem unnoticed can become a big problem in flying airplanes.

[14:28]

Flying is responding continuously to hundreds of variables to get the results you want. The most critical moments in flight, other than engine failure and thunderstorms, are called moments that are called landing the airplane. Here comes a Zen moment. We don't land the airplane as some special, separate activity. We just fly. We don't land the airplane as some special, separate activity.

[15:32]

We just fly. Sounds like somebody else we know. A couple other people we know might say such things. If you'll indulge me, I want to describe the landing. Specifically, the wonder of landing. I have a prop here. I have a hard time figuring out what to do with this thing still, but today it's going to be an airplane. Plus the propeller. Yeah, the propeller and the wings are out here. Anyway, this is an airplane. And the meal board in front of me is the runway. So some of you may fly or be pilots.

[16:37]

I don't know. But for those of you who aren't, when you fly a pattern around an airport, I fly from Oakland Airport. And if I'm flying from runway 27 right, east-west runway, There's the runway, and then it's a right pattern, so that means you do right turns around the runway. So here's the airplane about two-thirds of a mile from the runway. And this pilot is on the downwind leg. The wind's blowing this way, and the airplane's going to land like this into the wind. So the airplane is here. And I'm going through a checklist. The gas valve is on. There's sufficient gas. The undercarriage is in place.

[17:40]

It's always in place. This airplane doesn't retract its gear. But undercarriage, the mixture is rich. The primer is locked. The propeller is 2,000 RPM. Seatbelts are fastened. Switches appear are right. Systems. Engine systems. Oil temperature, oil pressure. Ammeter is charging. The brakes are firm. All this in. That's it. Like that. From memory. Meanwhile, the air traffic controller is talking to you through your earphones, and so is my instructor if I'm not exactly on course or altitude or something.

[18:42]

I'm watching the altitude and course distance from the air, looking for traffic outside. This is a 12-frame surface. And flying downwind at 80 miles an hour. And you come up adjacent to the end of the runway, two-thirds of a mile away, the throttle comes back, carburetor, air heat on, and you trim for 70 miles an hour. So the airplane's going to begin to sink. And you do execute a medium right turn, looking for traffic upwind. Out the corner of your eye, just a glance, is the end of the runway. Still two 90 degree turns away from landing, from being lined up with the runway.

[19:47]

And somehow the human body and mind, with all the rest of this going on, knows whether you're too high or too low. But it's a knowing that isn't even, it's not even a conceptual like a feeling in your chest and abdomen. We're at the right height or we're not. We're going to be high or low and of course there are many ways to respond to this. Anyway there's this turn and then another 90 degree turn and a little pause at the end of the, about a quarter of a mile from the end of the runway, 300 feet and so on and so on. I won't That moment of, for me, that sense of being able to just glance out, and it's over the right shoulder, the end of the runway, because you make that turn past the end of the runway, otherwise you'd be landing halfway up the runway.

[20:57]

That glancing over the shoulder and knowing where you are is just a wonder. It's uncanny how that can happen. an airplane flies in the air and all it knows is the air when it's flying and then there is a fraction of a second when it suddenly knows the ground and is on the ground and that's another just extraordinary critical moment The airplane is flying in the air, and if the wind is blowing across the runway and the airplane is not trimmed properly, the airplane is moving with the air mass.

[21:59]

And if it touches down on the runway, the tires squeal. You can blow a tire. You can be blown off the runway. You can do a grab. Any number of things can happen. My little airplane probably wouldn't kill you, but it could make a mess of the airplane. So there's that incredible transition from air being a creature of the air and then a creature of the ground. And it happens in a moment. Anyway, that's a little bit about landing an airplane. I just had to get it out of my system. So it's a little mysterious, you know, how all this can happen. Dogen says, the sky is vast, straight into the heavens. A bird flies just like a bird.

[23:04]

How does a bird fly? He kind of begs the question. The poem is concerned with the vast sky straight into the heavens. suchness, I think, the wholeness of bird, flight, sky, with no separation among these empty phenomena, and yet each phenomena as it is. Elsewhere, Dogon elucidates undivided activity. He says life is like riding in an airplane. You fill the tanks, check the airframe, start the engine, and take off. Although you steer with a stick and rudder, the airplane gives you a ride.

