This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome. Thank you for coming out to Green Gulch on such a cold and foggy day. It's wonderful to see you all. Here I was so eager to get in here and give the Dharma talk, beat the third roll down of the bell and had to kind of stand at the back of the mat for a while and then continue to be so eager that I did three full prostrations before offering incense and then did them again afterwards. So I fully prostrated now and ready to give the talk. I'm probably going to need all the help I can get from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as I give the talk. I often feel that way, that the best way to give a talk is just to try and make oneself kind of available as a vessel for the Dharma to come through.

[01:09]

And that kind of the more I feel like I'm giving the talk or I'm trying to give the talk, the more astray I go. But the danger of that is in thinking that, well, I don't have to do anything. not preparing not knowing what i'm going to say so it's kind of this fine edge right between what's what's my role and um and how do i get out of the way i do feel like the weather has turned um colder more recently i've definitely felt it at uh here at green gulch green dragon temple the last week there's a kind of nip in the air kind of bite in the air that wasn't there before and even though Maybe out in Mill Valley. Yesterday I was out in Mill Valley and it was still beautiful, sunny, kind of almost eerie. On the seasonably kind of warm day still, there's that kind of coldness entering the season. And I think the farm's done going to market.

[02:13]

So kind of the main harvest time here at Green Gulch is over. There's still some food coming off the farm that will subsist on during the winter. late fall and winter, but the kind of bulk of the harvest season is done. So it does feel like this time of kind of seasonal change heading into the darker, colder time of the year. And there's a kind of beauty in the season, but kind of poignancy too. Perhaps it's no surprise. And then also this week is Halloween, right? A holiday, though, maybe in its current incarnation, has kind of lost connection with this kind of root connection with the season, but it feels very much connected to this time of seasonal change.

[03:14]

As many of you may know, Halloween is short for All Hallows' Eve. And kind of marks the time in the Christian liturgical calendar where there's a kind of turning toward and paying homage to and praying for the dead. I guess November 1st is All Saints Day. And so that's kind of, that's All Hallows Day. So the evening before the 31st, All Hallows Eve. And then November 2nd is All Souls Day. So I guess on the 1st, practices to kind of pay homage and respect and venerate the saints, and then on the second to pray for those unsettled souls that are still kind of seeking peace. And so Halloween does have this kind of Christian root, but even the Christian holiday, I think, has kind of pre-Christian origins. Apparently it's maybe grew out of kind of

[04:20]

Celtic harvest festivals, so pre-Christian festivals having to do with the harvest, kind of Gaelic and Welsh influence, where this time of year was considered kind of a more liminal space, a more liminal time, or the veils between the material world, the everyday world. physical, material world, and the spiritual world were kind of thinner and more porous, and the time when the spirits were more active and could more easily make their presence known. And I guess it was customary in various kind of festivals and celebrations at this time of year to offer food to the spirits, maybe in part also to propitiate them, to get their... and support in making sure that the people and the livestock kind of survived the winter season.

[05:21]

And I guess it was also a time when it was considered that souls could kind of return to the earth. So often in these festivals or customs, these holidays around this time, a place was set out at home at the dining table or by the fire for the souls of the dead to kind of make them welcome comfort them and have them have a place back at home. I kind of say all this because I have some intention today of talking about a kind of Buddhist holiday, Buddhist ceremony that we'll be practicing here next Sunday, where we too kind of make offerings to the dead and kind of recognize And I was talking with someone about this recently, and they were saying that even in pre-classical Greece, there were, again, this time of year, kind of the end of the harvest, festivals of offering to the dead, offering ambrosia, in fact, to the dead, which is what we offer as well.

[06:30]

Our ceremony is part of our sermon is called opening the ambrosial gates, you know, and offering the ambrosia of the Dharma or teachings. So this idea of offering ambrosia or some kind of sweet, easily digestible food to departed ones is kind of very ancient, very ancient tradition, cross-cultural, kind of feels kind of deep in the human psyche, kind of archetypal kind of experience. Of course, there's also Mexican Day of the Dead, which also apparently has roots in Aztec culture. So again, kind of ancient culture. get the same practice at the end of the harvest season. There seems to be some kind of important kind of human psychological need to make this kind of connection. So, as I said, I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, the kind of Buddhist tradition around this, the Buddhist ceremony that we'll be doing here and a little bit about its

