Good morning, everyone. I want to speak this morning about starting with a writing from a talk from Shigeru Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center and my teacher's teacher. So Zen Mind Beginners Mind, which is a collection of his talks, is probably the classic American Zen book. other collections that have appeared more recently, not always so. And so I'm going to start by reading some of what he says and talk about it. He starts, when you are practicing, you realize that your mind is like a screen. If the screen is colorful, colorful enough to attract people, then it will not serve its purpose. So to have a screen which is not colorful, to leave a pure, plain, white screen is the most important point.

[01:04]

So what he has to say in this talk I think is a very important point about our Zazen practice and our everyday practice. Zen is actually our way of life, and to practice Zazen is like setting your alarm clock. Unless you set your alarm, a clock will not serve its purpose. Every day we must have a starting point. The sun rises at a certain time and sets at a certain time, always repeating the same thing. And we do too, but it may not feel that way to us. Unless our life is organized, we may not realize how important it is to know where to start our life. As Zen students, our life begins with Zazen practice. We come back to zero. and start from zero. Although we have various activities, the most important thing is to realize how these activities arise from zero.

[02:06]

So the title of this talk is Everyday Life is Like a Movie. And this is really a teaching about facing the wall. So I've been talking about from Dogen's version of the story of Bodhidharma. He said Bodhidharma faced the wall for nine years. He was the founder of Chinese Zen. He came from India. There's an image of him on this side of the altar standing. I guess he stood in between periods of sitting like we walk in between periods of sitting. But this is about facing the wall. How is our life How does our life flower from this practice of just sitting, facing the wall, facing ourselves? And part of what he's saying, and as I say to the people this morning when we were at the Zazen Instruction, this is a practice that is about our everyday life.

[03:16]

So to do this practice regularly, not just when you come to Ancient Dragons and Gate, although it's great, please do come and sit Zazen here when you can, but also in between, if you can, several times a week, or every day, even, just to take some time to stop and sit and face the wall. So, I'm not going to read all of this, but I just want to talk about movies today. during Zazen, you may hear a bird singing. Something is arising in your practice. In the same way in our everyday life, many things will arise. And if you know where these things arise from, you will not be disturbed by them. Because you don't know how it happens, you become confused. If you know how things arise, if you see, if you can stop enough to see,

[04:18]

our experience arising, then at the moment something happens, you will be ready. It's like watching the sun rise. Oh, look, the sun is just coming up. So sometimes, as Zubi Roshi says, you will be angry. But anger actually doesn't come all of a sudden. It may come very slowly. When you feel anger come all of a sudden, that's real anger. But when you know how it comes, When you can say to yourself, oh, there's anger arising in my mind, that's not exactly anger. People may say that you are angry, but actually you're not angry. So he says, if you know you are about to start crying, oh, I'm going to cry. And then in the next two or three minutes, oh, I started crying. That's not exactly crying. Our practice is to accept things as you accept various images in your sitting. The most important thing is to have a big mind and to accept things. So Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the most important thing, about many things.

[05:23]

And he asked the students, what is the most important thing? And I modified that to say, well, what is important to you? What are some of the things that are important to you? What is it that brings you to do this practice of looking at yourself, of facing the wall, of letting the wall face you? So to sit every morning at a certain time makes sense, if you wish to sit. And this is the life of a residential practice place. So for us with busy lives in Chicago, I would say, well, whenever you can, sit. And if it's not the same time every day, that's OK. But actually, it's nice if you have a time when you sit. But just, again, to take time in your life. He says, our everyday life is like a movie playing on the wide screen. Most people are interested in the picture on the screen without realizing that there's a screen.

[06:28]

When the movie stops and you don't see anything anymore, you think, oh, I must come again tomorrow evening. see another movie, or come back and see another show. When you're just interested in the movie on the screen and it ends, then you expect another show tomorrow, or maybe you were discouraged because there's nothing good on right now. You don't realize that the screen is always there. But when you are practicing, you realize that your mind is like a screen. If the screen is colorful, colorful enough to attract people, then it will not serve its purpose. So you have to have a screen which is not colorful. To have a simple, pure, plain white screen is the most important point. But most people are not interested in this pure white screen. So he's talking about this background of our sitting. So we sit upright, relaxed, but paying attention, facing the wall.

[07:34]

And that wall is like a screen. It's not that we're focusing on a particular object. And our mind often is like a movie projector. We're projecting images. We're projecting thoughts. We're projecting feelings. That's very natural. But also, as we sit, we slow down, we calm down, some of the time anyway, enough to see, oh, there, there's a wall. It's just a blank wall. It's not about... some particular part of the wall or some particular configuration or interesting thing on the wall. Oh, you're sitting facing the wall. So this is very important to our practice. This is, you know, we all have many stories and many narratives. We all have various ideas and images and stories about who we are and what the world is.

