Feeling the Heat

The Practice of Active Acceptance.

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Good morning. I'm sure we can all agree that 2020 is a challenging year in many ways. Well that could be the broad the broad consensus, I'm sure, uh probably throughout throughout the world, although on an individual level um it varies very much. Maybe 2020 is uh best year ever for uh some people. But we have a broad feeling of it being challenging uh for us the last few days with uh you know the canyon filling with with smoke. Do we have the windows open? Do we have them closed? Would one prefer to broil or choke? You know, it's like the and then the concern of you know where we are with uh the fire ecology and all of this coming on top of the continued restrictions and threat of uh COVID-19. So we have uh I would say I could say difficult circumstances, but are they really, really they're just circumstances, changeable circumstances. This is how the circumstances are arranged now, and uh tomorrow, of course, the circumstances will be different. Whether they're taken as challenges or problems, that's where we have some agency in our approach. I wanted to bring up a uh a koan from the from the Blue Cliff record. And a very obvious one. I gave you three guesses on which koan it would be today. Probably get it. Um but as I, you know, had the opportunity given the first talk, I could make a plump thought for it, which is uh case 43, uh no cold or heat. Uh the introduction. The statement the cells of the universe is followed for 10,000 ages. The ability to catch tigers and rhinos is incomprehensible even to sages. With no further obscuration at all, the total potential appears equally in all situations. If you want to understand the hammer and tongs of transcendence, you need to forge and bellows of a you need the forge and bellows of an adept. But tell me, since ancient times has there been such a manner of teaching or not? Then the example, or main case, a monk asked Tozan, When cold and heat come, how does one avoid them? Tozan said, Why not go to where there is no cold or heat? The monk said, How is it where there is no cold or heat? Tozan said, When it's cold, it kills you with cold. When it's hot, it kills you with heat. And the verse, he reaches out, but it's still inaccessible. Why must absolute and relative be in an arrangement? The ancient palace of crystal glows in the moonlight, a sneaky dog goes up the stairs for naught. So another um famous koan from antiquity, but one which is very relevant for our for our life, as each one of these koans is. That is why they've been maintained, after all, through the through the tradition, these many years, these many centuries. Collected and all of the fat trimmed off them over the over the years, and then maintained and commented upon, sometimes teachers later, adding phrases, capping phrases, and turning words to keep things fresh, offer different perspectives. And that tradition, of course, is continues, continues now, and now it lies in in our hands, and another training period. We enter another training period and another session, and in unusual circumstances, in one sense, usually we would have more more people, a few uh more more beginners, more more more people who are new to the to the center. But it appears as it does with nine or ten of us. I think it looks quite beautiful in the Zendo, the way we're all it looks quite full in a sense. It's all spaced in that way. You know, like nine or ten uh temple guardians in the Zendo sitting together. And that's that's a wonderful thing. It really is to start a training period in that sense and have a head trainee installed, and for for us to continue the um the Zen business. And in the place of uh whether one is a beginner or a senior or being a head trainee or a teacher, then it in many ways that's irrelevant. Everybody is is equally a practitioner. When one uh if one becomes a teacher, then you discover that kind of like in the secular world, you have to do continual education. So you're always, you it's not that you reach a place where then practice ends and you and you kick back. There is that quality of, of course, why why would we practice if it weren't to assuage those things that causes uh real suffering and to resolve uh those things and to arrive at a place of um satisfaction with things as they are, but that process of uh inquiry uh goes on and on, and we're only as enlightened as our last breath. So that that test is always there of how is this being um expressed, how is this life being lived now? I felt quite clumsy at the beginning uh with uh for myself and you know, just moving into that role that Roshi said, Okay, well, you know, you'll need this training period, and then so there's some differences where uh the entering ceremony and and coming in and doing altars. I ran up here the first morning after uh Keisen kindly alerted me that I'm doing altars, and like, oh, you know, we didn't really spell it out that much before, or if it was, you know, then I forgot, and um and then uh made some mistakes with uh around the entering, you know, and and I see that also with a mix of experience here, uh, and people coming in also from different different trainings, different uh temples within our broader lineage, you know, and there's uh a few a few differences as we learn to bring things into a into a common flow. And that'll take care of itself if we if we meet it with care and attention. And yeah, I remember for myself in the first, I was reflecting on the first training period that I did here, the first training period that I did, at least in this uh you know, present existence, whatever that means, but I I was as we do here, I was thrown into the place of being Jiki Dog, like how Segaku is now. He has the uh added difficulty of having learned it slightly differently, which is in some in some ways makes it makes it tougher. You know, I know when I got a visit