Sunday, March 23, 2025

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Santa Barbara Zen Center. Great to see you all. It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker this morning via Zoom. You will be hearing from Charlie Korin Pokorny. Charlie was ordained as a priest by Reb Anderson in 1999 and received dharma transmission in 2018. He practiced as a resident at Tassajara and Green Gulch Farm and studied koans with Daniel Taranio. Charlie and his partner Sarah served as head priests at Stone Creek Zen Center from 2014 to 2022, and they are currently dharma teachers at Brooklyn Zen Center. Charlie also teaches courses through the Institute of Buddhist Studies at Berkeley. This morning, Charlie's title — and he can clarify this — is "Everyone Is a Light." So, Charlie, welcome. It's really great to have you with us.

Charlie Korin Pokorny: Thank you very much. Well, good morning to you — it's kind of afternoon here. Thank you very much for having me.

I want to start by bringing up some inquiries that I'm practicing with. These would include: What is the ground of my life? What is the ground of our life together with all beings? How do I care for this ground? Or we could also say, what is my center? What am I really here for? And how do I live from a sense of the shared miracle and dignity of being alive — and how this isn't actually an individual thing, this isn't something I can do by myself?

I'm not really looking for an idea with these inquiries, or philosophy, or answers, but something embodied, felt, intimate. And so there's this request bringing me to practice — to feel into this ground, and just for this ground to be expressed in my daily relations and my daily struggles and my moral commitments.

What's resourcing me to meet suffering — my own, others', collective suffering? What's sustaining me in meeting the pain and harm, the dehumanization and violence of this time, in a way that's informed by compassion and courage and clarity and fortitude? That's actually resilience.

So with these inquiries, I'd like to bring up a koan. This is a Zen story from a Zen teacher named Yunmen, who lived 864 to 949 in China. On a few occasions, he would address the assembly at the monastery where he taught and he would say: "Everyone has a light. When you look at it, you don't see it, and it's dark and dim. What is everybody's light?"

Maybe I'll just say that again: Everyone has a light. When you look at it, you don't see it, and it's dark and dim. What is everybody's light?

He's offering this affirmation — everyone has a light. Light is an image. I would say sometimes we also hear this concept in Buddha nature, or true nature, or original awakening. Sometimes we meet other expressions in Zen: your original face before you were born, or the treasure buried right beneath your feet, or true self, or unborn Buddha mind.

Suzuki Roshi — Shunryu Suzuki — brought the lineage of Soto Zen that's practiced through San Francisco Zen Center and the branching streams that come from it. He brought that lineage to California over 50 years ago. He talks about how your practice is not getting things to put in your basket. It's more like finding something in your sleeve — like finding a light, finding an invaluable jewel that's somehow already there. And this isn't something we can force. It's not really a result of doing or getting or figuring something out. It's not something we make. And we can't see it — we look for it, it's dark and dim. And yet it's like this source, this real resource of compassion, connection, freedom, wisdom, love, creativity.

So how to care for this light? How is it to be grounded in, to sit still in, to be resourced in the presence of — everyone has a light? And part of caring for this is inquiring. He also says, what is everybody's light? This was something he wanted people to ask — not just once, but as a lifetime inquiry.

The way we have it translated, and I think this reflects the Chinese: everyone has a light. But part of how I don't see it is it's not really something I have. It's not a thing at all. It's not really deep inside. It's not outside.

The Nirvana Sutra, a very important sutra for Buddha nature teaching in China — part of the context in which Yunmen offers his teaching — says all beings have Buddha nature. And Dogen, who founded Soto Zen in Japan, a 13th century teacher, took this teaching from the Nirvana Sutra — all beings have Buddha nature — and he turned it: all beings, whole being is Buddha nature. All beings, whole being is Buddha nature.

So it's not a something. It's also not fixed. If I try to see it, it's dark and dim. It's like an ungraspable wholeness, and we're in it together. In the sense of this light, you're whole. We are whole, and we can't become more or less whole. But I can doubt, or I can turn away from my wholeness. And I can also let go of doubt. Doubt can relax, and sitting upright and fully awake, I can relax totally into this wholeness.

A deep root of suffering — in some ways for Zen, the root of suffering is losing sense of my wholeness. Or, the other way this happens: getting involved in appearances of separation, isolation, disconnection. This is what grasping gives me. All my knowing — how things appear through knowing — is with some experience of separation. And so that's the root of suffering.

