This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. what to talk about on the first day of Sashin. Sashin sometimes feels to me kind of like stepping off a cliff, only it's like you step off and then it's not like you free fall. It's more like you find that there's a step there, like a little step in the cliff. So you take that step and then you take the next step and eventually you get to the bottom or maybe you get

[01:01]

up the other side. But what does one say as one is stepping off a cliff? So we'll see what I say today. I have said to myself at the last session and at this session that this The sesheen, these two sesheens have been just a time for my mind to get more in the habit of staying with my body. Just that, you know, just stay, just stay. You know, kind of like you would teach a puppy, stay. Of course they don't. You know, they run and then you come back and you say, stay, just stay. And it's complicated.

[02:03]

One way that it's complicated is that it isn't just your mind staying with your body. It's your mind staying with your mind. Because our mind also can be with our mind. Or at least my, maybe somebody could do it more accurately, inexact words for these parts of our self. So I was reading a little bit of the Fukanza Zengi, which we're chanting this Sashin. And also, I don't know whether anyone in this practice period has talked yet about the harmony of difference and equality, but that's another one of the texts for the practice period. And so I was reading both of those this morning, kind of looking for what might be encouraging to say here.

[03:05]

And this phrase, or a couple of phrases, is Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding and rather learn to take the backwards step that turns your light to illuminate yourself. This encompasses a lot. This practice based on intellectual understanding is so deeply ingrained in us. That's pretty much the way we function. relying on our uh intellectual understanding one way or another you know are trying to understand what's what's going on in the world around us are trying to understand what's going on with us you know what's what why am i having these emotions why am i sleepy why am i you know many many things uh and and our kind of go-to tool you know the one that we

[04:06]

We don't even have to pick it up. We're just always carrying it. It's like right there in our side pocket or in our hand already is to try to understand it with our intelligence or our mind. We may not think we have much intelligence, but whatever we have, we turn toward this. What's happening and how should I respond? Really, one of the basic... teachings of at least Soto Zen Buddhism is cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, put down that tool that you're relying on, and really, in a way, that's all. Just put it down and see what happens then. Because we're putting so much of our eggs in that basket. Okay, I want to do the right thing. I want to... I want to have a happy life. I'm afraid of this.

[05:08]

So what do we use? Well, I'll figure it out. I'll do my best. So this instruction, cease from practice based in intellectual understanding and learn the backward step. You know, whatever that is. Learn the backward step. Turn your light around to illuminate the self. And that backwards step, I think one way of describing it, is this deep practice called zazen, where we sit down and just be there with ourselves. And ourselves in its widest context. You know, whatever ourselves are at that point. in those moments, those many, many moments of sashin. In the Harmony of Difference and Equality, I've taken some phrases from that.

[06:22]

The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted. So one way of thinking about this, intimately transmitted, is the same thing. It's like it's as close to you as you can get. It's intimately transmitted. The mind of the great sage of India is, as we say in the chant, is completely available to us and yet rarely met with. It's intimate to us. Human faculties can be sharp or dull. Same thing, you know, our intellectual understanding. They can be sharp or they can be dull. We can think they're sharp or dull. Our own or others, human faculties. But the spiritual source shines clear in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. I'm not sure what that means, but...

[07:28]

what I'm thinking that it means today, or at least part of what it means, is that when we're in touch with wisdom, the source of where our life comes from, how our life happens, is actually clear to us. We can feel, we can see how this part of our life happened. And even when we're in that state, which may be somewhat rare, still the branching streams flow in the dark. Still our life goes on from here in the dark. We don't know what's going to happen or how the next part of our life is going to happen. I went to the city, actually to Green Gulch, a few days ago.

[08:36]

I can't remember when now, a few days back. It was a really intense trip. It was a very intense trip to the Bay Area. Christine and I went to see Steve, Abbott Steve. I mentioned at Work Circle I was supposed to go see him on Saturday after the elders' council meeting. I was going up, you know, the main work reason to go up was to go to the elders' council, which was talking again about what to do about the central abbot position when Steve is no longer able to do it. So that was on Friday afternoon. And then I couldn't see Steve on Saturday because he was being rehydrated, which he now has to go to the hospital to do. He can't When he drinks, I guess it's not absorbed. So he goes and gets rehydrated several times a week. So Mary Stairs asked if I could come, and Steve asked if I could come when Christina was coming, which was at 10.30 on Friday morning before the Elder's Council.

