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. Just yesterday I told somebody, it's not going to rain. I think I forgot that it, I forgot about rain. I forgot that it seemed like inconceivable. So we don't have that anymore, really, is my attitude. Totally unreflective confidence. Oh, no, tomorrow it's not going to rain. Ridiculous. Humble by the rain today and humbled by you all making the trip through the rain to come. to sit in this barn and humbled and honored by those of you joining online, either in real time or at whatever time now you're in.

[01:10]

Same moment or a different moment, what do you say? I wanted to begin this morning by sharing a statement from our Soto Zen founder in Japan, Dogen Zenji, in his collected record, which is known as the Ehe Koroku. He says, this is number 34, if you're keeping track. He says, If this greatest pole does not penetrate into our bones, how will the fragrance of the plum blossoms pervade the entire universe? So this was one of Dogen's stand-up shorts.

[02:25]

The whole assembly is standing and Adobin is standing and he says something beautiful. And this took place maybe sometime around the year 1236 at Koshouji Temple in the dead of winter in a fierce Kyoto cold. If this greatest cold does not penetrate into our bones? How will the fragrance of the plum blossoms pervade the entire universe? I've been turning this line over, thinking about it, and this morning before it turned into rain, it was just sort of a gross drizzle here at Green Gulch. And I was on my way to finish preparing for my talk about letting the cold penetrate your bones.

[03:26]

And I was walking like this. Yeah. About, you know, 20 steps from my office, I realized, oh, I think this is what I'm talking about. If this gross drizzle isn't welcome, what will be welcome? So I think I think, well, it's gross drizzle now, so I can... hunch, and power. And then when the sun comes out and the plum fragrance is everywhere, I'll be able to just open fully and receive it all. And that's a nice idea, and maybe so. But I have some doubt. You know, I felt it in my body as I was hunched against this rain. Like, I think this is leaving a trace. I think this is carving a rut into my body and my heart and my mind. I don't think it's so easy to say it Well, today I'm cowering and hunched, but tomorrow if the weather is nice, I'll open.

[04:30]

If this greatest goal does not penetrate into my bones, how do I think I'll let the fragrance in when it's time for that? I can close my heart to you now, but I'll open it later. Maybe so. And of course, it's okay to cower and it's okay to close. And we should maybe be a little bit strict with ourselves too and notice, what rut is this deepening, this closing my heart, this cowering in my body? And when exactly do I think that's going to heal or shift? Well, when thumbs come out, then I'll open. It's too late. So Kyoto, you know, Dogen says this greatest cold.

[05:36]

Kyoto is cold when it's cold. And then this additional feature of Kyoto is that the buildings are made mostly out of paper. So especially maybe in the 13th century. So it's cold. And Dogen Zenji and his monks were these as a friend said, very ventilated robes. So wearing ventilated robes and surrounded by this cold. So this teaching in our meditation practice of welcoming, trying not to cower and resist, but welcoming what is. Also, amazingly, just around this time, a few years before Dogen was given this beautiful statement, a kind of generational once-in-a-lifetime cold had ravaged Japan, causing crop failure everywhere, and this great famine that wiped out something like a third of the population of Japan from this cold.

[06:54]

So this cold that dug in is suffering and allowing in is like real suffering, real cold. It's not just a nice instruction for slightly chilly, well-fed monks. It's this frozen, devastated ground. Japanese society apparently sort of fell apart as it would if a third of the population died from the effects of this cold. So he's not saying this lightly. He means let it in, whatever it is. Also, this temple where he's teaching, Ko Shouji Temple, has an awesome long name, which is called Kanon Dori Ko Shou Orenji. So the Kanon, Kanon Dori, the Kanon is Avalokiteshvara,

[07:57]

the manifestation of compassion, the bodhisattva of compassion. So the name of the monastery where he's giving this teaching is the chapel for being guided and benefited by great compassion. This chapel devoted to great compassion at the monastery for promoting the sacred. in awe of that temple man, you know, here at Green Gold's Farm. We could be, we're really, I think, aiming low. We could be the chapel, the barn for being guided by great compassion at this monastery of promoting good and kindness and peace in the suffering world. So anyway, the context of this statement, let the cold end,

[08:57]

and the plum fragrance only then can permeate the whole cosmos. That's a teaching of compassion at a place dedicated to compassion. That's what that teaching is for. So of course, You know, if we're sitting meditation, we want to open to the joy and ease of meditation, but not so much the pain and constriction and rumination of meditation. But are we open or are we closed? How can we wake up to this fact that we're alive, this basic, obvious, all the time overlooked fact that we are here? If we're trying to keep some part of how that being here is manifesting out.