I can't really address the root of suffering within the branches of suffering. Through knowing and grasping, I can find all sorts of things I might fix or change about myself to relieve suffering. But those would be approaches based on elaborations of suffering, and they're just going to perpetuate suffering in this root sense. There are some kinds of problems that can be solved and fixed and changed. But the root, the ground — it's not the fixing kind. That changing mind can't address it. It won't help me there. I can't see it, it's dark and dim.

So what's an approach based on the light, based on wholeness? How am I resourced by this ungraspable wholeness — by a light I can't see?

Sometimes I feel like this is sort of a hard sell. There are so many wonderful and exciting things to grasp or to get or to consume. And Zen is over here saying, well, we have this liberating light, but it can't be grasped. It can't be apprehended.

And I can look at all these wonderful and exciting things I can grasp — are any of them a reliable resource for sustaining love and fulfillment and engagement? How do any of these things really resource me in what I'm really here for?

There are lots of things I might want. In Brooklyn, sometimes I have a desire for a bigger apartment. You might have a desire for a nicer home. Sometimes we might have desires for more wealth. I really like doughnuts — sometimes I would like an amazing doughnut. I've had pain in my back, so sometimes I'd like less pain. Or better health, good health. All these things are totally fine. It's fine that these things might make me happier for a little while. But they're not really the joy of the bodhisattva. They're not really the joy of practice. They're not the enjoyment of this light. And the joy of compassion lives in a kind of pain that I feel for people and beings I love when they suffer — and that's a pain — and the joy of connection, of relationship, of shared truth, and of this wholeness. All beings, whole being is Buddha nature.

Suzuki Roshi also taught: try not to see something in particular. Try not to achieve anything special. You already have everything in your own pure quality.

This one really speaks to me. Everyone has a light. Everyone is a light. When I really appreciate this, when I open to this, when it becomes the ground of my life, when my trust in this light grows and deepens — it's not that my suffering goes away. It's not that my pain and difficulty go away. They don't. They're actually part of the wholeness. It's only by completely embracing them that I can open to the wholeness. I can't open to the wholeness while only attending to segments or fragments of my life. But when I open to this wholeness, I'm resourced to meet my suffering and to open liberation with suffering.

And so freedom is not escapist. Sometimes when people talk to me about their meditation practice, they say, "This period of meditation was really good — I was just really calm, it was very pleasant, there was no pain, it was very easeful." And I'm like, well, that sounds like a nice vacation. And then someone comes and tells me, "My meditation was really bad. I just kept seeing over and over again that I'm getting caught in my thinking, and then this other thing came along, and I remembered I was angry about this thing." And I'm like, that sounds great. You're seeing all of that, and to start seeing that and including that in Zazen — that is our path.

So the freedom that we have in Zen is right here and includes everything right here. This is the practice of being fully present. It's not that I'm getting rid of a bunch of stuff I don't like and then being fully present. And it's also not a transactional thing — I'll be fully present, all the stuff I don't like will go away. It's completely embracing everything that's here, that's my life, that's this moment.

Suzuki Roshi emphasized no gaining idea. It's also a teaching in Dogen, but Suzuki Roshi really emphasized it — this is how I'm present. If this moment is for the sake of another moment, I'm not fully here. This moment is completely for the sake of this moment. I'm not practicing to get anywhere. You could also say this is trusting intimate presence. I'm not being present as a strategy. It's not part of a program, it's not a step, it's not a mediation — it is the whole thing. Intimate presence. A willingness, a fuller and fuller willingness, to be present and feel thoroughly.

So each of us, just as we are, is spiritually whole. And this wholeness is not in contradiction to whatever pain and suffering are here. Part of what I feel like we're doing in Zen is growing a kind of faith or trust in just being here, and wholeheartedly being this person.

In a sense, it's a simple thing to just tune into the breath, to just feel into the body. And in a sense, that's it. And to do this with more and more trust. If I'm tuning into my breath in a transactional way, or as part of a program, or if I'm feeling into my body in that way, I'm not fully trusting. I'm kind of using it — thinking, well, that can't be it, it's that and then it's that to get over there. But totally being here is total trust, just being present.

So tending to the breath, feeling into the body, being resourced by the light, by inherent wholeness, inherent belonging — unconditional belonging of this person in the universe — and including whatever parts of myself don't seem to fit, whatever things I don't like, whatever imperfections, whatever odd particularities, all completely embraced and included.

