Good morning, everyone. Good morning. So it's good to see you all here on this lovely spring day, at least here in Chicago. Many of you are coming from, signing on from a distance. I want to talk today about Zazen, this practice we've just been doing, and resilience, something we all need right now. Resilience and patience in this strange time settling within for many of us or dealing with the effects of this pandemic. So again, this Zazen practice we do and doing it regularly can help us nourish our resilience, our ability to be present even in difficult situations.

[01:18]

But first, we need to not run away from but be mindful of the great distress that many people are feeling now. Many around the world, as virus numbers spike in Brazil, for example, and people are caught away in India, away from home, jammed together trying to get home. And also here in Chicago, many people who are suffering from the disease or from family members who have the disease or from economic distress, losing many, many, many, losing jobs. And so we, part of our resilience is to be mindful of that. And of those of us who are not in great distress,

[02:27]

I know some now are turning within, using this as a kind of retreat. And there can be advantages of that, even people catching up on reading or catching up on sleep or just settling within. But then also many people are weary and tired, even people who aren't in particular distress, just this is a strange time. and many people are working still, working from home, working out in the world, people who need to. And so it just, you know, here we are, another month, and Arzenda will be closed again in June. It's too, as Arzenda, what Irving Park wrote, is a little small for, social distancing, but we will be starting with Monday evening as well as Sunday morning talks starting in June.

[03:38]

But how does our practice of zazen, practice of zazen on the cushion and when we get up from the cushion, how does that help foster our resilience? That's what I want to talk about today. And I want to talk about the style of Zazen in our tradition of Dogen Zen and what's sometimes called Soto Zen. And ultimately this is objectless meditation. Just being present with whatever is happening. Being present and upright with whatever is happening. Sometimes during Zazen, we feel sleepy. Sometimes during Zazen, the mind is racing. Sometimes, anyway, various presences as we sit and pay attention, sitting upright, paying attention, even when we're sleepy, paying attention to that.

[04:49]

when we're tired or when our mind is racing, paying attention to that. That's the ultimate practice in this tradition, this objectless meditation. There's no particular objective and we're not focusing on any particular object, but just paying attention. So that said, Sometimes it's helpful to have some object of meditation, and there are many of those that are available, following the breath or counting breaths or working with breath in various ways, being aware of sound, being aware of mantras or phrases from the teaching, and just repeating that silently as we sit. So if you need an object of meditation to settle, that's fine. But basically, we're just sitting, being present. with what is. Practicing with uncertainty. We don't know how long this situation of this pandemic will continue.

[05:59]

We don't know how it may suddenly affect us. Maybe not directly, but through friends or family members. Anyway, there's this uncertainty and this is in some ways the heart of this practice too. Just sometimes it's called not no mind. We don't know ultimately what is happening and yet we pay attention to it. And so this is a kind of practice in patience. And just sitting waiting for the bell to ring is a kind of training in patience. showing up, breathing, being present and upright, enjoying the silence. But this is not, this is an act of patience, this practice of patience. We're paying attention, we're ready and willing to respond when there's something to respond to.

[07:04]

So much of the time we, don't know what to do about whatever situation is in front of us, and that's okay. But just to be present, to continue paying attention, develops as we do this practice over time, develops this faculty, this capacity for being patient, for being present, for paying attention, paying attention to our own body-mind, feeling what we're feeling, sensations, thoughts, sleepiness, sounds, whatever, just to be able to be upright and present and attentive. And it's not about reaching some particular a state of being or state of mind.

[08:05]

It's not some particular outcome that we're looking for, but it's this deeper awareness. So all of that story about Yaoshan, who's in our lineage and lived in the early 800s, 700s, early 800s. Once he was sitting there and a student asked him, what are you thinking about while you're sitting there so still, so steadfast? And Yaoshan said, I'm thinking of not thinking. And the student said, oh, how do you think of not thinking? And there are various translations of the response, but I like beyond thinking. So it's not that we are trying to get rid of thinking. It's not that we're trying to get rid of not thinking. But this other, this deeper, I don't know, this other kind of awareness we experience in zazen, in just sitting.

