Good morning, everyone. This morning I want to talk about zazen, this practice we've just been doing. And I want to talk about it as a practice of active patience. So in this zazen meditation practice we do, it's not some technique to to get some result later on. As our 13th century Japanese founder, Dogen, says, Buddhas do not wait for awakening. So awakening, enlightenment, whatever, is not something that'll happen if you do enough zazen. And our zazen isn't about reaching some other mental state or place or situation. It's about awakening to what's here, now, this.

[01:06]

So as we sit, of course, there are physical sensations, there are thoughts and feelings that arise, all sorts of stuff is going on. But just to sit upright in the middle of that can be tremendously powerful and helpful. And part of zazen, even though we're not doing this for the sake of something that will happen later on, is that in this practice we're developing our practice body. So each of us, with the body-mind on your kushina chair right now, is developing this is unfolding and awakening and creating this practice body, this capacity to respond, to be present, to pay attention, to be patient in the midst of all of it.

[02:15]

So just that capacity to be present and upright, here now, as that becomes part of our awareness, tremendously powerful, tremendously helpful, tremendously beneficial to ourselves and the people around us and the world. So this isn't a practice about figuring out something or getting some understanding. Of course, all of you have understandings about all kinds of things, and that's fine. But this is a practice, this is like doing physical exercise in a way. We develop our muscles of practice by sitting. We develop our tolerance, our capacity to actually be present and upright in the middle of chaos, in the middle of sadness, in the middle of excitement.

[03:19]

in the middle of whatever problems you have, whatever problems there are in the world or people around you. So this is a practice where we learn active patience. This is a dynamic, active, creative practice. And sometimes it just feels like we're waiting for the bell so we can get up and do the next thing. And sometimes we may all think that way. But apart from what you think, just to be present and upright. So in terms of developing the practice muscles of zazen, just to say this, that I encourage people to sit every day or at least several times a week. at home in your spare time, just find a place where you can sit comfortably and face the wall and be present.

[04:25]

And whatever happens is okay. This isn't about becoming virtuoso meditators, although, you know, that's okay if you do that, but just to be present with whatever's happening now. So this is not a passive practice, though. So this quality of active patience, patience as a practice, is very important. How do we be present and pay attention in the midst of greed, hate, and delusion in the world, amongst the people around us, and on your own Kushner churn? So how do we It's not passive patience. I mean, it could be waiting for the bell. We have all kinds of occasions to practice patience in our everyday activity, waiting in a line at the grocery store, waiting, I don't know, waiting for the L, waiting to make a turn as you're driving or whatever.

[05:36]

We have many occasions for practicing patience. But patience, as a practice, is not just passively waiting and something will happen later. So this quality of attention is really important. So in terms of our zazen, don't emphasize, you know, that you have to be sitting in some perfect posture, or that you have to be sitting in full lotus, or, you know, that's great if you can do that, but each of us has our own way of being upright. How do we be present and upright, and pay attention? So some periods of Zazen, Especially when you do longer sittings, sit all day, or we're going to be having a five-day sitting coming up soon. You know, some periods of zazen you might be sleepy and groggy.

[06:42]

Some periods of zazen your mind might be whirling around, or you might have some discomfort in your shoulders, your knees, or whatever. Or you might have a period that you think, oh wow, that's wonderful. whatever, anyway, the point isn't that you have some high quality of zazen. Your idea of high quality zazen is just your idea. Just to pay attention to whatever's going on is the point. So this act of patience, this attentive, patience is one word, another word for patience, capacity, or tolerance, to tolerate discomfort. to be willing to go beyond your comfort zone. You know, it's okay if you, you know, Dogen also says that Zazen is the Dharmagate of ease and bliss.

[07:43]

So, you know, if you feel that great, but to feel that, we need to be willing to be uncomfortable. Most people walking down Irving Park Road, if we went out there and said, hey, come and sit for 30 or 40 minutes and don't move, that's not something that would be a big attraction to most people walking by. And yet, just doing this practice, this yogic practice of being present and upright, whether we're sitting cross-legged or kneeling or in a chair, to be present, to be upright, to pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention. Very powerful practice. But it's not about getting some power. So if I say that, I just have that disclaimer. How do we just appreciate and enjoy this situation?

