Can everyone hear my voice? Great. Thank you for coming this morning on this holiday weekend. It's such a beautiful day to be outdoors. Really appreciate your presence here. And some of you may be here for the first time. Are there any of you here for the first time? Yeah? Good. Well, welcome. Welcome to Green Gulch.

[01:00]

And enjoy your day here. I just returned from a wonderful week of refreshing vacation down in the redwood forest in the mountains above Santa Cruz. That area, it's called La Honda. If you're familiar with La Honda. I went to a YMCA camp. So it was like going to summer camp again after about four decades. And it really was great there. There was a swimming pool and woods and campfires, and I took a couple of Tai Chi classes a day. That was my excuse for being there. And anyway, I had a wonderful time. And as I would walk from my cabin each time, each meal, and each Tai Chi class, I would walk through the redwood forest, a big section of it.

[02:04]

And it was so lovely. It was so beautiful. It's tall, slender, redwood trees, pretty tall, but quite slender. And I was enjoying them, and I began to notice something about them, which was that they had these interesting little groupings. There would be like five or six redwood trees in a little circle, and lots of them fairly close together, but they definitely had like a little family group, which I at first thought, oh, that's so sweet. And then it is sweet. But I began to notice that at the center of the circle, a big, large stump, a massive stump. And I began to notice that every circle had one of those. And I thought, oh, this is the second growth forest.

[03:09]

These are the children growing out of the parent. And I think the land was purchased by the YMCA sometime in the 1930s. So this was probably post-lumbering of the great first growth, old growth forest that had been there. And after that, although I still really enjoyed walking through the woods and the beauty of the trees, I couldn't help but envision the great primordial forest that had been there up until maybe 100, 150 years ago. And I found myself wanting to go over to the trunks and put my hand on them, which I did. Just greet these old beings.

[04:13]

And this, as I was thinking, as I was there, I was thinking about this talk and working on it a bit. And it brought up for me what we call in Zen the great matter, the great matter of birth and death. This forest of second-growth trees, growing out of the great stumps of the old-growth forest, eloquently spoke to me without words about the matter, the great matter of birth and death. And also, during this past month, month or so, I, and probably you, too, have had many reasons to consider this topic. in the light of very public and painful losses of people we care about, or maybe people we didn't know, but we care about their death.

[05:22]

A dear friend and Bay Area resident, Robin Williams, great teacher of yoga, BKS Iyengar, whose tradition I have taught yoga in. Michael Brown, a young man in Missouri, Jim Foley, a photojournalist in Syria. A doctor whose name I don't remember, but he was the major specialist of Ebola virus in Africa. And he died caring for people in that epidemic. I saw a picture of him, you know, wonderful face. And of course, many people dying of the Ebola virus, of the wars in Gaza, in Iraq, in Syria, and Africa, and Ukraine.

[06:27]

All those many people died on the airplane that crashed in the Ukraine. All of these have been bringing this matter up to me again and again, just this month. mother, too. It is this great matter of birth and death that brings many people to practice. Many people come to Zen practice because of their encounter with this great matter. And that's my story. Thirty years ago this month, my father died. Died August 21st, 1984. I was in my 30s then. I was not completely unacquainted with death. I had held a beloved dog as it died. I'd seen relatives in their death. But this passing was somehow incomprehensible to me.

[07:33]

At the time, I could not take it in completely. Got the facts. The facts are he's gone. that there's death. But there was some way in which my body could not really fully get it. And so I spent a couple of days before his funeral just sitting with him and staring. I just kept looking at him. I wouldn't look away because I kept thinking he was going to move. I couldn't understand somehow physically that he wasn't going to move. And I kind of imagined him turning and lifting his hand and asking me to get him a beer. And I, of course, knew it wasn't going to happen. I didn't think it was going to happen. But there was some way in which there is that feeling in my body that that should be happening.

[08:39]

After he was buried, I kept on staring in a certain kind of way, and I kept looking for an answer to this question. What happened to him? Where is he? How can this be? And I kind of went on for a couple months with that, and each day, Each morning I would wake up in a lot of grief and pain with that question. And then I would resort to thinking, which is a really good way of trying to figure something out, but not so good if it can't be figured out. And each day I would come up with a story. Each day there was a new story that was going to make this okay. It was going to make it bearable. It was going to make it understandable. If I could understand it, then I could deal with it. And so for a while, each day, I would feel better.