[09:05]

And doing this regularly over time, this deepens. But this beyond thinking, it includes thinking. And sometimes we're thinking and we don't try and stop thoughts from coming. It includes not thinking. Sometimes there are spaces between the thoughts that were just there. And that can be delicious. But it's, so it includes that, but it's not just about that. It's this deeper presence and awareness and whatever you want to call it, you know, I like beyond thinking, but it's a kind of presence and awareness. We're aware yogically, we're aware with our body, we're aware with our uprightness, we're aware with our ears and nose and eyes and inhale and shoulders and back and So beyond thinking, this deeper awareness, which we connect with, we get some sense of. And again, it's not about some particular kind of beyond thinking.

[10:11]

It's just beyond thinking. And in this beyond thinking, we get some sense of, I don't know, various ways to call that too. None of these words are actually hidden, but the ultimate, the universal, some deeper reality. We get some taste of that. We have some sense of that in this beyond thinking. And our practice is not to reach some particular state again. Although, you know, sometimes we have some experience in Zazen or just walking around and that's, and that might feel, you know, very flashy and cool and whatever, but that's not the point. How do we integrate this sense of the ultimate, the sense of the universal, the sense of this deeper, deeper beyond thinking? It's not just about us.

[11:13]

It's not just about making ourselves feeling better or whatever. It's something that goes very deep. And how do we integrate that sense into our everyday experience? That's what our practice is about. So we have many lists of practices, not just patience, but effort and ethical conduct and generosity and skillful means. And anyway, many ways of talking about how we practice this connecting of this deeper beyond thinking awareness with our everyday activity. So that's, so again, talking about resilience and settling, how do we withstand the challenges and difficulties of The reality of life in this world, and especially now, you know, this pandemic is a challenge to everybody, a challenge to humanity, a challenge to each one of us, each in our own way.

[12:23]

How do we find some steadiness, some steadfastness, some settledness, some resilience, some ability to keep going and keep paying attention do what's helpful when we can to be helpful in whatever situation we're in in relationship to all that's happening in our world and in our body mind. So part of that is a sense of gratitude. Here we are and we can be here and present and how do we appreciate whatever our situation is, including the challenges. How do we appreciate the other people in our lives further away and closer? How do we try and take care of ourselves and each other in this situation?

[13:26]

So resilience is about settling, about paying attention, about appreciating being grateful for that which we have to be grateful. And it's not and it's not about reaching some steady state because our body-mind situation changes and we get more upset or more tired or more frustrated or more grasping or, you know, we see all of the habits of our mind for avoiding being present and paying attention. And being resilient has to do with being patient with that too. How do we just settle? How do we keep settling? How do we find our way to be present? How do we share that with each other? How do we take care of each other?

[14:30]

How do, you know, checking up on friends and family and so on. So I want to read a poem. This is a poem, I sent it out to some of you. This is a poem by Jane Hirshfield, who's a well-known poet and an old Zen Center person, old friend, colleague of mine. This is from her book, The Beauty. I want to read this poem because it speaks to something about this. It's called My Species. Even a small purple artichoke boiled in its own Bitter and darkening waters grows tender, grows tender and sweet. Patience, I think, my species. Keep testing the spiny leaves, the spiny heart. So I'll read it again, my species. Even a small purple artichoke

[15:33]

oiled in its own bitter and darkening waters grows tender, grows tender and sweet. Patience, I think, my species. Keep testing the spiny leaves, the spiny heart. So as human beings, we're all in process. We keep testing the spiny leaves of our life and of the world. And we grow tender, and maybe we can grow tender and sweet, and still very hard. So we're all in process, we're all works in process, individually and now as human beings. We are being human beings all over the planet.

[16:34]

All of us, all of us, all of us are being challenged and tested by this situation. And we're all in process. It's not about reaching some perfect state of being or awareness or whatever. This is a process, this resilience. And Part of it is this deep interconnectedness. We are connected deeply as human beings all over the planet now. And, you know, with each other, with all the faces I can see and not see in this strange Zoom world we're living in, we're connected deeply, deeply. So I want to comment on something.

