Being real

Thank you for listening to UPIA's Dharma podcast, an extraordinary series of talks from some of the finest teachers in the world. I'm Joan Halifax, founder of the UPIA's End Center, and we're happy to make these podcasts available to you. Please consider making a donation so we can offer these recordings freely. You'll find a donation button on our podcast page. And thank you so much. This is Dharma Podcast at DharmaPodcast.org. This is episode number 2661. It was recorded on September 16th, 2026, and it is titled Being Real. The speaker for this episode is Frank Ostasezki. Nice to be with you all. I see old faces of old friends. Very sweet to see you. I know a lot of you are staying on through the Kuroo Nacerco, which is really delightful. I'm really glad you're sticking around. I'm grateful to my old friend Roshi for showing up tonight. It's very kind of you to come. Noah gives introductions which are really hard to live up to. But I come to UPIA because Roshi asks me, and when she asks I try to come. But one of the reasons I come is to hang out with Noah, because I learn a lot about kindness from him. Some of you know Kathy Fisher. He's taught here a lot. We were together for something recently. I forget what it was. She was talking about Baker Roshi, and she said what she learned from Baker Roshi was to pick things up and put things down, to treat everything with respect. So tonight I wanted to try and talk about Being Real, one of my favorite pastimes. One of my old teachers was very fond of saying that Being Real is a risk and an adventure. I mean, what will be left when all the concepts are gone? I mean, who will we be? And how will we see the world? And what kind of feelings will we have? And how will we see other people? And how will they see us? How will my friends recognize me? We don't really know. There's no way to know. There's no way to find out what it's to do. So he would say sometimes Being Real happens when the noise has subsided and the complexities dissolve. And we are experiencing ourselves just as we are in the true condition. Not the reflection on that, not the picture of it, not the echo of it, not the memory of it, not the reaction to it. Being Real is what we are, what we truly are, what we experience in this very moment. And Being Real, at least, in my experience, doesn't require that we experience anything in particular. I think it's more about a way of being. Yeah. To be real means that we need to be able to live in a way that reflects reality, not what we truly are. So I don't know, but it seems to me at the heart of Buddha Dharma it's about reducing or transforming or ending suffering. And that comes about, it seems, through an ever-expanding awareness of reality and how it functions. So Zazen is an intimate and immediate way of being real. I was telling Noah that when my son was younger, high school, he'd go out to school and as he'd go out to do it, he'd say, keep it real, Dad, keep it real. And I never was quite sure what he meant, but it seems to me that to practice Being Real is the same as practicing Being One's self. What do you think? Yeah, that sound good? I made that up. Yeah. So to be real means we need to live in a way that reflects reality, the reality of who we are. To be real means I'm not pretending to be myself. I'm not being in reaction to someone or something else or to some image of me. Yeah, if we're honest, then I hope we'll be honest tonight. Will you promise to do that? Okay. So I hope we'll be honest with each other tonight. And I think that if we really are true, truly honest, most of us often are living in the idea or the story of ourselves that we sort of toss out into the future and then we try and live into. Instead of being real, instead of living in this fresh moment. So I don't know, I was thinking about this, and I thought the best approach to Being Real is to learn how to be where we are, whatever we are experiencing in any moment in time. It's all a manifestation of the nature. And if we allow our experience, if we embrace it, if we hold it, if we allow ourselves to feel it rather than resisting it, well, then we give it the space to unfold, to show itself. And when we do that, it naturally unfolds because that's the nature of our true nature. So the thing I wanted to really talk about tonight is that to me Being Real indicates some measure of self-love. Kind of a love of what we are, actually. And so we want to move toward it, you know? We want to move toward what's real in us. It's not something beyond us, you know? It's not something that we don't know. It's actually something that we've tasted. And because we've tasted it, I think, we want to come closer to it. And that, to me, at least is a wholesome wanting. A love balanced by wisdom and appreciation that I think is essential in our spiritual practice. I think without love, I think we're on the risk of doing the practice for the wrong reasons. So I'm not speaking about some