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. Is the sound okay? Is this all right? No? No? You can't... Is this better? Okay. Well, I apologize. I have... It's on. It is on. Yeah. I think so.

[01:03]

Well, also, I got a cold a few days ago after taking a walk in the rain, so I'm speaking kind of with a weak voice now, and there may be some sound effect later. No? Hello? better? I guess I have to talk louder. Okay. Can you hear me from that corner? Kind of? Sort of? Well, I will do my best. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Lucy.

[02:07]

And I'm a resident and priest here at Zen Center. And how many of you are here for the first time for Dharma Talk? A special welcome. And welcome to Everybody else also, and thank you for spending tonight here with me and with each other. The subject I'd like to talk about tonight is... about warm feeling. We had a tri-tempo meeting last week and during that meeting I brought up the subject of warm feeling in front of the community.

[03:17]

And so I thought for this talk I would elaborate a little bit what I was talking about. and what I meant. Please. Is it good? Do you mind if I move the microphone a little closer to your mouth? Not at all. How is this? I don't know if it will improve it, but... Well, what if you move closer?

[04:21]

Increase the warm feeling. We just hover together. Now this feels really warm. I like it. Sometimes technical difficulties make miracles. Well, last Sunday, and as we were eating, I asked everybody around the table, what brings you warm feeling?

[05:23]

And so, we just talked about it, and we took turn to share. And... You know, someone said a genuine smile. And another person said meaningful conversation. And another person said cooking and eating together. And then someone else said, well, wait for everyone to sit down and eat together. I thought that was all very nice. What is this warm feeling that we're talking about? Yes.

[06:28]

The warm feeling that we like to have for ourselves and for each other. What is it? When we have the Jukai ceremony, Lei Jukai, which we just had one, Bert just took pre-sets. And also pre-ordination. During those ceremonies, we receive a little packet called Kachimiyaku. The... blood vein lineage chart from our teacher. And this blood vein traced from Shakyamuni Buddha to all the Indian ancestors and Chinese ancestors and Japanese ancestors, to Suzuki Roshi and to our teacher and to us.

[07:32]

And when the teacher gives this little packet to the student, oftentimes we hear the teacher say, warm heart to warm heart, warm hand to warm hand. So what is this warmth that gets transmitted heart to heart, hand to hand, from India to China to Japan and now to America to all of us? What is it? It's called the blood vein. It's the blood and the life energy or I would call it chi of our practice. It's the life, the life energy of our practice.

[08:37]

When we only transmit the text, we only read text or follow the forms, follow instructions, which we do, and they can be transmitted by, you know, words. But that's not complete. It's not complete without this life energy, without this warmth. from heart to heart. And that's what I call the warm feeling. It's a friendly feeling, a pleasant feeling.

[09:40]

that we get from heart to heart connection. And we have this warm feeling when we receive kindness from others. When we give kindness to others when we exchange kindness and generosity. Where do we get this warm feeling? We get this warm feeling also from feeling grateful feeling grateful for all the kindness that we receive or very simple, simple act of kindness, a small thing that we receive from our friends or from a stranger.

[11:04]

That feeling of gratitude also brings joy Sometimes it's just a small thing. But it can really warm our heart. My mother likes to tell the story of when she was young. When she was young, she went to live with my grandma and other aunts and children in the countryside in our ancestral home during the war.

[12:12]

in the 40s, anti-Japanese war and civil war for many years. Our family had an ancestral home in the countryside. While men, you know, my grandfather and great-grandfather and great-uncles, while they were working in the city or studying in the big cities, the women and children stayed in the countryside because that's safer. But then 1949 came, the communists took over, and so overnight, my family lost everything, and this big ancestral home got taken away from our family. And so they were... only given like a very small shelter within the big home.

[13:18]

And everybody else in the village moved in and my family, the members of my family were kind of the enemy of the people at that time. So nobody wanted to talk to them. And They got very, very little food, and the adults had to go to work. My mom, she was probably only around five, no, around ten. She stayed back, and she would be cooking, making small meals for my grandma and grandaunt. And... So one day, well, back in the country, they would start, they would burn firewood. They would start a fire every day.

[14:22]

And that day, my mom, the little girl, 10-year-old girl, she started a fire, and she went to go get rice from the rice pot. And there was no rice. So she started to cry. There was no food, no food to cook. She started to cry. And so there is a woman from the village who moved into the big house. You know, this is a big house, about 60 rooms. So many people lived there. And so this woman... walked by and saw my mom crying, and she talked to my mom. Well, they were not supposed to be talking, but she asked my mom quietly, little sister, why are you crying?

[15:28]

And my mom said, I started the fire, but there is no rice to cook. So this woman... I took a moment and she said quietly to her, to my mom, that in a few minutes you go to the bath house. So my mom waited for a few minutes and she went to the bath house and there was a bucket covered and inside the bucket there was a bowl of rice. So since then, she remembered the kindness of this person and told us many times how grateful she was and how grateful for the very simple, small,

[17:00]

act of kindness. Risking her own, you know, it was a big risk for herself, although this was just a bowl of rice. As I grew up In China, there was another wave of political movements that caused a lot of sufferings. It was during Cultural Revolution. There was also a lot of lack of food. Food was rationed.

