Beginners and Beginning: Self sufficiency: Serial No. 01084

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i've ah today's to choose the to directors were in mourning
and happy new year
i thought it would be appropriate this morning to talk about
beginnings
and beginners
ah which are not the same thing
and
strictly speaking
neither one exists but ah
they won't be
so strictly speaking
i found a poem yesterday that
that it would be good to start the talk with to begin ah this ah new book by
wonderful poet w s merwin i'm forgetting what the name of the book as i just bought it ah just just beautiful so this is a palm of his it it's a guess it's a solid of sorts in in couplets
but it's called a momentary creed
i believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me
i do not see it going it's own way
but i never saw how it came to me
it extends beyond whatever i may think i know and all that is real to me it is the present that it bears away where has it gone and when has it gone from me
there is no place i know how decide today except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay everything that i call mine it lent me
even the way that i believe the day for as long as it is here
and is me
jerry that again
ah
i believe in the ordinary day that is here at this moment and is me
we do not see it going it's own way but i never saw how it came to me
it extends beyond whatever i may think i know
and all that is real to me it is the present that it bears away
whereas it gone when it has gone from me
there is no place i know outside today except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay here everything that i call mine in lent me
way that i believe the day for as long as it is here and is me
pretty good
so every time i read this ah
find different places where you can kind of bend the inflection and in the syntax because there there is no syntax and ah it's completely ah
without without any so ah it leaves it up to us
ah how to make this poem
come alive
ah
so
the watchword of our practice
given to us by suzuki roshi
via
dogan and all the old buddha ancestors ah
is what we call beginner's mind
and where she says in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities
but the experts mind there are few
so a poet is always
a beginner
and the reader
it's always a beginner
and i like in this for my liking
because he lives out all of the syntax
you have many possibilities
doesn't block it in
so this is a new beginning this is the first saturday of our new year two thousand and nine
ah which is okay with me
it's the first year of our a what's going to be a new
presidential administration which is really okay with me ah
although
we really don't know what it's going to bring
but it's proved safe to guess it's gonna be different
ah
on the other hand ah
i think a lot of people in this room have seen
oh a lot of what they had accumulated over the last fifteen or twenty years just
disappear
ah
and that's how do we start how do we begin to live with with that
on
in the one thing that
we can say is that to some degree
everybody is feeling this but it's also true that people feel it in different degrees people who are closer
to the edge
ah
may find themselves in really really dangerous circumstances
how do they keep their composure in the midst of this how do we
how do i

so really in terms of beginning everything is new
it's new again and again and again and this is this is actually the experience of zaza
the breathing the renewal ah
everything being born
and the completeness of that everything passing away
and the challenges to find
our composure right in the middle of that
with every beginning
ah
so in the midst of the newness of two thousand and nine ah
we have our hopes
we have our yearnings
we have our grief
there is much too
grief
and we have or
joy and celebration
and the deal is we actually have all this stuff coming up together
and it all comes up together
in our lives as we transact that
it comes up together in our zazen
and it's different from time to time when many of you here on wednesday night for new year's eve
it was really ah it was wonderful there were a lot of people
i think my experiences that when there's trouble in the world the zendo tends to be fuller
ah and if there's you out this there's some compelling reasons for that ah but it would it was a wonderful quiet sitting
and i was i was thinking back
to the beginning i realized ha
some some point in the evening heroes oh this is my
twenty fifth new year's
here i think
not sure if i missed
any
i think i missed part of one when i was playing some music and it was so disconcerting that as soon as we were done i came back to this end of ah but ah oh twenty five years and i remember the first the first new year's eve sitting that i did because it was that it was not so
long after tried com and it was the first multiple period of zazen evening or day that i had done and it was like oh it was like five period two thousand ah and
huh went out of the sendo we had a little party is when you usually do and then i drove back to my
ah apartment in oakland and method it'd be really careful i don't know where i am aware of my head is after sitting five periods as eyes and but but it felt very comfortable and i felt very comfortable really wonderful on wednesday night very deep lot of new people
and i just thought oh this is so
sweet and restful which it was at that moment
and
then we began our
sitting in a regular program again yesterday friday morning and i came to the zendo and i was thinking oh yes was so restful one peaceful on wednesday night in octa core this is great and i sat down and just like
no the
busy thought after thought and you know plan after plan that it was trying to because like kate decide and then something has come next set it aside
and so you don't get
to say how it's gonna be
in each beginning is new

