This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So this is, always feels like the beginning of the year. School started, our practice periods, times of more intensive meditation. and sequestering Tassar practice period starts the end of September. October here, city center starts end of September. So this is time to take up our studies in all ways, taking up our study. Tomorrow, by the way, is the full moon of September, and this full moon is the closest to the equinox. which is called the Harvest Moon.

[01:02]

And I think it's also a supermoon, the way it will look bigger and we can all shine on Harvest Moon and enjoy, I don't know, hopefully it'll be clear, we can see the Harvest Moon. And the equinox is on the 22nd this year. I also wanted to mention there's a number of people going to the People's Climate March. in New York on the 21st, New York City, September 21st. And I'll be going, the president of Zen Center, Susan O'Connell's going, Steve Weintraub's going, our ex-chair of the board, Mary Morgan, will be there. And we'll be joining up with the Brooklyn Zen Center, probably Village Zendo, and many, many, you know, hopefully thousands and thousands of people to visit to demonstrate, to march. And if you've been thinking about going, this is a personal decision to go by joining with others.

[02:13]

So I just wanted to put just a word in for it's not too late to hop on the plane and meet up with our fellows to express ourselves. So in this particular, you could say, lineage of Soto Zen or lineage of practice coming from Suzuki Roshi, study has been very, very important to study. And usually the word study means a certain... We think of, you know, being in school. and hitting the books or studying a language or some kind of concentrated overtime looking at a subject.

[03:17]

Also the word study in terms of music. We have etudes or a kind of exercise that you do over and over and over. Study so that you in the body become change the body-mind while doing these studies. Same in art, where you do a study of something in preparation for more or larger entry into your practice. The word study, the root of it comes from the root to be eager, to be diligent, to be pressing forward. So I think part of study, it's not a kind of laid back. In order to study anything, we have to be strenuous. We have to put forth the energy over time.

[04:23]

And I know in tea ceremony, you start each class with basically making a... commitment to really study together. And that means paying attention, listening, watching, not wandering, being there completely, with an eagerness. And that eagerness meets the teacher. The teacher, your eagerness, and the teacher wanting to teach will come together. If it's a little bit casual and ho-hum, wishy-washy, then it... You can't be met. It's pretty hard to meet wishy-washy. It's like, where is it? So part of to study, if we unpack the word, has this eagerness and a strenuous quality to it. Diligent.

[05:24]

So in our Zen practice, we use the word study a lot. Actually, one of the most famous paragraphs from our ancestor Dogen is, which you may know or may have brought you to Zen, is to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. Your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away and your original face will be manifest. And this realization goes on endlessly. thinking of study as just academic study or intellectual study or getting knowledge and putting it, you know, at filling our, Suzuki Roshi said filling our basket or filling our pockets, you know, trying to get things, more things that we know as a way to perhaps

[07:06]

that we know things more than other people as a way of maybe elevating ourselves is not the study that we're talking about. When we study the Buddha way, we study the self, and in the fullest and most comprehensive and deep, unfathomable way. studying the self. And you can ask, what is studying the self? How do I study the self? There's an essay by this teacher, Dogen Zenji, called, in Japanese, it's called Hanzan. And it's translated various ways. One way is all-inclusive study, hands-on. And another translation is thorough exploration.

[08:23]

So all-inclusive study or thorough exploration, they illuminate this word. The word hands-on, hen means to visit or explore. And the zan means, hen means everywhere widely. And the zan means to visit or explore. And it comes from the practice in China and other places of taking your practice and visiting many teachers. And many of the Zen stories have one teacher going to one teacher and bringing up a question and being sent to another and going to another. This traveling everywhere widely to visit teachers is a traditional understanding of that word, hands-on.

[09:26]

But... Dogen kind of turns that usage around, and instead of this pilgrimage to go to teachers and test oneself, he called it all-inclusive study. And it doesn't mean necessarily that you go anywhere, or you could go somewhere. It's not dependent on going and finding and testing yourself. It starts right here, all-inclusive study. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. And you don't have to go anywhere to study the self. Please don't go away to study the self. Come home to this body-mind to study the self. So, not visiting and going around to different people to study, but... all inclusive, all inclusive.

[10:30]

Nothing is excluded from our study. We might have some idea that, oh, that over there, I don't have to study that. And there may be some excuse, like that's just how I am. I don't have to study the way I habitually do such and such or talk to people in a certain way or think about people. That's just who I am. That might be some idea we have. However, hands-on or all-inclusive study leaves nothing out. The way we think about one another, the way we think about ourselves, our habitual responses, is all part of hands-on, all-inclusive study, thorough exploration. In that story that I told to the children, I didn't go on to say what happened to Suzuki Roshi by being treated that way.

[11:40]

What he talks about is he vowed, I think, as a very young person, maybe in a way to get back at these people who were mean to him, retaliate in some way, or show them who he really was or who he could be, he made a vow that he would understand Buddhism and then teach them. He would come back and teach them how to be good human beings. And he grew up in a time when, during the Meiji era in Japan, when Buddha's temples were being dismantled, their property was being taken over and given to Shinto shrines and many Buddhist objects, you know, bells and instruments and Buddha figures and so forth, were being destroyed and burned.