[07:35]

kind of origin and history, and maybe it's meaning for us. How do we make this accessible for us and make it meaningful and kind of relevant? That's particularly a time where we don't pay so much credence or don't, you know, to spirits or ghosts. We mostly think of that as superstition, and so how is this meaningful to us? How does this speak to us? So the ceremony that we'll be performing next Sunday afternoon, I think around five or so, is called Sajiki, which I think means food offering. So again, it has these same kind of elements from these other cultures of offering food. When I first came to Zen Center, the ceremony was called Sagaki, which I think meant feeding hungry ghosts. So it's kind of changed from feeding hungry ghosts to simply offering food. which maybe has a kind of more peaceful kind of feeling to it. I think partly the name has changed also because sagaki maybe was a colloquial term in Japan used to refer to the homeless.

[08:42]

And so there's maybe something feeling kind of disrespectful about using that term or something like that. But I think also making the emphasis a little bit less on the hungry ghosts kind of restless unsettled unsatisfied energy of hungry ghosts and more about offering kind of actually gets us more in touch with the kind of peaceful healing quality and uh potential of the of the ceremony um so i thought i would maybe just describe the ceremony a little bit um so we get a feeling for what we're doing also we're in the midst of a practice period We just started a practice period here a couple weeks ago, so quite a few students here for a kind of more intensive time of kind of meditation and study, and they'll all be in the ceremony and supporting the ceremony, so I thought it might be helpful also in that context to talk a little bit about what we'll be doing together next week. So the ceremony is unusual in one way, right away, in that it's oriented in the opposite way of most of our...

[09:51]

So typically, if we're doing a ceremony in the zendo, the ceremony is oriented toward the main altar where Shakyamuni Buddha sits and where Manjushri is. It has many lights and candles and flowers. It has a kind of radiant quality. And so we normally orient ourselves toward the altar. And when we do ceremonies, they're oriented toward the altar. But for the Sajiki ceremony, we actually turn our backs to the altar. We're facing away from the altar, and the altar is dark. There's no light coming from the altar. And the ceremony has another unusual element in that we make loud, kind of cacophonous sounds to actually call the spirits to the ceremony. So again, normally we're quite silent in the Zendo. You know, there's the occasional big bell, but basically there's a feeling kind of quiet in silence. But in the Sanjiki ceremony, we make these loud noises to call the spirits. And I guess the feeling there, the thinking, is that if there are spirits who have kind of restless or agitated energies, that they respond to restless and agitated energy or sound or quality.

[11:06]

So it's actually an alluring sound for them, a cacophonous sound for someone who's kind of agitated. They want to go toward that sound. Maybe it has something to do with our idea of, like, It's the kind of feeling of, like, maybe someone who's angry, kind of wanting to go pick a fight, actually looking for conflict, looking for difficulty. So there's that quality of wanting to create kind of a cacophonous environment that'll draw those with kind of agitated energy. And then once they've been invited in, we chant to, as I say, open the ambrosial gate. open the gate of sweet, do so that they can be offered pure and nourishing, sustaining food for their own well-being, and that they may perhaps in turn also offer it to others. And then we do a series of chants. basically again about kind of inviting the spirits and purifying the food, making it accessible to them, making them be able to eat it, and then offering it.

[12:13]

And then the ceremony also includes reading the names of the dead that we know, our loved ones and those close to us who have passed, either within the last year or even longer ago than that, their names that we read. Usually close family members, we read their names every year. And teachers and benefactors and important members of our community in Sangha, their names are also read every year. And this used to actually confuse me, these two elements of the ceremony. Particularly when the ceremony was called sagaki or feeding the hungry ghosts, and I thought it was mostly about, you know, kind of bringing in these hungry ghosts and then, you know, make these offerings to them. And when we read these names at the end of the ceremony, it was confusing to me whether we were making, we were implying in some way that all these, all these departed ones were hungry ghosts.

