I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.
Good morning.
I'd like to introduce Linda Weintraub.
She's a priest from San Francisco, as I'm saying.
This is the first time that she's given a lecture here.
But she's friends with Leonel Mills since she's been here.
This is a test.
Good morning.
It's very wonderful to be at the Berkeley Zendo.
The first time I was ever here was... Can you hear me all right?
It was when I was going to school at Berkeley and the Berkeley Zendo was at the other place, the other address.
And I hadn't sat here
Until this morning, for maybe it's been about 10 years now.
Or, yeah, about 10 years.
And there was a wonderful feeling of energy.
Mazendo.
It was cold, very cold morning.
And you could see your breath.
And it reminded me of being at Tassajara.
Everybody was sort of full of a lot of vigor.
And the chanting was especially energetic.
Happy New Year to everyone.
On New Year's Eve at Zen Center in San Francisco we did the usual thing we do is sit Zazen and the period of Zazen lasts through 12 o'clock and at 12 o'clock we strike a bell 108 times and while that's going on San Francisco sort of bursts into noise
and firecrackers, and cars honking.
I think the great museum does the same thing.
But we did something new this year, which was to have what was called a fire ceremony.
We actually kind of invented it.
We hadn't done it before.
And after the sitting, we all came upstairs to the courtyard.
If you're not familiar with the Zen Center building in San Francisco, there's a courtyard
And there was a big fire that was built in this giant wok, you know, Chinese woks, big fire.
And we burned many things.
We burned the Zazen attendance records for the year.
And all the little stubs of incense, you know that after the incense burns down, what's sitting in the ash itself doesn't burn, so you're left with a little stub.
And the Eno, the head of the meditational, have been saving those for many years.
There's a big bowl, literally, you could take handfuls, toss them onto the fire, and bring those.
And we also burn the memorial cards.
The names of people who have died are written on a card for a memorial service.
And the Eno also didn't know what to do with those because you can't just, there's something about that piece of paper that just doesn't work to just toss it into a waste paper basket.
So we burned those.
And then anyone else who wanted to write something down on a piece of paper that they wanted to toss away, they could do that too.
There was paper and pens provided in baskets.
and you could write something down, toss it into the fire.
And many, many people wrote things down and wrote several things down and something else would occur and they'd go back for another piece of paper.
Meanwhile, incense is being thrown on and it's all going up in big waves of clouds of smoke and it's a very powerful ceremony.
Actually, it had a very pagan kind of feeling to it in some ways.
So I knew the ceremony was happening, and I tried to think what it was that I wanted to throw away or get rid of or finish in some way.
And actually, when I thought about it in that way, getting rid of something or burning something up, that wasn't quite what I had in mind.
That didn't feel...
so useful to try to get rid of something and what I realized was that the writing it down and the tossing it into the fire was actually rather than getting rid of something it was taking something on or acknowledging that I want to work with this and making something very conscious by forming it into a phrase or words
and saying, I'm going to work with this now.
So out of the five or six pieces of paper I threw in the fire, one of them had to do with
What is it to practice within busy, busy everyday activities?
As Ron mentioned, I have a daughter who's pretty young.
She's nine months now.
And there was quite a big change from before Sarah was here.
And now, before Sarah was here, I didn't realize it actually, but it was very easy to get to the Zendo quite often.
schedule my day in such a way that I could actually get something done, be somewhere on time, participate with Zen Center in a way that was very full.
But actually, before Sarah was born, in the nine months that I was carrying her around, everything changed and I wasn't able to do... I could barely sit a period of zazen, actually.
just physically I would get dizzy and my legs fell asleep and I couldn't get up and I couldn't get down.
I couldn't bow and so it was rather problematical.
And then when Sarah arrived the problems increased in terms of
the strict, a strict understanding of formal practice.
And I think that's true for many people.
It may not be that they have a baby to take care of or a child, but they have a profession or their life situation is such that it may be very complicated and demands all your effort and concentration to take care of what you need to take care of.
So I've been asking myself what is useful to do in that situation.
The feeling that often sort of descends upon you is that it's impossible and I can't do it and it's no use.
There's no use trying.
That kind of feeling, sort of a downward spiral of thoughts.
