Alignment With The Great Way

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SF-00944
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Sunday Lecture - Children's Lecture: waging peace; taking up a practice

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our intention
to target those words good morning
it must beginnings to be close to spring
with all their
new life showing up
so i like to talk about
alignment
alignment with the great way
and down
one of the ways we do that is sue
can meditation practice so i like to invite
particularly particularly the smarter people in the front
but actually everyone to join me in up
meditation
what i call nose and belly meditation
so if you take your your hand and you put it kind of like this make a couple of an open open fist not a tight fist
when you place it to this part of your finger here is right under your nose
you take your other hand and you put them on your belly
and someone has a bill so and you have also have a clock so you could time was for one minute
and during one minute just see what you notice
okay pay attention to you your hand at your nose and your hand at your belly and to see what you notice

so
does anyone want to say anything that you noticed that

ah yeah when he breathed in your nose your stomach was going out
yeah okay good
anyone else notice anything

okay so that's good
one thing was noticed and that and and mentioned
ah
since it said it is a
close to spring a couple of a couple of weeks until spring
there's various
kinds of activity the people are doing around here to get ready for spring and one of them is taken care of bees
and
i love you all know how important bees are
the you know that a lot of the food to eat we wouldn't have without bees
now
someone knows some some kind of food that we wouldn't have an obese
yeah
honey of course honey
yeah
that's a good one
anything else now now
well you know that you like cherries
say let anyone like pairs
yeah okay as and pair of fans here and scared how about
nuts like almonds
yeah some people like almonds
so bees are very important
they fly from flower to flower and they and they take the elements for one flower to another which actually makes the flower turn into nuts or fruit
even chocolate to do know that
chocolate is dependent upon bees
i just learned that yesterday myself
ah
so we have that
we have a a picture of maybe in our minds various various buddha images there's one up there
you can't see there's this will be i was standing diesel here
we have sought we have in another body here sitting here
and i just wanted to reflect for a moment on the idea that that buddha sitting was in alignment with the bees
so the you do you mind when bees and crawl around on you
no
how about spiders
yeah
i'm so so bitter was able to sit there and be an agreement with the bees and be an agreement with the but spiders
and so
i'm going to have against he'll pass out some copies over a short song
about buddha sitting under the tree and not being bothered by bees
and ah being bothered by spiders
this can go out to the whole
for the whole assembly
and
i did this with one group and one person said they were not
they actually were bothered by the fear are doing it wrong
so that's so we'll do this song three times in the first time will say well as not bothered by bees and the next time that bothered by spiders and the next time not bothered by the fear of doing it wrong
maybe i should be the first the the first time
so it goes like this and yeah somebody you know not already so you can just join in
there's all buddha certain under the bodhi tree there's all buddha mind as quiet as it can be certain like a bump on a log
certain like a rise old fraud
he said
on his fair is
sadly lie empty space is that supposed to be silent
so you have to pay attention
it doesn't mind rain doesn't mind thunder was current batter or buddha i wonder who has and nine be these who has a mind being he is he likes there's
the be is just bizarre by
okay
let's do that was one more time and then we'll then we'll give them go under spiders and game
there's all the we can pick up the pace a little bit now
there's a burger certain underground bodhi tree there's a good at mind as quiet as it can be certain like a pamper our lab so you like arise or bar
enjoy the smile on his bay is served like and these berries doesn't mind rain there's a mind bender the banner but i wonder who has a nine boom
the rules he led there's beam these jazz bass and by there's or bad as threatened hundred the bodhi tree there's a good mind as quiet as with
can be certain like that back on our now said like the rise on fraud so lax is very is sit and read and these berries d'azur mind rain dance
the minds on the web bad bother old buddha i wonder who has a bad or is viewed as a minds by burns who read there's bad news was crowned by there's old buddha
a certain man to that very to leave there's a good and by and as quiet as it can be certain like that barbara lab serve like arise or fraud certain way the smile
ron is there is so loud panting spare his dad arrived ran a mile van laan turn bother but i wonder it has a mind the fear of not getting it right
it has revived the they are doing it wrong
he doesn't mind the fear of doing it wrong it lets that your brain around just flirt on
thank you very high

so now of the major rearrangement and the little people can go out into the sunlight right and then other people can come and fill up in the front