[13:20]

And there was something kind of unsettling to me about that because they've included the names of our founder and teachers, you know, Suzuki Roshi and Katakiri Roshi and any great benefactors and great teachers actually who have was actually a great gift to us was their kind of connection with kind of peace and stillness. So it was kind of confusing to me whether we were implying that they were hungry. And I think I now kind of understand it as kind of two separate parts of the ceremony. So the first is kind of welcoming the hungry ghost and the other is just this kind of recognition of the dead in a more broad way And so I feel like it's not only perhaps that we're making offerings to the dead, we're making offerings to the hungry ghosts, but that they're actually coming to help us as well as this kind of new feeling about this part of the ceremony, that there's a kind of reciprocity in this ceremony and in this relationship.

[14:22]

And then we're in some ways actually even calling on it at the same time that we're wishing peace for these people spirits that we're actually calling on them well to help us and that they have something to offer us as a kind of communion in the ceremony. And then the merit of the ceremony, we actually dedicate to our own parents for their kind of toil and care and all the effort in bringing us up. So it's also the ceremony has this kind of expression of gratitude in it and recognition of our place in kind of familial lineage. So it has a different, the sermon has a different filial kind of familial feeling to it as well. And the recognition of the kind of importance of those relationships, both those who have died and those who are living in the importance of kind of respecting and caring, caring for those relationships. So that's kind of briefly, you know,

[15:24]

what the ceremony is about. And I feel like part of the reason it's oriented away from the altar is kind of similar to the kind of cacophonous noise is that trying to create an environment for those kinds of energies and those kinds of spirits that may not feel so comfortable kind of directly encountering the Buddha or directly encountering the Dharma. That's not a place where they would feel safe or feel comfortable. So creating a darker space with louder noise, a place where they would feel more at home. The familial quality of the ceremony in some ways also speaks to its origin. The ceremony kind of dates all the way back to the Buddha's time, apparently. And I want to tell a little bit about the history of its origin. There was one of the foremost disciples of the Buddha, Modgalana.

[16:27]

Is that right? Modgalana. Buddha had 18 primary disciples, and he was one of them. And apparently, according to some accounts, maybe the foremost and kind of psychic powers are these kind of supernormal powers that are apparently one attains, you know, as one achieves Buddha head. And he kind of had maybe just recently kind of perfected these kind of supernormal powers and wanted to maybe use them to help bring his parents across to bring his parents kind of peace. And then there are different accounts of this, but Modiglana had, you know, had dreams or had a vision with this intention of trying to help his parents of his mother as a hungry ghost. A hungry ghost is one of the six realms in Buddhist cosmology.

[17:29]

There are six realms of beings, which, again, we can understand literally or just as psychological states. There are heavenly realms of gods, realms of fighting spirits, powerful and godlike spirits, but they're kind of competing and in conflict and kind of warring with one another. There's the human realm, the animal realm, the realm of hungry ghosts, and the hell realm. So he saw his mother in one of these realms of hungry ghosts. The hungry ghosts are often depicted with kind of very, very thin and narrow, long necks and kind of bloated stomachs that you might associate it with kind of humans who are kind of emaciated or starving, and their necks are so narrow that they can't get any food down. And there's often food around them, so there's this kind of craving. They need the food, they need the nourishment, but they can't get it down. So apparently Modgerlana saw his mother kind of in a state like this and was really greatly distressed, wanted to help her.

[18:34]

In one account that I read, he actually does go to actually visit her in the Hungry Ghost Realm, and tries to offer her food, and as it reaches her lips, it turns into kind of hot coals, and she can't eat it. So Modyalana goes to the Buddha and tells him of these either dreams or visions that he's had. Again, there are different accounts of it, and I think some of them are unsure if they're even real. You know, is this actually his mother? Is this actually happening to her? So he wants the Buddha to kind of help him understand what's happening. And the Buddha does tell him that, yes, Magyarana, this is your mother, and she is in a state like this due to her own karma, due to her own past actions of body, speech, and mind. She's kind of in this condition. And it's actually beyond your power, especially beyond your power alone, to save her.

[19:37]

to help her. This is her karma that in some way she has to live out. And there's nothing you can do kind of individually to kind of save her from this situation. But then, you know, the Buddha really feels, you know, for Motkyavana, who's really kind of in great distress about his mother, and comes back to him and says, well, there is a ceremony that we can do that could help her. And some accounts I read that the Buddha said that he was actually taught this ceremony by Avalokiteshvara, by the bodhisattva of great compassion, maybe in a previous life. But the ceremony requires the entire sangha. So again, Modhyala is kind of powerless to do something by himself, but with the entire sangha, with the entire community, some relief may be able to be offered to his mother. So the ceremony is scheduled for the... Pravarna Day? What is it?

