How can we be in the midst of our problems? I'm taking this as the kind of central question that emerged, the practice question that emerged in the seminar yesterday. How can we sit in the midst of our problems? Yeah, it reminded me of this, of Baker Rushie mentioning the... to be in the unmoving midst of appearances. And he... associated that with Bodhisattva Samantabhadra who enters without taking a step. How can we be unmoving?

[01:20]

in the midst of our problems. Maybe if we see our problems as mere appearances, being in the unmoving midst of appearance, if we see our problems as mere appearances, maybe that makes a difference already. And Suzuki Roshi says, If you can appreciate whatever your problem is as an expression of big mind, it's not a problem. What does that mean, to appreciate something as an expression of big mind? So the discussion we had was about, you know, one aspect was, hey, we can practice, we have this nice practice feeling, It's really, you know, practice going well, and then these darn thoughts come back and disturb everything.

[02:29]

And you want to get rid of them because they're disturbing the nice practice feeling, and it just doesn't seem to work so well. And Leo mentioned the five hindrances. Of course, I went and looked them up right away because we couldn't enumerate them. But here they are as a piece of information for you. The five hindrances are desire, anger, boredom, worry, and doubt. Ever encountered those? Hmm. Yeah, those are the five hindrances. There are problems. Okay, so again, how can we be in the midst of the problem?

[03:41]

Because the desire is to get rid of the problems. So maybe the basics, you know, like the five hindrances, we have the four noble truths. You know, it's funny, you know, we have this Zen practice, and Zen is always like, you know, it's kind of a lofty teaching. And then the four noble truths, yeah, we know what they are. But it's interesting, when you go back to the four noble truths, it's the first teaching supposedly Shakyamuni Buddha gave, and it's the full expression of his enlightenment. And what are they? First noble truth is they're suffering. That's the situation we're talking about. It's a truth. It's part of being a human being is to suffer. Suffering is such a strong word. It's like, you know, suffering to me feels like losing a leg.

[04:48]

That's suffering. Like a disaster. Earthquake. War. Our situation here, that's saying this practice period, you know, is that really suffering? I find it useful to translate suffering into my situation and realize sometimes there's suffering, sometimes there's something strong. I almost lost a foot once. That's suffering. And then there's also dissatisfaction, what we used yesterday. And a word that I like even better, dis-ease. It can be very subtle. Somebody said yesterday, this delicious, what, annoyance or dis-ease? Delicious annoyance.

[05:49]

Yeah, this delicious annoyance. This delicious dis-ease. That gives you a sense of being alive, you know, really. Because if you have nothing to complain about, hey, what do you do with this precious life? If the complaining stops, you may need to know what to do. So maybe the annoyance and the dis-ease are so delicious because they give us a sense of purpose, you know, we can continue the fight against our little problems. And the second noble truth is there's a cause. for the suffering. And the third is, because there is a cause, there can be an end to suffering. And what is the cause?

[06:49]

The cause of suffering in the traditional teaching is called craving or thirst, desire. And I think mostly there are different types of people, but for me, mostly the dis-ease shows itself not so much as desire. It shows itself more as aversion. But you know, there are desire types and aversion types. But, you know, they're really two sides of the same coin of suffering. Sometimes the aversion, the rejection is in the foreground and the desire is in the background. It's like when you know what you don't want, but you can't really say what you want. You're really sure what you don't want. Sometimes the desire is in the foreground, and sometimes the desire is for things that can't be realized under the present circumstances.

[07:51]

It's just this desire to be, you know, the main... One of the, I think, interesting situations in the human being is you want to be someone that you're not. How does that work? It's a desire, right? I want to be a good father or mother. I want to be a writer. You know, lofty goals that are difficult to achieve. Not easy to make happen in an instant. You know, it's a long journey to come to say, oh, I'm, you know, I can say of myself, I'm this or that. But we have these desires and we can suffer from not getting the recognition that we want to be that person or the support or whatever. So these are problems of being a human being and wanting to achieve things, desire and diversion.

[08:53]

This is all obvious, but I think it's useful sometimes to immerse yourself into that territory. We take it so granted that we have goals that we want to achieve, and we're suffering from the difficulty of wanting to achieve, that it's hard work. And there's supposedly, you know, because there's a cause, the cause can be removed. And that is the end of suffering. Desire and aversion can be removed. That is the end of suffering, the Buddha says. And there's this famous line from the poem called Faith in Mind, The Third Ancestor. The Great Way is not difficult.

[10:01]

Just avoid picking and choosing. That's it. He also says there, a few lines later in the first stanza, it says, For and against opposing each other, this is the mind's dis-ease. How can we avoid picking and choosing for and against? Isn't that sitting? Isn't sitting in the unmoving midst that kind of activity, avoiding for and against, picking and choosing? How do you do it?

[11:02]

Like right here. I'm sitting here and... How can I sit here without picking and choosing? How can you sit there? I sit here and I have to give a talk. But there's someone here who doesn't have to give a talk. I can get up and walk away. You can get up and walk away. There's that possibility. And then there are the circumstances of the practice period that make me having to give a talk and that make you having to sit there and listen.

