This morning I would like to talk about meditation on impermanence. Somebody said that the deepest unconscious desire or aim of life at the human level is to directly experience the spontaneous flow of quality in the fleeting

[01:23]

The deepest aim, the deepest unconscious aim of life at the human level is to experience the fleeting flow or the flow of quality fleeting spontaneously in the now. In permanence, you could use the words for permanence as this flow in the fleeting now. There's also a flow which occurs over time in successive moments, like you watch a river flow. You watch somebody walk by or you watch the bamboo wave back and forth, but there's actually a flow, a spontaneous flow in the moment.

[02:48]

And it is that one in the moment that's most desirable. from the point of view of life, of a human being. In other words, we desire to experience impermanence. In other words, we desire to experience our Buddha nature, our awake nature, our nature which is so awake that in every moment it jumps up and springs off the head of itself or it crashes down to the floor of itself. It stretches his arms and flips out beyond all control in pure vitality.

[03:52]

So awake it is. This desire is unconscious. I'm talking about it now and it sounds like we're becoming conscious of this desire, but there's actually one that's deeper, that we can't put out ourselves, put outside of ourselves and know it as an objective object, a desire. It's built into us deeply. And peace is, originates in this flow. Peace originates from this flow of events. If I think about me and other people storming around this world, Like I'm thinking of a professional football player storming down the gridiron, making lots of money every step of the way.

[05:12]

If you could kind of like inject into him the experience of impermanence, he would just kind of like sit down and relax and forget about making money and crushing other people's bodies. I didn't plan on mentioning this, but when I was a kid, one of my favorite stories was the story of Ferdinand the Bull. How many people do not know the story of Ferdinand the Bull? Well... I didn't bring that story with me, but it basically goes like this. There was this bull named Ferdinand. He lived in Spain. And he was a regular bull.

[06:19]

And except, actually, I didn't see, what I first saw, I think, was a Walt Disney cartoon. And so you have this scene, you know, of these, they have this bull training ground, right? And these little, these young bulls are like bumping heads against each other. And then, and the people come from the, from the bullfighting areas to look for these energetic young bulls. And so they see some pretty energetic ones. But Ferdinand, what Ferdinand does is he doesn't butt heads with the other bulls. What he does is he sits under a shady tree and sniffs flowers. He's a total sweetheart. I don't think it even occurs to them that the other guys are weird or silly. He just is enjoying being in the shade in hot southern Spain, sniffing flowers.

[07:26]

But then somehow, as he's sitting down one day, he sits on a bee. And the bee bites him. And he gets very upset and starts charging around. And he's, you know, he's a fully endowed bull. And he's really upset because he got bitten. And he goes, you know, like knocking all the other bulls sort of out of the territory, knocking down trees, digging up the earth. And the, what do you call it, the scouts come for the bullfighting thing, see Ferdinand and say, wow, look at that one. So after he calms down, they apprehend him and put him in a cart and he's sadly taken away to the bullfighting ring. And word gets out that they found like the super most vicious bull of all time, you know. So like the stadium's packed with people to see like the most powerful young bull they've seen in generations.

[08:27]

And the matadors and the picadors and the whatever else they have are shaking in their boots to see this monster bull come. So anyway, they pull back the curtains and let him out, and he comes walking out. And I think he just walks sort of like, he's just kind of frightened to go out in the ring. And he goes and he sits down. I think he just sort of sits down and Oh, I think that the ladies throw flowers at the bulls, too. So they throw these flowers at him. He just sort of swoons in the flowers and sits down sniffing them, you know. And they can't get him to fight. And so he's, I guess they just take him away, totally disgusted with this. However, he, of course, gets a pension plan for his one fight and lives happily ever after. That's more or less the story of Ferdinand. And that's what would happen to, believe it or not, that's what would happen if you could kind of expose these storming around people to this flow of events.