[24:08]

But you ride in the airplane, and your riding makes the airplane what it is. The sky, the earth, are all the airplane's world, pilot, airplane, flying, sky, radically interdependent and indivisible, active and still. Another significant aspect of non-dual action is its lack of willful intention. By that I mean intention serving the narrow interests of the agent. As there is no awareness of a self-existing agent distinct from his or her acts, there also is no self-referencing intention, no separate self, no separate intention.

[25:16]

landing. It's like this. When piloting, if I think about myself and how I'm doing and impose a plan for getting it right so that I'll be a good pilot, it immediately goes off. The little ball floating in kerosene It goes back to the teens or 20s, a little ball, and it just tells you whether the airplane is skidding to one side or another when you're in a turn, in a coordinated turn. The little ball, like a level, just stays right in the center. So it swings to the side. Step on the ball is the right response. Any more than that is too much.

[26:26]

Am I a good pilot? Something else, if I ask such a question, if I become involved in that kind of mentation, something else invariably goes wrong. Loss of heading or altitude, a missed checklist Division of attention is a hallmark of flying. Fluid, subtle, comprehensive awareness without the imposition of self-conscious intention. Without the imposition of such intention, anxiety about results doesn't happen. Anxiety invariably hinders flying. Bhajan says normal mind is the way.

[27:37]

Normal mind is a mind free from self-consciousness, from superimposed intentions, schemes and plans. Normal mind is how to fly an airplane. What about thinking? There is thinking that is self-conscious, and there is thinking that's completely involved with action, with the natural flow. Non-dual thinking is what is required for Dharma combat and for flying, where responses need to be immediate and appropriate. It's not random or arbitrary. In non-dual thinking, the self-conscious controls that usually direct thinking are relaxed. and they don't interfere. Still, there are plans and desires and thinking and intentions, some lofty, some not, in the human world.

[28:52]

To pretend that we could be utterly intention-free would be seriously unrealistic. How can we navigate the whole territory of duality and non-duality. The Heart Sutra tells us straight out that form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness is no other than form. The duality of form and emptiness is itself one more duality to be transcended. This is true, true non-duality. The sixth ancestor says that wisdom is to see and know all things free from attachment. To see and know all things free from attachment. This is a big challenge.

[30:04]

The Dharma name I was given a long time ago is observe ocean, no indication, no mark. So to see and know all things, and if there are no marks, then there's nothing to attach to. How we hold our perceptions and plans then is the key. We have perceptions and plans, the standard of safety in flying an airplane, wanting to get from one place to another. The question is how do we hold these things in awareness? An open fluid awareness that doesn't stick to one thing or another in the mind's scope is wisdom.

[31:13]

Free from attachment includes freedom from clinging to what is pleasant, as well as freedom from aversion to what is unpleasant. Of course non-attachment is not quiet, quietism either. It's really the ground of full engagement. The Tao Te Ching says, whenever you let go of all intentions, you will see the wonder. Whenever you have intentions, you will see forms. Again, whenever you let go of all intentions, you will see the wonder. Whenever you have intentions, you will see forms. There's no hierarchy established between these two.

[32:17]

Most of us probably want to see the wonder, but forms put bread on the table and airplanes where they need to be. Finally, then, what is important is to nurture a capacity to see the world both ways, to move freely back and forth between forms and wonder. The true wonder is the whole works held freely and enjoyed to the fullest. Happy flying. I guess we have time for some I'm struck by your looking over your right shoulder and seeing the runway and

[33:28]

to be able to have that feeling. If I were to fly up there and somebody gave me the controls, I would not have that experience, I can guarantee you. The airplane would probably crash. So, you know, just like musicians who have that feeling of being totally free from duality, Can you talk more about that? Yeah. Well, exactly. Part of the wonder is just that. It takes training. It takes doing something over and over again.

[34:57]

The process by which doing it over and over again finally is, I don't know what verb to use, sort of integrated, absorbed in the body-mind is itself mysterious. It's not like working out an equation. step, step, step, then step. This is more like, it begins like that, like this is exactly how you do it. Do it this way, not that way, not this way, do it exactly this way, and then you do your best to do that, and then somewhere along the line, somehow, it becomes part of you, and that, somehow, that transition, that absorption, I don't know how that happens.