[09:46]

So we drove out, and Keith went along. He was going to go see Steve, but then he had that kind of flu that people had here, so he thought it was better not to go in. And we drove out, and Rona Park has a brand new casino opening. And in the morning, there was traffic. And also, they're rebuilding the highway up there. So the lanes are gone, and there's solid traffic going to Rona Park, where we went to. And then you get off this. you know, traffic, traffic, traffic, and you go into this little quiet neighborhood. You know, it's right next to the freeway, but you don't hear the freeway. Very quiet, or at least we didn't. And got pulled up in front of the house and called Mary because we weren't sure what to do. She came outside and told us a little bit about how Steve was doing, which he, the morphine, so...

[10:50]

This is my version, which may not be totally accurate, but what I understood from Mary was that the morphine wasn't working as well as it could. He's taking enough morphine, it would basically kill any of us, but because he has this amount of pain for somebody, that makes it okay for him to take it. But it wasn't working. I think the timing on it wasn't quite right. So they started giving him also some... something like synthetic morphine. Something like morphine, but some synthetic, which supposedly evens it out some. Instead of, you know, he has to take a big hit of morphine, and then he's kind of out of it. It could be done more gradually. So he had just started taking that, and also Frank Ostaseski, who was the first director at the Zen Hospice, and now isn't there anymore, but has had a close connection with Zen Center since then in the hospice realm, called the head of hospice in Sonoma County and told him about Steve.

[12:01]

Because usually hospice wouldn't, you know, as long as a person is doing chemotherapy, they don't have anything to do with it, with the person. But he explained to him who Steve was and what he was doing and what had happened, you know, how fast it was all happening, the pancreatic cancer. And so the this hospice doctor called Stephen Lane and came over to see them and said he would be really available to them, which is very helpful because the hospice people really deal with everyday stuff like constipation and hydration and things like that that the oncologists mostly don't deal with. So this hospice doctor was involved with them. which I think has been a really big help. And after a little while, we went inside, and then later we found out that, so he just started taking this new medicine, that Lane had gone to wake him up and tell him that we were there, he was sleeping, and that she actually couldn't wake him up.

[13:06]

She called him, and she shook him a little bit, and he didn't wake up, so she called the hospice doctor, and he said, sit him up. He shouldn't be that deeply asleep. Just wake him up. So she did. She started sitting up, and he woke right up. And I guess got up and went to the bathroom. He does a jundo around his house, I guess, maybe the yard, I'm not sure, every morning. Still, this was at least last week. So he got up, went to the bathroom, came back, got into bed. We had to wear masks and put that stuff on our hands and stuff. So we were there for about a half an hour before we went in to see him. And then we went in and sat down next to him, bowed to him at the foot of the bed. Sat down next to the bed, and we're not supposed to touch him. And he had his mask off when we first came in just to say hello and then put his mask on. But then we sat there and talked.

[14:09]

He looked... I'm sure that he's way, way thinner than he was, but he really didn't look gaunt. I mean, he was covered up, but he looked beautifully like Steve and was very engaged, wanted to talk about the elders, wanted to talk about how was Tassajara going. How are you? He sent his greetings to all of you who he knows. He's really putting out a lot of effort to do as much as he can of Christine Palmer's Dharma Transmission Ceremony. So he talked about that. He asked about the next practice period, if we knew who was going to be leading it yet. And Christine said that the meeting was happening, I think, yesterday.

[15:10]

It was going to be a month, a month by Mel, a month by Paul, and a month by Steve. And now who's going to do Steve's part? And then he kind of looked past me to a shelf, and he said, oh, right over there, that's a card that my granddaughter gave me. And so we pulled out this card and looked at this sweet card that Steve's... I think she's about nine or ten. Zora, she lives in Brooklyn. And of the cat, whose name is Cinnamon, and Grandpa, Grandpa sitting there cross-legged with a few little hairs sticking out of his head, cross-legged, slightly floating above a Zafu, and Zora. same way, sitting cross-legged, slightly floating above a Zafu. He said he was so happy to see her on a Zafu in her mind, you know, and in her drawing. So anyway, somewhere in there, Lane came in and said, you know, how are you doing?

[16:18]

He said, I'm kind of tired. And she said, so should we end? And he said, no, come back in a little bit. She said, okay, five minutes. He said, 15 minutes. So we were there for, you know, a half an hour, pretty much. And he was very available. And then he said, I'm really tired. I have to go. You have to go. So we left. And I asked Lane how she was doing. She said, well, I've got Mary who tells me when I have to change my shirt or brush my teeth. I think they're really, you know, helping each other. My feeling is Lane is, you know, just doing. But she, several times was, when we came out, she went back in and was just, I think, just sitting there talking with Steve. So I think she's just doing what needs to be done. Before we had, so that was our visit with Steve.