[10:00]

I want to be fully alive, but not with that part. So are we open all the way? So this is our practice. In Zen, we practice including everything, welcoming everything. And we do this, of course, in whatever activity. This is a way of life to include everything. and welcome whatever is. And we express it, I think, most beautifully and most... We embody it in a very powerful, particular way in sitting meditation. We sit upright and open and still, and we open our eyes, and we open our ears and our hearts, we let everything in, include everything inside or outside.

[11:02]

So sometimes we think of meditation and there may indeed be some styles of meditation where we close our eyes and cocoon into some deep and separate and quiet place in ourself. That may be a wonderful practice, but it's not a practice. It's not Zen practice. Our effort is to just open out all of the senses, open, including more and more, including, if we can, just this whole immeasurable totality of being all of the and light and sound and feeling of this moment all included in this light, in this brightness, in the stillness.

[12:05]

It's quieting down our heart and mind in order to include everything, not in order to just get lighter and lighter until it all goes away. So when we just sit in this way, open to everything, including everything, the teaching is that the whole universe is just right here, perfect as it is, totally revealed. Dogen says, when even for a moment we sit in this way, open, including everything, then the whole universe, becomes the Buddha mudra, becomes our zazen, and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. It's just simple. It's just everything is present. Everything is revealed just as it is. It's maddening to try to explain or point out because it's just the obvious fact of sitting with your eyes open in stillness.

[13:16]

What's missing? What's not included? What's out of place? There are, we could say there are two kinds generally of including everything. The first is maybe the usual way of including everything. And we can read Jogen's line in that way when he says, if this greatest hole does not penetrate our bones, how will the fragrance of the plum blossoms pervade the entire universe? So a usual way of including everything is, there's coal, bring it in. There's plum blossom, bring it in.

[14:18]

There's light, bring that in. There's sound, bring that in. Here's a feeling, bring it in. Opening and including each thing one by one. And there's another way of including everything, which is to include everything before it gets splayed up into anything. This is the Zen way of including everything. By the time there's things, you're way too late. So these wonderful teachings that try to point to this include everything before you divide it up. It's not like a gathering up of something. It's a trying to be more directly, trying to be before the division happens.

[15:22]

We sometimes call this hear with your eyes and see with your ears. That's a good way. If you can hear with your eyes and see with your ears, maybe you're there before it's gotten divided up. You know, there are sounds for ears and there are sights for eyes. But if you can hear with your eyes, then there's just this total unified feel of this moment as it is for us, for you. Or another wonderful expression, to swallow up all the waters of the great river in one volt. There's a river and a lot of water. It's gonna be really hard. But before there's a river, you can do it. Dogen says, this is the principle that is prior to knowledge and perception.

[16:27]

It's not knowing stuff and then including all that stuff you know. It's before you know, it's direct being alive. In other words, if we're trying to include various things, I think Fu has used this analogy before. Humpty Dumpty has already fallen off the wall. So we can gather up all the Humpty Dumpty pieces and include them, and we should. That's good. But even better, you know, if we can catch before Humpty Dumpty falls, before this basic being alive gets carved up and split up and named. So of course, there is a wonderful practice of including lots of things and it's worth including this practice. It's worth, you know, every day reflecting on what am I not including?

[17:34]

What person, what grief, what joy, what sensation, what relationship, Am I not allowing in? Am I not including? And then using our practice to find this stability and the courage and the ground to say, I have room for that. That won't break me. Just like everything being included doesn't break the sky. I have room so I can include this difficulty or this light or this joy that I'm avoiding. Wonderful. an important practice. But even better to save for just a moment if we can connect with our life before it's divided us.