At the Shuso ceremony, the Tassahara Shuso ceremony, there's a phrase that the Shuso is the head student for the practice period.
And there's a big ceremony at the end of the practice period in which they answer questions.
Each student in the practice period asks a question.
And there's a poem that they say right before the questions begin, which says, though only a mosquito biting an iron bull, I cannot give it away, I think is the phrase, meaning they have this responsibility and there's nothing they can do.
only a mosquito biting an iron bull.
Usually we don't want to be a mosquito trying to bite an iron bull.
We want to be, you know, we want to be a bullfighter right in there, equal to the task and winning out actually
accomplishing things, want to accomplish things.
But that mosquito, actually it occurred to me that the bull, the iron bull probably gets rusty, and there's probably these places where the mosquito gets in,
We don't talk about that.
The mosquito, that effort that the mosquito is making to bite the iron bull, find a place to bite, is very pure effort.
And actually, what Buddhism is more interested in or concerned with is effort,
Perfect effort, not perfect accomplishment or perfect attainment.
The making of the effort itself over and over again, that's what it's all about.
It's not getting things to such a point where it's all taken care of in any form.
When I hear that, when I've heard that before, perfect effort, not perfect accomplishment, I remember the first time I heard it was like a flood, a flood of relief came over me.
Because perfect effort is something you can, you could actually, it kindles you, perfect effort.
Perfect accomplishment is, it drains you more, to think about it even.
So then, what is perfect effort?
What is effort and then what is perfect effort?
There's many things in Buddhist practice, Zen practice, that helps you in making effort.
Now, you may not realize that when you first hear about them.
For example, our posture.
I would say our posture, working with our posture is one of the main first and strongest ways to work with perfect effort.
And I mean our posture in Zazen, in the cross-legged position, and also outside of the Zendo, in everyday activity.
In Zazen, we're taught, if you come to Zazen instruction, or have been sitting, you know that we're asked to keep the spine straight, pull up in the back of our hand, keep our chin in, so it points
Actually, those little points are... there's vast... universes between chin out and chin in.
So it may feel like some technique, but actually, if it helps you and if it's useful, and if you find it useful,
It's okay.
So finding your daily activities, finding some way that you are... that you're with yourself.
if you can remember to remember to put your consciousness in your spine, pull up on your bed, and breathe.
When I first came to Zen Center, actually within the first month, a friend asked me to come to tea to her room at Zen Center in San Francisco.
and she made tea and she sat in Seiza, do you know Seiza position?
You sit on your knees with your, sit on your heels with, and she sat very beautifully.
She just made tea and we chatted and I realized that I think I was sort of half leaning on something with a leg up and kind of sprawled all over and I realized that she was very concentrated in what she was doing
even though it was a little social gathering that we were having, we just hadn't to.
But she was very, she knew what she was doing.
And it made a big impression on me that there was a way, there was a way to do something that was more helpful, or more, that allowed you to be with people more completely
and you could put yourself in that position, you could choose to do it.
The other very helpful... what I found helpful in finding the practice within everyday activities, busy life, is to ask yourself a question and a question... a question that comes from your own life
is the most powerful.
But a question that says, if all day long, from morning till night, you ask yourself, is what I'm doing helpful to other people and helpful to myself?
That kind of thinking, for every action that you do, whatever it is,
that begins to work and works.
As I'm listening to myself talk, it sounds like, well, I've heard all this stuff before.
Yeah, yeah, I know all about that.
But I want to know how to practice.
It's interesting because
It's true, we hear the same things over and over again.
But there's a difference between hearing it and actually experimenting with it.
An older friend of mine who's a golfer
and was a very good golfer when he was younger, a champion of various places, began to lose his golf game as he got older, and he couldn't die.
He couldn't play the way he played before.
And he was working with this, and finally began to come back again.
And I asked him about it.
What was it?
What did you find?
What did you change?
And what he said was,
You know what the secret is?
Keep your eye on the ball.
But after, I think it was about, he was in his 60s, so maybe he'd been golfing since he was 10 or so.
He'd been playing for 50 years.
So that was the revelation.
And it's the same with Zazen posture.
Watch your posture and watch your breathing and watch your own mind.
What does that mean?
I think there's a tendency when we do have busy lives that toss us around, throw us back and forth.