[09:37]

It's so satisfying. It's like just being immersed in life itself and it just makes you peaceful because you realize you're a success. you're alive. And life is just totally overwhelmingly living. It's not a dead, this impermanence is not like death. Although death is in there swirling around with life. Life and death are dancing in the impermanence. In impermanence it isn't like there's a set relationship like this is life and this is death. It's very confusing which is which in impermanence because everything is spontaneously erupting in relationship. The good guys and the bad guys are there too, but you can't tell who is who. The self and the other are there too, but they're not like in rigid separation. So actually impermanence

[10:43]

is the Buddha nature. It's our true state of existence, and we yearn to experience it in the present moment. However, we also have resistance to it, strangely. And we resist it. And we have a mind which naturally, wonderfully interprets it. sort of sits in the bleachers and says, makes comments on it. And says, well, it seems to be like this and seems to be like that, which is true, it does. And then it structures it. It structures this spontaneous flow of quality. It structures it into self and other. And then it takes the structure seriously and keeps them that way. And somehow the flow gets compartmentalized and blocked and doesn't seem like a flow at all.

[11:50]

And then our yearning to be in touch with life gets transmitted into self pushing around other or getting stuff from other, giving stuff to other, making arrangements with other. And everything gets very rigid and forced. and organized in set ways. So then not only do we still want to be in touch with this basic flow, this basic satisfying state of affairs for a living creature, but we want to become free of these forced structures and strivings of self with and against the other. Because not only are we out of touch with this wonderful, lovely flow of sensation, which is really satisfying in itself, and even if it isn't, it changes so fast you don't have time to worry about it.

[13:06]

And you don't have time to figure out whether you want the next thing to happen or not. You're just in it. You're alive. But when we resist this, which we naturally do, and, you know, don't, you know, try to not. We do resist it. But then we also, because of this structured situation, we feel very uncomfortable. We feel stressed. We feel hypocritical. We sense our phoniness. We feel stiff. We feel choked. We feel tormented. We feel anxious. I said choked and tormented. That's actually the root of the word etymology of the word anxiety. Anxiety means to be choked at the root.

[14:12]

Choked and tormented. It's an uneasiness It's a disquiet with our situation. And it makes sense that we should be anxious. If you're not in touch with your anxiety, then you just may not be looking at it. Anxiety is something which results from ignoring, from turning away and resisting this flow. Anxiety is not the same as the resistance. Anxiety is the result of the resistance. It's the result of the interpreting and structuring and compartmentalizing a river. Like a novelist said, in the beginning, this is my rendition, in the beginning, the unborn was like a river.

[15:14]

But then later it became like a road with yellow lines down the middle that you cannot cross legally. Double yellow lines. For good reasons. And a dangerous edge. And so on. And it has to be maintained. But because the road was originally a river, the road was always hungry. So anxiety or this hunger is the result from structuring and compartmentalizing and rigidifying and routinizing a spontaneous vitality. because we can't face the anxiety, we try to get someplace else, away from the now, from the present anxiety, from the present constricted feeling, from being choked around self and other separation, put it in the future, and then we can be afraid.

[16:40]

So, we got a whole setup then of anxiety and fear and think, well I have to, you know, push people around in order to make a living otherwise this self won't survive and so on. So I can go into how difficult and uncomfortable the situation is which results from this messing with something which is just fine in itself. And I also just want to mention that we can't avoid messing it up. The greatest Buddha still messed things up. However, what the Buddhas did is they entered into a process of meditation, not first of all on impermanence, because you can't directly look at impermanence when you're really messed up, but you first of all have to meditate on fear and anxiety and ignorance.

[17:48]

You have to meditate on and become aware of these inhibiting structures and these rigidities that our mind constructs in the middle of this flow. By meditating on these structures and the effects that they have on the flow of our life, the process starts to turn around. and we start moving towards the original experience of impermanence, of transience, and of life unadulterated. Now there may be, there's many ways that this that this process of reversal starts happening, I suppose. In the Zen school, we have a simple method which we recommend, which will start to turn the process around.