I also see this as a deep befriending. Whatever's here. I might have this intention — I just want to be present — and then I might have lots of resistance to what I'm finding. Befriend the resistance. Include the resistance. That is here, that is part of my wholeness.

One way of talking about being here completely is unconditional love — a love with no conditions, nothing needs to change to be here. How friendly can I be with whatever's hard right now? How am I fully here to be with the breath, completely with the breath, to be with the breath the way the breath is with the breath? To be with the body the way the body is with the body? To be with pain the way pain is with pain? To be your posture, to be your breathing.

So I'm relaxing into my body. I'm resting in the light. This isn't a knowing thing. I'm not being with my breath the way knowing regards my breath. I'm not being in the body the way knowing regards the body. I'm letting go of that knowing. I don't have to get rid of it — it just becomes part of the scenery. It's not the medium.

And right here I also want to bring up what I see as a different kind of agency or power. An immediate embodied intimacy has this agency. It's not necessarily the agency of controlling and managing something external to myself, which is sometimes what we mean when we think of agency. But there's an agency of being part of this moment. And sometimes when I feel disempowered, I'm caught by separation, caught by disconnection. I'm not in my body. And then things and events and people and certain actions can make me feel small and anxious and helpless. Growing intimate presence in my body, I can find agency and freedom right here. And when I'm intimate, nothing can make me feel small unless I give it that power. And when I'm intimate, no one can make me hate them unless I give them that power. So the light has a function in the world that I can't grasp — how it lives.

In February, my son Loka, who's 13 years old, got really bad pneumonia and other complications, and he was in the pediatric ICU for almost two weeks. It was pretty scary and uncomfortable for him. My partner Sarah basically accompanied him the whole time, and I would go over for a few hours almost every day. He loves video games. Normally we have fairly strict limits — two hours max on Saturday and Sunday. But in this situation, he's attached to all these tubes, he didn't even stand up for over a week, there's breathing apparatus — it was not a fun place to be. So it was like, go for it. Basically all he did for two weeks was rest and play video games.

I would visit, and I'd show up and I'd be really happy to see him and I'd want to talk — how are you doing, what's going on? But he'd just be like, "Oh, hi," and then back to video games. I might ask him a question and not even get a response. I'd be lucky if I got the "hi." I might try a few more times while I was there, but pretty much it was just video games — that seemed to be taking up all his attention. So I'd leave eventually.

One time, he was doing a little bit better — he just had more life in him, though he was losing weight and didn't look good. But that day he was doing better. He said — and then he turned to me and in all seriousness said — "It was great to see you, Dad." This is not the kind of thing he normally says. And it was striking, because I thought: I didn't even know you saw me. I don't know if he did see me until that moment, actually.

Another time, I touched his shoulders as I was about to leave. He took my arm in both of his hands and said, "Are you coming back tomorrow?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm coming back. I'll be here."

So in my head, in my thinking, in my knowing, I'm looking at agency and impact and communication in terms of what I could know — verbal communication, an interchange, I say this and you say that, okay, we've heard each other. But there's this other thing happening where just being there meant a lot to him. He was in this scary, uncomfortable situation, and video games gave him some comfort, and also just being there, accompanying him — it meant a lot to him, actually.

So what do we offer? Is it just in the stuff I manage? Is it just in what I do and say? Is it just in what I apprehend? There can be a lot of agency and power and communication and sharing just in how we show up — aside from anything I might do or say from knowing and thinking.

And this speaks to me of this light and how this light lives in the world. I might have a mindset to fix or solve or change my suffering, and it's basically reactive — it ends up perpetuating my suffering. So what's a liberative movement?

To me, everyone has a light — and this inquiry, what is your light? — this is about a liberative movement and a different ground or basis for my life. And trusting that intimacy with suffering is the liberative movement. Trying to get away from suffering is the reactive movement that actually ends up perpetuating it. So to face and feel rather than resist and deny — that's a kind of pivot of freedom.

There's something of immeasurable value right here in your life as it is in this moment, without changing anything. And it can't be given or taken away or granted or withheld. And it can be appreciated. And it's the resource for how I could thrive in meeting hard stuff. The hard stuff actually shows me the depth and the meaning and the strength of my vow and my love, and it can bring us together. I can't do this on my own.

