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 good morning. First of all, how is our sound? Where's Ruth? How's it? Can you hear? You good? Okay. Everybody else? Everybody can hear? Good. So it is a pleasure to have this chance to say hello to everyone in the practice period here toward the beginning. Kathy and I are very, very happy to be here.

[01:04]

Glad to have this precious opportunity to practice with many close friends, good friends, old friends, and new friends. And congratulations to all of you who have completed Tongario. Not such an easy thing to do. I think everybody knows that the tradition of Tangaryo comes from the ancient custom of just ignoring monks who came to the monastery for practice, closing the door in their faces and letting them sit outside the gate for a while to make sure that they were really sincere and that they had the strength of commitment necessary for monastic life. And perhaps you were feeling some of this when you sat, Tangaryo.

[02:09]

Maybe you sat there when it got rough, questioning your commitment. Why am I doing this, after all? What is the point, after all? And how serious am I? Maybe you asked those questions and perhaps the five days came and went and you never did quite answer them. Maybe somewhere in there you realized, wow, it would really be embarrassing to get up and leave now and go home. And so the strength of embarrassment saved you and you saw it through. Or maybe it was will and determination that got you through that and the fear of humiliation and failure. Or maybe at some point you just totally gave up, which is the best way.

[03:18]

Just give up and go on trusting whatever is going to happen next, and just not giving a damn. For the rest of us, those of us who did not sit the five-day tangario this time, but sat some other time, perhaps long ago or not so long ago, maybe you are like me. You just do all this because... Well, that's what you do. You forgot why. So maybe we should all be questioning ourselves. Maybe all of us should peek out from our Zen bubble and really ask ourselves,

[04:25]

What are we, in fact, doing here? What is, in fact, the point? And yes, how serious are we? So here is Dogen about practice period. This is the opening of his fascicle Ongo in volume two of Shobo Genzo. In an informal talk to open the summer practice period, Ru Jing, my late master, old Buddha, Tien Tong, presented this poem. Piling up bones in an open field, gouging out a cave and empty sky, break through the barrier of dualism and splash in a bucket of pitch black lacquer.

[05:26]

I quoted those lines at the opening statement. Dogen then comments, to grab hold of this spirit, to train constantly for 30 years, eating meals, sleeping and stretching your legs, this requires unstinting support. The structure of the 90-day summer practice period provides such support. It is the hand and face of Buddhas and ancestors. It has been intimately transmitted as their skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. You turn the Buddha ancestors' eyes and heads into the days and months of the 90-day summer practice period. Regard the whole of each practice period as the whole of the Buddhas and ancestors. I think this is the passage that we quoted last night when we read the Shingi.

[06:34]

And it is Dogen's true sense of what practice period is. Every day, every week, every month of the practice period, is an eye and a head of Buddha. There are no ordinary days, there is no ordinary times. We think of our life as ours. My life lived in this time and place with this history these characteristics, these problems, these limitations that we think of as uniquely ours. But this is only half of our life.

[07:39]

And it's a mistaken half at that. That life is the dualistic life of me and you, this and that, good and bad. It is a life of suffering and of the fruitless attempt to avoid suffering. The truly radical teaching of Buddha and the beginning middle and end of the Buddha's path is that suffering is built into time and space and consciousness. It cannot be avoided. But it can be transformed. Throwing away our lives

[08:45]

Gouging out a cave in emptiness, we can crash through our limitations into limitless love, splashing in pitch-black darkness and going beyond everything we think we know. So this is practice period. This is the spirit of practice period. This is the goal and this is the way. In order to accomplish this, just as Dogen says, we need support. No one can do this by herself. We only do this with support.

[09:48]

And the practice period itself, not just our fellow monks and teachers, not just the schedule and the rules, not just the previous 102 practice periods that have taken place here in this narrow, sacred canyon, not just the many, many devoted donors. The donors have power. it seems so much that they there they are back again thank you donors for this sound system very expensive so in other words not all this stuff that I'm enumerating here Beyond that, the practice period itself as a structure in emptiness provides this support.

[11:06]

And with this support, we cannot help but realize our true purpose. We cannot help but be serious. even if we seem not to be. Okay, the sound is different. Can you still hear? Ruth? Yeah, mostly. Okay, I'll try to speak up. So far, so good, right? You heard what I've said so far. Okay. So now I'm going back to Dogen's text, Dogen's words. He says, from top to bottom, The summer practice period is Buddha ancestors and it covers everything without an inch of land or a speck of earth left out. The summer practice period is an anchoring peg that is neither new nor old that has never arrived and will never leave.