[19:00]

We call it just sitting. Particularly, we emphasize just sitting still in the present. If we do that long enough, what will be presented to us is everything we need to know, everything we need to see. What we will see is that we will see these structures getting stressed. we will see how something starts to hurt we start to feel uncomfortable and we notice that the discomfort is we notice what the discomfort is coming from and what we mostly find out is coming from is these walls that we've constructed these partitions

[20:12]

these rigidities, these structures. If you sit still in more or less any posture, but the sitting posture is, I guess I should say, if you sit still in an upright posture, But any sitting posture will work too, but being upright is the best because it lets the energy flow. Or put another way is, what we mean by uprightness is the posture that lets your energy flow most fully. The more fully your energy flows, the more it will uncover the holdings, the holdouts, the encampments. the establishments. It could also happen if you stood a long time or walked a long time.

[21:21]

It can also happen if you visit someone in the hospital that you love who is very sick. It can also happen if you're sick. Sometimes sickness is a flow Somehow your body starts flowing and showing you where you're holding. So gifts can come to people who are not able to, for whatever reason, sit still. In the West, some of the people I most value The thinkers and artists that I most value are people who usually were sick, had some sickness that visited them, which made them become aware of this flow. Or first of all, made them become aware of how stressed they were.

[22:22]

And in the midst of that stress, gradually the flow became apparent. So I sometimes speak of a yogic wind tunnel, that if you sit still, it's like gradually the wind starts to build up inside and outside and all around you. A wind starts blowing. You can call it your breath if you want to, but it's not just your breath after a while. It's the breath of all life. It starts blowing through you. At first, you may not sense it as breath. At first, you may experience it as pain. But the more you sit with pain in this upright way, the more the wind starts blowing, and the more wind starts blowing, the more it shows where the pain's coming from.

[23:36]

It sort of uncovers the pain. I mean, the structure of the pain, like they put airplanes in wind tunnels and start blowing increasing the flow of air across the structure. And gradually, even before things start ripping off, they take pictures of the different parts to see where they're stressed. And then they redesign them so that they don't get so stressed by the flow and make them more and more able to exist in the flow. And it isn't that your life is destroyed in this flow, it's just that its true shape appears, or its true shape is realized. And the true shape of our life is one that actually can participate with the flow very nicely.

[24:42]

In other words, what happens is your life just becomes the flow and no more stress. And the more you notice how what's holding is causing the pain, the more you're willing to let go of that holding. And the flow is actually simply letting go of that holding. And the flow is actually already happening. So basically all you have to do is join what's going on. You don't have to make the flow happen. You don't have to make yourself into a new person. You just have to let go of everything that's resisting yourself becoming a new person, which is actually happening all the time. You don't have to organize this exposure.

[26:05]

You don't have to say, well, I think we should turn the wind up today, the velocity of the wind, or we should have wind from another direction. You don't have to do any of that. The world will offer itself to you without you you know, asking for anything. As a matter of fact, if we ask for something, we tend to select what we already are ready for. But if you sit still and just wait for your turn, it comes. Just exactly what you need. During meditation, sometimes we walk around and we adjust people's posture. Sometimes they call it correcting posture.

[27:09]

I don't think it's correcting the posture. For me, when I adjust people's posture, I make suggestions, and my suggestion is basically I'm suggesting a posture which looks to me, which would be for me, according to my understanding of what I see there, would be a posture where the person would get more help. where the person would get more visitors, where the person would be open to more information, where the person would be more present in the moment to experience what's happening. But a lot of times when we're in pain or frightened or whatever or feel choked,

[28:09]

What we do is instead of opening up to the feeling of being choked, instead of opening up when choked, we choke ourself more. When we feel pressed, we tend to curl up and make ourself more pressed. When we're worried about not having enough breath, we inhale, which makes us less able to get breath. If you're worried about not having enough breath, if you exhale, you make yourself more able to get breath. I don't know if this is true of other people, but if I feel faint, my natural reaction is to inhale.

