Meet our life with grandmotherly eyes

Abbot Ryushin Paul Haller at San Francisco Zen Center, December 9, 2006 Download from SFZC's Audio Dharma page (donate)

“soft grandmotherly eyes” • “more inclined toward compassion than criticism” • human history: oh that’s a good idea! let’s go! • “sit down and you just watch yourself go and then you get up and watch yourself go” • “zazen is not a process in which you stop doing, zazen is a process in which we wake up to doing” • like the rules of formal poetry • “do it exactly like this and see what’s happening” • being undone by our own doing • the five ranks • don’t be so caught up in the stories you tell yourself • “our so-called waking life’s actually not that different [from dreams] except that in our waking life we confuse ourselves by thinking this is real . . . no, it’s a magnificent mistake . . . truly magnificent, but truly not the only truth in town” • how are you going to learn how to be you? by being you • could this day be some turning point in your life? • who gets the most out of practice? • laying down a burden • letting the water of a new life flow • maybe being you isn’t such a terrible affliction after all