[36:14]

It's maybe not so different from a kid riding a bicycle, you know, you help your kid and the kid's leading, and you know. to the right, the kid does it, you know, and then finally, they just do it. Who can explain that? Not me. Yes. It seems that the world you are describing of flying is a world without other human beings when you are... The most difficult thing in life is to be non-dual when you interact with other human beings. Yes, when you... Herman Goering, who was an ace pilot... I suppose the experience that you described was flying? I think so. Yeah. And of course, actually, I didn't emphasize it, but flying is completely involved with other human beings.

[37:22]

For example, there's my instructor sitting right behind me. I fly a tandem airplane. I sit in front, he sits behind me. His feet are right by my hips. He's talking to me all the time and there's traffic, there's airplane, I can't tell you how much airplane traffic there is in the Bay Area and all those people want to live. They want to land where they want to land and not be hit by other airplanes. So in that sense it is, and Garin, you know, he was very much related to other people. his fellow pilots and also the pilots he was trying to kill. David, thank you for your talk. I'm curious about the perfection and good enough. And I'm thinking about Suzuki Roshi, the attributed quote to him as you are, maybe even perfect as you are, and you can use some help.

[38:27]

Yes. Or some improvement. Yes. Could you speak a little bit about this perfection that people strive for and it being so they can get out in the way of being good enough, which is actually perfect. Yeah, perfectionism actually gets in the way. That is striving for perfect in a kind of self-reflecting way is extra. It gets in the way. Good enough in the way I was using it means, well, I was at 72 miles an hour, you know, the side picture was such and such, and we're coming in for final at 72 miles an hour, not 70.

[39:32]

That's not good enough, because those two miles an hour make a difference in how the airplane performs. And so, 70 miles an hour, That doesn't mean you can always get it at 70 miles an hour, but that's the intention, is to be again and again with a kind of relaxed, open, unselfconscious attitude, 70 miles an hour. Not 72, that's good enough. Take. I'm a little curious. more about Mike. You have to really trust him. Has it ever, does he let you start to make mistakes and then bring you back or does he write on you immediately if he sees something?

[40:34]

When he is anxious, which is something he's working with, I mean put yourself in the position of a flight instructor. he's still there's landing the airplane he has a student pilot let alone I mean an old guy and you know I knew how to fly 50 years ago he's responsible for me and he has to let things develop and let me develop, and the only way he can do that is to let me do what I can do, which includes a certain deviation from what he might do, what might be, in his mind, perfection. But at some point he has to step in, and he steps in if he deems the situation dangerous, or he sees that I'm not making a correction.

[41:38]

If something gets off and he can see that I'm making a correction, then it's fine. He stays out of the picture. But that's a dialogue between him and me that goes on. And if you ever disagree with Mike, you go with Mike. No, sometimes I say, Mike, don't do that. And he respects that. And sometimes he says, I had to come in then, crosswind landings. I won't go into the details, but landing with a 10 or 12 knot crosswind with gusts and rolling wind and so on, things can go wrong very, very suddenly. And when I'm learning those, practicing them, Thank you so much for your talk, it's exactly what I need to hear.

[42:47]

The example is perfect, and I'm still having trouble sorting out how to let the anxiety and the extra-ness of perfectionism go while still needing to be at exactly 70 miles an hour. Here's how I understand that. We say letting it go. That's a phrase. We use let it go. Let this go, let that go. Letting go is kind of like relaxing. If I say, relax. No, come on, relax. You can't do it. If you give that a let go, let go, of course, So, I think more of what's involved is a kind of spaciousness of the mind, a kind of true relaxing of body and mind, so that anxiety and self-concern and so on have some place to be, but they're not running the show.

[44:11]

If the mind is small and contracted, then those things have a way of, their influence is outsized. Does that make sense? So it's, in a way, it's capacity. It's not a doing exactly. Wouldn't you also say that if you're really focused on being at 70 miles an hour, you don't have room to think about, am I a good pilot? You would have room? No, you don't. Because you're focused on it. 70 miles an hour, let alone direction, crosswind, air traffic control, your instructor, who you know, is looking over your shoulder, the ball. Is it in the center? Am I skidding? Yes. It's a very good training in, that's why the term, it's kind of a paradox, but division of attention. Division of attention. means one-pointed concentration.

[45:17]

It's just a big point. Yes? Yes, thank you for your talk, David. I'm wondering, when you speak of perfection, I wonder if this is a language issue, you're talking about accuracy, it seems to me. I think accuracy is good. And another, I have a question, and that is, When you're flying, are you aware of what you're doing with your breath? Yes. And what, can you talk about that a bit? Sometimes I'm holding it. And other times it's, the question, awareness of breath, awareness of body, a sort of total sense of how am I as an organism in the midst of this hugely complicated activity, it's crucial.