[12:15]

It's the size of your fist and it takes the form of grabbing you by the nose. When the practice period is opened, the empty sky cracks apart and space dissolves. And when the practice period is closed, the earth explodes, leaving no place undisturbed. When the Koran of opening the summer practice period is taken up, it looks as if something has arrived. When the fishing nets and birds' nests of the summer practice period are all thrown away, it looks as if something has left. However... Those who participated intimately in the practice period have been covered with opening and closing all along.

[13:25]

An inch of grass has not appeared for 10,000 miles. So you might say, give me back the money for these 90 days. That may sound all a little drastic or merely rhetorical or poetic. But honestly, I think it is the exact truth. And I completely believe it. And my experience has borne out this belief. To put it in a plainer way, although we miss half of it in this way, We could say it this way. Practice period will completely change your life and the world you live in. Not because you'll have some insight or some experience or you'll accomplish something that makes this so.

[14:38]

It is simply by virtue of the practice period itself that this is so. And I really hope that you will be happy with whatever it is that is going to be completely altered in you as a result of this winter practice period. Maybe you won't be happy with it. Maybe you will wish in the end that you had never done such a foolish thing as to undertake this winter practice period, because maybe it will wreck your otherwise happy life. Anyway, as Dogen says at the end of the passage I just read, in reality, nothing at all happens in practice period.

[15:50]

This is really, really true. And you'll see life, time, your body, your mind, all a fleeting dream with nothing to have and nothing to hold. So truly, if you are paying attention, you'll see that you won't get a thing out of this practice period. And it will be a profound waste of time. So you would be fully justified, as Dogen says, in asking for your money back. If, however, you decide to do that, don't quote me. Dogen cites priest Xijing of Mount Huanglong who said, my pilgrimage of more than 30 years amounts to one 90-day summer practice period, not a day more, not a day less.

[17:15]

And I could say exactly the same thing. My 40 or 50 years of Zen practice amounts to not a day more or a day less than one 90-day winter practice period. As you know, the Buddha invented the tradition of practice period, and next in his fascicle, Dogen tells the story of how the Buddha came to invent Practice period. Here's the story in Dogen's words. During a Dharma talk that the world-honored one gave in the country of Magadha, he announced his intention to go into a summer retreat. He said to Ananda, My advanced disciples, the four types of human and celestial practitioners,

[18:26]

are not truly paying attention to my Dharma talk, so I have decided to enter Indra's cave and spend the 90 days of summer in sitting practice. If people should come to ask about the Dharma, please give them your explanation on my behalf. All things are beyond birth, beyond death. And then he closed the entrance to his meditation chamber and sat. That's the origin of practice period. So it seems like practice period began with Buddhist frustration that people seemed... not to be able to pay attention to what he was trying to tell them.

[19:27]

So he decided to withdraw, and he left it to Ananda to offer any explanations that he saw fit, which resulted in the entire Buddhist canon. Maybe this story is telling us that explanations and teachings don't really help that the only thing that matters is the practice of seclusion and monastic silence. Maybe that's the only way to truly understand the meaning beyond the meaning of misunderstood teachings. It would seem that this is what the story is saying. But in his lengthy commentary to the story, Dogen says, Do not misunderstand and think that words and discussions are unnecessary or are somehow not as good as silence.

[20:40]

Do not think that practice period is a withdrawal into silence. He says, If you really understand the meaning of cutting off words, speech and mental activity, you will see that all social and economic endeavors are essentially already beyond words, speech and mental activity. Going beyond words and speech is itself all words and speech. And going beyond mental activity is nothing but all mental activity. In other words, we're not here in the mountains to escape from the crazy world of tears.

[21:45]

We are not here to escape from Trump and all the other poor souls who act out their drastic karma in the world. We are not here because they disturb us and we need a break. To understand and live in the human world as bodhisattvas, we have to understand the world as it really is. And to understand the human world as it really is, we have to understand the human heart. All of it. Its fears and hopes, its pain, its depths and surfaces, its inmost desires. And that's why we're here. To understand all this.

[22:48]

so that we can be of benefit to the world and use all of our activity, the activity of practice period and all other activity in this endeavor. After all these stories and quotations, Dogen goes on in this fascicle ungo to describe in elaborate and almost obsessive detail the various practice period observances. He describes how a squirrel should be prepared with the names of all the participants and hung in a particular way, in a particular place, at a particular time. He speaks about all the different protocols of monastic titles and how a person's title should be written on the scroll. He describes the seasonal greetings that must be given with the exact words that are to be spoken in the precise way of offering the ceremonial tea with the abbot as well as the various formal greetings that are given.