[08:42]

But somehow behind them there's this screen, this wall, this wall that we face. And it's not that we should ignore the stories. It's not that The stories don't matter, but they're just stories. Sometimes they have great consequence. So we've been speaking recently about how do we respond to the difficulties in our world. The promotion of fear, the problems of inequality and injustice and racism and so forth that are part of our society, part of our lives, all of us. So some stories get dug in really strongly. They're part of our culture. They're part of us. We each have our own particular stories, too. We have our own ideas about what we're doing, who we are, actual stories of personal history.

[09:52]

So all of these stories on the screen are there. But this background screen, this blank wall that Bodhidharma sat facing for nine years. In our practice, whether or not you think about this or have heard about this before, somehow we start by doing this practice regularly, by just sitting upright, being present, facing the wall, facing our lives, we start to have this background sense. Suki Roshi also talked about our life being always losing our balance against a background of perfect balance. So this thing about the screen, the wall, is kind of the background. And then there's all the stories. And some of the stories, you know, we don't ignore cause and effect. We don't ignore the consequences of our stories. We try and take care of the stories, but it's not about fixing everything.

[10:59]

things that should be remedied and healed in our own lives and the world around us. But having this background sense is very important and very helpful. We come back to sitting upright, facing the wall, facing ourselves, just being present So, what Sakyong Rinpoche is saying, to have this sense of this very simple background screen, you know, we can sort of reach out and touch it when we're sitting facing the wall, or facing the floor, whatever. It's right in front of us. And yet, there's all these stories. And, you know, sometimes we get all, many times, much of our life is getting all caught up in the various stories.

[12:02]

and the various dramas and melodramas. And that happens, but also when we stop and pause. And so we emphasize the sitting practice, but we also emphasize how is it expressed in our everyday activity. When you're going about your business, when you're at work and anger arises about something that somebody did or something that's happening, in the middle of dealing with relationships with neighbors, relatives, and so forth, various scenarios appear on the screen, various drawings, various narratives. And part of the way our consciousness works is that we get caught up in them. But having this practice of sitting upright, doing it regularly, having this sense of the screen, the wall, this background, actually is helpful to What are we going to do when there's a difficult story that's showing up on the theater of your life?

[13:07]

How do we respond to that? How do we respond to it, not from being caught up in the melodrama, but, oh, OK. So as you're walking around in your everyday activity, when you have this relationship with your breath and with uprightness, you can hit the pause button. You can stop and take a breath or two or three and, oh, OK. And then, of course, there's some story still going on in front of you, and it's changed after a couple of breaths. But having this background sense is very helpful. So Suzuki Roshi says, to know what you're doing at any particular time is the most important thing. This is to make effort according to the situation you are in. So it's not that we have to think about the wall or try to remember what color the wall is, but having that sense of uprightness and breath can be very helpful.

[14:14]

So he says most people are interested in the picture on the screen without realizing there is a screen. And, you know, part of the practice is when you realize that there is this background perfect balance, that we can play with the stories on the screen. We can tell more helpful stories, or we can try and be helpful in the middle of those stories. But in the background, there's, oh yeah, I can just sit and be present, face the wall, face myself. and not get carried away by all the melodrama, not react. So the way our, and it's biological, fight or flight, you know, we see something and we're alarmed and we either want to resist or we want to run away or it's, you know, this is deep in us. But when we have this sense of just stopping and breathing, then we don't have to react according to our habit patterns.

[15:23]

according to our own way of getting angry, or our own way of being greedy, or our own way of trying to protect ourselves. We can have a wider sense. So part of our sitting is settling, calming, just facing the screen or the wall. And part of it is then a kind of openness, where we do have a wider capacity to respond. So I think it's okay to enjoy the movies. This is the time of year when the big Hollywood movies come out. And Christmas week is when my wife and I go to a few movies. So I'm looking forward to seeing some of the new movies. We're going to see Star Wars. Is that like mandatory in our society now that everybody has to see Star Wars? I don't know. I don't think so. But anyway, how many of you have seen it?

[16:25]

Ah, OK, right. So somebody who was here earlier told me they liked it. But anyway, so there's all these movies that come out. And I enjoy movies. In fact, I used to be a filmmaker. I was a film editor for a number of years. And for about 10 years, and then a little later, for a little bit more, I did a lot of different jobs in the film business, but I did mostly editing. I gravitated towards that. Mostly documentary, and I ended up doing TV news, of all things, because there weren't so many documentaries back then. And I did some other kinds of films, too, some feature films. Having that training, I could see, you know, 24 frames per second, I could see things. My training was to see the movement and the structure of the image on the wall, or on the screen, or on the film.