[12:46]

And this was an effort by the government at the time to turn away from what they saw as a foreign religion, come back to the roots, the Japanese roots of Shinto and the original religion of the country and to make that the national religion and to break up the power of the Buddhist clergy. And there were policies where the clergy needed to marry and lots of changes, big changes. And Buddhism was very, it was persecuted at that time. in the early 1900s. So aside from being very, very poor, there was a low opinion and this hard times for Suzuki Roshi and his family. But out of this difficulty, and he also feels, Suzuki Roshi says, many teachers of his age who took up the priesthood and studying Buddhism

[13:57]

had this same understanding of let's really get to the bottom of what Buddhism really has to offer. Why is it that people don't respect it and are treating it this way? And this strong vow to come back to the origins, to teach, and to show people. And this vow, and for Suzuki Roshi, his school friends, you know, these friends at school, he wanted to show them, you know. So this is mixed with, you know, hurt and how do you show people what you got when they don't respect you. It's kind of a mixed emotions there, I think. However, this vow was very, very strong and supported him his whole life, brought him to the United States to teach. So for Suzuki Roshi, study was very, very important.

[15:02]

And he mentions it in many different lectures what the importance of study. Not only, I should say, he studied academically and you know, the intellectual side of the teaching. But later, when he was teaching here, he regretted he didn't study enough. He didn't study widely enough and deeply enough to be able to meet the students that were wanting to practice and study. And that was some regret he had when he was young and had the energy and the time. He didn't take up study as thoroughly as he could have. And he mentions this that he really didn't study, you know, coming from a Buddhist family of, you know, father being a Zen priest, all the practices of the temple he took up, and an area of more academic study, he did study strongly enough and regretted that.

[16:12]

Also, The study that he advocates to study the Buddha way is to study the self, to study the self in all our activities, in all our actions. What does that mean to study the self? To be present, attentive, and to not cover over our activity with conceptual ideas about what we're doing and why and how and to do our best to be here right now studying rather than in our thoughts about and two steps away about what it's about, which means to study our body.

[17:20]

to study our body-mind, I should say. Our posture. Where are we in space? This is study. This is all-inclusive study. Sometimes we think study goes from this way up, you know, just... permeating our bodies with study. And, you know, when we're young, We can sit kind of any old way, and we don't have to think about it that much. And those habits of standing and sitting and walking in line down that are not so healthy will catch up with us, you know. And we need revitalizing this vow, really, to study all-inclusively body and mind right now. and start with our posture. Now, in this paragraph, to study the Buddha way is to study the self, our studying our self thoroughly is already studying the Buddha way.

[18:36]

Already is studying Buddha way. You might think, you know... We have to study something else in order to study the self. We can start with to study the self. To study the self is to study the Buddha way. So it's already taken care of. We start with the self. And then to study the self is to forget the self. What is this? If we thoroughly study the self, we see that just as more and more we can see that it's all just causes and conditions that are flowing and arising. Who we think we are, what we can do, our intellectual capabilities, our acumen, everything, our reputation, what we have, what we don't have.

[19:45]

It's not ours, really. It's causes and conditions that come together to appear like that. And it's always changing. And we can't hold on to it. Rest on our laurels. It's forgotten. It's gone. Study the Buddha way is to study the Self. Forgetting the Self, to study the Self is to forget the Self to forget some idea of self and drop into what is the self? What is it that arises right now? And this, I would say, is the quintessential or the method that's been passed on from Buddhas and ancestors to us is to sit.

[20:52]

When we sit, we get closer and closer, I would say, to being able to study the flowing causes and conditions that are rising and vanishing. It's harder and harder to hold on to anything. There it is. Forgetting the self. All-inclusive study is sitting in zazen and letting go of body and mind, which is open to everyone. as I hope you all know. And it's open to everyone right now, you know. You don't have to wait for the schedule to say Zazen, you know, and to come to the Zendo. Or if you're sitting at home, Zazen, all-inclusive study right now.

[22:02]

You don't have to wait. Along with studying the self and studying the self and forgetting the self, there's many pitfalls in this. And I really want to bring this up. And I've been turning this and looking at this in the last months, which is a term that maybe many of you know already. It's a term that was coined by John Wellwood in 1983 called spiritual bypass. Spiritual bypassing. And so as we're talking about studying the Buddha ways to study the self, there are many ways in which we fool ourselves, actually, into not really studying the self and inserting Buddhist teachings, wonderful Buddhist teachings,

[23:12]

but nevertheless used in a way that is keeping us from truly studying the Self. Things like the wonderful teaching of being not clinging to anything or not being attached. This is part of the Four Noble Truths, that clinging... The second noble truth, the origin of suffering is, or dis-ease is clinging. So, you know, this teaching of letting go and non-attachment and beautiful teaching, helpful teaching. However, used in the wrong way, you know, used at the wrong time, brought in as a kind of bludgeon or shield to defend oneself about the lack of real relationships and real friends or loving relationships or difficult childhood traumas.