[18:44]

So here's how Suzuki Roshi, our founder of San Francisco Zen Center, says it. Everybody okay? The big question I understand. What am I not including? So Suzuki Roshi says, when you just practice zazen on your black cushion, your practice includes everything. That's great. I don't practice. I'm going to now, you know, include everything or include everything. I'm going to do something to include everything. So he's saying, when you're sitting on your black cushion, everything is included.

[19:49]

What's not already included? So everything is included. And you practice Zazen with Buddha, with the ancestors, and with all sentient beings. This is what I always repeat over and over. And it's true. If you read Zubiroshi, he always repeats this. Include everything. That's this basic warm-hearted teaching that requires this great depth and great strength and great space to be able to include everything. but it's already included when you just sit on your cushion. Then he says, we say that the absolute is that which includes everything. But actually it is more than that. It is beyond our understanding. You may think that if you add up all the beings that exist in this universe, that is the absolute. That's somehow like, and we get all the pieces and I'm going to include them and that'll be everything.

[20:52]

He says, but it is not so because the absolute cannot be understood by your mind. That which you understand is already not absolute because your mind limits the real understanding of the absolute. When you don't understand and you just sit, you become a stone. or you become stuff and you include everything. That is ourselves in practice. So again, not a gathering up, but a not understanding, not knowing, before knowing, sitting like a stone or like stuff. What a word, just to be stuff. So many of you, if you've been hearing anything I've said over the last couple of months, probably it's had to do with something like sit like a stone.

[21:57]

Somehow these teachings of just being in the stillness have been very alive for me. Sit like a stone with your eyes totally open and your ears totally open, but doing nothing. Just being still in the brightness of this moment of your actual life. So I want to note that include everything is the foundation, not just of our meditation practice, but of our ethical practice. Include everything is like the whole way of Zen practice in sitting and in life. Include everything. This deep faith that by including everything, we're creating the ground. We're connecting with actual life and actually connecting with each other and with being here in a way that's the source of compassion, of right action, of not causing harm.

[23:05]

So including everything is the basis for our compassion practice. Including the suffering is the basis of our compassionate response to suffering. This is our aspiration. So one aspect that I've become very aware of that I need to work on to include in my heart, in my mind, in my practice of including everything, and the tradition talks a lot about this, is that we need to include the things that we think are bad. We need to include the things that are evil. And we need to include the things that are good. If we don't let the cold penetrate our bones, how will the plum blossom fragrance pervade the whole universe?

[24:10]

If we don't include the great suffering and the terrible evil, how will we live fully? It's so obvious, you know, when I reflect on my own difficulties, my own relationships, the community, and the whole world, that this habit of thinking in terms of good and evil, carving up the world in that way and trying to eliminate the evil and hold on to the good is this great engine of harm and suffering and confusion. It's not helpful. It's not good. I don't know that I need to give examples. They're all around in our hearts, in our cities and towns and country and world.

[25:20]

Almost all the time, I'm in that good or evil, bad. Remove. And then I come and say, I practice including everything. So the next entry in this, in this, in the record of Jogen Zenji, the teaching he offers after having said, let the great cold permeate your bones. Because that's the openness that will allow the fragrance to pervade the whole cosmos. Next, he says, I don't know if it was a day later or a week later, but the next thing he says is, he stands in front of the assembly, the practitioners, and he says, is old sage Shakyamuni a Buddha or a great demon? This is kind of classic Zen stick.

[26:29]

that may land for some of you and not so much for others. It's a very typical and powerful statement. Is old sage Shakyamuni a Buddha or a demon? It's a challenge to the practitioners. So Shakyamuni, of course, is the founder of this whole mess. This whole thing is his fault. that old demon. If you're uncomfortable right now, it's his fault for starting the whole wheel of dharma in motion. So as I hope I express a fundamental practice,

[27:31]

For us as Buddhists, the fundamental teaching of Shakyamuni was to appreciate and connect with and really live at the edge of life itself in its totality as it's arising before we cut it up into pieces and start calling something something and something else something else. That's the teaching that Shakyamuni has. Appreciating and connecting with ungraspable life before we cut it into pieces. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a wonderful test or trap. If you say, yes, it's good to connect with life before we call it anything. this abiding in, being in this undivided present, immediate present, is good.