There's a tendency to want to find some place where it's quiet and some place where you can push that all away and just sit sasen or study or
retreat and actually that's very useful sometimes to set aside some time to do that but within that to not reject those things that come up the daily the daily events to take those on to enter those
I, when Mel asked me to, I was talking with Mel about giving the talk, and I was saying that I hadn't been able to work on it.
It was just one thing after another would keep coming up.
I would have it set up that there'd be child care for Sarah, so I could have a couple hours in the afternoon to think about it.
And something would come up.
And it just, that went on for day after day this past month.
So I told him I was going to talk about that.
He knew what I was, what I meant.
He had been up at three, I think.
But I realized there were several months where I didn't put his eyes in at all, when Sarah was first born.
And, but it was fine.
I didn't, I didn't mind in the least.
I didn't resent her or wish it could be any differently.
But when I went to the center finally and sat down, it was,
Oh, it was so amazing to be there.
There was such a place.
And then when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, can you leave?
Sarah's crying.
That was all right, too.
So the pure effort is, it's not that you got to finish that period of Zazen,
with everyone or follow the morning schedule but it's being ready to take on whatever the next thing is willingly even if it's kind of a sticky business or not so fun to enter it with your
up on the back of him, doing the next thing.
I was reading this poem written to a layman, written by some master named Da Huizi.
and the layman had written that he had found some joyful release feeling and quiet and opening up and I actually can't quote exactly what happened to the layman but Da Hui wrote back saying joyous mindedness, pure joyous mindedness makes people weary
Too much purity makes people go crazy and come on, you know, let's get with it here.
That's not where it's at.
And the end of the poem was about water taking the form of whatever vessel it is in.
be it square or long or short or round.
So there's opportunity everywhere we are, from wherever we are.
We don't have to go any special place or be with certain people.
Although some people are very good friends and make it easier, still we have to find it on our own.
I think that's all I wanted to say this morning.
Does anyone have any questions or something they'd like to talk about?
I have.
I wanted to ask you, Bill had said one time that one of the things we should do is to cultivate to the same state of mind in everyday affairs that one has in Nisenga.
And I wondered if with the fragmentation of your life that you've described and the physical fragmentation of it,
if you found you were able more and more to maintain that quiet even though you were obliged to go from one activity to another.
Did everyone hear the question?
Well, I have to admit it goes both ways.
It changes.
I found... Someone once said to me that they felt they were a better person if they sat Zaza in the early morning periods.
If they fought with that sleepiness and got up when the wake-up bell went off.
They actually treated people in a different way.
were less arrogant during the day and that kind of thing.
They really saw the difference.
And I found that I'm able to take quite a bit in a certain one thing after another, one thing after another.
But then I get daily or
everything sort of dissolves.
So what I realize, and within, then it's sort of gathering up again within the dissolving.
And that's hard.
Or listening, sort of turning what I'm doing, turning it in and saying, boy, I really am being sort of obnoxious, aren't I?
Or listening to my tone of voice.
it's the state of mind that's in the zendo that state of mind of turning turning in that actually that quality is there that quality is there but what's happening it may be you know quite extreme
You said that you talked about the pure effort, and I hadn't thought of it before, what a release it is to have the pure of the effort rather than the result of complete effort.
And that's quite a wonderful notion.
But something that bothers me about that is that it seems to, although a very strong
effort seems to build a kind of strength which gives you a certain kind of something to rely upon but sometimes it seems to me that it also builds a kind of hardness where you're trying so hard and you're so sleepy and you're so tired and it can go on for a while and there seems to be a closing down that takes place some part of you that closes down while making that kind of effort
that you're in a way blinded to certain things, that you might see if you were not relaxed, but in a way more in harmony with your surroundings, which you didn't have to make all that effort, or something of that sort, I don't know.
I know what you mean.
What can one do to keep from going to the other side?
I guess that's a two-point dilemma between being lazy
That's exactly right.
Did you all hear his question?
That effort that you described actually has attached to it something extra, which is what the effort is leading to.
It's got the accomplishment tied onto it.
So it's kind of, and that's very, it's like that point is, it's kind of a dangerous place, you know, because you may be practicing very hard,
And to everyone else, it looks like you're practicing very hard, and it may be an encouragement to other people.