[09:47]

I would walk around feeling better. And then by the next day, the story would crumble, and I would be back in the same place. And so day after day, for a couple months, this is what happened. Some years later, I heard a Zen story about this very subject in a Dharma talk. It was about 10 years after my father died. And I was really amazed when I heard this story because it was my story. thought I would read you this story. It's not very long, and it's actually a very, I won't say popular, but it's a story that a lot of people have read and discussed.

[10:54]

So this is a story from our Chinese ancestral tradition, the Koan tradition. And for those of you We're interested. It is in the Blue Cliff Record. It's case number 55. And I'm going to... The characters in the story are all Chinese. There are tellings of the story that use their Japanese names. And since I am much better at pronouncing Japanese words than I am Chinese words, I'm going to give the Japanese names. So this is called Dogos... condolence call. And this is about a teacher and a student. So Dogo is the teacher, and Zengen is the student, and they go together to make a condolence call. Dogo and Zengen went to a house to express condolences.

[11:59]

Zengen rapped on the coffin, so there was the body there in a coffin, Sengen rapped on the coffin and asked, alive or dead? He was asking his teacher, alive or dead? That was my same question, except at the time I didn't have a teacher. So I just kept asking myself, I guess. Dogo said, I won't say alive. And I won't say, Dad. Zengen said, Why won't you say? Dogo said, I won't say. I won't say. So I kept asking that question, too, in my own way. And I kind of got the same answer. I didn't get an answer. And I kept asking.

[13:02]

And in the asking, there's a kind of... Emotional build-up, you know, got more and more intense for me. And for Zengen, too. On the way home, Zengen said, Master, please tell me right away, and if you don't, I'll hit you. Dogo said, hit me if you like, but I'll never tell. So Zengen hit him. And thinking about this, I thought, yeah... I was hitting myself every day. Every day I was hitting this person that couldn't come up with a good story that could hold in the face of this extreme, seemingly extreme event. Later, the teacher Dogo passed away. Must have been hard for Zengen. And Zengen went to another teacher, Sekiso, and told him the story. of paying the condolence call, and asked Sekiso the same question, alive or dead?

[14:11]

And Sekiso said, I won't say alive, and I won't say dead. Zengen said, why won't you say? Sekiso said, I won't say, I won't say. And this time, with these words, Zengin had some understanding. So what happened for me was, after two months of alive or dead, and I won't say, I won't say, I had some understanding. I had a little bit of experience with sitting zazen. Not very much, but a little. But the thought came to me, You're not going to get this question answered. You're just going to have to sit with this. Pretty much those words.

[15:12]

And so very fortunately, there was an opportunity for me to come here to Green Gulch, which was my first visit to Green Gulch. And I came into this. I came here for a three-day retreat. And my purpose was just to be able to be present with what was going on. I kind of gave up that there was going to be an answer. I just knew that sitting was going to be what would help if anything would help. And I came here and I sat in this room. I heard a Dharma talk. And then my life changed. I didn't resolve any questions of alive or dead. It took a long time for me to have come to terms with that. But my life, I met a teacher and I began to sit and my life gradually did change.

[16:24]

And here I am sitting here. It was kind of like out of this great stump, some new growth started to come up. That was my life of practice. Our Japanese ancestor, Dogen Zenji, wrote about this story, this story, Alive or Dead, in his great collection of writings, The Shobogenzo, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. And it's in a fascicle called shoji. And sho means birth, and ji means death. So he's writing about the great matter of birth and death. Very short fascicle, kind of actually one of the easier reads in the Shobogenzo, I think, although the subject matter is quite deep. So this is something of what he wrote in that.

[17:29]

He said, if you search for a Buddha outside birth and death, it will be like trying to go to the south with your spear heading north, or like trying to see the Big Dipper while you are facing south. You will cause yourself to remain all the more in birth and death and lose the way of emancipation. Just understand that birth and death is itself Nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be avoided. There is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realize this are you free from birth and death. So my freedom in the situation that I was facing came from just ceasing to try to find some reason.

[18:37]

And either a reason in the heavenly realm or a reason in the hell realm. And so just sitting down and practicing was what helped. And because of that, I'd like to talk a little bit about practice. I think most of you have some familiarity with our sitting practice. Any of you perhaps were here for Zazen before this talk, and I've been here many times or come to retreats. And this sitting practice, the sitting meditation practice, we call a ceremony of Zazen. And it is our central practice. It is the central practice of the Zen school. It is the practice of Shakyamuni Buddha when he gave up seeking for nirvana outside of birth and death, and sat down. So this is our central practice, but we have been given the gift of other practices, and some of those I'd like to mention.