[28:38]

We've gone after the carving up to call it something. That should be obvious, I think, if I'm saying it at all clearly. Shakyamuni Buddha is teaching us to be right here before There's anything that we could get a hold of and call something. And then he's saying, why didn't you call that? And he said, it's good. But we missed it already. The thing we're calling good, it's already broken. It's already after something's been carved up. That's an idea, you could say. It's too late. And of course, this is what we're doing all the time, is carving up the world into pieces and pronouncing judgments on the various parts and imagining, despite everything we think we know about Buddha Dharma or deep ecology, imagine that these pieces are pitted against each other and that there's good ones and bad ones.

[29:51]

Are you involved in that kind of splitting of good and evil, eliminating the evil, and promoting the good based on our perspective, our conditioning? So what do you call Buddha? How can we stop? part of what we practice in this Zen practice is how to become really intimate with this kind of view, this kind of hate in ourself, and sitting and breathing, make enough room that it might gradually unbook or unwind to notice and catch ourselves thinking,

[31:14]

good and evil. So as I said, this is our ethical practice. Connect with your life before there's anything that could be called good or evil. That's our meditation practice, and that's also our ethical practice. So there's a great story about this that I want to share. A story about a very bad Buddhist whose name was Hui Ming. So Hui Ming lived in China in the seventh century. This is 500 years before Dogen. Before Dogen went to China to bring this Zen teaching to Japan. So Hui Ming really wanted to become a Buddha. He really wanted to live in the undivided, ungraspable presence.

[32:15]

And bless his heart. He heard that there was a robe and a bowl that embodied Buddha and that this person named the sixth ancestor had this robe and this bowl that expressed undivided, ungraspable reality. This person, Wei Nung, who had this robe and bowl, had inherited it from the fifth ancestor, who then said, sort of, I would say, sort of disappointingly, in terms of the commentary on the Buddhist Sangha, he said, now, Wei Nung, I've given you this robe and this bowl, you better get out of here in the middle of the night. And the fact, because everybody around here wants to be a Buddha, and they're going to try to tackle you to get this roe and this bowl so that they can be the Buddha. Give me that undivided presence.

[33:21]

I want that. Especially since Wei Nung was this ignorant foreigner who was despised in the monastery. This person receives the robe and the bowl and the teacher says, they're going to chase you. They're going to chase you. And they do. They do. Quai Meng, who so badly wants to be a Buddha, chases him through the mountains with apparently hundreds of people to get the robe and the bowl. So Quai Nang hears him coming and takes off the robe. sets the rope and the ball on a rock and hides behind a bush. And Wei Ming gets there first. Wei Ming had been actually a high-ranking military guy. So he was fast, I guess.

[34:23]

Knew how to get stuff from people. So he got there and was delighted to see that this Buddha, undivided, easeful, spacious, contented, loving life was right there on a rock for him to pick up. And he tried to pick it up. And before he does, Wei Nang says, this robe is about the Buddha way. How could you be fighting over it? So Wei Ming picks up the robe in the bowl, but he can't lift it. The beautiful, supernatural powers of this abiding in the undivided present reality of our life as it actually is. Sets the bowl, the bowl and robot right there, but Wayne Lang can't pick them up. Of course, right?

[35:25]

You can't get that. He's already carved up the world and now he wants to get this thing. He's way too late. But something beautiful happens with Kui Ming that maybe isn't celebrated enough. He says, he is given pause, as we say. And he says, you know, I came for the teaching. I came to connect with my actual life. I didn't come for the rope. So he's humbled and he requests the teaching. He says, I'm sorry, this actually, I don't want the rope. I want the teaching. And Huenang says, I will give you the teaching, but first you need to become very still and silent. Always like that.