[17:18]

Oh, and then, so then we went back to the elders meeting and Steve Skyped in to the elders meeting. I was a little worried. I was chairing the meeting. I was like, oh, how do you do a meeting where somebody's Skyping in? But it actually, it worked fine. You know, there was a little technical glitches at the beginning getting it to happen, but then there was Steve, and here we were seeing a little circle kind of around it, and he said, he said, oh, there you are. Show me who's there. So we took the camera, you know, little tiny camera, and just kind of turned it around the room so he could see, and everyone said hello, and But he bowed and he said hello to everybody. And then we started talking about the central abbot position. And Steve had a fair amount to say. Mary said he talked more than she'd heard him talk for quite a while. She said that afterwards. So then we did the first vote. When we choose an abbot at the elders, we always...

[18:25]

vote on paper, secret ballot, usually we say for at least three people. So even if we have a pretty good idea who it's going to be, we always expand the field first. And then we have this discussion about the people who are written down as a way of discussing the position. So Steve... This time we said, you know, you can vote for up to three. You don't have to vote for three. You can vote for up to five. But you, you know, you have to vote for somebody. So Steve voted. You could see his, on the screen, you could see the paper up there. You know, he was writing. It took a long time. It's like, we're like, what's he doing? He must be drawing pictures. And then you could hear him chuckling from behind the paper. I said, Steve, turn your paper around. So he turned it around. There were his votes. And I'll just go ahead and tell you the results of the Elders Council.

[19:27]

Hopefully, I don't know, the board meeting is happening. The elders just recommend abbots to the board. The board actually invites abbots. And they don't have to invite the people who we recommend. They can instead send it back to us. So even though I will tell you what the elders did, if the board hasn't met, it's not happening yet. But I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. So this was Steve's wish, and also several of us had this idea, which was to invite Linda Ruth to be the central abbot. And then separately, going on... In the meeting, we went on also to invite or to recommend to the board to invite Fu Schrader to be the Green Gulch abiding abbess. So I think we all feel like with that and then Ed Satterson coming in at the city center when Christina steps down is a very strong care of Zen center.

[20:28]

And that of anyone now, you know, no one will do this like Steve has done it. Steve has been so... energetic and devoted to all the aspects of Zen Center. Linda is just as devoted, but I don't know anyone who is as energetic as Steve has been up until a month ago. Also, Linda knows all the areas very well, knows all the practice places very well, really cares about administrating Zen Center as a practice. which is my main qualification for a central abbot, and I think the elders also. So we did the first vote, and then Steve said, well, I have to go. I'm getting worn out. So he signed off. So it was really... What?

[21:35]

Such a complex... meeting in a way, you know, so sad and so wonderful. You know, it was to have Steve there and really engaged, you know, really obviously enjoying being part of this group and really, really feeling our connection to him, all of us, and at the same time seeing, okay, this, you know, Zen Center's not dependent on one person, you know, even Steve. Um, And there are people who are willing to step, you know, Linda Ruth, who had already, you know, had heard about this, of course, and had already talked with Steve Weintraub and was able to say yes, and all of us to say and her to say, I think it should be a regular term, which, you know, means four years with possible extensions of two, three-year terms. You know, not just to filling in for a couple of years, but to really do it.

[22:35]

It just felt... the continuity, I can say the continuity of Zen Center, but really by that I mean the continuity of life. Just that life goes on. When something happens, things move around and fill in. So that morning at breakfast, before we went to see Steve, well actually before that, before we went up, Keith and I had sent an email to Arlene saying, could we come visit you on Friday night? It'd be kind of late, so it'd only be for a couple hours, but does that work for you? And she sent an email back saying, yes, that sounds good. And we hadn't heard that Dagon was having these little strokes, which I think you have all heard. But I was gone to Idaho when it was announced, and Keith didn't hear about it, so we didn't know that. We thought we were just going for one of our regular meetings with Dagon and Arlene.

[23:37]

And then at breakfast, we happened to see Sonia, who told us that Diagon had been in the hospital twice. And then we saw Arlene's. Luckily, we knew by then. So we had some idea what she was talking about. So that he has bleeding out. He has a blocked, maybe you've heard all this, blocked artery in the top of his head, which there's nothing to be done about. And then bleeding out. whatever that means. So sometimes he gets headaches or pressure, and mostly they aren't doing anything. They can just... They're adjusting his various medications. And then at various times, things happen. You know, like he was sitting there talking to me, oh, you, and his right side went kind of limp. So things are moving around inside him, you know, like... blood clots or vessels or, I mean, I don't really know.