[08:47]

So doing this develops our capacity, develops our tolerance. Forbearance is another word that's used for patience sometimes. To be able to stand it when our shoulders are uncomfortable, or when we're having some really uncomfortable thoughts, or when we see our own craving and it's unpleasant, or we see our own anger or fear, to be present and pay attention when uncomfortable emotions arise. To be able to stay present and upright, to be patient with that, and pay attention is a very powerful practice. And according to early Buddhist psychology, whatever consciousness is arising, there's always some object of attention. There's always something we're attending to. Even if we're groggy and sleepy, there's something that is present in our awareness.

[09:51]

So how do we pay attention to whatever it is? As we develop the practice body, the practice muscles to pay attention and be present in the middle of confusion, or in the middle of sadness or loss, or in the middle of excitation and thoughts whirling around, or whatever it is, one thing you can start to see In the middle of this tumultuous activity or this confusing activity that's going on, we think that we're sitting still and it's just very calm and still. And sometimes it is. And that's wonderful. So part of this practice is settling and calming. And we can find that. But there's also paying attention, and pay attention to that.

[10:54]

Because there's levels of that. But paying attention in the middle of confusion or sadness or difficult emotions is really powerful, really helpful. So we emphasize the sitting practice, but we also emphasize how that's expressed in our everyday activity when we go out from the meditation hall. How do we take care of ourselves in the world? How do we take care of others? How do we be helpful rather than hurtful? And one of the first things that we see when, so we have a couple people who did Zazen for the first time this morning, which is wonderful. But when you first do Zazen, you see that there's all these thoughts going around. Or sometimes, you know, maybe there's spaces between the thoughts. But we can't even control our own thinking most of the time.

[12:02]

So part of the patience is to be patient with the reality that reality itself and everything we experience is beyond our control. In reality, we can't control anything. At least that's how I feel. Some people are very skillful at controlling things. And probably each of you in some ways has areas where you can pretty well take care of things. And some people are very powerful, you know, think they can control. Donald Trump has lots of control over lots of things. He's very skillful at that. So, but this patience is about seeing what we can't control, and being present with it, and being responsive. So this paying attention, which widens our capacity to pay attention, to paying attention itself, allows us to actually be more helpful, to be more responsive in whatever situation arises in the world or on our cushion or chair as we're sitting.

[13:24]

We start to see over and over again our patterns and habits of reacting to fear, to anger, to confusion, whatever. And the more we see those reactive patterns, the more we don't have to act them out. We can stop causing harm for ourselves or others by just saying, oh yeah, there's that again. the more we don't need to react, the more we can actually be responsive and responsible and helpful for ourselves and others in the world by just being present and paying attention. So active patience is really responsive. Being patient allows us to be in a place where we can respond more skillful, and that doesn't mean that we're going to fix things or that we're going to do it right.

[14:29]

Part of responsiveness, skillful means in Buddhism is that we try things, but we try it not from our habits of reacting, but from a place that's a little more settled. So this Zazen practice is training in being patient, waiting for the builder, just sitting. Whatever happens is okay. But pay attention to it, and take another breath, and enjoy your breath. So, you know, this is not our common idea or sense of the world in our culture, or maybe in most cultures. Some cultures, they train very young to just sit and be quiet and pay attention and listen to reality. hear the sounds of the world. But, you know, what is it Tom Petty says, the waiting is the hardest part.

[15:33]

Rod Stewart says, don't it seem like a long time? Sometimes waiting for the bell seems like a long time. Or whatever you're waiting for. So, this capacity to just be present and pay attention and when we're paying attention we can to whatever the situation is, we can respond more skillfully. We can be present in a way that's more dynamic. So I think this act of patience is one of the keys to Zazen, allowing ourselves to actually pay attention, to actually be present. And take another breath. And you know, we think of being, well, to be present, again, this is a dynamic act of practice.

[16:45]

One of the Dogon scholars translates one of the things he says as presence in, to find our presence, to actively appreciate our presence. This is one of the gifts of Zazen. To feel, how does it feel to be present? And take another breath. And pay attention to our inhale and exhale. And I'd like to say to pay attention to the space at the end of the exhale. And then another breath. So this takes some effort, but it's not our usual kind of effort. Take some energy to pay attention to our uprightness and to take care of our, each in our own body, each in our own way, take care of our posture.

[17:47]

Find our own uprightness. Feel where you're slouching, if you don't need to be. Bring energy to your upright posture. I recommend for some people energy in your lower back. Take a little lift, a little tilt forward. Just open up your capacity to breathe. So being present is also an active practice. And being attentive and paying attention again. So I don't know how many times I've said the word attention in this talk, but it's not enough. Pay attention. And more than just paying attention and kind of bearing it, and you know, so one word that's, the practice of shanti or patience is sometimes translated as forbearance. How much bad stuff can you tolerate? But tolerance, tolerate, tolerance also has this double side.