[24:20]

To use non-attachment, non-clinging in that way is misuse of the teaching. And it's using spiritual teachings to bypass what we actually need to attend to and take up and study all inclusively. So this particular phenomena, spiritual bypass, is very pervasive. And I... The more I study it, the more I see my own tendencies in the past and looking at now, is this still going on? The main, maybe, definition of spiritual bypassing is using practices and teachings to sidestep or bypass or avoid issues

[25:28]

and situations and work that we really need to do. Psychological, emotional, relational work. And when we have teachings in Buddhism, for example, emptiness, you know. Emptiness is never apart from and is never taught apart from. only provisionally in order to turn it, is never apart from form. So to take emptiness and to mix it up and confuse it as it doesn't matter anyway, or it's all empty anyway, you shouldn't be so upset, or using it in some some way that negates feelings, relations, our own disappointments and pain, is a misuse of Buddhist teaching, and it's a disservice to ourself, and it is not all-inclusive study.

[26:40]

All-inclusive includes emptiness and form, includes the messy, difficult, inter-relational stuff that goes on in families, at work, at school, in community, and inside, you know, internally. And to cover that over with, you know, it's all empty anyway, or I'm not attached, or I don't have any needs, I don't have to attend to this because I'm above it all, I'm practicing. is a very dry, actually, kind of a practice, I think. It doesn't have the moistness and warmth necessary to continue our practice and to be in the world in a way that the practice and the teaching is asking of us.

[27:47]

So this is worthy of our attention, I feel. Our study, our all-inclusive study, if it doesn't include the difficult things that are hard to look at and hard to feel and hard to talk about, then it's pretty brittle and thin practice that might look pretty good to someone. But the warmth and depth may not be there, which is what we need to really fulfill our vows of compassion and generosity and loving-kindness. I wanted to just read a few things that Suzuki Roshi said about studying, true study.

[29:19]

It says the most important point is you yourself rather than your teacher. You yourself study hard. And what you receive from your teacher is the spirit of study. That spirit will be transmitted from warm hand to warm hand. You should do it. That's all. There's nothing to transmit to you. Often we have some longing that somebody can give something to us. They've got it, don't they? And how come they're keeping it from me? Give it to me.

[30:36]

The basic teaching is we all share Buddha nature as our own. We all are Buddha nature, each one of us. Nobody has it and nobody doesn't have it. It's who we are. And yet we have to study all-inclusively. We have to study hard with diligence and eagerness in order to realize it. And that spirit, I appreciate that so much. It's about you yourself. Each one of us, it's about our own study. And study of the self is studying the Buddha way. It's not about our teacher. And this is another kind of spiritual bypass thing that can happen where it looks like we give it all to the teacher. They're holding it all. They've got it. So this... admonition to study hard.

[31:43]

Study in practice, I think they're really interchangeable, but this study inclusively, study the self. And that spirit, do you feel the spirit, the ongoing, never-ending, to the last breath, spirit of study? Can we encourage one another? Wake that up in one another. I hope so. Another thing he says is if you're completely involved in our activity, that is how to study. Completely doing whatever you're doing, whether it's sitting in a talk, having tea, Are we completely there? That is how to study. All-inclusive study.

[32:45]

And I would say that's asen, too. There's been such difficult news in these last weeks. And when you study, when you bring your attention to what's going on, you see fixed views and karmic consequences and the results of thinking in a certain way, flowing from thinking like the wheel follows, like the shadow follows the wheel, flowing from thinking are actions of body and mind. You see it. We see it. And we see, if we look deeply, the results of not studying thoroughly racism, ageism, genderism, prejudice.

[33:57]

We see it. An all-inclusive study and studying the self, studying the Buddha way, studying the self, rests on or flows from, I don't know, flows from don't know mind. Don't know mind and commitment and vow to study. It's like the least we can do. So may this year be full for you all, full of practice and study. And may we support one another to continue our practice. And I just want to mention today is our first lunch that we're serving to the Sunday folks after being closed since April, I think, since before April, I think March.

[35:11]

And we're back in Cloud Hall. It's snug. I don't know if you've walked through it. It has a snug, quiet, dry, warm feeling to it. And so much work has been done and there's so much more to be done with the new retreat center and the ADA, the Accessible Pathways. Just marvelous work being done and more to unfold. So this is how we maintain and take care of these places, not for the sake of just taking care of these places. We maintain and take care of these places as part of our all-inclusive study and our open eyes about what needs to be done. So I want to thank you all, all of you who've contributed and helped, and there's There's more. We can use more help, I'm sure.

[36:11]

And may we all receive the benefits of this wonderful project. Okay. Where is my stick? Voila. Thank you very much. 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.

[36:59]

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