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. Nice to see everyone. Lots of old friends. Not that you're that old, but old friends. And it's wonderful to be here, and I'm so impressed with all the work that's going on. Yeah, I drove by, and there's even a new roof on the guesthouse, which is no small accomplishment. And all the construction and the rehab of the Cloud Hall is pretty thrilling. Practicing Zen is easy.

[01:00]

Raising money and fixing buildings is much more difficult. So, thanks to everybody who made that happen, maintaining the practice and the place here. So we're good for another 50 years. Excellent. That is, somebody is, I'm not, but somebody is. So it's fall, and our Everyday Zen group in the Bay Area is in the middle of our annual fall practice period, which we started on September 21st. And Alejandro told me the other day that Green Gulch is also starting practice period on Wednesday, right? Tongario is on Wednesday or Thursday, I guess. So it's good to be here today as we intensify our practice for the fall.

[02:02]

renew our commitment again to find out the truth of our human life. Not that we're all such noble truth seekers, but we seek truth because we have to. Otherwise, it's just too hard to survive this human life. I think it was Jesus who said, the truth shall set you free. Anyway, somebody said this. Maybe Buddha said it, I don't know. Somebody, but somebody said it. And it seems true, doesn't it? The shoe of human life pinches. It's just too tight.

[03:06]

It doesn't feel right. So we all need to get a little bit more space, a little bit more room, a little bit of freedom. So we all have to practice. It's not that we're so noble, it's just we're forced into it. The theme of our everyday Zen practice period this year is suchness or just this. And that's a term in Chinese, renmei or renmo, immo in Japanese. I have a friend, Gregory Wonderwheel. I've never met him, but he's a friend of mine because he's a Chinese, he's a scholar of Chinese Buddhism and he listens to my Dharma talks online. And then he sends me emails correcting my mistakes and adding further information. So it's thanks to Gregory that I can learnedly tell you that in Chinese it's renmei or renmo, Japanese immo.

[04:17]

He told me that his various Chinese dictionaries translate the term variously as in this way, like this, what, or which, or in that way. So this word, just this, is an esoteric technical term in Chinese Buddhism, but it refers to something that is very commonplace that we can all relate to. It just means things happen, and they happen just in the way that they happen. They don't happen in some other way, other than the way in which they happen. They happen just like this. In any moment of our living, something is happening.

[05:26]

There's a passing moment of time. And here it is. And now it's gone. And it's just like this. Not necessarily the way we like it, not necessarily the way we wanted it to be, not necessarily the way we expected it to be, not necessarily the way we understand it to be or fail to understand it to be, not necessarily the way we live it or fail to live it, but just like this. In fact, all the moments of our lives have a kind of stark reality, a kind of sacred, intense presence, quite independent of what we like or don't like, wish for or don't wish for, and quite independent of the mistaken ways we might see or fail to see.

[06:35]

the real nature of our human experience. Moments of our lives are constantly happening just like this and not some other way. And this same word is used as an epithet for the Buddha when we say the Tathagata. That's the same word. Tathagata means the one who just comes or comes and goes in just this-ness. And Tata is the Sanskrit term that the Chinese rendered as Rimmo. In Japanese, Immo, it's the same word. So in our practice period, we have a wonderful Shuso, and she's sitting right there, Aunt Via Jacobi. And she gave her first talk the other night, and it was a really good talk. Very personal, very practical. down to earth and I know that most of you in the room weren't there to hear her talk so I thought I'll quote a little bit from it and she gave me permission so I know that she doesn't mind so this is a little bit from Andrea's talk to give you a sense of her wonderful take on just this

[07:55]

My parents used to live in a condo complex that had an outdoor heated pool and I would swim there every week. One time I watched a mother with her small children who were also enjoying the pool until the late afternoon chill. And her son, who was about four, started fussing about being cold. And his mother said, come out and I'll wrap you in a towel and warm you up. But the child wouldn't come out, and he kept whining that he wanted to stay in the pool, but he was shivering. Come on out, she said. But he wouldn't come out. He stamped his foot, and he said, No, I want the water to be warmer. So like that child, we're all running after what we don't have. I wish I were thinner or had more time to read books, Andrea says.