[17:45]

I've been watching this 2014 series, Cosmos, by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'd seen it when it came out. I just recently watched the whole thing again. And actually, there's a new series, which I haven't seen yet, on National Geographic. But it's a really... wonderful, visually awesome, psychedelic, beautiful, but also deeply informative information. Partly it's history of science and all these wonderful scientists who made all these wonderful discoveries. Some of we've heard of, and many we've never heard of, many women as well as men in the last century and earlier. and many strange, strange, strange things about the universe we're living in. So one of the things that Neil deGrasse Tyson conveys is that there are many, many, many galaxies in our universe, all circling around the center

[19:04]

of this galaxy, of each galaxy. So just like there's a center to each atom, there's a center nucleus to each galaxy. And of course, the sun in our solar system, our little solar system, somewhere sort of towards the edge of our galaxy. And one thing that Neil deGrasse Tyson said that I thought Informed Zazen is that each inhale we take, each one of you, each inhale you take includes as many molecules as all the stars and all the galaxies in the whole visible universe. Each inhale. That many molecules. So, um, enjoying our inhale and exhale in zazen, or if you want to count breaths or follow your breath.

[20:13]

This is so complex, our experience. Just each inhale, each exhale, includes so much. The complexity of reality is just beyond our capacity to know or understand. And we don't know the future. We are here present in one of the most challenging times in human history. But the future is not set. We don't know how, so we need to be resilient because we don't know the future. The future in some ways is up to us, all of us as human beings.

[21:20]

And each of us, each of our efforts and our positive energy has some effect. So, How do we be patient and resilient with that, with the complexity of this reality, beyond what we can encapsulate in some, beyond words and letters, as we say in Zen, something beyond whatever we can understand or encapsulate in some description? We don't know. We don't know the future. We don't know the present. We don't even know the past, of course. many things have led up to this situation. So I want to have time for discussion. But Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about five principles of scientific inquiry.

[22:26]

And I kind of felt like these, you know, five scientific principles also are related to our Zen awareness to beyond thinking. So some of you, I think, have some science background. At any rate, here's what he says are the heart of, maybe we could call it the scientific method, or just scientific inquiry. One, so there's five of them. One, question authority. Remember, that was a great bumper sticker back a while ago. Question authority. It doesn't mean just people who have authority in our governmental institutions or whatever, or whatever institutions. Question authority. Question the authority of the established conventional views of reality.

[23:27]

Question authority. What we think. Don't believe everything you think is another bumper sticker. Question what we think is established. Okay. So that's the first principle of scientific inquiry. Question authority. Two, think for yourself. So, you know, I sometimes say that I can't tell any of you how to be Buddha. You have to express Buddha in your body mind for yourself. Think for yourself. Three, question yourself. I wrote a book called Zen Question as a verb. Question, not just authority, but question yourself, question your particular pattern of greed, hate, delusion, whatever, grasping, anger, fear, frustration, confusion, question yourself.

[24:34]

Scope is three. Four, don't believe in what you want, he said, what you wanted things to be. Don't believe that. Maybe this is also don't believe in thinking, in what you think. And he says, test ideas and follow the evidence. So check it out. See what is real for you. This is part of resilience. How do we stay steady and questioned? Not holding on to some belief that you want to believe. Don't get caught by dogmas. That's four. Number five, very interesting. You can be wrong. You know, there are lots of things we know and we think we're right about, but also you can be wrong. So look again. We're in process, this is not set, okay? How do we find what is real, what is good, how we can be helpful?

[25:40]

How we can support ourselves and each other, how we can Engage in beyond thinking. So let me repeat those five. One, question authority. All kinds of authority. Two, think for yourself. Three, question yourself. Question your experience, question your awareness, question all the things you think you know. Doesn't mean get rid of it all, just question. There's a kind of gentle, steady kind of questioning that's possible. I compare it to the way the Colorado River questioned the Grand Canyon over many years. Questioning can have great power. Step three is question yourself. Four, don't believe in what you think or don't believe in what you want.

[26:45]

Test your ideas, follow the evidence. And five, you can be wrong, and it's okay to be wrong. Dogen talks about making the right mistakes. How do we accept our mistakes? We all make mistakes. This is part of reality. So you can be wrong. So I feel like these five principles of scientific inquiry relate to what Dogen meant by study yourself. Dogen, our founder in the 1200s, said to study the way is to study the self. So these five are about the human self, including the strange beings who may appear in our awareness, in our little windows. Study the self. And then he says to study the self is to forget the self.

[27:51]

But don't jump to trying to forget the self. Just studying the self itself is letting go of our idea of ourself. So I think, you know, and it's not just theoretical or intellectual in token or abstract, it's yogic, you know, we sit in zazen and study the self. And again, question authority, think for yourself, question yourself, don't believe what you think or want, and you can be wrong. So anyway, again, I think our job now is to find our own way as individuals and as human beings, to be resilient, to stay steady, to try and be helpful in this difficult time. So, I will stop now. And if you want to... add some response or comment to that.