[17:34]

And, you know, the first five years I was doing Zen practice, I was a professional film editor. I gave that up to go work for Zen Center at Tassajara Bakery. But, you know, so I have a particular relationship to the screen, you know, and particular training. And so, as a good while ago, but still, I like to go to the movies. I like movies. I used to, you know, this relationship of image and screen and the background screen, it used to be that when I would go to the movies, most of what I would see is the editing, particularly in bad movies, but even in good movies, I can appreciate how the images flow, and I was really trained to see, you know, when I started sitting, I would try and see my zazen in terms of not necessarily 24 images per second, but I could see, you know, how a changing story had that quality.

[18:38]

But I used to, because when I wanted to just enjoy the movie, I would sit up close. So I wouldn't be looking at the screen and looking at what was happening technically. I sometimes still do that. Sometimes I'm distracted by the editing. Which is to say, I see the screen, I see the wall, I see the story being put together, and the images being put together. And that sometimes is fun. But then sometimes I just want to get lost in the story. It's okay to do that. But then I always remember I had the sense of, oh, it's just a screen. So how do we do that with our life? How do we see the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about the world around us and its problems? And sometimes we get into the story. And I think that's OK. So maybe Suzuki Roshi would disagree with me, but I don't care. So how do we look at the reality of our life and see this background?

[19:43]

So Dogen, the 13th century monk who founded this branch of Zen Soto Zen in Japan, talks about time in terms of our illusion of continuity, but also the discontinuity, that each moment is complete right now. And yet, our consciousness, one of the main things our consciousness does, one of its main functions, is to put together a narrative. That we actually think that my hand is moving, but actually, if I broke it down into 24 frames a second, each one of these, you know, movies are just still pictures put together, and then there seems to be some flow. So our mind does that. And we do that with our life too. And it's not that one is right and the other is wrong. But to have a sense of presence right now is part of our practice.

[20:58]

To see, oh yeah, here I am facing the wall. And we don't need to have some story. We take another breath. Our body keeps functioning. We feel whatever, the tension in our shoulders, we can see the thoughts arising, we can let them go. How to be present in the middle of this illusion of continuity amidst... In old Buddhism, they say there's six... In a finger snap, there's 64 moments. Some yogi, some meditator figured that out at some point, I don't know. a Y64, but in each moment, and a moment isn't exactly a second, but anyway, so each present is fully present, and yet it's deeply related to the past and future, and actually includes the past and future.

[22:05]

Anyway, all of this is about how we make up stories about whatever, and project them ourselves. So as you're sitting, a period of zazen, it's very likely that some of you may have had some thoughts or feelings in this last period of zazen, and may have actually had some images of things that happened yesterday or that you're going to do later today, or whatever, or could be something from a long time ago, or maybe sometimes we see things from the future. All of it's right here. And all of it is, as Tolkien says, to use one translation, presencing right now. So beyond all of the stories, beyond all of the images, beyond this flow, there's right now. There's just this screen. There's just this wall. Let me take another breath. So Suzuki Rishi, just to continue with this passage, and not only so, says, I think it's good to be excited by seeing the movie.

[23:16]

To some extent, you can enjoy the movie because you know that it is a movie. Even though you have no idea of the screen, still, your interest is based on an understanding that this is a movie with a screen, and there is a projector, or something artificial, so you can enjoy it. This is how we enjoy our life. If you have no idea of the screen or the projector, perhaps you cannot see it as a movie. So again, it's not that we ignore the stories and the narratives that are going on in our world and in our own experience of life, but to have this sense, this background sense, oh yeah, it's happening on the screen, it's happening on the wall. Yosa says that white screen is not something that you can actually attain. It is something you always have. So this is not something that you can get some experience of. It's there all the time, whether or not you've ever thought of it.

[24:20]

The wall is there. The screen is there. The reason you don't feel you have it is because your mind is too busy. And we all, many of us, have that problem. But once in a while, you should stop. all your activities, and make your screen white. That is Zazen. So one common Zazen instruction is to put aside all involvements and cease all affairs and just sit. It doesn't mean that you, this is not the bottom example, you get rid of all thinking and all functioning, but you take a break, stop. Whatever the dramas in your life and in the world that you have to confront, Here we are, in this movie of a room with people sitting around, facing the center. And somebody up front that way.