different temples, I was like take out Mazagu the wrong way or turn the wrong way, or and there's always, oh, we do it this way here, we do it that way there. And and I was I was thrown into that place of being uh jiki-do, and I was getting so so many corrections, and I could you know the blood rising, and um yeah, feeling really discomforted by that, which is a nice way of saying I was just you know really pissed about it. And I I remember doing the Han run, and the head trainee at the time came out and said, Your Han is too quick, and I said, I'm following the instructions in the book exactly. It says here nine seconds, I'm counting nine seconds. He goes, How are you counting nine seconds? And I'm like, like this, one, two, and he goes, No, no, count them like this, one, two, and I'm in my head, I'm like, those aren't seconds, are they? You know, it's a matter of taking that's like that. I can like I could have gone further and had a big fight over it, but it was a way of of just adapting to the fact that no, this is this is how it how it goes here. The the book and the guidelines are a ballpark, we don't use it that much. Um, it's there, it's a great resource, but you cannot rely on it. You can rely on your attention and your ability to to be able to take correction and to be able to learn. You know, and there's always there's always mistakes in that way. I have a good uh friend of mine who a practitioner in in Japan, he said they were doing a talking along these lines of cold and heat. He was doing rohatsu out there where they do it in the in the winter, and then last night they sit all night and they sit outside. And it shows the strength of a cultivation of one's sitting posture in Zhao Zen that you even sort of survive doing that. You know, it's a long tradition of I look into the tradition of being able to um sit with real grounded samadhi and concentration just to be able to put up with extremes of cold and heat. And he said they would have a um a burner in the centre, they'd sit not just not so differently to how we are here, and have a fire going in the center, but you couldn't really feel it, but you could see it. And and but and over here would be um it had a stack of uh blankets, and he said, but they they don't use the blankets, those those are there, should anyone you know anyone crack. And he said, and and of course, in that in this particular tradition, the Roshi doesn't um sit with with uh the training monks and nuns, you know, but that would usually be off doing San Zen or Dokasan. Uh that's commonly done in that way, and and so he's not there. And um, but he told me that one one time at the end of Rohatsu, they were they were they were sitting in this way, and it's so you know, just basically just staying alive, and then the Roshi came by and said, Why aren't you using the blankets? So that could have been going on for years, you know. At some point, perhaps somebody said, I'm not using a blanket, and then somebody else hardcore, I'm not either, and it just became the way that it is. But there's no real barrier there if you needed one, go go get one. So I bring that up just as a as a comment on we do things in a certain way, yeah, and we can spend our time in um trying to find what the truth of that is, or or a portion in uh blame or looking, you know, and and fighting against that, or we can take it as it is and take it as a challenge and make the best of it. Um the crazy zen way that we that we have. But it's effective. It's an effective way, it's an effective training. I can testify to that, I would um sign my name off on on that. There are other ways of looking at this great mystery of self, looking at this reality. There are other ways and other things that can be done, and it's wide open, any one of us can can do any of that. But in in my experience, though those ways that don't push you, the ones that don't really provoke um deep challenge, in return, don't provoke deep realization. You know, you can see that often in the way things are set up. You know, the Zen tradition is is tough for a reason. In the introduction, it says if you want to understand the hammer and tongues of transcendence, you know, is that not the business we're in? Transcendence. If you want to understand the hammer and tongues of that, you need the forge and bellows of a of an adept. So his colourful metaphors have real meaning to them. You look into that and you say you need a forge and a bellows, you need heat. You need you need a container. And or perhaps you don't. You maybe you don't need that container, but for many people need that container. So it's still important to be a part of that. Creating that uh forging bellows. And Sashi and I often think that it's like we're whether it's hot or cold or anything in between, just a schedule in itself is like being uh, you know, it's like the Zen does like a uh a cookie sheet, and we're all sat there as our, you know, we put the cookies on, and then you put it in the oven for seven days, crank up the heat, and and see what happens, see if you can make some good cookies or not out of that. That's what's you know, Sashin is that way. It's like it brings heat to one's one's practice, you're faced with it. And then it's really what to what to do with that. The the choice is for each one of us. Monk here, monkas Tosan. When cold and heat come, how does one avoid them? What a wonderfully human question that is. How does one how do you how do you get out of that when cold and heat comes? You can look at it explicitly of like how when when a time of extreme cold comes, how do you how do you avoid that? How does uh when a time of uh real heat comes, how do how does one avoid that? Whether it's hot and cold, that points at, you know, when circumstances change, when true difficulty comes in life, over and over, the question, how does one avoid them? We don't want to suffer if we're sane, don't wish to suffer. And yet in life we we