[18:52]

It's like, oh, I can bear it. But also, tolerate can be active too. It's not just, oh, I can, well, okay, I'll, you know, I'll manage to, abide with those people, and maybe I'll put a door in the wall I build to keep them out, or whatever. But it's not just paying attention as some punishment. It's actually getting interested in what's going on. Or another word is to enjoy patience, to enjoy your quality of attention, to enjoy your breathing. to enjoy your uprightness, to enjoy the patience, to enjoy all of the difficulties that arise, the problems that you face in the world, in your life. In the next breath. So enjoy is an interesting word, I like it because it's not just joyful, it's active, it's to enjoy, to me it means sort of to bring joy, to bring joy to your life.

[20:03]

Please enjoy your practice. Please bring joy into facing difficult situations. Okay, how can I see this problem as an opportunity to be responsive, to pay attention? Not necessarily to try and fix it and figure it out or understand it or know what to do either. So most of the time we don't know what to do, if we're really honest. But then, OK, if I'm paying attention, I can try something. I can try some response. And I can enjoy that. And I can enjoy the whole process. So one of my favorite Dogon quotes that many of you have heard before, he says after saying, Buddhas don't wait for awakening some other time, future or past. He says, just fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha.

[21:09]

So this is like presencing, just fully experience, just really enjoy, really pay attention to the next breath, the next thought stream, and then we let it go, we don't try and figure it out or do anything with it, but actually, can you enjoy your life? So all of this is part of the training and learning of Zazen, to actually enjoy just fully experiencing the vital process. We're alive, and stuff is happening, and we're responding or reacting or whatever. Pay attention. Just fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. do not wait for awakening means don't, you know, wait for some perfect experience, some perfect buddhanness. And if you, you know, read enough books or do enough, go to enough talks or sit enough sessions or whatever, sit enough satsang, then there will be this perfect buddhanness.

[22:23]

As the great yogi Varis said, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. You're not waiting for awakening. It's right here. Inhale. Exhale. Enjoy your life, please. Enjoy your practice. Enjoy your difficulties. Enjoy your sadness, even. That's difficult. It hurts. We have loss. But when we see the difficulties in the world around us, how can we bring our attention to that? from this place of patience, of responsiveness, of being willing to pay attention, of being willing to feel what you feel and see how it feels. And enjoy the whole thing. Bring joy to the whole thing. Or, you know, maybe joy for some of you might be too much. Just, you know, just some willingness to be present.

[23:31]

Fully experience this vital process. On the path. We're all on the path. The path is not a path that goes somewhere else. The path is right here. You're all on the path. Just because you're here. Of going beyond Buddha. Appreciating Buddha. Enjoying Buddha. Whatever Buddha you got right now. So maybe that's all I wanted to say this morning. But I'm interested in hearing any responses or comments or questions or enjoyments. If any of you don't want to be patient, because it's just too... Oh, one other thing I should say is part of the practice and study of patience is to see when you're impatient. So when impatience arises, that's really valuable. Oh, I can't stand this. the bell, got to get up and whatever.

[24:36]

So the practice of patience includes studying impatience, studying all the ways that we're not enjoying being this body-mind this morning. So look at that, pay attention to that too. Pay attention to your resistances, all the ways you want to pull back from actually being yourself in this body, mind, and present here this morning. So, comments, questions, responses? Hi Joan, good to have you back.

[25:48]

I'm thinking that I've been practicing for many years and sometimes I don't feel like sitting and I just have to force myself to do it. And it feels like what I'm trying to do is just keep a habit of attention and awareness going. And so that really feels like that's the purpose, is just to have that habit going. Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, in some ways Zazen is just a ritual activity, like bowing or offering incense or walking in a certain way when we do walking meditation. So one of the ways to overcome our unconscious habits or even our addictions is to develop positive, you can say habits or you can say rituals, whatever word you want to use, but to develop practices of patience that help you.