[25:23]

This is also, as Suzuki Roshi says, it's the foundation of everyday life and a meditation practice. Without this kind of foundation, the practice will not work. All the instructions you receive are about how to have a clean white screen, even though there's never pure white, because of our various attachments and our previous stains, all of the stories and all of the events in our life. And, you know, to talk about our disdains is, I don't know, maybe to make a value judgment. So, maybe I'd like movies more than Suki Roshi, but I know he did like He says, when we just practice zazen with no idea of anything, we are quite relaxed. Because it is difficult to have complete relaxation in our usual position, we take this posture of zazen. To do this, we follow the instructions that have been accumulated from the experience of many people in the past. They discovered that the posture of zazen, this upright sitting, is much better than other postures, better than standing up or lying down.

[26:37]

If you practice zazen following the instructions, it works. But if you do not trust your own pure white screen, your practice will not work. So, he's talking about this background, but he's also talking about kind of trust. To have this sense of facing the wall, like Bodhidharma did. To not be caught up in, at least not all the time, in all the melodramas that get projected onto the wall. be present and face the world. This is one of the keys to zazen. And again, in terms of all of the difficulties in our world and responding to those, and being helpful rather than harmful, all of the qualities that are described in our precepts, including all beings,

[27:39]

not building walls. We don't build a wall to keep out certain kinds of beings who speak certain languages. The wall is just a screen that shows everything. The wall is a kind of window to see our own stories, the stories that we have constructed, and to see the stories that the world is constructing, and to not be caught by them. It's a screen, it's a wall. So I remember at Tassajara, a shuso ceremony. This is after the end of a Tassajara three-month practice period. We've done it here for two months. And then at the end, the head monk, the head student, there's a ceremony where everybody in the practice period, everybody in the room and former head monks, all ask questions.

[28:47]

And Douglas will be doing this this coming spring. And then the person responds to those questions. So it can be very dramatic. It's actually fun to do it. And I do this now at the end of long sittings when people ask me, come up and ask questions. But one of the most memorable encounters has to do with this, in a way. So this was a while ago, and there was a Japanese monk there at Tassajara at the time, who was checking out American Zen, and was, I think, a young monk, but he was sort of dissatisfied with the Japanese sutra forms and the rigidity of those. Anyway, he asked this interesting question to the Shiso. He said, So first he had a preface. He said, this is a serious question. I really mean this.

[29:49]

This is true. Please do not take this lightly. And then he said, I have this friend. And he's a very gentle being, very kind. But he's from a different planet. And he looks very different. He's kind of round and doesn't have any legs. And he went on to describe this. alien friend of his who was, he said, was a very kind, gentle being, but didn't have any legs and couldn't sit in the way we do. And he asked his shisho, how would you tell him to sit zazen? And Robert just said, I always face the wall. So let's remember that exchange. So our practice is about just facing the wall, facing the screen.

[30:51]

Not turning away. Not trying to get a hold of it. Just being present. And I don't know what uprightness would mean to that being that Krishna does for him from the Upasantoriya, I don't know what being upright would mean for a dolphin or an elephant. But for us, for we monkeys, intelligent monkeys, we have this posture. You can do it kneeling or cross-legged or sitting in a chair, but to be present and upright. And just face the wall. And some of us occasionally sit facing the center, as I do. But it's not different. And again, the point of this is not to become an expert meditator or anything like that.

[31:57]

The point is, how do we bring this background balance, this background awareness to the stories of our life? when we feel anger arise, when we want to respond to some problem in our life or in the world. Having that wall behind us or in front of us can be very helpful. So maybe that's enough for me to say. Does anybody have any comments or questions or responses? Please feel free. Well, you know, we talk about emptiness, and the screen is empty.

[33:26]

And so, in some ways, facing the screen is facing emptiness, and then their forms arise. So emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. It means that everything is interconnected. So maybe there's no screen, but there's no stories either. But in terms of our functioning, mostly we're just caught up in the stories. And the stories of our culture that tell us to go out and acquire more or accumulate things or accumulate merit or whatever. These stories are very powerful. But also there's this background. And is it real or not? Is that what your question is? I'm not sure I understand the point of your question. Okay, that's fine. Part of our practice is asking questions.

[34:28]

And then, you know, how do we work with those questions? Where do the questions arise from? Why do they come out of the wall? They come out of our stories. Wherever. Part of the practice is to see the questions arising. Oh, I wonder about that. And it's not that there's no such thing as a stupid question in Zen. It's just, you know, they're all ways of seeing. the images projected on the screen, or sometimes the screen itself. And yeah, it's actually good to ask about the screen, to wonder about this background awareness. And part of practice over time, we can become more and more deeply aware, connected, informed by that background screen. But also, we can never, one of those famous So the story about the screen, we never ignore the stories projected on the screen. Or we never just pretend that we can get rid of them completely. Because they're deeply ingrained, embedded in our DNA.