[19:49]

Just going back a moment to... the various passing-ons that have happened this past month, I've been really interested in what people have had to say about these people who've passed on. And I've noticed, you know, there are many wonderful things to say about most of them, or all of them, but what I noted was the most common was the talk of generosity. Many... wonderful stories of generosity of these folks. So generosity of the financial and humor generosity of a great comedian, the enormous teaching of 80 years of BKS Aungar. I heard a lovely story about Jim Foley. He was imprisoned in Benghazi in the

[20:56]

previously when Libya was at war. And there were stories of how he, in spite of his own difficulty at that time, took care of the other people who were also imprisoned and brought them good humor and reassurance. So wonderful stories, heartwarming stories. And so generosity thought, you know, All these people have done wonderful things, but what people seem to remember about them was they were generous. They gave. And that seemed notable to me. Because in our tradition, we have what are called the six paramitas, or six supreme or transcendent practices or virtues or perfections. And these are cultivated... by one who is on the bodhisattva path.

[21:57]

Bodhisattva is a being who aspires to enlightenment for the sake of all others, putting others ahead of themselves, so right away there's a path of generosity. And the very first of the paramitas is generosity, dhana, giving. So I see this practice of generosity as a way for human beings to start practicing where they are. So one of the great insights, maybe the great insight, of Buddha under the Bodhi tree was he saw through the illusion of a permanent self and another.

[22:59]

He saw through that delusion, that illusion, delusion, both. And... He saw that this was a kind of magical creation. And of course, to us, it seems very real, even if we kind of get that it doesn't make a lot of sense if we think about it. It seems very real. And of course, it's a really important development, human development, to develop a self and to have a sense of other. We need that to function. But it's also a source of suffering. We spend a lot of time suffering with our self and our other. There is a kind of self that does exist moment by moment, that arises moment by moment. And I think that there are other beings out there besides myself.

[24:02]

And I think that's true. But it's not true in the way that I see it. And the way that I see it is a kind of permanence, a kind of continuity. And that's what the Buddha taught, was an illusion. What the Buddha saw has been described as Indra's net, or this vast web. At each interface there's a jewel. And each jewel reflects another jewel or all the other jewels. So this is dependent co-arising, that everything comes up together and passes together and reflects each other. It's a kind of mutual existence as opposed to a separate existence. And this is the Buddha's teaching and his vision. And it's our practice to look at that vision. But in our deepest selves, until we're Buddha, our programming is to feel like we're ourself and see another.

[25:11]

And so this is the world we live in. This is the water we swim in. This is the sky we fly in. This is the air we breathe. Most of the time, our focus is on ourself, if we're really honest, what we need. what we like, what we don't like, what our opinion is. And sometimes we pay attention to others. Sometimes we pay too much attention to others at the neglect of ourselves. So it's this constant kind of back and forth for most of us. And so I was seeing, thinking about all of this, I began to see generosity, the practice of generosity as a way of beginning to... soften that edge of self and other, narrow that gap. I saw it as a kind of antidote to these two extremes of self and other, which is a kind of self-cherishing, self-aggrandizing, or which can diminish the value of other, or the opposite, which is to blow up the other at the...

[26:30]

cost of yourself, creating a kind of a balance, a kind of balanced way of living in this world of self and other before Buddha. And I see generosity, too, in a kind of yogic way. It's like a hand that opens. When a hand opens, this is like an extension outward, and it requires consciousness. If I'm just relaxed, my hand softens and closes, and of course I can clench my hand. But to open the hand requires consciousness. On my vacation, I was practicing Tai Chi a couple of times a day, and we did it very, very slow. And the hand was open, but you had to think about it all the time. The minute my mind would start to wander, things would start to close down.

[27:35]

So I see this practice of generosity as a kind of yoga practice, an asana practice, to become more conscious. And in this consciousness, we actually begin to transform. We begin to change. Just as in yoga, when you... practice opening the body, opening the joints, opening the muscles, the body will gradually change. It will actually, the resting length of the muscles will grow, the joints will loosen up a little bit. There's actually a real transformative quality to it over time. And I feel like practicing the generosity for me has that same quality of a conscious practice that gradually creates balance and opens me. to bringing the other closer, bringing myself closer to the other. We can continue to go on with our thought of self and other, but over time, this lessening of the space will bring us to a new way

[28:57]

of being in the world, not just thinking about the world, but being in the world. So that's the first paramita of dana. The second paramita is called shila. This is, I understand, from my reading, it literally means cool and peaceful, which is lovely thought, to be cool and peaceful in the world in this... great matter of birth and death and self and other. We translate it variously as virtue, precepts, most commonly, proper conduct, morality, discipline. And there are many precepts, both in the Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions, the lists are all slightly different, although there's some commonalities. So in yoga, there's the yamas, There's five precepts there.