this whole
okay
this is a real digression ah but you'll excuse me maybe maybe you won't ah because i was thinking about beginning and then i was thinking about genesis
ah
in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the earth
and the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters
and god said let there be light and there was light
and god saw the light that it was good and god divided the light from darkness
so my question was is got a beginner or an expert
yeah yeah and in the beginning seems like he's doing a lot of playing around or she is doing a lot of playing around with duality right
yeah maybe that's because
god herself as unity
ah
first off she created heaven and earth
which seem to have a closer resemblance to each other then we customarily think of heaven er nurse now
but that changed pretty soon because ah well god might have been clear about the distinction between heaven and earth and light and darkness adam and eve were not
ah so they mistook this shiny apple of
ah
because they were not yet aware that wisdom lived in
and through and around them they thought it was something else something that you could get
and
god let them do that ah
which is a little confusing but i think it's because
ha
that god knew that wisdom abides everywhere
that it has to be seen it has to be discovered
and she couldn't give it to them
they had to work it out for themselves and in fact if we want to put it in buddhist terms they had to work it out for themselves here in this saha world
which means the world ah
of things that have to be endured the world itself that has to be endured
so ah we've had to figure it out ever since
i wanted to talk that's that's my depression on
not quite sure where it leads me this is the religion that i
was raised in but
ah so and i think many of us were so it's in us in some sense these notions the language itself
ha
and i think i have i know i have a
any ambivalent attitude towards twenty and yet there's some residents
but when i read suzuki roshi
ah
when i first came to in which was in nineteen sixty eight ah
this was after
taking a lot of psychedelic switch quite a few of us probably did ah can we
read the philip capitals book three pillars of zen and came out here to california to escape from new york for for the summer and began to sit actually and in dwight way and at psychology the
ah
suzuki roshi his temple which was which was also the
the genesis of san francisco zen center ah and
i think he was at tassajara that's that xamarin so we didn't meet him and we didn't know what we were doing
but that was okay
but when i read his send my beginner's mind later it was there was complete residence
even though i really didn't understand it ah i think we talked about this trailer aspect of practice the language of send my beginner's mind is so it's so welcoming and open
and you're reading along and you say yes yes this is really familiar like in in at a cellular level and then you see what did he say
you know that's really hard or i don't understand it how can i understand this
so
in the prologue is and my beginner's mind if and when he begins there is as the epigraph ah
in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities but in the experts mine are a few
and the prologue itself begins people say that practicing zen is difficult
but there is a misunderstanding as to why
it is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged position well that's a difficulty for dumbass but that's not to send the essential one
or to attain is not difficult to attain enlightenment
it is difficult
because it is hard to keep our mind pure
and our practice pure in his fundamental sense
and then
he sort of veers away because he doesn't ever say pure means such and such
ah
so it i think
it's left for us to
try to understand heard
what is that purity
ah because of course if you feel that in in our customary language
where we have purity
paired with purity implies impurity
ah if we try too hard to be pure then we're going to have a really big problem
if we try to be pure in the ordinary sense
ah
can he goes on and says the zen school developed in many ways after it was established in china but the same time it became more and more impure
i think you know what he means there is has it became an established religion it became more and more beset with beliefs concepts rituals ah
we're very into are closing are various various forms that
one could fool oneself were essences
but that wasn't it
so then he gets in the second paragraph
it's a lot clearer
in japan we have the phrase shushan
which means beginner's mind
the goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind
suppose you recite the prussian apartment me sutra heart sutra which we chant everyday only once it might be a very good recitation
but what would happen to you if you recited it twice three times four times or more
you might easily lose your original attitude towards it
the same thing will happen
in your others than practices for a while you will keep your beginner's mind
but if you continue to practice one two three years or more although you may improve some you are liable to lose limitless meaning of original mind
i really love it when when people show up here for the first time i was i came in i had to have some exchange with a with andrea who has given has an instruction in there was a your bunch of people for his eyes and instruction and ah
you know you can see
on their faces on people's faces on there you know in their bodies ah
say we don't know what we're doing
we don't even really know why we've come here
which is that's
very cool right that's beginner's mind ah so why have i come here
we're just why
and linked to why is
how
how do i do this i didn't even know what it is i'm doing how do i find
how do i observe so so their minds are very open they're looking at everything they are trying to take it in usually
there's always some voice of judgment unfortunately saying know i'm probably oh i'm not doing it right
but what if you if you've been step aside from that when you come into a situation new
if you can
of turn away from the inner critic you see oh this is full of possibilities
and it's possibilities and i don't even know what they are
ah that's really miraculous
so i think that's what he's talking about as as beginner's mind ah