[35:33]

They're part of our biology. But how do we not get caught by them? So having a sense of this background screen, whether that's real or not, I don't know. But we can face the world. Maybe sometimes we face the wall so much that we feel like we can bore through the walls like x-ray vision or something. So, you know, the walls are also just, you know, forms on the screen, but there's this background. Anyway, looking at all this and seeing how the stories fit together and seeing how they arise can be very helpful. But having this background sense of underlying sameness is very helpful. Other comments or questions or responses?

[36:38]

I have one. Good, thank you. Also, the screen in Zen gives me, like you said, the pause. Yes. So that I don't have to react in a normal way. I can change that reaction. Exactly. My normal reaction would be anger or running away. But I don't have to do that. I don't have to do what I've always done. Right. You understand, and sometimes you see it, I see it in my wife where she just reacts. Yes. And I wish that she would. But we're all, you know, just human, I guess. I don't know. Some English guy said, all the world's a stage.

[37:42]

Yeah, right. So yeah, we're all, there's this, there's this background and Yeah, it is helpful. We can... I mean, this isn't just some philosophical point. It's practical in that, yeah, we can hit the pause button, we can stop and pause and not get caught up. And that takes time, you know. These patterns and habits of grasping or anger or confusion and so forth, they're deep. and you may see through them. Sometimes going to a therapist or something is helpful to see them. Sitting zazen and feeling them viscerally can be helpful. But even if you see them, it doesn't mean you're going to suddenly stop acting them out. But the more you are willing to just watch yourself acting out these patterns, the less hold they have.

[38:46]

And sometimes then, not all the time, but sometimes then you have the capacity pause, breathe, and not react. So, yeah. It's been very helpful for me. Yeah. Controlling some of my emotions that aren't helpful to other people. Me too. Yeah, yeah. Good, thank you. Other comments, anyone? One or two more. Yes, Deborah, welcome back. You know, one of the most important qualities is the persistence. No matter what the movie that is going to be shown that day on that screen, that I show up for the set, and no matter what my experience is, to keep persisting has been one of the most helpful things for me. Yes, thank you very much. That's very important, that, you know, we don't, since Zaza just were feeling really good, and you can think we can have a groovy period, or whatever kind of wonderful period of Zaza,

[39:47]

and everything will be luminous and radiant and whatever. Sometimes it's most important just when we're feeling tired or we're feeling angry or grumpy or whatever's going on, just to stop, face the wall, pray, take another breath. Yeah, so steadiness, sustaining the practice, sustaining awareness is what this is about. We're not trying to reach some particular state of being or state of mind. It's about seeing what's here now. What's going on under your seat? Here, this morning, the next breath. How is it? And paying attention to it. qualities of attention. Sometimes we can, you know, depending on what's going on on the screen, we might feel, you know, this kind of intense need to focus very deeply.

[40:54]

Sometimes it's okay to just, you know, relax into it. There's not one right way. It depends on the situation. But to be present and upright and face the screen, face the wall. Any other comments? I was kind of thinking of that, yeah. My life and also the movie, but probably for the Zen, pause may be really good, but fast-forwarding or rewinding, probably that's not really the things we are supposed to do during our Zen practice. That's really interesting. So, you know, partly this is what we do when we're walking out. We get up and walk around and we're dealing with stuff to be able to pause.

[41:56]

But yeah, sometimes we can wind it back in, you know, mentally. We can see the past, we can see the future. That's all part of what's happening right now. But to bring it into the present, not as a way of running away from ourselves. So this practice is not about an escape We talk about spiritual practice as a refuge and sanctuary sometimes, but it's not about running away from the movies. Some movies we don't like. Sometimes you walk out on the movies. Not very often, but a couple of times. With this sense of this background reality of facing the wall, it's easier to not run away. And we can actually, no matter how difficult it is, we can be there, take a breath, be present. And yeah, in some ways, maybe it's winding back a little bit or winding forward a little bit.

[43:03]

You wanna look back at something, you wanna see what's happening now in the future, because it's not the future now, it's now, it's now, but anyway. So time is very flexible, actually. moves around in different ways. But it's always about just facing the world. So part of this facing the screen, this movie screen, is to not avoid ourselves and being present. Sometimes that's uncomfortable. Because all of us, and of course our society and our world, there's aspects of it that are uncomfortable. And yet we can be present. and have more and more of a capacity to see how we want to respond rather than react. Thank you.

[43:54]

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