[26:51]

And so I'm going to sit just because that's what I do. So I have to do that every day. That's how I feel. Some days I don't feel like it. Or I have other things I feel like I have to be doing. But I stop and sit and face the wall and take a breath. So, yeah, there's lots of ways in which we can use rituals. So, you know, sometimes people come to a place like this and there's all this bowing and weird stuff and, you know, it feels strange. And, you know, we all have rituals in our life, if you pay attention. When you first get up in the morning, You know, there's things we do in a certain order. Get dressed and then brush our teeth, or maybe we brush our teeth and then get dressed, or whatever it is you do. We all have rituals, and maybe we play with them and change them around, but we all have ways. So all of you who've been here before, have come here before, probably have one route that you take.

[27:57]

If you drive or if you take the L or walk or whatever, there's a certain way you go. That's a kind of ritual and that's okay. You might try doing it a different way just to see what that's like. So paying attention to all of this is helpful. But yeah, I used to think of Zazen as a positive addiction. So I confess, I'm addicted to Zazen. I've been doing it every day for, I don't know, a long time. since before some of you were born. So, okay, how do we find ways of expressing that patience in our life, that active patience? So thank you, Jim. Other comments, responses? Kazan, hi. Thank you very much for the talk, Tai-Yin. I don't think, as long as I've been practicing, I think I could never hear enough talk when I first started practicing, I always had this game idea that I was going to levitate or something.

[29:10]

And this practice always reminds me, just sit. And like I said, you never hear enough talks about that. I agree. Yeah, that's my job as a Zen priest, is just to encourage everybody who sits outside. Period. That's it. Yeah, and sometimes you see people levitating in the Zen Dojo and stuff, but that's not important. If that happens, you know, get over it. Thank you. Hey, Shin. Thank you, Taigen. I'm unfortunately not prone to experiencing Zazen as a positive addiction. And I hear that and sometimes I wish that I was, but one of the things that I have discovered about myself over time and over sitting with it is that I'm actually prone to, at times, really feeling just kind of bad about

[30:20]

I used to think it was about something, and you feel that way, and then you feel like, well, I have to change something. And you hate everything, and you hate everything about myself and everybody around me. And I've been discovering over time that I can't even put my finger on what it is. I used to think I knew what the problem was, and it was just the result of all my choices being wrong. But I kind of went through this over a couple of weeks where just everything just feels bad. And Zazen doesn't feel good either. And so I liked, I think, what you were saying about patience. This time around on this episode, that was the only thing I could come up with, was I can't do anything about this. I can't say anything about it. on its own, with nothing changing, you know, nothing about me or anyone else changed.

[31:27]

It just, whatever it was, it kind of lifted. And so, you know, patience seemed to be the one thing that I had to, you know, kind of work with that. Great. Without having to, you know, make drastic life changes. But the other side of that is that, of course, everything is always changing. So, part of paying attention is, you know, if you're in a bad mood or whatever for a couple of weeks or a couple of lifetimes or whatever, just pay attention to that and to see what's, to see, you know, you might have this general feeling, yuck, but what's going on, what are the details of that? And things are changing, everything's changing in some ways. So, you know, which is a good thing, because this too shall pass, you know. Even, although sometimes there's changes that are horrible.

[32:31]

There's loss and there's, you know, passing and it's sad, but again, just, so patience is as you described it, as a kind of comfort to wait this out, which sometimes that's how we feel. But paying attention to it, it's not that it's going to fix it or make it shorter. It just seems like a long time. It seems like a long, lonely time, you know. And how do we stay there? But if you're paying attention, you see that the quality of that impatience, or the quality of that waiting, there's little changes there. And it's not going to fix it, but anyway. Whatever problem we have, it eventually is going to shift and change. in a way that we will actually notice.

[33:32]

So thank you for your testimony to getting miserable at home. Right on. Debra. I'm becoming aware over time with my sitting practices, the ways in which the values of the culture are so embedded in me. often unconscious or just part of the air that I breathe, but I'm noticing more how they influence my expectations of the practice. This whole achievement and goal-oriented focus, and how subtly that can influence it. Somehow, something's going to change. If I just do this practice enough, I won't ever feel, fill in the blank. Angry, anxious, sad. And I see how that, so you're talking about patience. being aware of just being there. Yeah, I think it's so, you know, a part of it maybe is our consumerist acquisitive culture, but I think it's also wired into discriminating consciousness that we want to get the things we think will make us happy.