competition
but accounts

i'm one

you might think that the
my statement
yeah

so alignment alignment with the great way
jojo
chinese zen student asked non on
what is the dow
and nonchalance said ordinary mine is to doubt
so we can we've adopted the dow into an english language
usually translated way i'd like to translate a great way
so it's not so ordinary
i just want to
i propose that
the practice of alignment which we do and i'm sitting practice and our meditation sitting by sitting up straight and noticing the alignment of our ears and shoulders and hip bone
ha nose enable
it's it's helpful to find alignment when you're sitting
and then the challenge for us is to take alignment out into
our everyday lives
help the door of the zendo so and were pruning an apple tree
ah
you can pay attention to your body in alignment
and you can be in alignment in all different postures
and also it's important to be in alignment with the season with the time of year
how
and maybe the time of day and with the
insects that are buzzing around
i read a little code from suzuki roshi
shinji suzuki it
this is from my collection of taxa that brown collected in the book not always so
here he states enlightenment does not come until your mind and body are in perfect accord
if you cannot accept your experience
you won't feel you have enlightenment in other words when your mind and body i completely one enlightenment is there
whatever you hear whatever you think that is enlightenment
so it's not the sound of a stone hitting bamboo or the color of plum blossoms that makes people enlightened that is their practice
and your everyday life you always have opportunities for enlightenment when you go to the restroom there's a chance for enlightenment when you cook there's a chance to attain enlightenment when you clean the floor that's also a chance to attain enlightenment
have some years ago i did a series of works up here on driving
and there's a real challenge to heaven some sense of flab
are being in accord with things while driving
people would come
ah and confess that there
well some of them would confess and some of them would confess that someone else told them that their personality would change when they were behind the wheel and perfectly supposedly calm sane reasonable people would would experience anxiety and rage
ha
when behind the wheel or particularly when something happened that was someone gotten their way
cutting in front of course and
so that's really an opportunity to notice your own tendencies
a tendency to to maybe be impatient yesterday i had to take it a drive into the city for a meeting in the afternoon and my hadn't figured on all the traffic around muir woods on saturday afternoon i'm leaving green gods i'm just a little late
and
and there was a particularly slow car and
so it was an opportunity for me to work with my impatient so you i tell myself to allow plenty of time for whatever it is
and then i can actually do the activity without that additional stress of being being late but then one late when you're already late than what do you do
so for me
the practice with my own impatience is to except being late
ah
to actually acknowledge okay i'm like and i have to accept whatever the embarrassment at the other end when i'm arriving and and someone says you're late
ah
so to find alignment in that situation is actually to completely accept the situation of being late
now it's been
that's been a week since i've been
wearing this robe
hobbs installed as abbot of coal abbott of san francisco zen center last sunday
one of the great opportunities during that ceremony was to say a dedication for world peace
and i want to do it just read
ah a modified version of that statement
and think i would think of the whole matter of world peace in relation to living in alignment
today let us honor our whole practice have world peace
from our founder a shakyamuni buddha on throughout our wide circle lineage we end any thoughts of hon
whereas wow to investigate deeply and keep faith with this revision
it includes all species
and the biosphere itself as one
rocks rivers trees mammals birds insects and frogs are equally buddha mind
muslims christians jews atheists hindus and wiccans are equally buddha mind
to realize no self no other is the harmony hub buddha fields
listen what the bodhisattva of compassion to the sounds of the world
respond with skillful attention and bliss bestowing hands
this is our whole practice of peace in the world
so
shakyamuni buddha
i made some effort
sometimes i think things did actually in fact bother him
ah
and motivate him to get up
ah
there was a case of the two of his
his clan actually he was related to both the polian send this and the shock is he was born in the shakya clan
and his mother was from the petrolia clan and they were having a squabble over water

i expect that the in the coming decades
there will be more squabbles over water ah
ah planet
so twenty five hundred years ago they were having a squabble over water they used the same river for irrigation how these two two different clans and
in this case
a
the silent sage spoke
to both sides
and convinced them that town
ah it was it was enough for them to have
say be concerned about the water
and not have it turned to blood
and in that case they actually negotiated away in which they can share the the water and
but it was able to make peace
he wasn't always successful though there are other times
there was a time even in his own tanga when some of the monks were squabbling and
ah over sung disagreement about an interpretation of the rules if they had undertaken and down the squabbling went on until it disturbed the whole community and the surrounding lake community in and the buddha himself could not resolve the conflict so he walked away
back into the forest
and
until
the sanga discovered that they weren't going to be supported anymore the the lay community was withdrawing support
until they are
settled down and began to live in harmony with each other again
during that time it said that them shakyamuni buddha made great friends with an elephant
and actually elephant would come he would come out and do his begging and the elephant actually
ah
picked up on the idea and carried his begging bowl for him
and then there was a monkey that like the idea to and so the monkey would ride along the elephant so they are this nice little trio going out and begging
and it was there was actually very sad for the elephant when one now checking money would have decided to leave the forest and go back and do some more teaching
and the elephant shed tears
so we're in a situation of
say miss alignment
i want to read some suggestions about our
aligning and regards to peace
for mary oliver