[28:51]

I welcome that or some question. So please feel free. You can raise your hands or you can, I think if you go to the bottom of the screen where it says chat and click on that, or no, I'm sorry, not that one, where it says participants on the bottom of the screen, if you click on that, those of you whose face I can't see, if you wanna raise your hand, At the bottom of that list of participants, there's a, you can click on where it says raise hands. So anyway, comments, questions, responses, reflections, please feel free. And I'm sorry, you may hear sounds of one of my companions in isolation who's nearby. Her name is Bessie. So comments, questions? Hi.

[29:52]

Nicholas? Yes. Thanks for the great Dharma talk. I feel like you were talking a lot about don't know mind. And, um, you know, for years I didn't really resonate to that statement much. Cause I thought, Oh, well I know lots of things. What do you mean? Don't know mind. but as I've gotten older, it's just, it's one of my, it is kind of like, yeah, I don't know if this is the main teaching for me, but it's just something I come back to again and again as, as a source of refuge really. And particularly during this pandemic, um, you know, many of you know that I, I'm in the movie business and have a, a small theater, and we've been hit really hard. And the only way I could really stay serene at all in the face of this pandemic is to embrace Don't Know Mine.

[31:00]

Like, wow, didn't know this would happen. Didn't think my life would change. Who knows what my life is gonna change into, but just allowing for the possibility that everything I thought was gonna happen might not happen with my life. Which is, I believe, true all the time for everyone. So it's giving me a real opportunity to sort of live in that impermanence, in that uncertainty. I created a lot of uncertainty anyway in my life. So just embracing the, you know, just kind of the emptiness of the whole human experience. But in that, there's so much spaciousness and so much joy and so much, you know, like you talked about resilience and also my willingness to, you know, chop wood, carry water every morning and do

[32:13]

what I need to do for the business. And, um, and last night I got some really good news from the SBA and we got a bunch of money, which is going to probably see us through, but, you know, uh, so that's, that's the great news. But that also just was, um, yeah, there's just a lot of trust and just, doing all these things, you have no idea if they're even going to work. And then last night, I just had this intuition to pick up the phone, call the SBA, and somebody answered the phone on a Friday night at about 7.30 and looked into it. And then about a half an hour later, I got an email saying, oh yeah, you've been approved. Great, you know, just, I don't know. I just feel like, yeah, I have no idea how this is gonna play out. I just try to follow my intuition and act. So action, thank you.

[33:16]

Yeah, thank you, Nicholas. I'm glad that you're getting some support. Yeah, but we don't know. And we always don't know, but we think we know. And there are things we know, lots of things we know. Each one of us has whole bodies of knowledge in our whole body and mind. And yet, suddenly something There's a koan that talks about a guest appears, something new shows up. So, thank you. Other comments, responses, questions? Jerry? Did you? Anybody else? Hi, Taigen. Xinyu, hi. How are you? I'm okay. I'm doing, you know, I had a good walk yesterday. It was nice. That's great. Yeah, it's great to walk in spring days. I just find your talk to be really, really, really open for me.

[34:23]

And I really open up. Yeah, I don't know a part of me or part of the world. And I have never read any of your books, but if you're talking with me, you want to read your Zen questions book. I just placed an order. I recommend it, it's a good book. So in response to Nicolas' comments on not knowing, I do find it to be really calming to not know, in fact. In my ideas, I thought, oh, if I don't know, I will be really freaked out. But actually, when I don't know something, I stop being so anxious because I don't anticipate so much about the future, whether it's good or bad. It makes things very simple.

[35:28]

So I really appreciate that spirit as well. Thank you. Other comments, please feel free. Yes, Bo. Thank you for your talk. I was interested in inquiry You mentioned inquiry as kind of a yogic activity, as a activity of the body as well as the mind. I kind of think of questioning so much as like an operation of the brain. So I was wondering if you could talk or speak a little bit more about questioning inquiry as a yogic activity. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. So as we sit, you know, when we sit for, 40 minutes or sometimes we sit for a day or three days or five days or, you know, when we're doing this practice, you know, thoughts and feelings arise, questions arise in the form of thoughts, form of feelings, but also in terms of physical sensations.