[24:40]

And he's not very open to just going and letting them experiment on him, which I think is really wise. So when we got there to their house, we'd heard he'd been in different states. In fact, sometimes in rages, a couple of people have told me when people start having strokes, one of the ways that it sometimes appears is in rages. So Daigan's had a couple of those. But when we got there, he was the sweetest guy. He was just so sweet. I don't know how many of you have been in their place, but they used to have a room that was totally full of paintings that I got done. And a month or so ago, or a while ago, he got the inspiration, the insistence that that room had to be cleared out. And Arlene was like, no, no, no. What are we going to do with these paintings? Well, we're giving most of them to his son, who's starting a restaurant, and the rest, I don't care what you do with him.

[25:42]

I want him out of that room. So eventually she gave in. He took everything out of the room. I'm not sure. They painted it. Anyway, now it's his little quiet room. There's a bed in there, and there's a little seat that has a zafu on it. And when we came in, Arlene said... Keith and Leslie are here. And he said, I'm in my choir room. So we all went in to see his choir room, which is, you know, very light and white walls and very quiet feeling. And he was in there sitting zazen. And then he came out and we visited for two hours and it was so sweet. It's just like he was in such a good mood and so, you know, just available. at the end when we went to leave, he said, I could go any minute. I know I could, you know, one of these things moving around could just be it. So he's really in that state where he knows any minute he could go.

[26:48]

So that was two of them that are in that, pretty much in that state. You know, Steve is, you know, Steve has I think we probably all feel like Steve has settled so fast with this. You know, his sickness is so fast, and yet he's, like, you know, he's on board. He's not really in denial. But, you know, there's a little, like, well, I want to do this and I want to do that. It doesn't feel graspy, but it does feel like, you know, I've still got energy. I want to do it. Anyway, I don't know. I got, no. You know, it's like... I mean, you know, they're totally different age, and it's been going on for a long time, and I guess it's like, this is what's happening. I mean, you know, I don't know. Maybe he has moments when it's otherwise, but when we were there, that was the way it was. Then, since I'm telling you about this weekend, I'll just go on to, then the next day we saw Robert Thomas. So Keith had written to Robert, you know, who had had cancer.

[27:55]

kind of cancer that is testicular cancer, which has a 99.9% chance of being totally cured and him being back to complete health. And he just finished his chemo a couple weeks ago, which was way harder than he expected. Basically, he didn't want to see anybody. He just went for part of the time. He would just go in his room, and Samantha would feed him, and people would come to see her for her yoga or acupuncture appointments, but he would not come out. But when Keith wrote to him and said, do you feel like, could we come and visit a little bit? And he said, yeah, let's go out to lunch. So we walked down to Hayes Street and went to lunch, and he was doing really well. Also had lost a lot of weight, but looked good. Came to the meeting the day before the elders council. He said day by day he can tell that he's getting better. He still has. He has at least one surgery.

[28:56]

And then there's a chance of another more invasive surgery. They'll do a scan to see whether there are any parts of the cancers left. And if there are, then they'll have to go in and take those out. But basically, he's in a good place right now. So I hope it's all right with you that I shared all that with you. So I came back feeling, and I'm still feeling, how much our life is in our body in this light and dark way. How much we don't know. I think many of us, when we heard about Steve, I'll say for myself, when I heard about Steve,

[29:56]

My first thought, one of my very first thoughts was, oh, my God, I could have cancer. You know, if Steve has cancer, I could have cancer easily right now. Anybody in here could have cancer, right? So, you know, we really do live in this thing. And our mind has, you know, it has some limits. But they are nearly as solid. If we're sitting there, sitting in Zazen, and we're trying to let our mind increase its habit of staying with its body, and we just say, stay. Come back. Come back. And it's here for a little while. Maybe you want to follow your breath. That's a good... time-honored practice.

[31:00]

Or maybe you just want to let your mind rest in your body someplace, and then maybe later, after a day or two, some part of your body will start calling to you, will start talking very loudly, like it seems to at the end of our life. These people, their bodies have been talking very loudly and taking a lot of their attention. And ours will start to do that, too. We do this little simulated death experience. But today, and maybe even then, our mind can just float, just go for a while. It does have its limits, but still we can say, come back. Come back. This is where we live. This is where we're living together for now. and to just get familiar with how does this particular body and mind, turn the light around, take the backward step, how does this particular body and mind exist?