[20:38]

The Paravarna Day, which is the last day of the rainy retreat. So at this time, the monks would often practice on their own during the good weather, and then they would kind of come together during the rainy season and practice more in community. And then at the very end of that time, Pravarna Day was a day where they would actually confess their transgressions, things that they had done wrong during that rainy season retreat during their time together, and also a time where they would kind of openly request, kind of the word that we use these days is feedback. They would openly request kind of instruction and, you know, any concerns or criticisms that the other monks had with them. They would openly ask to hear them, of course, with the intention that they would be offered, you know, kind of in an open-hearted, kind, and compassionate way that with that intention of kind of kindness and open-heartedness, that kind of instruction could be given to one another in the Sangha.

[21:45]

I was actually kind of surprised reading. It felt very kind of democratic in some way, just that they could just talk directly to another. And apparently this came out of the Buddha hearing that at one point during the Renu retreats that some monks had gotten together for this time where usually they were practicing by themselves, but they would get together and practice together during this time. And they were so concerned that there might be interpersonal kind of strife and difficulty during this time of living together, that they all agreed just to practice completely in silence for that whole period of time. And it kind of sounded good to me. I actually appreciate silence as a practice. And there are practices of being in silence. But actually, the Buddha didn't think this was a good idea. He didn't think it was a good idea for them to be in silence together the whole time. He felt that they should actually be engaging with one another and then take this time at the end to discuss what the difficulties were and resolve any difficulties at the end of their time together.

[22:46]

So he scheduled this Sajiki ceremony, this ceremony to benefit Moggillana's mother on this last day of the retreat, on the Pavarana day. And the ceremony was very similar to the one that I described that we practiced today. They all had kind of basins of food and broja that they put out and kind of, you know, offered these and, you know, concentrated their hearts on the well-being of Modiglana's mother so that she could attain some relief. And Modiglana was so... pleased with the ceremony, and I guess other monks as well, that it just became an annual practice that they would do this ceremony, not only for one's, you know, not only for those in the hungry ghost realm or one's immediate parents in distress, but actually for one's living parents and for those who have passed seven generations back.

[23:50]

So seven generations of ancestors were included in kind of the as the kind of recipients of the benefit of this ceremony, which is interesting to me when I read that because I think I also have heard or have some understanding that Native Americans, when making a decision, you know, a considerable decision about their community life together would consider the impact of that decision seven generations forward. You know, what's going to be the impact of what we do for the next seven generations? So that same you know, kind of generational span, going backward, trying to offer benefit and healing to those seven generations in the past. It gives me some feeling about, again, various cultures, this palpable sense of the way that we're actually in connection with those well into the past and those well into the future. And that we're kind of viscerally, palpably kind of connected to these generations.

[24:53]

ancestors and descendants. And apparently, after this, Moggyalana vowed himself to do the rest of his Buddhist training and practice in the hell realm. He voluntarily chose to go into the hell realm to practice there, I think because of the compassion that he felt for those there, which was cultivated by the compassion he felt for his mother in her state. And became really kind of venerated bodhisattva for choosing to do this, for practicing in the hell realm. And I think he said about his choice, you know, well, if I don't do this, who will? If I don't do this, who will?

[25:56]

And I guess one version of the story also has it, maybe even before, or I don't know, when he goes down to the hell realm, or maybe even before with his mother, but that he broke open the gates of hell, actually, when he went down, his efforts to freedom, and all the beings from the hell realms kind of escaped and came up into the human realm, and then it kind of took a month or so to kind of like gather them all up and offer them what they needed. And some of them, you know, were actually able to kind of transform from what they learned after kind of escaping from the hell realm and could kind of stay in the human realm. And then others had to go back, but then maybe would break free again and eventually could learn enough to kind of transmigrate out of the hell realm. So this... This is kind of a Chinese story about Mogulana, and it kind of speaks to the way that they celebrate these holidays. They have kind of a month-long celebration around this time. And it's actually in the midsummer for them, but it's a similar kind of seasonal transition.