[29:58]

Probably most people are familiar with the Ten Commandments in the Judeo-Christian heritage. And in our tradition, our Soda tradition, we are offered the 16 great bodhisattva precepts. So these are precepts offered to someone who wishes to enter the bodhisattva way, the way of liberating all beings ahead of oneself by... practicing enlightenment. So they are very central. This giving and receiving of precepts in our tradition is very central. It's not unusual. They are given to lay folks in a ceremony called Jukai. They're given to priests, same precepts, given to ordained priests in our ceremony of leaving home, practicing the way. We have a monthly bodhisattva full moon ceremony in which we chant the precepts every month, reminding of ourselves of our commitment and our practice.

[31:07]

They're part of weddings. They're part of funerals. I would say they're kind of a center of our ritual life. And... I think they can be looked at in many ways, and the way I'm looking at them right now is part of this sort of flow out of generosity as a way of bridging this imagined self and this imagined other while we still really believe it. But in a way that's kind of more detailed and closer. So in generosity there's a kind of orientation, and each moment one could ask oneself, is this generous? Am I being generous at this moment? With the precepts, you can actually get very specific about the kinds of generosity that you're enacting in your relationship with self and other. So, for instance, there's the great generosity of not harming.

[32:11]

What could be more generous? The generosity... of not taking what isn't given to you. What could be more generous? The generosity of not misusing one's sexual energy or using others to fulfill one's sexual energy. The generosity of not speaking ill of others, but praising, praising others. the generosity of not looking down on others and looking up at oneself. Of course, it could be reversed, too. And all of these ways of being generous that I'm relating to other are also related to self. The generosity of living in truth openly with others, being willing to share completely what you are, of thinking kindly of others,

[33:17]

the generosity of keeping one's mind clear and helping others to do so also, and the generosity of sharing, sharing what you have, and most particularly the generosity of sharing the triple treasure, the Dharma, the Buddha, the Sangha. I'm seeing right now each path, each precept is a light on this path of generosity. giving it subtle and very precise guidance. So one can have a general feeling or orientation of generosity, and then one can look at one's thoughts, words, and actions from this very specific perspective of the precepts. So there are four additional paramitas, which I will not go into today. But the next two, just to name them,

[34:18]

are patience or forbearance, which is shanti, and enthusiasm and diligence, which are virya. And there's a kind of relationship to the niyamas, for those of you who are familiar with yoga. The yamas are the precepts that talk about your relationship with the other, but the niyamas are the personal practices of a yogi. And I feel like patience and... Enthusiasm and diligence are kind of like that. They really are about the cultivating of the self as a practice. So while we still believe we've got a self, the self can be patient with pain. The self can be enthusiastic and diligent with practice. And then the last two of the paramitas are concentration or dhyana, and wisdom or prajna. And my sense is that at this point, we are moving into the realm of no self and no other.

[35:25]

While still being there, we're starting to move away from that false view. So at the end of Shoji, Dogen Zenji says, There is a simple way to become Buddha. When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors, kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called Buddha. Do not seek anything else. That's the end of his shoji. With the practices such as the paramitas, particularly right now, this talk, generosity and ethics, we as a sangha can do this together.

[36:42]

We can proceed together on this path of Buddha. And this reminds me of one of the wonderful stories that I read and heard. This is something that I heard in a tribute to Robin Williams, and that's very sweet. Robin is playing, of course, more than one person. He's playing himself, and he's... as a father, and he's playing his son. So he says, sometimes my son looks up to me and says, well, what's it going to be? And I say, I don't know, but maybe along the way you can take my hand. tell a few jokes, and have some fun.

[37:49]

Come on, pal. You're not afraid, are you? No. So together, we can proceed with fearlessness on this courageous path called the Bodhisattva Way. And we can help each other through generosity and through ethics and through all the paramitas. So I invite you to take each other's hands — you don't have to do it right now — and take my hand so that we can all proceed together through this great matter of birth and death, this great mystery. Thank you so much for coming today. and listening to this talk. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[38:55]

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.

[39:16]

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