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 evening, everyone. Before I get into introductions and start this evening's Dharma talk, I wanted to just take a moment to express something, I think, around our current events and also take a moment for a bit of practice. So in wake of the recent elections, I was moved by an article that one of my core teachers sent out, Mushin Ikeda, over at East Bay Meditation, and she quoted another beloved teacher of ours, Suzuki Roshi, And the quote was, even if the sun rises in the West, the Bodhisattva only has one direction.

[01:05]

Their way is to express their true nature and sincerity in each moment. And so I just wanted to sit with that for a moment. And this teaching reminds us that even in uncertain times, we can stay true to our deepest intentions moving forward with purpose and clarity. A few days after that, I was sitting right over there in what's called the Doan seat, the person who rings the bell. So I was in here early morning before everyone else around, maybe the Eno was here. And I received another teaching from another beloved teacher, the bell. And the bell in our practice embodies this same single unwavering path. Each time it rings, it expresses its true nature fully, calling us to presence, sincerity, and with wakefulness. And whether the bell wakes us from sleep, sitting behind me, I have a wake-up bell, or how we start zazen with the small bell you heard.

[02:19]

We even have bells to have mindfulness breaks or to take pause in the action of zazen. The big densho bell out there that you just heard may call us into service, into community, into the Dharma quite literally. And each one of these bells sounds with a purpose to invite us back to what truly matters. So for me, in times of political, social, and environmental turmoil, it can be easy to feel a slight feeling of resignation or lose sight. of what we believe in. And yet, like the bodhisattva, the bell's tone remains steady, ringing throughout doubt and uncertainty, inviting us to stay grounded in our purpose. So we too can be like the bell, using our voices, our actions, and presence to express our deepest intention, encouraging others to wake up, reflect, and engage with compassion, to meet and make change.

[03:25]

So regardless of your positions or beliefs, I think that we are entering a time that's requiring us to practice together. So I invite us to join the bell, expressing our innermost nature with sincerity and strength. May we embody bodhicitta and awaken our heart-mind and bring clarity and connection to each moment. body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness. We send our heart along with the sound of this bell. May the hearers awaken from forgetfulness and transcend anxiety and sorrow. Thank you for joining me in that.

[04:41]

So welcome everyone here in the City Center, Hoshinji, Zendo, and then also to all of our friends online. My name is Eli. I'm one of the resident priests here at City Center. And before I start, I want to express gratitude to our central abbot that's taking care of us in the board, San Francisco Zen Center board meeting for inviting me to co-lead an eight-week practice container with Tim Wicks and Tova Green. And this whole eight-week series is on welcoming, exploring how to welcome ourselves and others on this path of practice. And so we're all on this journey, whether we know it or not, whether we're present for it or not. And in the text we're using in the practice period, Welcoming Beginner's Mind by Galen Ferguson, we are looking at all aspects of how to welcome this practice journey.

[05:50]

And to do so, we're using something that's referred to as the 10 ox-herding pitchers. And I wanna say, whether you've been following along with us the last couple of weeks or not, you can totally jump in at this time without kind of losing a skip. So the practice things I'm going to talk about do stand on their own. But I did want to just do a quick review to kind of recap where we've been so far. So these are some of the ox hurting pictures. We're only going to go up to six tonight. But just to give a review, the first picture starts off with this person. searching for something that is missing. And it represents us all as we start perhaps a practice journey or any maybe objective. We start off searching and looking for something. And in the second picture here, we begin to see signs pointing us towards our true nature.

[06:59]

Maybe we discover some of the teachings for the first time. But as you can see, the person now is discovering the foot tracks of the ox. So after we start getting some glimpses at awareness, and you can Google these, by the way. Sorry, I'm going to flip through them fast with my stapled flip chart. In the third picture, you actually see the ox. And in this stage of... practice or path is usually when we have our first direct experience. Some people call it Kensho, but it's kind of just a deep, profound embodied experience of practice that's not just conceptual. And then last week what we covered also was catching the ox. And here you can see the young person has now gotten a rope around the ox.

[08:03]

And in here, we're really trying to grasp control to figure out this kind of newfound understanding. And we're still definitely driven by this need to change, this desire to seek out and control. And so... There's kind of a unique transition that happens after the fourth pitcher. We go from kind of this need to, like I said, seek and control, to in the fifth and sixth pitcher, we go to more of a stance of acceptance and harmonizing. So here in the fifth pitcher, kind of similar to the fourth, you see the ox herder more just gently leading the ox rather than kind of this push and pull. And so while the whip and rope might still be necessary, as the texts say, we start to have a more friendly relationship to our practice.