[09:01]

Me too, though, also. I wish I were thinner and had more time to read books. We spend a lot of time in unnecessary suffering over God's and other people's business instead of paying attention to what we have. Chris Fortin, who is one of our dear, dear everyday Zen teachers, this is Andrea talking, said at one Dharma dialogue, trust what comes up. Wow, I thought, how can I work with that? Trust was not a big thing in my household. My parents' Holocaust experience left them feeling that it could all happen again. They were damaged and never trusted much of anything again. So trust didn't come easily, and my expectations were that what comes up and often would be hard, scary, painful, and possibly lethal. Hard because I assumed that it was my job to fix it.

[10:03]

Scary because it might be way too big for me to manage. And painful because it could hurt me and my family, and obviously some people out there still want it to hurt us. Lethal because I didn't think I could survive it all. telling me to trust was like telling a muscle in spasm to just relax. Not much chance of success there. What I did learn instead was to start examining my expectations about my job in the world. If I could breathe just long enough to do that, I found that my job was much smaller than I had been told. It turns out I didn't have to fix much. Now, some things were clearly asking to be fixed. Three times I found a small child face down in a swimming pool and I scooped him up.

[11:07]

That was a no-brainer. Before the rest, it was better to pay attention first and see if it was my business or not. When my parents in their later years tried to have me arbitrate their fights, I had to realize that it was their business, not mine. I had to see that for me, it was just this. So I learned to hold still and say nothing. It wasn't easy. Compassion made me listen and not dismiss their painful complaints, but wisdom said, shut up, be still, do nothing. And I repeated to myself, my parents are suffering and I am helpless. My parents are suffering and I am helpless. Just this. So I couldn't and didn't fix it, but at least I didn't make it worse. When something is painful or scary, I'm learning to breathe into it, to focus on my feet on the ground and my butt in the chair, and then I notice that I can survive.

[12:19]

Slowly I'm learning to trust the practice to help me deal with what comes up. Dogen tells us not to go out and meet things, but to let them come to us. So this is my understanding of just this. Whatever comes up is just this. And my namesake, Sekito, because Andy's Dharma name is the same as Sekito, writes... If you don't see the path right in front of you, how will you know the way as you walk? A few years ago when I was going to the hospital for some surgery, Norman said, when the doctor puts the IV in your arm, say to yourself, just this. And I understood that what was happening was just this. My job was only to breathe into it. Just this. I discovered that breathing into something made it physically impossible to reject it. Now I take that with me.

[13:23]

The flight is delayed and I'm going to be late for my appointment. Breathe. Just this. My knee still hurts and I may not be able to ski again. Breathe. Just this. So that's a little bit of what Andrea was saying the other night for those of you who weren't able to be there. Probably her whole talk is available on the Everyday Zen website, which is just everydayzen.org if you want to hear the whole thing. So one of our most important traditional stories about just this involves our Chinese ancestor, Dengshan. It's about the time that he was saying goodbye to his teacher, Yunyan, And he knew he probably would never see Yunnan again. So he was asking for parting words. And he said to Yunnan, teacher, if you are gone, if after, sorry, if after you are gone, someone asks me, what is the essence of your teaching?

[14:34]

What should I tell them? So Yunnan thought about this for a while. And finally he said, just this is it. And Dengshan sank into thought, it says in the text. Dengshan sank into thought. Just this is simple enough. I mean, it's radically simple. It's there all the time. And yet the shoe pinches. And we don't see the truth right in front of our eyes. So Dengshan took time to ponder. And Yunnan then said to him, you are in charge of the great matter of life and death. No one else can do this for you. Please be thorough and careful.

[15:38]

So Dongshan left his teacher then for the last time and hiked on in the mountains, going somewhere else. And as he was crossing a river, he saw a reflection of his face in the water, and he realized that this reflection was his image. And yet, also, it really wasn't him. So then he wrote his famous poem, Grasp Outside and You'll Lose Your Real Life. I now go on completely alone, yet he is always with me. He is me, but I am not him. To see it this way is to merge with just this. So this is one of the great poems of our lineage family.