[36:31]

To hear Zen teaching, to hear Buddhist teaching, it's so subtle. and so easy to misunderstand. The most important thing is to become silent and still, and then the teaching can come in. So Wei Ming, he sits really still next to this Buddha robe and next to this great ancestor. He feels his breath, and he allows... his body to become still and his mind to become quiet. And then Kuenang notices he's ready and says a strange thing. He says, do not think of good and do not think of evil. Just right now, what is your original face? So that's the teaching that Kuenang gives.

[37:33]

And this, what is your original face before your parents are born is a famous Zen saying again, this language of Zen. What is your original face? What did you look like before your parents were born? It's an awesome question. It's what is life itself? What is really before anything is carved? before there is any kind of like birth and death and you and ancestors. What's that face? So this is a classic teaching that people, you know, get red faced now trying to, what is my original face? You know, all retreats, driving themselves crazy to find it. But it's paired, this is so important. This, what is your original face is paired with this very strange invitation that sets the stage for that. Wait, this has always struck me. Don't think, I'm going to say something now, but don't think good or evil.

[38:37]

What's your original face? My feeling has been, I wasn't about to think about good or evil. I really wanted to think about the original face because that's a cool question. But somehow it's vital. I don't think it's just arbitrary that these are next to each other. Don't think of good or evil. And what is your life itself? What is it to be alive just as you are right now? Actually, I don't think about good or evil. There's a deep teaching in this is if we want to know our undivided life, we need to put aside a thought of good and evil. It's not just going to be a problem for us ethically because evil is this great loophole. Because hate is allowed when there's evil. So not only ethically is it vital that we not fall into good and evil, but meditatively, it's vital.

[39:43]

If we're going to touch our actual life, we can't fall into good and evil. Well, I need to say, in case it's not clear to anyone, and I hope it is. That, of course, there's good and evil. There's beneficial action and harmful action. And there's terrible harm and terrible violence. And we have a vow to take no part in that. So this is actually the first of our pure vows that is preliminary to doing any kind of meditation or study of the Buddha Dharma is, I vow... not to do evil. And I vow to do good. I vow not to engage in violence or hatred and totally sincerely to avoid any harm that can be avoided.

[40:48]

And this vow to nourish the wholesome and harmonious and beneficial aspects of our being alive together. So we take these vows And they protect us and support us while we do this practice of letting go of good and evil. In a way, we should probably ask this at the door. I think it would just take too much stat. To add that someone wants to come to a Dharma talk or to Zazen, I guess the email could ask the door. We'll kind of slow down on the process, but it's okay to be late if there's a long line because the email is just interviewing everybody as they come in. Do you promise to avoid evil and to do good? In the ordination ceremony, we say it even further. We say, even after you're a Buddha, even after you are just one with the undivided, ungraspable life itself, in which nothing is good or evil, those are just total phantom concepts.

[41:54]

Even after you're in that state, do you vow to do good and avoid evil? And if you don't say yes, then you're not going to get to that undivided place. So the Ena will say, do you promise to avoid evil and to do good? And you'll say, yes. And then she'll say, okay, so here's how I want to support you to do good, to fulfill this vow. The first step is to stop thinking in terms of good and evil. That's the way to nourish this practice of doing good. That's the way to fulfill this vow. So I think it's easy to imagine, and tragically, sometimes Zen ethics or Buddhist ethics are deployed as a kind of smokescreen to justify lazy ethics. You know, there's no good and evil. It's all just undivided life. I can do whatever I want. We get ourselves off the hook with no good and no evil.

[42:57]

So if you understand this teaching in that way, please, as we say, wash out your ears in the sound of the pure rain. We're so committed to doing good, and we're so aware of how the thought of good and evil is terribly consequential in our world. Therefore, we vow to put aside good and evil. That's totally clear, right? Maybe we could ask in a batch. Raise your hand if you do not promise. Or raise your hand if you promise. The individual will take a long turn. So if I want to connect with my original face, if I want to deepen in my sitting meditation to settle into the background of being alive in which everything just is exactly as it is with no reaching for and no pushing away to be in that brightness, I need to stop thinking that something is good and something is bad and let this greatest cold penetrate my bones and let this most uplifting fragrance permeate the whole cosmos.

[44:24]

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.

[45:14]

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