And so the sangha dimension — the community dimension of our practice — and part of Zazen being what it is — part of our practice is asking for help. That can be literally asking for help, but also just in Zazen, asking for help. That gesture — not the response, and whether the response is what I expect or not — but the gesture of asking for help. That's this practice of everyone has a light.

We're not just random slivers or accidental fragments of the universe. Each of us is a light, a wholeness. And our light, our wholeness, reflects the wholeness of the universe. And each of our wholenesses reflects each of our wholenesses. Each of us is a light.

So I think there's time for anything you'd like to express — questions, or just welcome anything you'd like to bring up or share.

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Question: Thank you, Charlie, for this talk. I still remember you talking about radical friendliness, and I've noticed a couple of reflections on that in this current one. So is friendliness a liberative movement too, in your opinion? Does the act of being friendly correlate with this liberative movement? What do you think?

Charlie Korin Pokorny: Yeah. The way I want to talk about friendliness as a practice of Zazen — I see it as a liberative movement in my life. And I see it especially with the stuff I might have a hard time with, like fear, or anxiety, or grief, or anger. Actually, befriending is the liberative movement. And befriending, the way I'm talking about it, is becoming whole with these.

I'm not meaning befriending in a way that might be indulgent. When I befriend my anger, it's not that I'm just going to go and be angry. It's more like I have a friend, and one of my friends is anger, and I want to take care of my friend and walk with my friend through this life and help my friend find helpful ways to be expressed. Same with my fear, same with my anxiety. To feel these completely — that's this kind of friendliness.

And to not have that sneaky transactional acceptance, which is like: I'll accept this so it'll go away, I'll accept this so it won't be a problem anymore. That's not really friendly. That's not real friendliness. Real friendliness is like: I welcome you here forever.

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Question: Thank you for your talk today, Charlie. It was really wonderful to listen to you. In Zen I feel like a lot of the time we talk about letting go and letting everything be here that arises, and don't push anything away. But in real life — outside of coming here every two weeks — it's very difficult. We have deadlines to meet, some of us have work we have to wake up and go to, projects to finish. I'm just wondering how you kind of reconcile being able to let everything happen, but also in day-to-day life being able to go to the doctor, visit your son, go to life and to work, put food on the table, get all these things done — but at the same time just let everything happen. How do you not get too lazy? How do you not get too caught up in finishing tasks? I was wondering if you had any thoughts about that.

Charlie Korin Pokorny: Yeah. Practically speaking, there's a whole bunch of stuff we need to do, and it can be kind of agenda-driven. And it's more difficult to be fully present when I'm involved in an activity that's getting something done. And so that's part of the reason, I think, why we need Zazen. We need something where we can be totally unproductive. Actually, that's the whole point of this — a big part of what we're doing here is: I'm going to give up being productive and getting anything done. And I'm going to be devoted to that. This is the time I'm devoted to being present. And then there'll be the rest of my life, where I constantly need to get things done.

And to start feeling that — start feeling into what it's like to do something for the sake of getting it done. If I'm really, totally doing that — if I'm just trying to get through this activity to get to the place where it's done — I'm not appreciating the light, or my life, or what I'm doing.

And so, just start tuning into that. Start turning into: what do I really want? And actually, yes, I need to put dinner on the table and do the dishes and get over to the hospital — and every step and every dish and every thing I'm cooking, I can be present there. I am here. We are here together. I'm here with and relating to this dish, relating to this food, relating to walking around New York City. So yeah, every step of the way is this chance to be present.

It's hard. But I think we have this formal practice, dedicated time. And I would recommend developing a daily sitting practice if you haven't already. Sometimes people are too busy, and I say to people: just five or ten minutes, even a time where this is — I'm going to devote myself to presence. That helps us. And also just bringing our intention to: I want to be present.

A traditional contemplation in Zen is to remember we're not here forever. We're definitely going to die. And so if I'm living my life for the sake of another day, and eventually there are going to be no more days — when do I show up for my life? And also kind of the idea here is that it doesn't get better or worse. It might get more or less comfortable. But from the point of view of liberation and the light and practice, this is perfect. This is perfect to practice. Every day is a good day to practice. Every moment is a good moment to practice, to be here.

Does that speak to you?

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Question: Hi, Charlie. I have been recently working with and talking about finding my question — finding the organizing thing that keeps me practicing — even to the point of the question coming: why am I practicing? What is the practice doing? And watching that transactional impulse to get something out of it instead of just expressing this light.