[27:02]

It's the same kind of holiday. And it's actually a very festive and joyous time there. puppet shows and opera and costumes. And it's actually a very joyous, kind of festive time when the feeling is that all these spirits are kind of among us and we're offering them to them and entertaining them and taking care of them. And then at some point, some are able to stay and some go back. And similarly, in Japan, the Oban ceremony is kind of the same thing, has the same history and the same origin, again, of kind of long ceremony of kind of celebration and time of remembering the dead and visiting the graves of family members. So that's kind of the history of the ceremony. It was introduced to the Zen Center by Kobinchino Roshi, one of the Japanese teachers that Suzuki Roshi brought over to help him kind of teach and train the American students here.

[28:06]

Kobanchino Roshi, apparently, was very kind of intuitive and didn't... My sense is he didn't actually fit in all that well in kind of the Japanese kind of Zen world. And it was a very welcome opportunity for him to come to the United States. It's kind of different culture. And he was, I think, a real master of these kinds of ceremonies, really. And in my sense, it's kind of artistic as well. And so I think in... in offering the ceremony to our community, he offered it as a way to engage and kind of bring awareness to difficult or negative energies. And maybe his sense was that this kind of practice had kind of been lost in the West, maybe particularly in America where we have so much emphasis on positive on improving ourselves and thinking positively and innovation and creativity and newness and maybe even, you know, many people engage in spiritual practice as a way to kind of improve themselves and be better.

[29:17]

And so there's so much emphasis on kind of the light and that kind of positive energy and self-improvement. And Copancino thought that maybe we'd lost in the West a way to kind of constructively and helpfully engage with kind of more negative, difficult energies, which also maybe for him were actually just another kind of positive energy, that they could be harnessed in a kind of positive way. And so I think that was the spirit in which he was offering the ceremony to us. And that's largely still how I feel the ceremony functions, as a kind of space, kind of form. containers, a word sometimes that we use, well, we can bring awareness to the darker aspects of existence, to ourselves and to our lives in a way that's kind of carefully shaped and carefully crafted for healing.

[30:19]

I think that's the real intention of the ceremony. I think in the kind of origin story with Modgyalana, I kind of get the feeling that the Buddha was moved by the way that Modgyalana and his mother, even though she had passed, were still kind of deeply influencing one another. There was kind of a mutual influence going on that Modgyalana was in. distress about his mother, but there was also a way that he could relate to her, that he could transform her. So I guess, and I feel like that's the case for us as well. As I was saying earlier, that there's a kind of, for me, there's a kind of reciprocity in this ceremony.

[31:21]

But I guess it does in some ways kind of raise the question of, well, what do we make of this, what we're doing? And these spirits and ghosts. Again, it's not something that we commonly believe these days, that there are our spirits and ghosts. So when we're making these food offerings and we're inviting these beings and we're chanting, how do we understand what we're doing? Because I don't want to answer that for us all, but... But I guess I do feel like that there is a certain respect that it maybe makes sense to have for the practice and for maybe the psychological, at the very least, reality of these beings. Again, just thinking about how broadly, how universally, how cross-culturally there are these kinds of ceremonies and practices that it seems

[32:23]

at the very least, that these beings exist in a real way as human psychological projections or wishes or confusions, that these beings actually do exist in our psyches in some ways and do influence us and that we may have the potential in turn to transform and influence these beings that live in us. I think there's also a kind of non-dual way to understand these energies, too. So again, especially with the history of Modga and his mother, we're mostly emphasizing the kind of restless, unsettled quality of these spirits. And there is that energy, and there's that energy in the ceremony. And again, that has a kind of reality for us, perhaps in our own restless,

[33:26]

and unsettled energies, which we may even recognize as in some way having inherited from those who came before us, family members or others who may now be passed, who in some way passed on to us a kind of restless, unsettled energy, which now we live with and we're trying to take care of in some way. But as I was saying also, I feel like there's also a kind of peace that these spirits can bring quickly. When we recite some of the names, we may have more of a feeling of peace. But even underlying the whole ceremony, there's a feeling of kind of deep peace that kind of holds the other kinds of energy. And so I feel like whatever restless energy is in the dead or in the spirits, there's also a kind of deep peace that they all bring, they all have in some ways just maybe in virtue of having died or in the virtue of the kind of courage to enter death however they died that death is in some ways the great purifier and that there is there is a peace to their state which they which they offer to us or they bring to us so there's both this kind of restless energy and this peace kind of co coexisting