[24:07]

He notes... the various observances that should take place on specific days. And he describes in detail the opening ceremony, which is the model for our opening ceremony, but of course far more elaborate. And he describes the ending ceremonies, including the exact words of thanks and congratulations that should be offered. As you know, a Dogen is a big picture person, but he's also very concerned with details. For a Dogen, this is not at all a contradiction, because the big picture, the biggest picture of all, is in each and every detail. And this is our practice. taking care of things on a minute level, paying attention to everything, because we know we are living, not just now, but also in the past and in the future, in timeless time.

[25:23]

And that's why each and every detail is crucial and eternal. Of course, we're all going to make a lot of mistakes. When we do that, we can just let go and not worry about it. At the same time, we should all feel really badly about our mistakes for about a minute or less. then we should go forth in doing our very best to do everything correctly according to what we learn from the temple officials. Because Kathy and I have not been here for Practice Spirit for many years, we are making a lot of mistakes. Or anyway, I should speak for myself.

[26:27]

I am making a lot of mistakes and I have to listen to the Tanto and the Eno to find out the way that things are supposed to be done. Hopefully, once we know what to do, we will do it. And we will not repeat our mistakes. But it's only been a few days, and I have already repeated several of my mistakes several times. Anyway, after all these pages of details about practice period observances, Dogen ends his fascicle with another story. Once upon a time, the world-honored one held a 90-day practice period in a monastery.

[27:37]

On the last day of the practice period, when all the monks are to confess their faults and ask for forgiveness, Manjushri suddenly appeared in the assembly. Suddenly, because he wasn't around for the other 89 days of the practice period. But he suddenly appeared on the last day. Mahakashapa, who was apparently at the time the Eno, asked Manjushri, where have you spent the practice period? Manjushri replied, in three places, a demon's palace, a rich man's house, and a house of prostitution.

[28:40]

Mahakashapa was shocked and immediately assembled the monks for the formal announcement that Manjushri would be expelled. So he lifted the mallet of the Sui Qing, like the one over there, and was about to strike the block when suddenly appeared everywhere innumerable monasteries just like the one that they were in. And in each and every one of these innumerable monasteries there was a Manjushri and a Mahakashapa in exactly the same position that they were in in this monastery. And just at the moment that Mahakashapa raised the mallet and was about to strike the switching, signaling the expulsion of the innumerable Manjushris in the innumerable monasteries, the world-honored ones said to Mahakashapa,

[30:07]

Tell me, which of these Manjushris are you going to expel? And Mahakashapa was flabbergasted. That's the story Dogen tells. So here we are. every one of us having made a really big commitment to do this practice period as well as we possibly can, making our best, most sincere, most serious effort, and we're all going to do that. But actually, there's no difference between us here in this practice period And ordinary people in their ordinary lives, demons in their palaces, rich men in their mansions, and sex workers and their clients in all the places where they abide, they're all in the practice period too.

[31:26]

Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of perfect wisdom, does his practice period in those places where and returns to the monastery on the final day for the closing ceremony. So it would be a big mistake to think that we are in any way different from or other than any other human beings in this world. That our practice is in any way different from or other than the practice. of all other beings in the many worlds. A wonderful feature of practice period is that we do a certain amount of zazen, which is really good.

[32:31]

In practice period, we can establish ourselves in zazen in a way that is not possible otherwise. This raises the question of effort. What kind of effort are we going to make in zazen? In practice, effort is not a matter of will or force. Actually, the classical definition of right effort is not at all what we would expect. The classical definition of right effort involves four practices. First, not giving rise to unwholesome dharmas.

[33:35]

that have not yet arisen. Second, abandoning unwholesome dharmas that have arisen. Third, producing wholesome dharmas that have not yet arisen. And fourth, maintaining wholesome dharmas that have arisen. These four practices define right effort in zazen, and all of the time. I think we all know the difference between wholesome dharmas and unwholesome dharmas. Basically, when you're crabby and having a hard time, it's because unwholesome dharmas like annoyance, attachment, aversion, complaining, and so on, have overtaken your mind. when you're perfectly happy and content and calm, it's because wholesome dharmas like peacefulness, acceptance, love, patience and so on are in your mind.