[34:52]

We want to get rid of the things we think are making us unhappy. We're not there's always this, this is the first level truth, this dissatisfactoriness with just this. And our practice gives us a chance to stop and sit and see it all and just take another breath. And it's not that that fixes it, but we start to develop this, capacity is a good word, a sense of being able to be present with whatever's going on. So thank you, Debra. Howard, hi. I've always had a very similar experience as you do, with sitting in general, on and off positive, on and off negative addiction. I'm not going to actually sit sitting, but the most interesting, because it's this weird internal struggle of, well, what am I really going to be doing with the 10 to 20 or 30 minutes that I would be doing otherwise?

[36:08]

Why do I have such an aversion, this immediate initial aversion to sitting with myself for 10 to 30 minutes, whichever one works out for that day? And I realized that I'm just afraid to be patient with myself or whatever it is that I'm dealing with. But I found that over time, once I actually do it, once I'm in the act of sitting, it's nowhere as good as I thought it was going to be. And even if it's not as great as I thought it was going to be, I might be kind of sleepy or groggy. I've sat. I've sat for a bit. And it's funny because over time, I think, to use a metaphor, hitting the pause button can be very helpful, actually.

[37:45]

Just, you know, okay, I have all these things to do today, but I'm going to take 10 or 30 minutes or whatever, just stop, and whatever happens is okay. And, you know, that It takes a while to get in, to get the, there's a kind of knack or craft to actually appreciating patients. To actually being willing to stop and just be. But you know, the other, what you said reminded me, one other side of this is the creative aspect of it. That when we're willing to stop and whatever's going on, whatever we're worried about, whatever problem there is, take 20 minutes or whatever, and just sit. There's some processing of that that happens. It may not be conscious, or we don't necessarily realize it, but we start to have an access to our capacity to respond creatively.

[38:46]

We start to have more options for how we respond to whatever situation we're in. And that's another blessing, to put it that way. When you do it regularly, you start to have that sense of other options. And sometimes it's imperceptible. But, you know, I'm sitting here for, what is this? Seven years now we've been sitting here, and I've seen people who've come and sat here, and I see changes. They may not see them. But it's sometimes very striking. But it happens over time. It's not like some sudden flash or whatever. I mean, that happens too sometimes. But that's not as important as the steadiness and sustaining of paying attention. And we start to be able to respond creatively. So any last comment or question or response?

[39:55]

Abby. For me this is a really physical process. Like that, you know, what what is attended to. There's all these aspects of our experience that we can attend to, of course. But I feel like a core part of this process for me is the movement from thinking, thinking, thinking, which in a particular form of thinking that has that kind of compulsive forward motion, like what's next? What do I need to worry about next? What do I need to do? And then the practice for me is like, you know, again and again dropping that and returning to the body. So it's almost like coming backward a little bit, you know, being willing, which feels so counterintuitive and I feel like, yeah, I feel like my resistance a lot of times to just sitting, I've started to feel like it's a resistance to,

[41:10]

to letting go of the fact that forward, yeah, that basic, I mean, it just feels like that core movement is the heart of the practice for me. And also that the unwillingness to do that, the compulsiveness of going forward is what keeps me suffering. But, so for me, the word attending is more evocative than paying attention. Paying attention feels a little mental to me. And attending feels like something more physical. And even with patience or enjoyment, it feels like, well, I can't will myself into having those. Those are going to arise maybe as some side effect. When they arise, I can't say. But what I can do, for me, if I've noticed my impatience, like you were saying, what does it mean to study it, is feeling the feelings that are happening.

[42:17]

It's like backing up into it. And I can often notice at those times of impatience, even if I back up and try to feel it, there's a part of me that can just feel all that that is, which is often a lot of physical discomfort. But also the part of me that's still resisting, like, yeah, yeah, when are we going to be done with this practice so we can, like, keep it? The next thing, yeah. So there's even, like, that subtle level of, you know, it's very hard to 100%, you know, to feel all of it and really attend to all of it without reserving parts, like, OK, but I still need to go forward and figure everything out and get my life going, whatever. Yes, it's very subtle. And yes, it's physical. So we have the instruction to take the backwards step that turns the light inwardly to illuminate itself. It's like a physical thing, taking this backwards step, stopping all of our programs that want to charge forward, and just take this backwards step, stop, turn within.

[43:28]

It's a physical thing. And this is physical practice. Yeah, and then one other thing you said that I appreciated was about just resistance, just to actually study our resistance, to actually get to know, to attend. Yeah, I like attending, attend as an actor for, I don't know where this commercial metaphor to pay attention came from, sorry about that. It's free. Attention is free. So, thank you all very much for attending to this.

[44:12]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_81.8