suzuki roshi says in our original mind includes everything within itself
insufficient within itself
you should not lose yourself sufficient state of mind that doesn't mean isolated herself and closed or selfish or self centered it just means that
because
we are connected with everything
i think this is what our berwyn is talking about the poem because we're connected everything
ha we have everything that we need
in our lives we have access to it in one way or other may not be what we want it may not be what we wish for
but it's there when you're sitting zazen
it's there
and there's there's a mysterious thing because however you are feeling in that moment when you're sitting zazen you know if you're feeling distracted
or you're feeling pain
ah
in some sense we think there's nothing i can borrow from this person i'm sitting next to you know so i can function that way well i can't borrow anything from su
you know because you're in european
and i'm in my skin
but actually that's really ah
it's not quite true
this is why ah in our tradition we sit next to each other
we sit side by side
ah
and we face the wall but it it's not so important whether we face the wall are we facing we sit side by side were constantly
borrowing
each other's energy each other zazen we're constantly supporting each other even though we can't
name or really
point two
what that sharing your exchanges
so our self sufficiency is not sufficiency you know within this narrow limited place but it's actually the self sufficiency of this entire room
right here
this room right now is self sufficient everything that is needed in our world at this moment is right here
and
the challenge and beginner's mind is and in this practice is going to recognize that dad's
always the case
that there's always something
the availability of connection
ah
not that we always have everything we need to survive necessarily
but that somehow we have everything we need
in that moment
so suzuki roshi says you should not lose yourself sufficient state of mind
this doesn't mean a closed mind but actually an empty mind and already mind
if your mind is empty it is always it was always ready for anything it is open to everything
in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities in the experts mind there are few
hum

in order to be able to do this we actually have what we're doing one of the things that's happening as were ah has are sitting zazen is worth cultivating our capacity for composure
we're allowing ourselves to include everything and seeing that capacity expand even though in a moment to moment sense we may feel uncomfortable or irritable or distracted or at peace it doesn't matter at some level that's that's the surf
office of the water at some level that goes deep underneath underneath that ah
we're in contact with this long and deep stillness and that is ah
that's the emptiness
which is always humming
ah

there was something else i've found by suzuki roshi ah
yeah
i'm certainly going east he said in the beginner's mind there is no thought i have attained something off self centered thoughts limit or vast mind so the vast minds the mind that that's encompasses and is created by this whole room
ah when we have no sort of achievement no thought of self we are true beginners
so as i said in beginning well whenever we may feel wouldn't we may feel whenever true beginners and we may feel
that were never quite rid of this vestigial thought of self
and yet we keep changing he says then we can really learn something
we do that's what we do day by day
ah he says the beginner's mind is the mind of compassion the mind of feeling with the mind of connection to
ah this is the aim of a bodhisattva vow
but sometimes
this begins in a in a somewhat intellectual way ah and i found another raw
the talk looking through suzuki roshi his lectures ah ah
where he gets down to the the physical side and that i want to emphasize that zazen is something you do with your body all of this work
the work of compassion is not like some wonderful ah glowing ah cloud in one's mind but it's actually something that we have to do in relation to our own body using our own body body to body with those around us
ah
so since intuition says in his in this other lecture if you are always lazy and drowsy spiritually and physically the daisy you actually have no chance to live truthfully to yourself that is why we practice various practices
if we stick but if we stick to old way of practice is not so good also
so it is necessary maybe to change our way of practice sometimes he's talking day starts talking about new year's time he says for instance at some monasteries they start to bathe in cold water from january
ah all the monks get up about four o'clock go through lake and bathe
he says and you will not catch cold he said recently flew is all over but if you make up your mind to bathe every morning and evening and cold water your mind does not accept sickness because you're so physically and mentally very active
so it's is rather difficult to take cold water bath and more difficult after working hard could you work hard and a monastery
this kind of practice is not orthodox practice
but according to the situation the monastery we also apply various ways of life to renew our mind and body
especially people who live in san francisco where climate is always same
it may be necessary to have some pool for them students to take cold baths
maybe exciting practice for us and it will give pretty good stimulation for san francisco people
good or preservatives tv i heard a an interview with a with with steve martin ah the other day on the radio and he was talking about how early in his career he just couldn't end a show and he couldn't figure out how to end and people were just sitting there and wouldn't go away and so you can
matt an audience and ultimately you know he led them all out to an empty pool it was an empty pool and he said okay everybody get in the pool
the chutzpah i would i would lead you over to the the king pool right now and we'd all jump in except it's heated right yeah well
but this we have to keep changing our environment
we have to keep beginning again
this is how
we cultivate our practice by just coming to the it was really cold speaking of cold baths it was really cold in the zendo this morning i came in ah
so i wanted to put up my hat
buried but i did ask ross to try to turn on the heat which ah but it's like
in that coldness actually i felt very awake and alive even though didn't actually like it but it didn't matter because this was my psych here i was this was my intention to practice to sit with cold it's cold
ah you know in ah i'm going to have opportunity it's warm in here now right
have opportunities to warm up but if it's cold and brings life force forward and
that's good and my zaza missouri ah
how can i says it's hard you know you can't talk about zazen you can't quite characterizing it was an com but it was an agitated it was it was just the cold was just getting a lot of energy moving so ah and we all felt that i felt they weren't
a lot of people here but i've it looked like everybody was called was called great
ah but there we were together and i just said wow this is great this is the new here and here we are and i felt his great sense of connection so we're ready to go forward
so i'd like to read you one more poem and i've been warned i have to be done by eleven ten so will we do one more poem because i think this poem is about the extension of our
ah
our beginner's mind and of our bodhisattva vow and then have time for some questions this is a poem by denise lever tough it's called beginners
and is dedicated to the memory of karen silkwood people know who she is right
and somebody i did a long search that's elliot gala who i have no idea who it is i did a long i search for about twenty minutes online and i just couldn't find anything it kept referring to dedicated to memory of karen silkwood an alien grella and that kind of circular logic of of google you know
it
so beginners
but we have only begun to love the earth
we've only begun to imagine the fullness of life
how could we tire of hope so much is in the bud
how can desire fail we have only begun to imagine justice and mercy only begun to envision how it might be to live as siblings with beasts and flower not as oppressors
surely are river can not already be hastening into the sea of non-being
surely it cannot drag in the silt all that is innocent
don't yet not yet
there's too much broken that must be mended
too much hurt we have done to each other that cannot yet be forgiven
we have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle
so much is unfolding that must complete its gesture
so much is in the bud
so we have a few minutes for questions or comments
ha floor is open