[34:54]

So in zazen, when you squirm or when your mind is plagued by obsession or when you feel pain in the body and you think it's your fault or some kind of a mistake unwholesome dharmas are flooding your mind previous to this you have been making an effort to pay attention to your breathing or your task in the kitchen or to your walking or standing or speaking or whatever you're doing so as to prevent such dharmas from arising, but whoops, now they're there. So now you have to be patient with them, not encourage them, and eventually abandon them. The worst of all unwholesome dharmas is the complex of dharmas that we call self-clinging.

[36:03]

that out of scale and inaccurate host of ideas about yourself that causes so much pain. So when all of that appears, instead of taking it seriously, understand, ah, a whole bunch of unwholesome dharmas are here. see them that way, that's right effort. Be patient with them. They don't go away that fast. But if you're patient, you can eventually abandon them until they appear again. It makes no sense whatsoever to blame yourself for them.

[37:05]

Of course they are going to appear when the conditions for their appearance arise, just like a stone drops. It is these unwholesome dharmas that cause most of our trouble in zazen. Your back, your knees, that's not the problem. Your mind, plagued by unwholesome dharmas, makes a lot of trouble and makes the pain in your back and your knees ten times worse. Conversely, when you take care of your body and your breath and flow with the schedule and with whatever happens without having too many desires to do anything else, then you Wholesome dharmas are arising and it won't be hard to maintain them.

[38:09]

So you practice zazen only for one breath. You take care of that one breath. Abandoning unwholesome dharmas. and producing and maintaining wholesome dharmas for one breath. And then you do that again. And when you lose track, you just start over again. It is actually really straightforward, and there is really no reason why it ought to be a struggle. So right effort is not being a hero. It has to do with being happy and content and knowing how to take care of yourself when you are not happy and not content.

[39:19]

And that practice of right effort is the precondition for awakening. Awakening doesn't come about by force of will or strenuous, stubborn effort. It is brought about by careful, wise determination to continuously practice right effort regardless of your state of mind or body. So I'm sure we'll have occasion in this practice period to talk a lot about zazen, probably too much. But I just want to say that I am quite thrilled to be able to practice Zazen here where it's pretty quiet and I can really plunge into Zazen. I think Zazen is the greatest thing.

[40:24]

There's nothing that can compare with Zazen. I have been doing Zaza my entire life. It's unbelievable. I haven't gotten tired of it yet. All this time. I'm not tired of it. And I haven't even yet gotten that good at it. But I have hope. So I'm here in this practice period to begin all over again. Last night, I was surprised how much I was affected by the memorial service. Thank you very much, Tonto and Eno, for allowing the memorial service for my dear friend, Rabbi Lew. He died 10 years ago yesterday, on that day.

[41:31]

When he was out for a walk, on a break from leading a meditation retreat for rabbis. Ever since then, whenever I am leading a session and I go out for a walk in the afternoon, I am half expecting not to come back. Ten years of walks. And so far, it has not happened. Although it does make every walk during Seixin very special. Anyway, I will end my talk this morning with a quotation. Some words from near the time of his death, words of mine about him. Soon after he died, I had already agreed

[42:37]

to do a weekend retreat that Tricycle Magazine, I think, sponsored. And I was doing it with Sokni Rinpoche and Sylvia Borstein. But of course, I couldn't help but speak about Rabbi Lu and his passing. And someone transcribed all the words of that retreat. And it was published as a little book called Solid Ground, Buddhist Wisdom for Difficult Times. So I'll finish by reading a little bit from that. On January 12, 2009, my dear friend of 40 years, my best friend, who was more than a brother to me, Rabbi Alan Liu, died without any warning of

[43:38]

or any known illness. I won't go on about our long friendship, there's too much to say. Suffice it to say, we were as close as people can be. We were spiritually linked. We knew each other before either of us had started on our religious paths and we began practicing Zen at the same time. We studied for many years together at the Zen Center in Berkeley and went to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center where we were monks together. As time went on, we created our own version of Jewish meditation and together we founded Makur Or, a Jewish meditation center in San Francisco. And we practiced there together, side by side, for more than a decade. So when Alan died, all of a sudden, it was hard to take.

[44:44]

And I'm guessing that I will not get over it. That his death probably holds a permanent place of sadness in me. I'm not so sure I want to get over it. The sadness is okay. It's not that bad. About a week before he died, we co-led a retreat together, and at that retreat, he gave me what turned out to be his last teaching, although at the time, we didn't know that. Alan was a really wonderful person and a great rabbi, but he had a way of giving teachings that sometimes seemed faintly ridiculous. He would present very profound things, sometimes in silly ways.