clearly understand at this point for every one of us that that is inherent with appearing in a human form. You know, to appear in form to be to be voss is to experience impermanence and suffering. It's a great truth that uh not just the Buddha, the Buddha clearly articulated it, but uh sages and teachers throughout tradition and timeless tradition have have recognised that. Each one of us recognizes that. That suffering and difficulty is is uh clearly part of life, part of the experience of appearing. Not all suffering, of course, there's also the other side, the the joy, the happiness, love, all of the more positive aspects of being. And naturally, as a human being, we seek to quite naturally uh seek those out and avoid the difficult parts. Even that's written into us in an evolutionary or biological way. We avoid pain and move towards ease. But of course, ironically, if we if we cultivate a life of ease only, uh, you know, and try and avoid uh difficulty and feather our nest, then life catches us out eventually. Even if it's not until the moment of death. But at some point, impermanence catches up. This is again what the Buddha clearly saw in his um, you know, apocryphal, lavish lifestyle of the day. Although in that era, in his position in northern India, I doubt it was that lavish. Really, you know. Today, maybe with our culture and our circumstances, we can hide it a little better. We can hide the impermanence a little better with the creature comforts of the day. Until something like COVID-19 comes along, or until forest fires come along, no matter how cunning we are or how we develop things, the great, you know, the fact that we're living on a little blue ball spinning throughout infinite space should be a reminder enough that nothing's forever. But so how does one avoid them? That's our natural inclination. That's my inclination in uh in sitting down in the heat, you know, at the beginning of the session. We come in there, I can I can see that part of my mind that's like, oh no, it's horrible. You know, why are we doing this? Why am I doing this? You know, what are we doing? What's everyone's agenda here? I don't want to be doing this, I don't want to have to have to sit here in that in that heat. Yeah, but how does how do I avoid that? I guess I didn't go as far as how do I avoid that. I've been here some some years. You know, and I've lived some years too, for all of us. You know, but there's no real avoiding. You know, and that's that's not our way. Of course, you one could just get up and uh leave. You know, it's uh it's a free Zen center, it's a free country. You can just head out. Many people do over the years. See that happen tons of times, right? Hit the car and take off to pastures new. Yeah, but how will things be in those pastures? Will the grass be green forever? If it's in California, no. It'll at some point it's gonna it's gonna burn. And it's also the the you know the the blame game. You can sit there with with difficulty, you know, with the challenge of of heat and difficulty. And I'm saying this like you know, just maybe everybody else was just cruising since the beginning, and it's just me that was having having some problems. And we can sit down, we can start like looking around or thinking it through and starting to really build the story of why we're suffering and whose fault it is. Maybe it's my own fault, maybe it's his fault, her fault, God's fault, the country's fault, you know. And and start to, and that's a natural, again, a natural part of the human mind that does that, that wants to recognize there's a challenge and then starts to scheme for for a way of escape or a way of at least to um be able to step out of it with uh as the hero still, but everybody else may we can apportion things in a different way. There's nothing wrong with this, this is just a way that we that we uh live as human beings. How do we escape uh how do we avoid or escape cold and heat? And Tozan says, why not go where there is no cold or heat? Which is uh a remarkable answer. And in some ways, the colon could end there, with that question. You know, because Tozan really just says everything in that in that one stage, in that one utterance. Hakuin comments in in this uh in the secrets of a blue cliff here says, if you see Tozan by means of this example, you may consider him foremost among the five houses and seven sects of Zen. Even Umon looks clumsy by comparison. That's a heck of a thing to say. Umon was you know great master and uh Hakkoin can say that. You'd put him first with this with his koan that begins with this statement. Why not go where there is no cold or heat? You see Kottozan looking at a student. Do you not have eyes, ears, two assume two arms, two legs? Are you not the same as me? Do you not have the same life as the Buddha? So why not then go to the place of no cold and heap? Why not end your own suffering? Why not take care of that? This is uh a teacher in that in in many ways, or a good great teacher like Tozan is that wall, a wall that you bounce a ball against. You just bounce things off and it comes right back at you. Yeah, that's our function in our tradition of uh meeting one-on-one with a teacher. You know, we see that over again. It's just turned right back at oneself. You already are, you already have the immaculate awakened mind. Everyone is equal in that way. Once it, but the the work is the work of realization of that intrinsic fact. As the Buddha said, I all beings simultaneously attain the way. Right? So for there's a couple of different ways to say it. I like this one, you know, that I all beings simultaneously attain the way. So everybody, throughout space and time, backwards and forwards, long before the Buddha, long after the Buddha, everybody is included in that waking up, in that enlightenment. If it doesn't include everybody and everything, then it's not real yet. And that's a check against one's own insight, enlightenment