[16:44]

It means there's no inside, no outside, and no in-between. That all our ideas about who we think we are and what we think is going on are wrong. All of them are wrong. And all of them are also right, providing we don't take them too seriously. All of us really are. alone no one of us can ever really know the texture the feeling how life really feels inside another person you can't even know this about someone you know really really really well for a long time possibly you've noticed this the more you really really know another person

[17:48]

the more you discuss with them as deeply as you possibly can what's really going on with them and really going on with you, what really, really matters to them, what really, really matters to you, the more you see you don't really understand and you'll never, never really understand. You don't even really understand yourself. So we really are, all of us, completely alone. And at the same time, we are never alone. Within ourselves and between each other, we're always connected to one another, and we're always connected to everything. Buddha has no other life to live but my life. And yet I am not Buddha. I am just a poor human being. And the same is true for you. When I can let go of my expectations about my job in the world, as Andrea teaches us, I can appreciate the justness of each and every arising and passing moment as full, as complete, as loving.

[19:10]

Once, when Dengshan was doing a memorial, service for Yunnan, after Yunnan did die, he told the story that I told you a moment ago. And a monastic came forward and said to him, what did Yunnan mean when he said just this? And Dengshan said, when he said that, I nearly misunderstood. And the monastic pressed further and said, well, did Yunyan understand just this? And then Dengshan said, if he didn't understand just this, how could he teach about it? And if he did understand, how come he said all those misleading things?

[20:17]

We're all always saying misleading things about just this. Whether we understand it or not, I guess probably we don't understand it. We live it, but we don't understand it. And I suppose that we all hope that if we continue with our practice more and more, we will appreciate just this. We can be awakened by just this, by these... moments of beauty in our lives even if we don't understand a few years ago I went with a bunch of maybe about 20 or so everyday Zen priests and senior students on a little pilgrimage to Japan and we went to Rinso Inn which was Suzuki Roshi's original temple in Yaizu.

[21:23]

And we went to Kyoto, and we went to Tokyo, and we went to the big headquarters monasteries of Soto Zen, Sojiji and Heiji, to do some ceremonies that I promised I would do years before, but I never did do them, so this time we did them. And we had fun. It was a wonderful chance for us to join with our Japanese Dharma brothers and sisters in the practice of just this. And maybe some of you have been to Japan and have had a chance to hang around Zen places, but Japanese Zen is really great. It is so beautiful, and it is so quiet, and it is so deep. And it's all about expressing just this. I think that's what's so moving to almost everybody in the world, you know, about Japanese temples, Japanese architecture, tea ceremony, calligraphy, all the Zen arts are moving because they are forms of expressing just this.

[22:34]

And they arose out of a deep appreciation of the practice of just this. While we traveled, as some of you know, I have this terrible writing habit. I just can't seem to get rid of it. It just gets worse as I get older. So I was always, I never go anywhere without my little notebook or notebooks, you know, so I'm scribbling away while we're in Japan in my little notebook. Just this is actually really the experience of time, time itself, which is being itself, moments and days and years that somehow pass by, or we say anyway, we think, pass by. And so just this is necessarily also an experience of language.

[23:39]

Because we're always explaining these moments to ourselves. We're explaining our lives to ourselves so that we can somehow wake up the next day and appear to be the same person we were when we went to sleep the night before. Thinking about our lives, conceiving of them to ourselves. Being in time. Being in thought. Being in language. So I was aware, as I'm always aware, that in my scribbling all this is going on I was aware that I was in the midst of the just this of language I was aware that in doing that I was writing a poem words because that's what poems are made out of words and that the words were actually making my life in the moment of my writing them and that Japan and Zen and my 20 or so dear friends at that time were the entire just this of my life in the language of that moment.

[24:52]

So the poem of that little trip has been published under the title Escape This Crazy Life of Tears, Japan 2010. So this is my sneaky way of having a book talk this morning about my new book, Escape This Crazy Life of Tears. And there's some copies in the bookstore just by coincidence. So it happens. So I'm going to close my talk today reading, and I hope I'm not stretching the point. I hope it actually is really the same thing that I'm talking about. I'm going to read some of the poem for you. You can tell me afterward, whether you think so. So this poem is written with very short lines, as few words as I could possibly use. I was measuring and counting my words. Very short lines, very few words, lots of spaces around the words.