[12:19]

You know, you may prefer to listen to Vekarashi, I would understand. But now you have to sit here and listen to me. But you can also walk away. I can accept this role that's given to me of having to give a talk and at the same time acknowledge the one who doesn't have to do that and just see what happens with the situation. And when I accept that role, I'm giving it my best shot. And your listening can be like that, you know, in this field of meeting and speaking. Listen as much as you can. Bring attention to this meeting and speaking.

[13:25]

And when that happens, something can happen in the field that we can't predict. Maybe something good will happen. Maybe not. But we're giving it our best shot. and we can be relaxed in the midst of it. Not worry, no doubt. Not get bored. Don't be angry. Just sit there. And let the activity arise. This could be the end of the talk.

[14:27]

I'm kind of done. It can be so satisfying not to do anything and to just sit there. I mean, we're trying to practice this every day in Zazen. We're just sitting down. And we're not trying to do anything. We're not trying to get rid of our problems. We're just sitting down in the unmoving midst, and we're seeing what will happen when we move into the stillness of Zazen. And then some thoughts come and you acknowledge that that's the case. And you continue to pull away from them into the stillness of your sitting.

[15:32]

And at some point you may notice how satisfying it is. There may be moments, I want to say, there may be just moments of noticing how deeply satisfying it is to just sit there. Yes, there are these thoughts and they come back, but there are these moments that don't need to go anywhere, where you're just in the midst of yourself. You may have problems in your life, but in that moment they don't really matter. It's a moment I am looking for a word, you know. Today I thought I'd call it maybe a moment of unconditional contentment. That moment doesn't need any object outside of itself.

[16:36]

It doesn't need to move away from anything to be content. That moment is just content with being alive. There's no object it desires. It's pure subjectivity. You may find, even if this is just a short moment, that this is your true self. There's the self that has these thoughts, that is looking for satisfaction, that goes along the lines of desire and aversion. And then there's the self of sitting in the unmoving midst with self-contentment. And you may find at one point, this is much more myself than this other self. This can happen. Maybe out of 10,000 moments, there's only one moment that is like that.

[17:49]

Unconditional self-contentment. Does that make that moment less important? That it's just one moment out of 10,000? Paying attention to that one moment may be one of the most important things you can do. Because all of a sudden there's an alternative. You can't think yourself to that moment. It's like, you know, the dissatisfaction that we talked about yesterday. I was imagining there's the land of satisfaction. You know, the nice practice feeling that you get is related to the desires that you brought to practice.

[18:56]

Like, what are the desires? Becoming a more content person, a better person. maybe a more spiritually mature person. Maybe we just want to use meditation as a means to be better at certain things. All kinds of things. That's all normal. So sometimes this happens, actually, and then there's the land of satisfaction in practice, and then there's the land of dissatisfaction, and they are separated by a fence. And you want to go over from the land of dissatisfaction, which is the discursive mind. And you want to climb over the fence into the land of satisfaction. And as you're climbing with your thoughts, the fence just gets higher and higher and you can never reach the other side. And there has to be some other activity. We can use the breath and one of the things that I found early on in my practice, that one of the most important things is that when you find yourself in the land of dissatisfaction and trapped in your thoughts, you really can think about why this is happening or that you are a bad practitioner, that you're thinking again and that you're unhappy about it.

[20:24]

You just have to interrupt it and go to the breath. I found I had to do that. I just have to do it. You can't think about it. You have to do it. When you do it, you may find yourself on the other side of the fence for one moment, and you wonder how you got there. And when the sense of contentment on the other side of the fence is strong, And you can avoid grasping it and thinking about it that now you've achieved something because then you're on the other side of the fence again. You can avoid thinking about it. That moment of self-contentment might extend itself into another moment. And you might find yourself cruising along from one little moment to another little moment and there are actually no thoughts.

[21:28]

This just resting in the moment, in an open field, in the mind as an open field that is ready to think all kinds of things. The stillness that you're entering on this other side of the fence is ready to produce all kinds of movements right away. But you're just holding back from it a little bit and you're enjoying, fully enjoying now this delicious contentment which is the other side of yourself. Dogen has called Zazen the Dharma gate of ease and joy. Zazen is, for he said, Zazen is not learning meditation.

[22:38]

Zazen is the garma gate of ease and joy. He also called it self-fulfilling samadhi. Unconditional contentment. It's just there. It's just, you have to do anything. It comes with being alive. That this aliveness can feel joy is just by being alive. It doesn't need any object. And I think it's okay to enjoy those moments. Actually, I think it's necessary to enjoy these moments so that you can build trust in the fact that this other side of yourself is actually accessible. It's there.

[23:38]

It's available. It's available in this one moment. It will be available in another moment. We may not all be so familiar of how to get to the other side of the fence, because sometimes the fence just grows as you want to get over it. But sometimes you find yourself just on the other side, just under the fence. I don't know how I got there, but it's there. And when it happens... one time, and then another time, and then another time, you can start to trust that this basic instruction that our school gives is just to continue sitting actually does its job. It may take a while. Yeah, it's hard to believe. You can read the books on Zen and the teachers will say, don't strive for anything.