[34:53]

you know, in the ceremony, which again is also a way that we might just understand kind of our everyday life or kind of the Mahayana view of the non-duality of samsara and nirvana, that at the same time there's the kind of suffering and craving and restlessness of our everyday life and at the same time and understanding that everything is actually kind of deeply at peace and how do we kind of hold both those things together. But beyond even maybe kind of granting the, let's say, the psychological reality of the ghosts or spirits, I think there's another way too in which they're not maybe as distant from us, you know, as we may think. Again, we may just... consider that all just kind of superstitious belief or something but you know if we consider seriously you know the buddhist teaching and really even the teaching of modern psychology and neuroscience that even our own selves even what we think of as having you know kind of concrete real physical existence me you know is itself a kind of projection of consciousness uh is itself a kind of

[36:19]

kind of illusion that we're kind of deeply invested in and in our conventional lives we take very seriously. But again, if we really consider this teaching that we actually ourselves don't have any independent existence as a kind of separate self, that we certainly couldn't come into this world in any way on our own, that we came in via other beings, and every moment of our life are sustained and supported by other beings and probably don't have the kind of unity that we think we do, that in some ways the difference between us, the difference between what we think of as the real conventional world and the spirit world starts to diminish. And maybe even more so in the space of ceremony, and ritual, which is really its own form of life, space of deep, deep awareness, that maybe that difference diminishes and diminishes until maybe there's no difference, that they really have a kind of equal reality.

[37:35]

I feel like there are a number of details in the story about Modiglana that are worth highlighting, again, in terms of the possible meaning or significance of the ceremony for us. I think one is this idea that Modiglana couldn't help his mother by himself. And that it needed the entire sangha. And I think there is... You made also something about the ceremony being scheduled for the pravarana day, this day of kind of personal confession of one's transgressions, because I think the ceremony holds that quality as well of not only caring for the dead, but caring for just our own personal unresolved karma, whatever obstacles or hindrances that are in our own psyche, you know, and are kind of blocking our way to practice that the ceremony offers an opportunity to kind of engage just with those own darker parts of ourselves.

[38:51]

And often it's these very aspects of ourself that feel most isolating, that it's kind of when we're most in touch with this that we might feel most kind of shamed or kind of excluded from the kind of human community or something, or feel like the human community is kind of inaccessible in some way because of some sense of who we think we are or something. And so it really is not something that one can kind of bridge on one's own. One does need to kind of reach out and connect and requires a kind of higher community to kind of care for these parts of ourselves. And, you know, really these energies aren't our own to start with. These energies have a kind of communal quality to them, a kind of transpersonal quality to them. like there's a way too in which um we're all you know we all have a kind of hungry ghost kind of aspect just again i said you know these realms can be considered kind of psychological states but i feel like particularly in our culture at our at all at our time that um you know most of us probably have some familiarity with the quality of being um hungry a hungry ghost you know i think because this um

[40:30]

sense of self that we have isn't real, that there isn't a kind of separate, independent self, and it isn't kind of grounded in reality in a way that we kind of long for, because we have this idea and we want it to kind of conform to reality. We want it to be grounded in reality. But I think we know at kind of a deep level that it's not, that ourselves are a kind of fiction. There's some feeling of lack or kind of dissonance that we have. And I think this is kind of just a kind of deep kind of human quality, kind of quality of the human condition, this kind of sense of lack. And I think traditionally kind of religions have tried to address this quality of lack, which maybe sometimes gets expressed as original sin, or there may be different ways it's expressed, but some quality of lack or deficiency that we all carry that is kind of religious or the broader religion or the broader culture helps us kind of address or live with or heal in some way.

[41:34]

But I feel like in our kind of contemporary world that in some ways the dominant religion is consumer capitalism, you know. I feel like that's the main culture that we're all living in, which also in some ways tries to address the sense of lack, but I think it tries to address the sense of lack in a way that kind of promotes the quality of being a hungry ghost, you know, that Basically, more and more we're encouraged to try and ground our sense of self, resolve this sense of lack in the material world, in this world, and largely by consuming, by getting things. And that somehow is supposed to shore up our sense of self. but as many of us may have experienced, it doesn't work all that well, you know, that it doesn't really do the work of shoring up the self, but we kind of keep at it. We keep trying to shore it up largely through kind of acquisition and feeling like there are things, and if it's not material things, it's status or power or, you know, these ways that we're trying to shore up our sense of self and resolve this sense of lack.