[29:12]

And then that's when I've experienced fainting. But if I feel dizzy and I exhale, I don't faint on the exhale. And then at the end of the exhale, I'm empty of air. And it just comes gushing back in. But we have this strange habitual way of reacting is when we feel poor, we act like a poor person. So, of course, we deepen the poverty. Rather than feeling poor, having the reaction of a rich person. Not a rich person, but a person who feels rich. Namely, feel poor? Give it away. And then as a result, you become rich. You feel like you got, you know, not enough strength?

[30:14]

Give it away, and you'll have more. Feel like you can't stand the pain? Open up to more. And you prove that you can stand more. But our reaction, again, is feel pain, curl up, rather than feel pain, open up. And it's, you know, it's difficult. At the beginning of a sitting, sometimes, as people get into a sitting, they start to feel pain. They start curling up. Their backs start turning into little turtle backs. Not always, but sometimes. And then they find out that that doesn't work, usually. But that, in the long run, makes it more painful. In the short run, it seems like it's less painful. but it just makes it worse and worse. And sometimes they start feeling, we start feeling, this is not working. So we're open to some suggestion. And by after several days of painful sitting, sometimes people at the beginning would say, you know, if I come up to the back and the back is all curled over and says, I'm having suffering, do not touch.

[31:24]

And then sometimes I touch just to check and it's like, it's like, Like a rock. This is not going to move. We already have problems here. We do not need any more information. We already know it's bad. You don't have to tell me anything. But after a while... The person says, okay, I've been getting, yeah, it's bad, it's bad, it's bad. It's bad, it's bad, it's bad. And now he wants to tell me it's bad. He wants to sort of say my posture's not so good or whatever. He wants to criticize me. Okay, fine. What have I got to lose? He wants me to sit up straight? Okay. And then you press in the back after several days of misery. The back gets soft for some reason. This sitting there tenderizes and turns this turtle shell into actual meat.

[32:31]

And you push on it and it can move. And the person gets into this new posture of sitting upright in the pain. And then they find out that Well, the pain goes away. Sort of. The pain of holding to protect against the pain drops off. Then some other kind of pains are there too, some other kinds of holdings, but then they can also be opened up to. And when they're opened up to, the process turns around. And the wind again the breath gets more and more vital and it gets more and more educational and shows more and more some new places where there's holdings and the results of those holdings. And then the desire or the willingness to drop those drops too. And little by little this unconscious desire to return to this flow is realized.

[33:37]

And everything's the same. The resistance is still there and all that stuff's still there because it's natural for us to resist this process. It's natural for us to keep interpreting it and keep setting up structures of self and other. But it's also possible for us and even more natural for us just to let them go because they are going. They're naturally transcending themselves and liberating themselves. But I suggest that you need some kind of yogic practice where you sit or stand or walk in a situation and you stay with it until you start to feel the stresses on your system due to your holdings. It doesn't have to be Zen sitting, but that is one of the ways.

[34:41]

It can be many other ways. It can be singing. It can be dancing. Even in dancing, you can experience this. In the moment, in the present moment of dancing, you can be still. And in the present moment of dancing, you can feel the stress of holding. And your dancing teacher can be a wind blowing on you, saying, you're holding. And they can yell at you louder and louder until you feel the unfortunateness of holding something in the middle of that pose. If you're an artist, you get into a place where you're holding. Even if you're a meditator, of course, even if you practice sitting for a long time, you still get to a place sometimes where even though the flow is building up, there's some place you're holding and you can't even see it. In that case, sometimes it's good to go paint a picture or write a poem.

[35:47]

Anyway, we all get stuck, and it's a question of moving into some arena where the flow of vitality will expose where we're holding. And if you can expose where you're holding, if you can see where you're holding, you'll see the stress and pain around that, and you'll gradually wish to let go. And you gradually see that the way to let go is simply to watch how that holding happens. And if you see how the holding happens, all the causes and conditions that lead to the holding, you will avoid the holding. By totally absorbing yourself in the causes and conditions of any holding, the holding is dropped. You don't have to get rid of the holding. It naturally drops away when you understand how it appears and how it is formed. But in order to see a holding, you have to be there with it in the present and see how it causes pain.