i'm sure many of you have seen this it was a it was an email it was sent around shortly after nine eleven and it's been five over five years
ah that time mary oliver's made these suggestions and some of them ah may still be a helpful so here's a reminder how she says wage peace with your breath
breathe and firemen and rubble breathe out whole buildings and flux of redwing blackbirds
breathe then terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields
breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees
breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact
wage peace with your listening
hearing sirens pray loud
remember your tools flower seeds clothes pins clean rivers
make soup play music learn the word for thank you in three languages
learn to knit and make a hat
think of chaos as dancing raspberries
imagine grief as the out breath of beauty or the gesture of fish
swim for the other the other side
wage peace
never has the world seem so fresh and precious have a cup of tea and rejoice act as if armistice has already arrived
don't wait another minute

so
ah
tiger to believe that some small actions
actually can bring a world into alignment
but the misalignment of the world is actually do too many small actions
the a cumulative effect of ah
a distorted view
an acting upon distorted perception and ah
fear
and not saying that there's a possibility of
ah fall
harmonious action
so jojo and he was asking nonchalant
what
here's the dow
ah he was a young student probably he came to
a study with nonchalant when he was eighteen
and probably shortly thereafter he had this question
what is the great way
and one said
ordinary mine
so then
jojo said should i direct myself toward it
and nonchalance said to direct yourself toward it is to betray your life
to actually ah
this becomes a more subtle the question of alignment
how do you actually find a way where you are not ah
clumsily turning this way in that to find what you already know
to find what you already have in your body and your mind
to find acceptance of what is
gl joe asked another question so how can i know the way if i don't drag myself toward it
the nonchalance said the way is not subject to knowing
or not know it
knowing his delusion
not knowing is blankness if you truly reached the genuine dow you will find it has vast and boundless as the sky
how can this be disgusted the level of affirmation and negation
so this was the point at which gl joe had his
first awakening
i'm saying that there is there is a practice which is not exactly knowing and not exactly not known not being caught in
grasping at knowing and not being caught in the fear the anxiety of not knowing it

so
suzuki roshi commented on ordinary mind like this
you may say that is not possible to be
ordinary and holy
when you think in this way your understanding is one sided
and then he talks about the image of the board carrying prison which actually is an old chinese zen image where
those of us governors have certainly had that experience and many of you have carried something maybe a carpet on your shoulder or something but when when you have something on your shoulder
you may notice that you can't see what's over there so the board carrying person is an image of someone who has a limited view
so he says
if you think that you can be both ordinary
and awake or wholly as he says
then that's just noticing that you have limited view like a bird carrying person
so you think that you are just an ordinary human but if you take off the board
you will understand oh i am buddha
i am buddha to
how can i be both buddha an ordinary human
it is amazing
when you experience this you will understand
you'll understand things more freely you won't mind whatever people call you ordinary okay
i'm ordinary buddha okay i am buddha yes so actually i am both buddha an ordinary
buddhism
ah buddha and it's true sense is not different from ordinary mine an ordinary mind is not apart from what is wholly this is a complete understanding of ourself when we practice zazen with this understanding that is true zazen we will not be bought
authored by anything
these spiders the fear of doing it wrong
whatever you see whatever you hear that will be okay
so then he says to have this feeling it's necessary to become accustomed to ah the practice
it's necessary actually to take up some practice
and he recommends the practice of as as
ah
so without some practice it's a pretty difficult
to find a way of alignment with the with the dow
ah habits and tendencies and past karma attend to
distract us take us away from this moment of our life
which is the only place where you can really truly live
so and jojo is asking nonchalant he's asking really how to live what is the great way
joseph says pay attention to your ordinary mine
pay attention to what's happening right now

thank you for listening