[42:45]

So I feel like there's this kind of hungry ghost quality to all of us, again, which the I think the ceremony can help us kind of address or resolve in some way. I recently was doing a kind of interfaith retreat day with a rabbi. It was just a month or so ago. So it was not so long after the kind of Jewish high holidays, after Yom Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And so I was doing a little bit of study about them to kind of prepare for the day and also just out of my own interest at being kind of Jewish. kind of cultural, you know, lineage and ancestry myself and wanting to kind of be more in touch with that part of myself. And I was actually really impressed with the power of Yom Kippur as this kind of time in the annual calendar to really address, you know, really look deeply into one's heart and really look at where, you know, faults and where one may have

[43:48]

gone astray over the previous year and really make kind of serious effort at kind of atonement. And I was actually kind of regretting that there wasn't something in the Buddhist liturgical calendar that was like that. And then as I started kind of thinking more deeply about Sujiki and kind of preparing for this talk, I realized that Sujiki had that potential. It actually has that potential for us as this time to kind of deeply look at also our own you know where our own hearts have kind of gone astray and and resolve that in some way you know largely by kind of letting go of the of the past letting go of past action also making amends and uh you know forgiveness which i think just is a natural quality too that we would want to cultivate in relationship to again loved ones who may have passed or whose kind of relationships we're seeking to kind of resolve in some way, that those relationships often call for kind of forgiveness, either for the other or ourselves, you know, or both.

[45:00]

That's also kind of an element that I feel like can be cultivated in the ceremony, this kind of quality of forgiveness, which, you know, also perhaps ironically, you know, I think for kind of real forgiveness, We often need to kind of get in touch with the more painful or difficult aspect or energy in the experience that requires forgiveness before we can truly give forgiveness. I think sometimes we have an idea of just wanting to offer a general kind of magnanimous feeling toward another that, well, of course, we forgive them and kind of that takes care of it. But I feel often for true forgiveness, we actually really need to kind of be kind of deeply, kind of thoroughly intimate with forgiveness the actual pain and difficulty for us of whatever it is that we're seeking to to forgive before before we offer forgiveness to really be in touch with what that pain is and and then hopefully be in touch as well with um you know if we do feel like we were harmed by another in some way how that harm came out of the other's pain because really that's the reason why anyone you know causes harm or difficulty is acting out of their own

[46:11]

pain so often requires kind of being in touch with our own pain or difficulty and then kind of empathically trying to understand or imagine the kind of pain or difficulty of the other before we can offer forgiveness. So when I was thinking about this as Sanjiki as this kind of time of kind of self-reflection and self kind of purification and cleansing you know as well. In fact I guess I recently heard that shalom, the Hebrew word that I always thought kind of meant peace, and maybe it does mean peace, apparently also means kind of completion or wholeness. And so I was thinking that was actually quite, it was actually kind of similar to nirvana, you know, in some ways nirvana has this quality of completion. In fact, I think in the early sutras, you know, in talking about nirvana, the language is sometimes used, the Buddha says that that which was to be accomplished has been accomplished.

[47:13]

Christ says something similar on the cross, it is finished, it is done. So that which was to be accomplished has been accomplished. That which needed to be brought into being has been brought into being. That which needed to be put to rest has been put to rest. So Shalom has this quality, Nirvana has this quality. And I think that's really what the Sajiki ceremony is it's a ceremony to bring completion and wholeness. And in terms of also how we may personally relate, in addition to an opportunity to reflect on and resolve our own karma, I think it's also a time to welcome and invite and make space for whether they're transgressive or not. Often we think they're transgressive, but... whether they are or not, parts of ourselves that we don't often welcome or include or for some reason can't welcome or include because they're threatening in some ways.