so
changing

yeah
changing
haven't

tainted right

well i've actually read this is so you're like a plant with a in audience or
well first of all
i think as with
really become aware of ourselves
ah in practice what we see is that actually the environment is changing all the time
that's what i was saying when you know the environment the the the weather and internal environment that i experienced on wednesday night was very different from the environment that i experienced on friday morning
ah or this morning that it was different
and if you were really a tune to yourself then you perceive the difference if you think you're doing this is i think what's and superior you're saying that then becoming impure in in china and japan are that when it becomes
repetitive as ritual say when you when you think you know what you're doing you think you're doing the same thing every time you kind of killed it
and so if we see that if we if we're tuning into our bodies and our minds that each time we sit down it's different and that the form to me as a is a framework
in relief against against which relief i can actually see the difference
but then i think that's that's here but then i think if we if we went around the room ah we would find everybody has as tremendously different life
and people's lives are changing all the time
and you know what suzuki roshi is talking about here is actually
yeah how do you jump in the cold pool of the cold lake and keep your composure at the same time not be
thrown off by it
so this is a say beginning after on tuesday
mina start doing every few months or what's called council practice
sitting in a circles or a horizontal non-hierarchical communal communication communal communication process ah where people just speak from the heart and listen deeply and actually the subject of of the the first one i'm going to give some instruction how to do it with the subject
is ah
broadly self-care which means
some of us are getting older we just really better than the alternative i think ah
as our bodies age
as circumstances change how do we keep vitality in our practice what does it look like if you think it looks like i have to do this you know every day in the same way then you're gonna run into a wall how do we keep it fresh and breathing so i don't
have the answer to that question you have to answer that question
ah but i try to notice how things are always
hot changing within myself so and then there's the constant that they assume that
i think that my son practice
but my women's problems
and from one thing together
over the place right
what is assumptions of gone quite simple
giving it
right
snow
hum
well i don't see peter every minute of the day
and i think that for peter
i would guess we haven't talked about this exactly the challenge does a challenge and how do i keep my composure
not how do i control my body because i can't the new lot neurologically he can't
ah but i feel when i'm with him you know he's a deep person and he is
working consciously or unconsciously on keeping their composure wouldn't you agree
that's that's all we can do
and that's i guess i'm expressing doubts
no that's okay
ah zaza may not be the practice repeater
dozens not the practice necessarily for everybody it's not ah it's not a cure-all however you can create a sense of composure for yourselves i got gets really important for me
i know what i was like twenty five years ago when i walked in here
and for me i would just say without zazen i'm not sure i'd be alive
and zazen was just when it was never easy cheesy year now but i hadn't faced in it
and it worked
you know and i see it i mean i know so many of you and i see people change from year to you i can hardly talk about it actually ah
i see people change from year to hear months two months and it's not like oh zazen is improving them
it's how we throw ourselves into this practice which is the one we're sharing in this room and there were other practices but ah i believe
that if you enter it that way
and you keep applying yourself and you keep looking at beginnings ah you know it's just that this is a good place to end is just
ha
each of us is like this so much is unfolding that must complete its gesture
so much is in bud
so we believe ourselves that way if we believe
there's a gesture to complete with it's a gesture of extending one's hand to another
the gesture of sitting down
the gesture of taking care of oneself
the bird is is potentiality this is the the what suzuki roshi was talking about in emptiness is possibility potentiality we can if we can open to it
so
thank you very much and
let's enjoy the near as an unfolds
fuck me