[24:43]

Don't try to accomplish anything. Don't desire anything, not even enlightenment. Just sit. And you're just like, yeah, right. But what, I mean, is it, but can't I do something? It's almost like zazen will function this way. You just sit and you do the practice. You turn to the breath. You fold away from discursive thinking. You drop into stillness. You find yourself on the other side of the fence. And when you find yourself on the other side of the fence, then the teachings that you received, they all kind of make sense. Because on that side, oh yeah, there is actually, there is no picking and choosing there for that moment. It's actually not there. And it feels like this. It's almost like, yeah, there's this other sense of self, and then slowly you can make a, it's almost like you're not making a decision, the decision is kind of being made, but it's, there's a shift of identity.

[26:05]

Am I more like, am I more this self, or am I more this self? This self is a different self. Am I more this small mind, or am I more this big mind? As the trust in the practice grows, being more this big mind becomes a possibility. And that doesn't mean small mind for me, you know, in my practice, that doesn't mean small mind doesn't occur, it's just like If being mind is actually more of a possibility of where I want to place my identity, then when the small mind starts to be active, it's like it's not such a big deal. There's a satisfaction, fine.

[27:08]

Got involved with the five entrances again. There was some desire, anger, boredom. worry or doubt occurred? Okay, fine. I know those. And then, am I really worried about those? No, they're a reminder that maybe that shift needs to be actualized again. But we always try to quantify things, I think, you know. Can I really say that my identity is more in big mind when it only happens one moment out of 10,000? I mean, that's kind of, you couldn't sell that to anyone. They would say, you're more on that side of the fence, not on this side, right? I mean, this is just happening one time out of 10,000. But the feeling can be, no, no, no, no. This one moment is much more important than the 90

[28:13]

I'm more than this side. This will be taken care of. When you read Dogen like this, when you read Dogen under this aspect, you know there are these fantastical statements that these Zen people make. It's like, even if you actualize this blah, blah, blah for one moment, the whole world will be everything, you know, doing the big turnaround. If you do it for one moment, this will happen. And we read it and we're like, what? What is this? But it's like, it's this, can you take this one moment where this shift occurs and really notice the difference? And trust it. Because when you trust it, the discussion that we had yesterday is not such a big deal anymore, you know?

[29:20]

Thoughts arise, five hindrances, okay. That's not where my identity is. I'll work with those. Because isn't it interesting, one moment of unconditional self-contentment, where is there room for desire and aversion? You're just here. You're content with what is. Where is there anger? What would you be angry about when you're just content sitting in the midst of everything? What would you be bored about? Is something better than being content? What would you worry about?

[30:21]

And what would you doubt? Those five hindrances are all taken care of in that moment of unconditional self-contentment. it can become a kind of place to return to. Once you get familiar in your zazen that how you can slip under the fence in this magical way, without trying to climb over it, how you slip under it, once you get familiar with that a little bit, you know, even if my life is a mess, I know I can return to this place. At least that. And then when you feel that you return to this place as a familiar place, as a resource that you have in your life, things are getting really rough.

[31:33]

You know, when I sit down in this unmoving midst, I can somehow slip under the fence. Then it becomes a kind of background, a kind of background that is there even when it's not there. And from that perspective, maybe the waves of the small mind, the thoughts that happen, those become... You could view them differently because you don't believe in them so much anymore. They become expressions of how you participate in this world of desire and suffering. There appears the possibility of actually being okay with being one-sided, because it has to be that way.

[32:45]

But you're not identified with it, because your identity is on the other side of the fence. And so those two sides begin to merge and overlap. And the trust that they can overlap, for me, I had this, I mentioned this before, I had this very powerful experience for me where I noticed that I had this moment of deep sadness that coincided with what I'm calling today unconditional contentment. They were just there together. Instead of resisting the sadness, which was my habit, like I didn't worry, you know, who wants to be sad? Who wants to be deeply sad? Instead of resisting it, I felt this contentment at the same time. And I said, whoa, how is that possible?

[33:47]

I can feel in the midst of my sadness, I can feel this... unmoving part of myself that is content and notices the sadness as an expression of my aliveness. I don't know, do you have experiences like that? That in the midst of being disturbed you feel your aliveness. And feeling your aliveness is the contentment that I'm talking about. And then you can allow it. And when it overlaps like this, this can be a little building block of trust that these two sides, the small mind and the big mind, don't have to be eternally separated as two realms, one in the world, the other one in the monastery, one in the tazen, the other one in everyday circumstances.

[34:49]

Somehow they can begin to influence each other. we could pay attention to moments where the two sides overlap and they can become, like it did for me, this one instance of sadness and contentment at the same time. They can become paradigmatic instances that allow a deeper trust. Maybe the whole problem is that we want too much from the practice too quickly. that we instrumentalize the practice to achieve something for the self.

[35:54]

But like I said, I'm ending on the same note, like I said, maybe the transformation is not something that the self achieves. Maybe it's something that the field does. And it takes time. Thank you very much.

[36:33]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_89.93