[25:58]

Very odd punctuation and odd way that the words are spread on the page, which is, of course, hard to tell when I'm reading it out loud. It also, by the way, has photographs. Not very many poetry books have photographs, but this is why the book is so outrageously expensive, because I insisted that they reproduce the color photographs. Anyway, I'm going to read a little bit, and I'll try to... If I read, it sounds funny, it's because I'm trying to reflect the way the words fall on the page. So I'm going to read a little bit, and I'll conclude. I'd had a thought then. now gone can't think of it that thought yet thoughts shape and memory linger still in me impression of that which had occurred in thought in fact is thought

[27:10]

as thought, fact, fact of the matter. Those curved roofs, thoughts result, that shrouded statue and feeling, thoughts result, first thought, then deed, and artifact, past, time, less. You can't argue with that, this, then thought, remembered, Thought forgotten. Thought frozen in wood, stone, paint, trace of person. They undergo austerities. Stay pure. Vow not to leave mountain twelve years. Hear their voices inside. skipping a bunch we were there maybe three weeks so long poem Dogen's portrait only one painted in his lifetime seen on covers of all the books in English puckered plum blossom lips thick square face

[28:39]

jutting jaw, distant eyes, here in Hokyoji treasure house with Dogen's own Chinese poem, ink still black after 800 years. It's funny, you know, when the book came out, it has a picture of that portrait of Dogen. I'm sure you can all see this very well. And when my wife Kathy saw the book, she was, happened to open to this page, she was horrified. I said, what's wrong? She said, don't you remember that you promised the Hojo or Hokyoji that you would take a picture and you promised never ever to show anyone the picture or publish it? I said, oh my God, I forgot that. So if you ever run into him, don't tell him. Don't tell him. that I did this, and I'm hoping he'll never see this book.

[29:42]

Yeah, right. Well, but I'm not going to tell him that. Anyway, Portrait of Tendo II, avuncular and kind. And this is a quote now from Tendo. Practice hard not to get it right, but it's the only way escape this crazy life of tears. Ungodoyo's face. Old picture of Mr. Shaka brought here by Junen. Junen's wooden traveling sutra box behind glass reflecting own face. Thank you very much. Photos, gifts, goodbye. Why do they freeze in unheated hokyoji? Why practice in those harsh conditions? Old-time people believed okay to die in Dharma pursuit.

[30:48]

Good karma, better luck next time. Otherwise, despair, dejection, terror, and fear, no use this worldly life anymore. Go to Buddha's land. Seek fortune. Do or die. Different. They're just like us. Then, just like now. Cultures, meanings, all rearranged. Persons, not what she used to be. Still, Uncle Death. conditions, thought, big nothing, blank indefinite, shapes, thought feeling.

[31:51]

So humans, same as ever, as quiet, as incomprehensible, as darkly different. in onsen, not the onsen we expected with streams and mountain paths, but this onsen in a little ordinary town, all in neat yutakas, red for women, blue for men, and salarymen in tubs joking over jobs, old couples, young couples with their broods, and we eating at fancy buffet, sushi tea, fancy rice. Worldly things have no meaning They are the meaning that they are at all, not what's assigned them by desire. The past creeps up on them, covers them with its design, brings feeling to the heart.

[32:59]

In a Heiji Hato's perfect movement, thought of Torah scrolls procession through shul of my ancestors, kissing it, the book, a book, no distant, shrouded, sacred image, but a book, scroll, black words on white, copied in love and awe, because truths beyond distinction, to names to dissolve in fire and air, the past, the past as told, as lived, you can't argue with that. its meaning that it was, you are Hojo-san. And now this is my little poetic quotation from Hojo-san. You know, all abbots are called Hojo-san, so they all have the same name, but Hojo-san. This Hojo-san is Hojitsu Suzuki, who's Suzuki Roshi's son, who's the abbot of Rinsoen, who at the time we visited the big monastery, was an official there, so he

[34:05]

brought us in, and we had tea with him, and he told us this. Hojasan. East, west, a person of Zazen is the same. Grandmother, mind, the kind heart, is imagination. Feeling for another, see them as yourself, takes imagination. Imagination expands the heart. One day, woke, heard sound in both ears sudden hearing loss my eyes don't work right either age is slowly melting my body with each loss there's gain my ears my eyes more mine now than ever before not so when I lose my life to death will my life be owned by me more than than it ever was.