[36:46]

Oh, what is this in my knee? We don't need to say anything about it. We don't articulate a question necessarily. we notice some tightness in our shoulders or whatever. We feel some tension in our mudra or in our breath. So the inquiry there is not just intellectual. It includes that. But what is this? What is this situation right now? That posture, that attitude of, what is this? One of my favorite old Zen koans, Dogen refers to it a lot, is a student who came to the sixth ancestor and the sixth ancestor said, what is this that thus comes? funny way of saying, who are you? What is this? It's not just your, all of the, you know, your body of knowledge.

[37:51]

It's not just all the things you know about yourself. It's not just your ideas about the world and reality. What is this? What is this whole thing? This whole dynamic body. So that question is, you know, we might ask, we might each ask ourselves with each inhale when we're inhaling, more molecules than there are stars in all the galaxies. What is this that's arising now? And that's not just a theoretical or intellectual question. It's like a physical kind of yogic posture to be present as inquiry, as I've sometimes recommended the great Minnesota Bard's mantra koan, how does it feel? How does it feel?

[38:52]

And that's, you know, that has to do with your thoughts and your feelings and she wants to know how it feels. So that's, it's a kind of yogic posture, as well as a sense of inquiry. So I don't know, maybe that's a little bit. Good question. Thank you. Other comments, questions, responses, please feel free. So Douglas has put the metasuita up or started to. Last call. A little too soon, sorry, I didn't mean to do that.

[39:56]

It's all right. But maybe we're finished. Does anyone else have any comments or responses or questions? Last chance. And again, if your picture isn't up for me to see, you're raising your hand, you can go to the participants list and raise your hand there. Oh, I see a hand, Dylan. Are you there, Dylan? Yeah, can you hear me okay? Yes, now I can. Bo, that's a really great question. Thank you for asking that. Taigan, what ends and what transforms? What's the difference? What do you mean by end? Like, Hmm. Uh, that after a certain moment, what, uh, uh, a certain thing or object or being can no longer be called by that name that, uh, that I did before.

[41:05]

Well, it still might be. So when someone passes away, we can still, uh, remember their name. In fact, I saw in the Sunday New York Times this morning, the front page is a list of a hundred thousand names of people with small descriptions of people of United American citizens who passed away. It's probably many more than that, but they were interesting little name and age and where they were and just interesting little things about each of those person, those people. So, um, They've ended, but they haven't ended. So, I don't know, I'm not a physicist, even though I like Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I think E equals mc squared has something to do with there's some energy that continues. So, yeah, but in a certain way, certainly things end, this talk will end. and you can go out into the outside safely, social distanced, with masks.

[42:13]

But each ending is also the beginning of something else. So you asked about ends and you asked about something else. I can't remember now, Dawn. Just the difference between ending and transformation. Oh, transformation. Well, yeah, I guess I've been talking about transformation. Everything is always transforming, you know. We have this teaching of karma, which, you know, on one level is from lifetime to lifetime, but it really is inhale to exhale to inhale. It's in each moment, everything is transforming. That's, you know, Jane's poem about the artichoke cooking. and all of us cooking is, you know, about this process of transformation. And that's happening. And even after this so-called civilization, maybe we'll end and things will be different.

[43:22]

You know, that's certainly, can you hear me okay? Yeah, that, This pandemic situation will end some way, but we're not going to go back to what was normal before. It's just impossible. This has transformed all of us and all human beings. So the question is, what will the new quote-unquote normal be? And that's not just about the future. What is it now? So this is about resilience, too. How do we not know, not have all the answers, but also we can observe. And the scientific method is to, as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, test ideas, follow the evidence. See what works for you in terms of how we will be

[44:23]

when this pandemic so-called ends. I don't think it will end in some ways, but something new will happen. So this is transformation. So thank you for your question, Dougal. I don't know if you have a follow-up. Oh, that's cool. I dig it. Okay. Other comments, questions, responses, reflections, I can just want to say thank you very much for your Dharma talk. Thank you. You're welcome, David. Thank you all for listening. Thank you all for showing up. This is, you know, in some ways the heart of our practice is just to show up. So, um, So I guess we'll do the closing verse. And then after that, I'd feel free to sign off at any point. But after that, for anybody who wants, and I'll have some announcements, but whoever wants to hang out and just stay on Zoom for a little while, we can spend time together that way.

[45:39]

But Douglas, if you would bring us the closing verse, please.

[45:44]

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