But parallel with that is this idea of the results of that, or I'm doing this for some reason, or... So that's not pure effort.
Pure effort doesn't... It's dropped off... Well, Suzuki Roshi says, gaming idea.
Goal-oriented.
So that's a very...
That's why it's so nice to have a teacher to point that out.
Because it looks, you look very good, you know.
And you can't actually distinguish.
You're making all this effort.
But there's some notion.
So that's true.
At that point, you have to relax somewhat.
And maybe pure effort for you at that point would be
to not go to the first period of sodomy, you know, or something like that, which someone can help you find, you know.
But then you, then along with that, the other kind of pitfall is the laziness.
Well, I won't make all this effort because that's really gaining idea and I'm, so I think I'll sleep in, you know.
So you have to, it's like the razor's edge, you know,
You have to know yourself pretty thoroughly to not get fooled.
But usually if you're with people who are practicing, somebody will cue you in if you're fooling yourself.
It'll show up in various places where people will give you some feedback.
If you stick around long enough.
Linda, in this context, could you say something about anxiety?
It seems to me that anxiety is a kind of notification that there's some attainment idea.
That one of the real gifts that pure effort bestows is a lack of anxiety, a release from anxiety.
I'm not sure.
Well, I'm not sure.
I think there can be pure effort within anxious feelings.
I think anxiety... there's the kind of anxiety about your practice itself, you know, am I... am I...
actually doing it, you know, am I really practicing it?
But then there's anxiety caused from you don't even know what, it just descends on you, you know, and it doesn't get dispelled very easily.
So I think with, to, I think pure effort doesn't
pure effortlessness includes having anxious feelings and having, you know, it includes all, everything.
And being angry and being, you know, those emotions, and within that you say, you say, oh, there I am feeling very anxious all of a sudden, or, you know,
looking at it that way, is making effort, pure effort within, rather than, I must not be practicing very well because look how anxious I've gotten, and I shouldn't be feeling this way, and that kind of thinking.
Do you see the difference?
in pure effort rather than pure attainment or pure accomplishment.
When I think about that, what comes up is the word try.
Try it out.
Try it again.
Try it on.
And it includes making baby steps and falling down a lot.
It doesn't mean smooth sailing.
It includes
all the difficult times you're going to have, and try again.
I guess they don't seem to have a lot of pure effort in the world.
Do you hear what he said?
When he hears the words pure effort, would you like to repeat it again, louder?
Pure effort almost sounds like that.
Can you hear it?
True effort, it almost sounds like a kind of effort that's not real, that's imaginary, that is not a part of yourself.
It seems like a kind of real effort, is just being aware of the effort that you're making, even if that's no effort, a lack of effort, just being mindful of what's real.
Did you want to hit me?
Well, that's the turning inward and seeing, looking at what you're doing.
You know that the baker, she always says the Morton salt container with the girl on it, the Morton salt container with the girl on it, the Morton salt container?
Do you know that?
Anyway, it's like that, where you're making effort and then you look and see, you look at the effort you're making to make effort, you know, sort of,
But that's the way of pure effort, is looking at the effort that you're making.
I wonder how it got into pure effort, because it started out perfect effort in my notes.
And in my mind it was perfect effort, but pure effort.
Anyway, the effort to bring yourself back to where you are and what it is that is going on
is the effort we're talking about, be it looking at your effort, or looking at the way you're treating somebody, or listening to the inflections of your voice, or realizing that you're slumping all over and daydreaming, you know, whatever it is.
I'm just calling it pure effort.
It's more difficult to apply the notion of perfect effort or letting go of attaining an accomplishment to something outside of formal practice.
It's like one's work in the world.
It's easier for me to think of doing that
within some kind of a clear sense of what practice is or what's sitting, and just sitting and does it.
Because I don't know what the results might be anyway.
It's so easy to just do it.
But if you have some sense of what you want to do, you know, as a career in your work, and you do this, then that will happen.
something at the end.
And that seems to me the difficulty.
Even though it's, even though if you get a very clear idea, you can just keep going each day and doing the work you need to do.
I think it's hard not to have that specification for something that's an accomplishment.
So, if you have something to work on, you know, you're always going to let go of an accomplishment in terms of work.