[09:07]

And so each one of these pictures comes with a poem. So I wanted to share the poem for number five. And I did not remember my glasses, so excuse my leaning. The whip and rope are necessary, else it might stray off. down some dusty road. Being well-trained, it becomes naturally gentle. Then, unfettered, it obeys its master. So this poem, again, highlights how our practice at this point still needs a little bit of support. perhaps not a whip. I think that in today's terms, that would be a little bit harsh. And I'll introduce another version of this picture that's a little bit, I think, more in sync. But it's actually a time where we start to loosen this need to control and kind of allow things to naturally and gently guide us. Zenju Earthland Manuel, one of the Dharma teachers,

[10:11]

that came through Zen Center. In her book, The Deepest Peace, Contemplations from a Season of Stillness, she writes, peace is not found in the quietude of retreat, but in the way we meet all that is unfolding in our life. So again, peace is not found in the quietude of retreat, but in the way we meet all that is unfolding in our lives. And so as we get into picture five, we start to begin this piece by meeting ourselves with patience and acceptance rather than this kind of something's wrong, I need to change. Another teaching that was kind of grinded into me by dear teacher Mark Lancaster up in Bainbridge, Washington, expressed a teaching that was from Reb Anderson. And I really struggled with this at first, so this might give you something to gnaw on. And so he offers a teaching on responsibility.

[11:15]

And what he proposes that, you know, in practice, in Zazen, that with responsibility, that there's a shift of our focus from seeking something external to realizing what we are looking for is right here in our immediate experience. And so he writes that part of this meditation is to be responsible for what you don't make. So part of this meditation is to be responsible for what you don't make. Usually we think we're responsible for what we do, but not for what someone else does. And this meditation is just the opposite. It's to be responsible for what you don't do. Be responsible for what you didn't do, which means when someone else raises their arm or cast their vote, you're responsible for that too. I still get some resistance on it, like, really? Anyways, this teaching invites us to let go of personal authorship and recognize our interconnectedness.

[12:19]

Instead of searching for answers outside of ourselves, we begin to see that what we seek is not out there, and it actually within our own awareness and in our own relationship to the world around us. Picture five really starts to mark this understanding in our path of practice where we start to gently accept things as they are and recognize everything we need is already here. So now number six. It's kind of a fun one. It feels fun. So here you'll see the ox herder atop the bull or the ox playing away on what appears to be a flute of some sort. So the poem for this picture is mounting the bull. Slowly I return homeward. The voice of my flute intones through the evening.

[13:22]

Measuring with hand beats. the pulsating harmony. I direct the endless rhythm. Whoever hears this melody will join me. So in this stage, our practice actually becomes a kind of music. It's almost a gentle rhythm that aligns with the natural flow of how things are and how our life is unfolding. This picture kind of invites us into unforced harmony. where we can actually just trust the moment as it is. As you can see, we don't need the whip and rope anymore of discipline. Instead, we're simply just kind of harmonizing with the melody of our experience. Again, in Contemplations from a Season of Stillness, Zenju describes this beautifully. To surrender to the mystery of life is to find peace in the unknown and the unpredictable.

[14:29]

And so again, this quote reminds us that it's not our task to control or to master life, but to meet it with openness and trust. And by surrendering to this mystery, we can actually find great peace in life. Picture number six is also spoken to, not surprisingly, wonderfully by Dogen in the Ginjo Koan, speaking to non-separation and awakening. To carry the self forward and realize the myriad things is delusion, that myriad things come forth and realize their self is awakening. So again, in picture number six, we're kind of putting down this need to carry the self forward, to impose ourselves onto the world. More so, it's inviting us to become more receptive, allowing less resistance with things as they are.

[15:43]

It's pretty interesting too. I have a seven-year-old and I get to watch her kind of hit this stage continuously, whether it's, you know, from riding a bike, she's starting to learn Spanish, she's starting to learn how to read, do mathematics and everything. And when thinking about the fifth and the sixth stage and kind of how it feels like a progression from one, and I don't know if any of you experience like this, but it can be tempting to think that this is kind of like... all right, we're making it, and now I'm on top of the ox. It was interesting. I was reflecting how it's very much like the hero's journey. I was imagining the movie Rocky, which I don't know if it's a popular one here, and Oldie, but how he's more or less finds some things out of place and goes on a regiment of kind of training and conditioning where he... starts to maybe realize what's more important.