[37:01]

If you turn away from the pain, you can't see the holding, the attachment. If you can't see the attachment, you can't see the causes. If you can't see the causes, the attachment just sits there, untouched. It's actually getting buffeted all the time by the winds of change, which is causing the stress. But when awareness comes and joins the show and observes this buffeting of this attachment, then the winds of change work on this and release it. It has to be attended in order to be released. Even unattended, it still functions to cause an effect, namely anxiety and so on. But we have to watch it in order to let go of it. Understanding is what lets it go. And letting it go is understanding.

[38:04]

The actual flow is the understanding, and the understanding is the flow. This flow is understanding. This spontaneous flow is understanding. It's going on right now, under our noses, in every cell of our body. This understanding is there. in every cell, and it's singing the songs of understanding this flow. But in order to witness it, we have to gradually work ourselves down into the present where it lives through, in some way, being still in a moment and being still in another moment and still in another moment. until we're completely settled in that place and then we'll learn. But it's not easy to do this.

[39:13]

It's not easy to sit still moment after moment because you start becoming aware of this pain and stress. But we can't drop it if we don't become aware of it. Sorry. And I'm sorry it's so hard in a way, but when people are telling me they're having a hard time, I don't say I'm sorry. Because I'm actually not sorry because they're actually getting down to their work. I'm happy that they're doing their work. That they're experiencing the results of their mind and body interactions. And that they're starting to become closer and closer to their best friend. this friend that's completely free. But the funny thing is that as we get closer and closer to this friend, it becomes almost even more and more difficult to completely seal that gap.

[40:26]

So we have this poem, why is it that the ultimate, no it goes, this closeness when seen outside is heart-rending. The ultimate familiarity seems almost like enmity. So that last little bit's very tough. Anyway, we have to be courageous and we have to be willing to do this big job if you want the sweetest fruit. So I have a story about this sitting still thing. And usually I just tell this story, but today I thought I would read it because it's actually very lovely in the way it's written.

[41:41]

Once upon a time there was an elephant who did nothing but sit all day. He lived by himself in a little house away at the top of a curling road. From the elephant's house, this curling road went twisting away down and down until it found itself in a green valley I'm going to be trouble sticking to this story. The green valley, you know, this valley of the jolly green dragon. Anyway, in the green valley where there was another little house in which a butterfly lived,

[42:51]

Stay with the story. Once, one day, the elephant was sitting in his little house and looking out his window, doing nothing, and feeling very happy because that was what he liked to do most. When along the curling road he saw somebody coming fleetingly flowingly up towards his little house. And he opened his eyes wide and felt very much surprised. Whoever is that person who's coming up along and along the curling road towards my little house? The elephant said to himself. And pretty soon, she saw that it was a butterfly who was fluttering along the curling road ever so happily, and the elephant said, My goodness, I wonder if she's coming to call on me.

[44:04]

As the butterfly came nearer and nearer, the elephant felt more and more excited inside herself. Up the steps of the little house came the butterfly, and she knocked very gently. Very gently. on the door with his wing. Is anyone inside, she said. The elephant was ever so pleased, but he waited. Then the butterfly knocked again with her wing a little louder. but still very gently and said, does anyone live in here? Still, the elephant never said anything because he was too happy to speak. A third time, the butterfly knocked and this time quite loudly and asked, is anyone at home?

[45:19]

And this time the elephant said in a trembling voice, I am. The butterfly peeped in the door and said, who are you that live in this little house? And the elephant peeped out at her and answered, I'm the elephant who does nothing all day but sit. I lied. The elephant didn't even sit. The elephant didn't do anything. Didn't even not move. He was the most radical Zen student of all time. He didn't even face the wall.

[46:22]

Oh, said the butterfly, and may I come in? Please do, said the elephant with a smile because she was very happy. So the butterfly just pushed the little door open with her wing and came in. The curling road will be all wet and will smell beautifully, said another tree to another tree. Then a different tree said to a different tree, how lucky for the butterfly that he's safely inside the elephant's little house because he won't mind that it's raining. But the littlest tree said, I feel the rain already. Sure enough. While the butterfly and the elephant were talking in the elephant's little house, away at the top of the curling road, the rain simply began falling gently everywhere. And the elephant and the butterfly looked out the window together and they felt ever so safe and glad while the curling road became all wet and began to smell beautifully, just as the third tree had said.