[48:18]

I think all of us in some ways have parts of ourselves that have been kind of exiled because in some ways they're not acceptable to us, they're not acceptable to our sense of who we are or who we think we need to be or our social personality or something. And there's a kind of depletion that I feel that we suffer. There's a kind of suffering in having these parts kind of split off and exiled. And they often kind of express themselves in kind of erratic ways anyway. And so I feel like that's also kind of a contemporary kind of psychological kind of understanding of the Sijiki ceremony is how do we welcome and include those aspects of ourselves that have been exiled and split off, that are kind of disconnected broken is kind of the opposite of nirvana or completion is some kind of disconnected or kind of broken quality so how do we welcome those create light for them bring them in so there's a kind of kind of wholeness

[49:19]

I'm feeling like I've said mostly what I want to say about the ceremony. Let's see if there's anything else. I guess also the way the ceremony orients us toward the past, maybe? dead are in our past, often, you know, our relationships with them are in the past, or we think of them as being in the past. And we often think about, you know, Zen as being about being in the present moment, you know, the past is gone, something we can do about that, and the future's not here, there's nothing we can do about that either, so just be here, be here now, be present. And there is something kind of helpful, you know, maybe in that teaching, but I sometimes think we have a kind of misunderstanding of what that means to kind of be in the present moment like it means to kind of like just go be at the beach or something or get a massage or, you know, just some relaxing, current, pristine kind of moment, you know, apart from, anyway, that just kind of exists by itself in some way.

[50:45]

But I feel like the present actually fully includes the entire past. The entire past is present in the present and the future as well. The entire future is pregnant kind of in the present moment. So being in the present includes the past. It's not cut off from the past. It includes the future. And there's a way in which it's independent too. It's not merely dictated by the past. We're not kind of confined or constrained or determined by the past. But being in the present kind of fully includes... past, the entire past is here, is here with us. So, and I think we sometimes kind of feel that, you know, when we're kind of in a deeper retreat, maybe kind of sishing, or maybe even just practice, I've been feeling something like that myself lately, where somehow time starts to feel very kind of thick and slow and dense, and there's kind of more awareness of all the layers that are actually in

[51:54]

each moment. So in this kind of ceremonial ritual space that we create, I think supports that kind of awareness. So as we find ourselves in the ceremony, for those of you who will be here and those of you who come, I think there can be that quality of kind of connecting both with kind of the deep peace of the moment, as I was talking about before, that kind of holds the restless energy in a way that we're completely connected to the entire past and completely connected to the future as well. I thought I would close in a perhaps seemingly unrelated way. I wanted to read, it's actually kind of a long excerpt, so you'll have to kind of indulge me, a long excerpt from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, the passage about what is the grass, which is kind of his meditation on death in that poem.

[53:06]

I just kind of wanted to read that to end. And I guess I should say, you know, if I didn't already, that the Sujiki ceremony next Sunday is, you know, open to the public everyone's welcome to come anyone who wants to and anyone who has names of loved ones that they want remembered and read in the ceremony are welcome to offer them to us whether you plan to be here or not the names can be read just wanted to make that clear that it's open to everyone okay this is this is Walt Woodman, who himself, I think, had very restless energies even after writing, you know, Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself and becoming a well-known kind of American poet, I think, still kind of struggled with his own kind of dark energy, his restless energies, kind of living a little bit on the kind of marginal life in New York and kind of raucous and I think sometimes a little violent and kind of edgy, had this kind of edgy existence until actually he found...

[54:15]

connection ministering to the wounded of the Civil War toward the end of his life he really started to completely devote himself to caring for the young wounded soldiers of the Civil War and found a kind of deep peace in himself and a kind of calling I think for himself but as a way that kind of resolved his own kind of restlessness this is from Song of Myself child said what is the grass fetching it to me with full hands how could I answer the child I do not know what it is any more than he I guess it must be the flag of my disposition out of hopeful green stuff woven or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord a scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped bearing the owner's name some way in the corners that we may see and remark and say, whose?

[55:22]

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, and it means sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, growing among black folks as among white, canuck, I give them the same. I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you, curling grass. It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men. It may be if I had known them, I would have loved them. It may be you are from old people. and from women and from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps. And here you are, the mother's laps. The grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, darker than the colorless beards of old men, dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

[56:40]

Oh, I perceive after all so many uttering tongues and I perceive they do not come from the roots of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women and the hints about old men and mothers and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? What do you think has become of the women and children They are alive and well somewhere. The smallest sprouts show that there is really no death. And if ever there was, it led forward life and does not wait at the end to arrest it and ceased the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward and nothing collapses. And to die is different from what anyone supposed and luckier.

[57:45]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[58:17]

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