[32:13]

How does it function? Not something that we have to get an intellectual understanding about or put into words, but just a kind of familiarity, a feeling at home here So that when things, you know, that seem like they didn't belong in our house, we have the possibility, you know, the settled possibility of seeing, oh, now here's a visitor. You know, here's who I am now. You know, whether that's at our death or whether that's, you know, in a moment when we have a lot of energy or in a moment when we don't have a lot of energy. How do I be me? How do I manifest the part of the universal mandala that I'm embodying? I wanted to remind you of this poem.

[33:16]

I think I brought it up during the summer, but maybe I brought it up during this practice period, in which case you've all heard it, but... Basically, it's a little poem by Harry Roberts called Seafoam. It's very short. It's just, what is seafoam? Seafoam is a bit of ocean caught by the wind. Seafoam is a bit of wind caught by the ocean. There's something about this poem that to me is so poignant. You know, and I think of it as us, you know, like what is seafoam? What is human life? And then we have a way of describing it, which may be pretty accurate, you know, maybe in the light. You know, seafoam is a bit of wind caught by the, oops, a bit of ocean caught by the wind.

[34:21]

That would be my, that's what he said first. That's what I would say first, you know. Seafoam is a bit of ocean caught by the wind. But also, seafoam is a little bit of wind caught by the ocean. Where's the action coming from? Who's in charge here? Who's catching who? Who's making what? This is the kind of activity that we're sitting with. How is my life happening? Where is it coming from? Am I thinking it up? Yes. Is it inside me growing already? Yes. Is it coming from the outside? Yes. How's it happening? It's like seafoam. And what can we do with it? Well, this week we can try to sit still with it.

[35:25]

try to just be there with it. This week we have very few decisions to make. You know, some big ones, you know, like in the 35 minutes into a 40-minute period that we don't know how many minutes we're into it, right, except for the Doan. We just know it's still going on, you know, and we have a big decision to make. Should we move or not? It's fine. Just put as much effort into that decision as you want. Just sit there with it. Feel it out from every direction. Should I move now? Should I sit still? Maybe I should move now. Maybe I'll take one more breath. It's fine. Do that whole thing. Just be there with your body-mind as it grapples with that decision. You know, I really recommend, and for those people who are in the kitchen for this session, you know, be there as a session.

[36:36]

Really try to be with your body-mind. And, you know, in the kitchen, it's a little different. You can't just, like, go chop, chop, chop. You have to, like, move along. That's okay. That's another way of living. You know, that's... Really, life is going like that. You know, life is not waiting for us to get mindful of it. You know, our breath is not waiting for us to find it before it starts on the inhale. You know, find the exhale before. No, it just goes right along, and life goes along that way, too, and so does the schedule, and so do our meals. So you get them here, okay? If you don't, I guess something else will happen, but... So, you know, I really recommend that you, during the seven days, it's hard to know what words to use, like stay with, stay with something.

[37:50]

I don't mean pick something and stay with it through the full seven days. I don't think anybody's going to do that, although if you do, that's great, I guess. Maybe it seems impossible to me, but as we go along, especially I would say if something is that you would like to get away from, a thought or a thought pattern or a physical sensation or an emotion that you would like to get away with, take one of them and actually just sit up as straight as you can, or if you're laying down, lay as straight as you can and be... with it, you know, just like stay with it. See how much you can experience of its, how is it, you know, of its seafoam-ness. You know, don't try to imagine its seafoam-ness, just like stay with whatever, however it's presenting itself to you in whatever language, you know, to whatever senses,

[38:57]

try to stay with it clear to the bottom. Just see. I think most things actually are more transparent, more empty is the word we use, but it's a little bit dangerous word because we have some idea of what it means, but more impermanent and more dependently co-arisen, meaning they don't have any structure of their own you know they're made up of all these things and they change as we as they go along so mostly we don't notice that mostly we're caught up in our own story of what's going on but during this time you know take a few and just stay with them it's a it's a new view of life what is sea foam it's a little bit of ocean caught by the wind a little bit of wind caught by the ocean.

[40:00]

Whether to have questions on the first day of Sashin. So I'm not sure whether to have any discussion right now, but I will take the chance to ask you whether there's anyone who really wants to say anything. Please don't just come up with anything I think it's fine if we just end now. But if anyone, especially if I said something confusing, you want to help correct me. But if not, okay. I don't see any hands. Good. Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge. and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[41:11]

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