[45:49]

And it would take you a while to realize how profound the teaching actually was. For some years, he had been collecting fountain pens. And he would tell me about this. And I like fountain pens too. I also was collecting fountain pens. But I didn't realize what he meant by collecting fountain pens until I went over to his house one day and he showed me his fountain pen collection. This was a prodigious thing. Hundreds and hundreds hundreds 500 600 fountain pens that he kept neatly in special fountain pen folders manufactured solely for this purpose rare antique fountain pens that were worth a lot of money one year

[47:06]

For my birthday, he gave me a fountain pen in the original box, manufactured in the year of my birth, 1946, a fountain pen. So he had fountain pens far older than that. This was a fountain pen collection. I didn't know that there's a whole universe of fountain pen collectors. Fountain pen conventions. fountain pen websites there's even a kind of fountain pen stock market where values rise and fall and people speculate on the fountain pen business I had no idea a few months before he died Alan decided he would sell off some of his fountain pens to finance the education of one of his daughters that's how much they were worth So he brokered a transaction online and he sent thousands of dollars worth of fountain pens to some person online, that he found online.

[48:16]

While waiting for the check to come in the mail, the guy who had purchased the fountain pens suddenly died. And his widow hired a lawyer to clear the estate, but the lawyer did not find the a convincing paper trail for the fountain pen transaction. So he sent a letter informing Alan that he was not going to get paid for the fountain pens. So he thought about this and he said, well, I could get a lawyer and I'm sure with a lawyer I could recover my losses. But by the time I pay the lawyer, it's going to be a wash. So the heck with it. And he just let it go. And he said, you know, I don't really mind losing that money. It was worth it because I learned something that I really didn't know before and that was worth all the money.

[49:22]

So I said, well, what did you learn? I learned that when you're dead, you can't do anything. I said, you didn't know that before? He said, well, I knew it. But now I really know it. That guy was a decent person. And he certainly would have paid the money. But he was dead. And he couldn't do anything. Losing all that money really taught me that. Now I know. When you're dead, you really can't do anything anymore. This is a profound if silly teaching. When someone you love is gone, that person can't do anything anymore.

[50:32]

And this means that you have to do something for that person. Somehow, you who are connected to that person have to do what they can no longer do. So you have to ask yourself, now that this person is gone, what will I do? What must I do in place of my friend? And there is always something to be done. And this was Alan's last teaching to me. So I thought about this. Rabbi Lou was always concerned about others. He would get agitated. He would get upset if people he loved weren't doing well.

[51:39]

If his family members were having troubles, and they often did, he would tell me about it with anguish in his voice. So his death made me want to care more for other people, which is not something that comes naturally to me. When my friends are ill or in need of help, I have to really Think about it. Really put intention into concern for them, calling them, doing something for them. My natural inclination is to just go about my business and forget about them. So I have a long way to go. But I keep thinking of Alan and I keep... working at it.

[52:42]

We think we're trying to get rid of suffering. But I want more suffering. I want to feel more the suffering of the people who are suffering everywhere. I want to feel that suffering more. I want to care about it more. And I want to do something about it more. That's my commitment to Alan and to myself. The other thing I learned from Alan's passing is that love will naturally rush into the vacuum that loss creates. Rabbi Lou and I knew a lot of people and we knew a lot of people in common.

[54:03]

Many people loved him and when he was gone I felt so much closer to those people. Even though we had been close before, the vacuum caused by the loss created much more love. And love creates love. That feeling was not something that came and went in a month or two with loss, with difficulty. with the total overthrow of the plan you thought you had for your life that is no longer operative, comes more love and more depth if you are willing to turn your heart in that direction. Loss, disappointment and difficulty can be really

[55:12]

They can damage us permanently. They can even destroy our lives. But if we yield to our sadness and turn toward our difficult feelings, we can remember these lessons that I learned from Alan's passing. There is always something to be done. And there is always more love. Maybe you already know this. It is certainly true. So yes, there is always suffering. We will experience a measure of it I'm sure, ourselves during this practice period.

[56:15]

But suffering is good for bodhisattvas. When we understand our mind and know how to live, we can be okay with suffering. We don't need to get rid of it. We can make use of it. And that's what practice period is for. To show us the way. to live within conditions, no matter what the conditions are, and beyond conditions. To learn this, all we have to do is just show up and make our best effort. And our success is 100% guaranteed. Thank you everyone for being here and constituting this practice period.

[57:21]

I am really grateful to each and every one of you. 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, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[57:58]

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