[46:21]

So referencing the breath is very helpful. Am I breathing up here, breathing up here, you know? Or am I breathing down here? And it seems to me like this is, on one level, this is a very intuitive activity. And so you have, I don't know how many times you've been flying and so on, but I would guess, I don't know, I've never been a pilot or been instructed, but I would guess you develop a number of experiences. So you'll come to learn, with the help of the instructor, what to do in a crosswind and somehow this gets internalized. Yes, eventually it has to get internalized because there is so much happening so fast. In a sense, there is no time to think conceptually. Oh, this is happening, so here is another factor, so here is how it has to be in your body.

[47:29]

So if you're landing at a crosswind, the wind's coming in from the side, and you have to be centered on the runway, and the airplane has to be lined up with the runway, and then you hit some air motion like this, used to call them air pockets, you know, not really air pockets, the airplane drops. And you have to add power. It just happens in maybe two-tenths of a second. There's no thinking, oh, the airplane's dropping. I have to add power. By then, you've hit the ground and bounced up. Jerry. Yeah, I think I've never Because it seems like you have to have... You're on my list. It seems that you have to have a tremendous amount of faith and that's of course part of practice too. I mean you could never get in that airplane.

[48:32]

Unless you have faith. Unless there's some very deep kind of connection or understanding that allows you to put yourself in that situation. I hope we have that connection. You're inviting me? I already have that you remember. Sometime next summer. With no crosswind. Yes, sir? Yeah. I think in flying, pilots, I'm thinking of commercial flying. where pilots felt they could do no wrong. And since the 1970s, the airline industry has been subjected to something called crew resources management. And it wasn't until they actually saw themselves as part of a sangha up in the airplane, which included the co-pilots, the flight attendants, the crew, did

[49:47]

crashes start to diminish. Because they found that most of the crashes had to do with pilot error. And that they were trained, just like you were trained, as a solo practitioner, and felt like they could do no wrong, and have to listen to the Sangha, which is up in the air. Until they saw themselves as part of a Sangha, Yes. One of the principles of flying, solo and otherwise, it's a funny term, it's called a sterile cockpit. And it means absolutely nothing is happening in the cockpit except flying. There's no chatter, no stuff lying around, it's a completely It's not sterile, of course.

[50:49]

It's completely configured in human terms and physically for flying. And you're certainly right. In a big airplane, now the co-pilot is going over the checklist. My co-pilot is here. I have to be my own co-pilot. I have to know my own checklist. Fortunately, my airplane you know, is made of welded steel and covered with cloth, and it has a 100 horsepower engine, and it goes, you know, 100 miles an hour and so on, instead of landing at 120 miles an hour. It's a little simpler proposition. Yes. Hi, Katie. Is that you, Katie? Yes. Yes, hi. You were discussing perfectionism. I was thinking of my own bouts with perfectionism. And a term I read that I found really interesting, which was fantasies of perfection.

[51:57]

And I've seen very clearly how when I'm anxious about something, about how I'm going to be judged, or think I might not measure up in some way, wonderful to indulge in a fantasy of perfection, of like, what I'm going to do that's just going to be perfect, and take care of everything. Of course, the devil is in the details and the execution, and then it just all falls apart. But I was wondering if you've encountered that and how you practice it. Well, you know, I think it's wonderful to have fantasies of perfection, they're enjoyable and so on, but there's a kind of neighboring fantasy which is actually flying in your mind. I think tennis players do, they play tennis in their minds, where one goes over and over the sequence of actions and all the images, looking over the right shoulder,

[53:09]

the pattern of your eye moving across the instruments in the cockpit, the feeling of the control stick in your hand trimming for pressure. I mean there are not millions, but hundreds of little details that can be if you will, lived out in a fantasy life and enjoyed, which lead to leading the direction of, there is no perfection, that's an ideal, but to great accuracy, and which don't constitute perfectionism. Perfectionism is kind of a disease, right, it's the fantasy that you could actually be perfect and it has right behind it the judgment of what you're going to do to yourself or somebody else is going to do to you if you aren't perfect.

[54:17]

So that's not what's going on here. That gets in the way. The fantasy of perfectionism is, well, it could be a killer. Oh, time to end. Thank you very much for your comments and questions.

[54:39]

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