egocentric self-cherishing, you know? I'm really something, ain't I? Yeah. Where we have an attitude about ourselves and others. It's not about claiming or anyone or anything. At least it doesn't seem so to me. This love is all-inclusive. It's the motivation and the fuel for the journey. And it's inseparable from the realization. So does this make any sense to you so far? Sure. Some of you? Yeah, okay. The others, maybe you'll get there. I'll get, maybe I'll get there. Better way to say it. So when we slow down, you know, we settle into the stillness of our practice, into the lived experience of this, oh my precious human life. We recognize that we love this quality of realness for its own sake, not because of what it does for us. So we want to be real because we love the experience of being real, of being completely who we are. No part left out. We love reality. We like all the manifestations. We love reality. I love reality. And I love to feel it, to see it, to swim in it, to be it as much as possible. Because us, it's not about our preferences being met, or because we realize some special attainment, or we know something that other people don't know. I don't think I do it because it's good for me. So all those things might happen. We might attain special states. You know, we might have some remarkable experiences. We might become wiser. But we also know that being real means allowing unexperienced pain to surface. So we need to be, we need to love actually being genuine and real in order to go through the trouble and the discipline of inner work. Because it's not so easy, right? I'm just looking to you for verification. Yeah, okay. You know, the vipassana teacher Christina Feldman used to say, the eight-fold path is a rocky road. It's uncomfortable in a liberating way. So I don't meditate to become a good person or a spiritual person or an idealized version of me. I meditate to be real. No reality. And if we're interested in being real, we naturally become interested in becoming as clear as possible about the experience of reality. However, it's showing us. I wonder how it's showing itself, rather. So if I'm feeling anxiety or anger, I'm aware of it, right? Not from some distance, not like a bird on my shoulder or something, but directly feeling the emotional state, right? Observing the activity of mind and the related attitude of mind and the physical manifestations and discerning the three marks of existence and the nature of what's happening as it's happening. But when mindfulness stays firm and it's noticing, it penetrates right into the object, and it can immerse itself in the breath, for example. I quite literally pervade the breath, right? Live inside the breath. It's a fully embodied presence, being real. And through it, we understand that there's no separation between body, heart, and mind. This means awareness receives and knows directly, intimately. Awareness knows through immediacy. And to me, at least, love of truth is essential in that process. When you love someone, you want to find out everything about them. Do you remember any of you remember falling in love? Yeah? You want to know everything about them, don't you? You want to be intimate with them. I have a friend of mine, and he fell in love well back, and he lived in the United States, the person he fell in love with lived in the Netherlands. And so I said, well, how's that working out? And he said, oh, it's great. It's really great. I talked to her last night for eight hours. I said, eight hours? You talked to her on the phone for eight hours? He said, yeah, it's fantastic. It was really great. Wow. I mean, supposedly brought that same curiosity to knowing ourselves. I mean, who knows what that actually even means? I mean, how are you going to try and be yourself? I mean, it's not like you've got a stack of shelves on the shelves somewhere, and you just pick one down and become it. Being aware of who you are can only arise from the love of being where you are. I don't think there's anything particularly esoteric in this. I mean, right now, you're experiencing something, aren't you? I mean, go ahead. Try to not be aware. See if you can do it. You can't. Don't make a big deal out of it. If you're sensing something, you're experiencing something, pressure of your body against the cushion, right, of the chair, sound of my voice, air in the room, some emotional flavor, maybe. Appreciation, one could hope, or complete boredom, maybe. This is natural awareness, being conscious of the present experience. I was thinking as we were all coming and settling into the hall, the beautiful soundscape of Zen practice. You know, the bells and the Han, shuffling of feet on the floor and creaking of chairs and slipped sliding of socks. I mean, I'm just speaking about consciousness at the six sense stores, six sense pieces, ear consciousness, eye consciousness, nose consciousness, etc., right? Ear consciousness, it just simply reflects or registers the presence