[35:08]

Hakusan's sacred rushing water, stories told again and again, sound of water flows by Rinso-in, Eheiji, the same quiet sound, brings eternal peace, waters not the same, many waters flow down in channel, good place for a temple here. July 20th, 2010, Yaizu, Rinso In. Living in tea rooms, not easy. Everything's too low. You must never hurry, lest you carom through paper door or delicate bamboo window. You must bend over always slightly, walking room to tiny... room for unexpectedly a ceiling element appears lower than the rest you crack head maybe several times a day and if tall even entering living even entering leaving a room must constant pay close attention can't close door without standing just so facing door full

[36:35]

so can't anticipate next door. Must completely concentrate on this door, else it stick. Maybe you will break it if just slightly too rough. Not yet. Dear Mitsu Suzuki, and this is a little scene of Mitsu Suzuki, who's still going at 100 years old. Yeah, last year we... published a little book of hers. Kate McCandless, our everyday Zen priest from Vancouver, translated a hundred of her haiku. And there's a nice book. Probably it's also in the bookstore. But she came to visit us when we were at Rinsoen. And here's a little account of that visit. Dear Mitsuzuki Oksan visited, 97, beeline for Hondo, not greeting anyone, bowing, praying, sitting, silent, then, welcome home, though I... Doubt she remembered us after 17 years.

[37:36]

She's here saying hello. Rinso in. All welcome. Home place. In photo book we look at picture of Suzuki Roshi leaving Rinso in. Hoichi with silly grin behind him. Both enjoy some foolish family joke. No doubt 51 years ago. She self-contained and dignified still holds tiny trim body. and inelegant grace hands gesture while speaking controlled in self-possessed expressive dance recites wavering haiku tells of her life the school next door for children who can't go to school every day hello ringing something to her the businessman's house on the other side they come to stay one night hello Each day I walk one hour, my job to know who lives alone.

[38:40]

I knock on their door and say, come out, it is spring, and sings for us a spring song and leaves, walking resolutely with her cane, crisp white hippari with matching pants, fresh and clean, she sings a Goodbye song. Try not to smell like butter. This I can say to you because I am your laundress and my mother said it to me. I guess Japanese people think that the smell of body odor is butter. I never would have thought so, but that's what they say. Maybe one last little bit, and I'll stop.

[39:47]

There are so many fun parts, it was hard to select. Time to talk. Drink tea. What do we think about it all? What can we remember and reflect? How do we feel our lives? It's go in. Horizontal. It's be home. Welcome home here in rising sun's land of delicate people. Vertical. Each one has his place. Walls, walls. No task frustration here. Barrier. Patiently viewed open arms in one. So look up, look back, and there's comfort in your place. Tint of time dies one's skein of years.

[40:57]

Holy home, yet each one lonely. Horizontal. People's inner walking. Horizontal. Inner's outer also vertical. All hold up sky. Each its go in momentary sphere-ing lost. Each one's thought. A mirror. Back. After which there's 27... and we were back. So anyway, that was my sneaky book talk. Usually I try to avoid ever quoting my poems in Dharma talks, but this time I thought it was relevant, so I did it. So, here we are. A few moments ago I began writing

[42:01]

my Dharma talk, and now it's over. How'd that happen, Yuki? Can you figure that out? I don't understand it. I find it mildly disturbing, but there you go. So, please take care of yourself and your practice. We have a very big world to clean up. I guess this is just a little break. We'll all roll up our sleeves and get on with it. Hi, Grace. Nice to see you. I couldn't get tickets to that movie. But everybody else was there. Oh, really? Oh, no. Thanks. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[43:04]

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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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