or attainment. If it doesn't include everyone and everything altogether, then it's still on the it's still on the surface. The Tosan's very ex extraordinarily direct. He says, why if you wish to avoid cold and heat, then why not go where there is no cold or heat? Where is that place? He invites the the monk to look. Go to that place. Go to that place of no no suffering, perhaps? No striving against. For myself, in in sitting just yesterday with the heat. And I won't go into the details, right? But for all of you, just you know, it's just like you start sitting and then you're just like, alright, I can handle this, and then you know, mosquitoes, and it's like, oh, there you go. Here we go. I've got a couple of mosquitoes now. Mosquitoes love me. Apparently, they love my Zumi Roshi too, so I'm in you know, they're in really good company. I like to think it's because I've got exotic blood for a Californian mosquito, you know, it's like sniff me out like a fine wine. That's my the positive way of looking at it. And sitting there, but then how does that approach with our practice of Zazen? You know, when we encounter that. Just in the in the preface or introduction. Without with no further obscuration at all, the total potential appears equally in all situations, with no further obscuration. Great word, word of the day, obscuration. The total potential appears equally in all directions, strike into the heart of the realization of Zazen. When we sit, we're offered that opportunity to really see how we obscure, how we obscure the freedom and peace, basic intrinsic peace of our own mind. How it's obscured, typically with the idea, opinion, and the way that we separate, chop up life and this experience with me and people in it. And Zarzen offers over and over their opportunity to allow that way of navigation to dissolve and to see and to sit clearly with all things as they are, in accord with in uh in accord and alignment with reality just as is. That has to be realized into real to the depths. That sitting is just sitting, that being hot is being hot, being cold is being cold. Or not, again, as the agency, that that choice comes in there. For many of us who just, you know, just will continue to strive against how things are on some level, all the way to the end. You know, I like that Dylan Thomas poem and big Dylan Thomas fan. That's like, do not go quietly into that good night. I always think that's going to be me, kicking and screaming to the end. You know, don't go quietly. And that may be our nature. After all, this is this is a um the practice of inquiry into one's nature. There is that shared life that we all are, this bottomless awareness beyond name and description that each one of us is. It's essential to become intimate with that, to really look. And for many of us, the beginnings of practice in Zen and the deepening practice is to really look into that aspect. We're familiar with the more relative perspective. The the gate of heat, or the gate, you know, particularly in again, talking about yesterday, today we could use the gate of smoke, or however else this is arranged. Do we hold ourselves separate in that sense from this hall, from others, from this, from this canyon, from this world? If we stay in that place of just running it through the head, moving the chess pieces around, then we miss out on the depth. We miss this place of no cold and heat. You know, for again, for me, just in my own process, say it, wow, it's hot, let the complaints run through the mind. You know, the difference that I I've learned for myself is when I listen to the grumblings of my own mind, it's like I've got NPR on in the background, and I'm not really listening. Because they just say the same things over and over again, really. That that that that's the that's that's the mind that's just doing its scheme, just recognize it as such. If it like, but if you reach in and we make a big identity out of it, then that's a problem. Making that identity. If we find the place that just aligns with as things are, you know, I've made the for myself, I'm like, I made the commitment to the session, I made the commitment to sit here. So sit. Next year we'll start maybe start training period a week later or something. So it doesn't mean that things can't be learned or we don't get on with making adjustments, but things as they are are irrevocably things as they are. So why not, you know, to to really to learn that shift that enters into that, that alliance of that mind. That isn't only just concerned with the change in circumstances, but that's an aspect and we can deal with those, but always recognizes and has deep roots and is at home in this, however this is, however, this is arranged. Then it's sitting something like heat, when we're at cookie on the sheet, you know, heat is it can be a wonderful teaching device. It's a wonderful thing. It melts up all of the all of the all of the scheming and the maneuvering and taking issue with things, it can melt all of that up. You just put it in, let it all, let it all dissolve, let it all burn up in the fire of just sitting and allowing things as they are. You may find that then sitting isn't so much a it's not even a problem. You could sit there, keep going. If your legs can take it, no problem. Just keep going, it's it's fine. You know, we look at our own mind going through session. Am I living, you know, in many ways, a human life is dealing with one problem after another until we die. Which sounds pretty grim. But another way, and some and sometimes it's approached in that way. Another one you could turn it over and say, life is over and over is dealing with with one challenge at a time, which I find myself perfectly equipped to be able to deal with. Living my life with whatever life brings, in the right place, in the right time. You know, I I have um a friend, I guess a student I could say, who who says that um, and for years as always has always