of a sound, just like a mirror reflects an image that it's held before it. Consciousness, nose. Mental factors, you know, like craving and aversion, big three, they're unwholesome qualities and they obstruct the clear seeing. They continue ignorance, they can really obscure our consciousness. And then there's mental factors like interest and tranquility, and they're wholesome and lead us to wisdom. So mindfulness is that enhanced quality of mind that's wholesome. And when mindfulness is present, it's always wholesome. Always wholesome. Because it includes the quality of acceptance. Mindfulness is this steady, unwavering remembering. Remembering the present, remembering intention, remembering as an anchor. Years ago, one of my teachers, Joseph Goldstein, he used to say, mindfulness doesn't wobble. That was his way of talking about it. He said, you know, normal mind is like a quark on the water, he would say. And mindfulness is like a stone that you drop that can go deep. And it can maintain continuous contact with an object. It's a vehicle of mindfulness for growing in wisdom. Oh my, I sometimes get too attached to my words. So a few things to keep in mind in being real. Bringing awareness to the present moment, every moment, moment by moment. That means paying attention to what's going on. Don't make a big deal. Simply ask, what am I aware of in the moment? What am I sensing, feeling, observing? It can't be where we are if we're not aware of where we are. So what's the truth of your experience right now? You won't recognize where we are if we're resisting being where we are. So the other practical suggestion I have is, keep your hands off your experience. You know, we're so busy meddling with our experience. Our ordinary minds complicate things. However you experience yourself, whatever rises in your awareness, leave it alone. See, it's trying to do something to yourself. I mean, keep your hands off your inner experiences. No need to manipulate it or change it. Please learn to leave yourself alone. One of the things Noah was saying, I did a lot of work with people who are dying. One of the things I learned was to sit next to people and not mess with them. Not try and help them have some experience, you know, or meet someone else's agenda, including their own. Just sit with them. It was often the most beautiful thing to do that. How exquisite it was to have that kind of relationship with each other. Roshi and I are allergic to the term a good death. Because, you know, it's hard enough to die. It's hard work. And you know, then if you're trying to do it in accordance with someone else's agenda or their, what they think should be happening, oh my, that's a lot to lay on somebody in their time of dying. I mean, imagine you were with a person or a group of people that were telling you what to do all the time. I mean, how would you feel when you want to be free of them? I mean, often in our meditation practice, we develop these habits that we think will make us more spiritual. But if you're trying to change yourself to reach some special spiritual state, or to have some particular experience, you're interfering. You're pushing consciousness in a direction. I mean, isn't it true? I have this. I have this. You may or may not have this. But I have it. I have this. I don't know. Create this idea where I think I should be, what I think I should be doing, or how I should be experiencing something. And then I use that idea to not be where I am. Any of you do that? Yeah. So we can be guided by the way natural awareness relates to whatever's happening. It doesn't do anything. It simply knows by being with it. It doesn't control. It doesn't direct. By knowing in this way, you develop insight. And when I say being with it, it's not like you're being with something separate, even. If you look carefully, you'll see that, you know, the object and awareness, they arise together. So to be where we are is a kind of form of surrender. You know, we surrender to whatever's happening. I don't take a position for or against anything. I'm feeling something and I don't like it. I see my aversion. I don't try to chase it away. How will I know anything about aversion if I chase it away? Awareness simply relaxes with a balance of effort, embracing the immediacy of the sensing of the feeling of the observing. And that's a kind of surrender. Now even there, you know, we have to really watch it. And we got to keep our hands off because what starts to happen is we start to say to ourselves, oh, that was really good surrendering. I wonder how I could get that again. How are you going to do that? How are you going to force yourself to surrender? Surrender means non-doing. Surrender is not an activity. The absence of control, the lack of manipulation that allows for what's happening to unfold to be known. We have to remain aware of what's happening. Our awareness will elude us. Meditation is something we practice, but ultimately engaging in inner