[47:41]

Pretty soon it stopped raining and the elephant put his arm gently around the little butterfly. and said, do you love me a little? And the butterfly smiled and said, no. Honesty is the best policy. I love you very much. Then the elephant said, I'm so happy. I think we ought to go for a walk together, you and I. For now the rain has stopped and the curling road smells beautifully. The butterfly said, yes, but where shall you and I go? Let's go down and down the curling road where I've never been.

[48:44]

The elephant said to the little butterfly and the butterfly smiled and said, I'd love to go with you. away and away down the curling road. Let's go out the little door of your house and down the steps together, shall we? So they came out together and the elephant's arm was very gently around the butterfly. Then the littlest tree said to the next six friends, I believe the butterfly loves the elephant as much as the elephant loves the butterfly. And that makes me very happy, for they'll love each other always. Down and down the curling road walked the elephant and the butterfly. The sun was shining beautifully after the rain. The curling road smelled beautifully of flowers. And a bird began to sing in a bush.

[49:47]

And all the clouds went away out of the sky, and it was spring everywhere. When they came to the butterfly's house, which was down in the green valley, which had never been so green, the elephant said, is this where you live? And the butterfly said, yes, this is where I live. May I come into your house, said the elephant. Yes, said the butterfly. So the elephant pushed the door gently with his trunk and they came into the house of the butterfly. And then the elephant kissed the butterfly very gently and the butterfly said, why didn't you ever come down here to visit me before in this green valley where I live? And the elephant said, because I did nothing all day. But now that I know where you live, I'll be coming down the curling road to see you every day, if I may.

[50:54]

And may I come? And the butterfly kissed the elephant. Of course, the butterfly didn't have to kiss him, generally. And said, I love you so, please do. And every day after this, the elephant would come down the curling road, which smelled so beautifully, past the seven trees and the birds singing in the bush to visit his little friend, the butterfly. And they loved each other always. E.E. Cummings wrote that for his daughter. I haven't read this story for a while, but I think it's pretty good. Usually I just tell the story about the elephant and the butterfly, but I think it's important to remember the birds and the trees too, that it doesn't just help you to sit still all day and be present.

[52:12]

It also helps the butterflies. It doesn't just help you to be in touch with the flow, the spontaneous flow of quality in the present moment. It helps the spontaneous flow of quality in the present moment. And it doesn't just help you in the spontaneous flow of the present moment, it helps everything else in the universe. They all enjoy it. Everybody's rooting for you. It's hard work, actually, practicing Zen. but everybody's rooting for you and everybody will be benefited if you can sit still in the moment and face what happens. But just don't expect it to be easy and Zen Center is here to help you with the difficulty of being yourself. Nothing's harder, nothing's more effective.

[53:15]

And again, I'm really serious about that, but also I'm not serious. I'm just not. And I just am. See what I mean? Anyway, it's kind of late, but I'd like to have a little song apropos of the topic. And I'm sorry that it's one of those old boring ones. But you know, it's appropriate. You'll see. Ready? Where's my pitch pipe? I forgot it at Tassajara. Do we have a pitch pipe? OK, I don't know. Anyway, let's see. Old Man River, that Old Man River He must know somethin' but don't say nothin' He just keeps rollin' He keeps on rollin' along

[54:40]

He don't plant taters. He don't plant cotton. And damn that plansome is soon forgotten. But old man River, he just keeps rolling along. You and me, we sweat and strain, body all aching and wracked with pain. Tote that barge, lift that bale, get a little drunk and you land in jail. I gets weary and sick of trying.

[55:48]

I'm tired of living and scared of dying. But, oh, Mad River, He just keeps rolling along. Thank you, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. And what's his name? Paul Robeson. THANKS FOR JOINING US.

[56:46]

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