So I want to hear you talk a little more about questions. You started your talk with so many great questions — each one was like a gem, like this could be my organizing question. And of course Yunmen came with a very good one: what is my light? And it does require some faith that the light is there, even if it's dim and dark. But the faith that it's there — then my question becomes, what do I do, what am I doing here?

There are just so many good questions. And I've been trying to encourage myself and people to find one that is not like a mantra, but is like a juicy investigation. I thought you brought up all these questions, and then the koan you brought up — which is the koan of our life — is a good question. So I just want to hear you talk a little bit about working with these questions, and sort of landing, or how you navigate that without getting too caught up in the response.

Charlie Korin Pokorny: I love inquiry. I love questions in practice. I feel a lot of inquiry in Dogen's writing and his writing about practice. I feel like he would ask all these questions that, for me, are practices — directing me into practice. He wasn't answering them. He doesn't want me to answer them. They're like tools. Here's where you dig. Just start digging. The inquiry is just like getting to work.

And I also feel like the question is actually Buddha nature expressing itself. And what brings me to practice is something doesn't feel right about this experience of separation and isolation, disconnection. Something doesn't feel right. That's Buddha nature — Buddha nature is saying that doesn't feel right. And then it's coming up against how this experience of separation has been woven into all my habits, all my thinking, all my values, all my reactions, all my reactivity, my views.

And so the inquiry is sort of coming up from the light, and it sort of wants me to appreciate the light rather than be caught, and to live the light, express the light. And these things are all kind of questions. And maybe they can have answers, but then the answer is just the answer of one moment, and it's still a question for the next moment — because there's no stopping. The light is going, it's like incessant activity, it's never static, it's never passive. And we aren't either. I think we could only be passive or static if we were separate, if we were things. But we're not things. We've never been things. We've always been a process.

Even if I think I'm doing nothing, every cell in my body is actually involved in all sorts of processes. All process.

So I love inquiry. I think it's great. And I kind of feel like answers are fine, but they're not places to hang out. Answers are beautiful when they arrive, and then they can just go on down the stream.

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Question: Hi, Charlie. I'm curious about koans and your study with koans — although I think you've answered my question a little bit. Would you mind commenting a little bit about koans with us?

Charlie Korin Pokorny: Koans are basically a story, or a quote, or something, or even just some poetry. And if some Zen authority calls it a koan, it's a koan. And once you call something a koan, you're kind of saying — I feel like when somebody calls something a koan, they've made it into an inquiry in a way. Or they're saying: you might think you understand this, but this is something to sit with. There's something here, like the light is here. And if you try to see it, it's dark and dim, but the light is here.

To call something a koan is to request a different kind of attention than a thinking, conceptual approach. Some koans are just walls if you try to think about them — just banging your head into a wall. And that's intentional. They're not for the thinking mind. And some actually are things you could think about, but even then, when we call it a koan, the invitation is: let go of thinking.

And koans became like the sutra of Zen — really the heart of Zen teaching. This goes back a thousand years. And over these past thousand years, in different cultural contexts — China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan — people have been picking up Zen koans and doing different things with them. So there are many different ways of working with koans.

For instance, the koan study I did with Daniel Taranio — this is a stream from the Diamond Sangha that also has basis in Japan and mostly Rinzai Zen — a way of working with koans that usually involves studying many koans, one at a time.

Another way of studying a koan is to study one koan for your whole life, which is also very common. You're basically cultivating doubt or a yearning to know, where you reject any resolution of the doubt. Anything that softens your question about this koan — basically you want all of your questions and all of your doubt about life to go into this doubt about this koan and not let it resolve until everything resolves. That's also a Rinzai approach and very important in Korean Zen.

Soto Zen, I'd say, is more informal. Koans are just like launching pads for inquiry and discourse, and you can do anything you want with a koan. You can play with it. It can be very open. And Dogen does really wild things with koans that no one ever did before. He's a really good example of that. I think you just start with a koan and see what happens, and see if the koan can be a way for the light to be turned and expressed and addressed.

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Question: I have a comment. I was thinking about Mu throughout your talk — I don't know how much that was intentional. I've been working with Mu for 55 or 60 years now, and I'm still doing it, and I'm waiting for the next question. It was Robert Aitken's practice and the Aitani's practice. And you just suddenly liberated me — it doesn't matter. I can live with Mu the rest of my life.

Charlie Korin Pokorny: Wow. It's done. Talk about ending on a high note.