practice and living life are not two separate things. Being real, learning to be real, that's our practice in every moment. And it leads to living a real life. And as we see the nature of the experience, we're seeing more truth. And each time we see what's true, more truth reveals itself. And so love of truth is essential in this process. I think the world needs more real human beings. Okay, I've said a lot of words. I hope I haven't exhausted you. But I'd like to take a few moments if we could to just see what's on your hearts and minds. Maybe you want to tell me a way that you interfere with the experience of meditation. Or maybe you want to share with me how you're open to your experience right now. I don't know. Or maybe you'd disagree with everything I said. That'd be okay. Would that be being real? Sorry? Would that be being real? I don't know. You'll know it. It's just that it came up for me this often. If somebody says to you, I want you to be real with me. It means I want you to give me your opinion. Your unvarnished opinion about something. Oh yeah. I'm just wondering how that goes for you. Well, in such situations, I try not to answer. Because usually they don't. They don't. Yeah. So I almost always, as you know, answer the question. So what do you think they're actually looking for from you? You're asking me? Yeah. Maybe to be seen, to feel like they're real. Their reality is being witnessed. Yeah, maybe. I mean, you know, first thing, you got to be completely yourself. Totally yourself, right? And to be anything for them, the whole situation is lost, right? So you got to be totally yourself, completely yourself. And maybe by doing that and not doing anything, they will recognize the opportunity to be totally themselves. And then maybe together you could be real. Good enough? I have more, but let other people speak with you. If you have something else you want to, should we let them go on? No, no. Yeah, he's doing great. I just, there's a, when you say, you know, we're real with each other. Yeah. Again, it comes up. It's like, okay, then I'm going to tell you what I think or what I feel. But the thoughts and opinions that are arising aren't really who I am. So then if I'm being real and I'm letting myself be who I am, is it not just giving voice to whatever thought I'm making? Giving voice to whatever thoughts and opinions I feel identified with? It sounded like from your presentation, it's more about not buying into those or not kind of giving those opinions. Yeah. I mean, they're coming and going, right? All those things you were just describing, sounds, I mean, thoughts and feelings, et cetera. To be real is to align with reality. You know, not just blabber out whatever's coming through our hearts and minds. To be real is to be grounded in reality. To know I am this. That I'm not just my opinions and views. Well, what this person needs me to be in this moment or wants me to be in this moment. You know, it is when you do dokka-san and you're doing dokka-san with Roshi or someone you have a high regard for. Maybe you can man with all kinds of things and it's their stillness that's an expression of their alignment with reality. Pretty much always. It's all this required. Remember that wonderful teacher we all were with in Japan who did one minute dokka-san? I had a sense he was pretty real with the people who came through because he was real with himself. Real with reality. I mean, it's a funny word we're using real. Because we think it's about being a particular way. It just means I am aligned with reality. Okay. Maybe somebody else has a comment. Thank you for your time. So we have nine more minutes and if people have a question, please speak into the microphone so we can all hear. Did you see a hand? Fai-yi. Um, I recently become one of the steward of the kitchen and I find my zazen deteriorating pretty bad. In the sense my new reality is sitting there doing kitchen planning instead of sitting zazen. So I'm hearing when you answer the question, when you say real, you do not mean the reality that is happening at the moment, but aligned with what zazen is all about. Then I have to yank myself out of those planning. I don't know. I mean, the planning is going on, right? And you're figuring out the next menu. Thank you for doing that, by the way. It really helps all of us. It's a really big gift you give all of us. And maybe especially generous that you give us some of your zazen time. That's really gracious of you. I remember Ed Brown, I think it was talking about this. I can't remember, but he was saying he was doing the same thing you were doing. And he was going on and on and on. And then he realized, oh my God, I spent my whole period of zazen planning menus. You know? Yeah. Oh, I could have been doing zazen. You know, that's what he thought. And then he got up and made the meal. You know, is it just, that's how it was. That's how it is. You know, Ed spent all his time in zazen planning the m