[16:43]

And he gets to the top of the stairs, you know, the iconic scene, and he's kind of made it. Then he wins his first fight and he's an official, you know, fighter. And, you know, there's, I think, a part of how I was relating to this is like, yeah, you get to the sixth stage, you're playing your flute, you know, you've kind of integrated. But that's not at all how this works. First of all, there's not a kind of pinnacle stage. There are ways of relating to where we are at. And in spiritual practice, it's easy to think that we're climbing some mountain to a designated peak or mastering this practice to be like one of these brown robes. And we might think that reaching a state of this kind of calmness or harmony is a place to have arrived on our journey. However, like I said, I had a couple of alternative pictures that I think help our Western minds engage with maybe these stages as they should be.

[17:49]

So in some of the alternative depictions, like ones I found by someone named Shubun, and I'm sorry I... couldn't research more. I know that DT Suzuki referenced them some, but they're less common. And then the interpretation for me really changed. So this is one of number five, and you can see that it's taming the ox. However, you can see that there's no rope or nothing connected to the ox. You just have to take my word. The ox herder is just simply standing there. And for me, this really symbolizes a stance of companionship versus control. Because even in the other one with the rope around the ox, it still felt to me like something was being led. And more importantly, to make us not want to just sit there on top of the ox, metaphorically or literally, this alternate depiction of six shows the ox kind of just sitting and resting.

[18:59]

And you see the ox herder kind of back just off in the distance watching. And so what's really relevant about that picture to me is instead of riding the ox victoriously. The boy is just simply watching from a distance, allowing the ox to rest. And so for me, both of these messages remind me that practice isn't about victory or mastery, but about gentle surrender and harmony. The boy doesn't need to hold on to the ox to be at peace. By just being present and allowing things to unfold, she's able to have a different relationship with the ox. And then, of course, as I'm pointing to this as a way to say that the journey continues beyond harmonizing. And so it's easy to think that these are final resting places of like kind of...

[20:04]

I'm not searching anymore. I'm kind of harmonizing. But there's actually a deeper essence to this. And in part, that is meeting the oxes of others, right? And meeting the minds, the practice body of others. As we know, this is not an individual practice. Galen Ferguson describes in Welcoming Beginner's Mind that true welcoming is not about achieving something once and for all. It's an ongoing practice of seeing clearly and allowing things to be. In this sense, we're invited to continue welcoming things as they unfold, not only in our own journey, but in others. And so as we move beyond picture six, which Tova and Tim will do in the following talks, I really wanted to say that because of this, Zen is not about how we meet others in the same regard.

[21:10]

It's not about controlling or manipulating things. And so I wanted to speak on the importance of teachers and spiritual friends to help us relate to our own ox and and guiding us in this journey without imposing control. In my own experience, my teacher, Ed Sarazan, amongst other mentors, have been invaluable in supporting this process. And it's why we, in Zen practice, emphasize working with a teacher, emphasize practicing together. So perhaps next time we do this class, Tim and Tova, we can add... Two more pictures, one representing the herder engaging with a teacher and one of them engaging with the sangha. So I had a lot and a little. I'm going to wrap up here with a couple more words and a poem in particular, which I feel in a sense encapsulates the whole ox herding pictures.

[22:18]

And it's The Journey by Mary Oliver, which I'm sure many of you have heard if you've been around these parts long enough. But I thought it was very fitting for this talk and day and time. One day you finally knew what you had to do and began. Through the voices around you, oh, excuse me. Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life, each void cried, but you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do. Through the wind pride with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, through their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones but little by little as you left their voices behind the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world determined to do the only thing that you could do

[23:45]

determined to save the only life you could save. Excuse my poem reading. It's late and that's what it is. Look up the poem and read it. I urge you. But it really reminds us and encourages us to honor our whole journey, to trust the process and embrace the unfolding that we will have in life. And in closing, That's what we're doing in Zazen. We're learning to welcome the parts of ourselves without judgment or resistance. We develop a sense of affinity with life, cultivating kinship with each moment as it arises. And one last quote that I will say from Reb, as he said, receive the sitting. See the sitting that is happening right now as a gift to the body. and see the body itself as a gift.

[24:47]

Each moment of presence is a gift teaching us to embrace life without trying to control it. So as you venture off into the world, yeah, I invite you and encourage you to just notice how you're relating to the ox, relating to your life as it is. Take a deep breath and welcome all. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[25:47]

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