said, you know, we come up and we talk questions after a talk, and she'll say, you know, I have a hell of a time in my mind, it's totally telling me stories all the time, it just doesn't stop, it races, it goes on and on, but I just keep practicing. And I really appreciate it because that that person can do that for us, they can be them for us, they carry that we don't have to. They can just get on, that's their that's what they have, and they practice with it. Each one of us is in that place. We we arranged as we are exactly what to do with that. Do we contribute to the to the the realization of the whole group to the Sangha? Do we hold one of each other up? You know, we find that the session is very much about you can come in, often it can feel it's me about me, how I'm doing, my realization, where I'm at in the practice, why I'm here, what my agenda is. But really, that's there's nothing there's nothing so great about staying in that mindset. Much better when we can explore reality yourself and realise I'm sitting for everybody else. This one too. But it's all of us, it's all of us together. It's never really about avoiding. Why not go where there is no cold or heat? And the monks, the monk says, uh, how is it when there's no cold or heat? Again, like really human, like right? It's like, have we not all done that as students in in this in this tradition? You know, got like working with a teacher or or reading the the old cases. Can you tell me how it'll be when I get there? Can you give me a little snapshot? It's like I want to have a look at the brochure to see if I actually want to invest the time, energy, and bone grinding effort in order to get there. How good is it? Is it worth my is it worth my like going forward with this? Again, as human beings, we're just very uh, like it says, a sneaky dog going up the stairs, scouting it out. You know, rather um uh really kind of sneak sneak the way through without having to do the work. So we're quite cunning in that way. How is it, whoever's no cold, how is it for you, teacher? What's it like to be enlightened? What sort of games that we that we can play in training? And then Tozan says, when it's cold, it kills you with cold. When it's hot, it kills you with heat. And there's a couple of other translations that I've read, and they they like to soften that kills with, you know. But I think it it should stand as it is. When it's cold, it kills the you with cold. When it's hot, it kills the you with heat. What is that the you? This all this whole way of, is it not really looking into what is the nature of self? What is the nature of self? And in inquiring into this nature of me. It begins with this this fixedness, this me identity in a world of things and how I'm navigating that. That's self with the small s. And through real effort, concerted effort, helping one another, we come to realize the capital S of self. The self that includes all beings, a great earth, simultaneously attained away. And what's lost in that? It's not really about gain or loss. But when it kills you with cold, it kills you with heat, it kills you with smoke, it kills you with boredom, it kills you with blame, it kills you with fear. You know, really entering into Tarzan, there is nothing that you can lose that you need. Everything that bakes off in the oven, everything that can burn up, clarifies. Like when um purifying gold bring an enormous amount of heat to it, burn off the impurities, and leaves perfect gold behind. But you know, we do a training period for a reason. You know, we do it for a long length of time. A session tends to be a length of time. Again, we can we can put our faith and our trust in a vehicle that has uh delivered results down the years, down the centuries. For since these times, since before these times, that are recorded here. You know, and set aside our short-term thinking around that, and rather trust and enter into this as it is now, just taking care of this, and then what's next, taking care of that. You know, I remind myself to practice sash in in this way. If I look at it, here we go for three months. I'm like, oh, I don't want to do it. They can build a story around that. Or here we go with seven days of seshin. Oof. Yeah, but it's not really that way, it doesn't have to be carried that way. What's happening now? Talking, listening, sitting, just taking care of that. Because again, as it pointed out in the in the introduction of the preface, with no further obscuration at all, the total potential appears equally in all situations. So that's a great potential, living potential of Zarzen. It can appear equally in all situations. A good reminder for the schedule and how we might cherish some activities over others. But it appears equally in all potentials. Whether that's working in the kitchen, working out, you know, finning the forest, whether it's brushing the teeth, whether it's uh running up late because you overslept, whether it's making the coffee, it's appearing equally. It's all a great practice of Tarzan, it's all the great practice of just-isness, justness. And becoming ever more intimate with that place of no cold, no heat. Or, you know, not cold or heat, and not no cold or no heat. It's way beyond that. But you know, returning to the the metaphor of a cookies in the oven, it's not a matter of, it doesn't need to be a matter of striving either. Particularly at the beginning of session, it can be uh it can be difficult. A lot of the difficulty is in the desire to escape the oven. Taking the place of uh active surrender to the schedule and the way, or active acceptance to the schedule and the activity, you see that it doesn't bind you. You see that it's not a problem, it's just what it is, and it's a challenge. And again, everyone here is perfectly equipped to navigate it and bring benefit forward rather than suffering. So please let's um now we're off to a a good start, let's uh continue to do our best. Thank you.