[18:02]

Everybody was struggling to feed their families. My family, as I remember growing up, always had lots of visitors, distant relatives. aunts and uncles and cousins and grand-aunts, grand-uncles, everybody loved to visit my family. And whoever came, there was always a pair of chopsticks for them. Even if it meant that we had to thin our porridge, we had to add water to the soup. Everybody shared what we had. And my mom always received our distant relatives and friends with whatever we had.

[19:17]

And she always said that if she get to see that village woman again who gave her a bowl of rice, she'll thank her. And she'll tell her, she'll remember her all these years. But my mom didn't go back to the village for a few decades. A few years ago when we went back, of course, most people were gone from her generation, from that generation. So, this kindness and feeling of warmth, feeling of gratitude,

[20:28]

feeling of generosity is like little candlelight that can light up the next candle and next candle and light up the whole room. What's this warm feeling? What brings this warm feeling? It's sometimes we think it's cultural because some people

[21:42]

from certain cultures seem to be more warm and more outgoing. And they have more outward expressions about how they feel for each other. And I think that's part of it. But I think the core is how we care about each other, how we take care of each other. And that transcends culture and transcends outward expressions. A few of our international students had to leave unexpectedly a few weeks ago, was it last month?

[23:00]

We were all very sad that they had to leave because of the visa issues. And... And then some of us were trying to think what we could do for our departing friends. And Delip, who is traveling in India now, Delip said, why don't we make a meal for them? And I said, that's great. Why don't we make an international meal for the international students? So I invited the international students to each contribute a dish from their home country. And we ended up having maybe nine dishes, nine different kind of dishes from different regions.

[24:11]

And 20-plus people sat around enjoying the meal. And we each said something to the departing students. It was very, very heartwarming. And I think that evening, we could really feel that no matter where we come from, from Argentina, Brazil, Japan, China, Ireland, Germany, whatever,

[25:20]

And United States, I had a debate with someone because I had thought international means every country, everybody. And someone said international means foreign country. So I said, whatever. We just include everybody. But I think we had the feeling that night that... no matter where we came from, we all enjoy this warm feeling, this kind of connection with other human beings. And how do we foster this warmth? How do we encourage this in our own practice? in our community. I like to suggest that the first thing that we need to learn is to be kind to ourselves and

[26:50]

have warm feeling for ourselves. And then we extend that to each other, to the people you live with, to strangers. And we need to cultivate this warmth, this kind feeling in our zazen practice, in our bowing and chanting. When we do our practice with a soft heart, with a relaxed heart and body, we can have that feeling of aliveness.

[27:59]

Otherwise, our practice can be a little rigid. If we just do our forms and rituals, we just go through the motion, without carrying this kind and warm feeling, we're not carrying the blood and the chi of the practice. Sometimes people say that Zen, especially Soto Zen, attracts introverts.

[29:18]

Is that true? How many of you identify as introverts? Quite a few. Can introverts be kind? Yeah? That's the consensus. Yes. And sometimes we hear that, oh, because we inherit our practice from Japan. And that's why we don't look like we are very warm. I don't totally agree. Whenever Japanese teachers come over, I have warm feelings for them. When I look at Suzuki Roshi's picture, I have warm feeling. To me, it's not so much about the outward expression of hugging,

[30:36]

and saying a lot of endearing words. It's more about taking care of each other, more about the spirit of kindness, the spirit of taking care of each other. When I go to the sewing room every time, I go to the sewing room, I see Tim, And all the other teachers and students sewing Buddha's robes together, you get a warm feeling. I get a warm feeling when Koyo-san is here. He is quiet.

[31:38]

I hope I'm not embarrassing you. But I feel very warm around him. I think a lot of you have the same feeling. You know, one morning, we came up from the Zendo to Buddha Hall for service. You know, as usual... the priest filled up the front row. And so I was probably, Koyo-san and I were the last to come up. He was ahead of me. And when I was taking off my shoes, he just entered the Buddha hall, entered the door. And I think from the corner of his eyes, he saw me coming. And so he just stood in the corner and waited for me and gestured for me to go first.

[32:40]

And I know it's the form to just come in and take the role when there is space. And there's not, you just go to another spot and it's fine to me. And we can do our bowing and chanting wherever we are. But that little gesture of just looking out for each other, it just felt so familiar to me. I felt like an instant, instant kind of bonding with him because I could understand it. And so even in zazen and in bowing and chanting, we can foster this one feeling with the sangha.

[33:50]

And here's a quote from Suzuki Roshi, the founder of this temple, from this collection of his talks. Not always so. We put emphasis on warm heart, warm zazen. The warm feeling we have in our practice is, in other words, enlightenment. or Buddha's mind. This warm feeling comes from a deep sense of interconnectedness. It's inexhaustible.

[35:01]

goes back and forth, in and out. We can never exhaust it if we allow it to flow from one person to another because it comes from a boundless well of interbeing. Thank you all very much for coming tonight. Ino-san, do we have a few minutes? Okay. I'd like to open up to the community and hear what you'd like to say, or if you have anything you'd like to say about how can we foster

[36:10]

this warm-heartedness in our practice and in the community, given all the challenges we face, and also with the support of the sangha. Does anybody want to add anything, or say anything, or ask a question? Yes, I see. I heard a quote that may not even be true, that the Buddha always went high first. That may be some novel or something, but I just found it really useful because if I am willing to extend myself first, it makes a huge difference.

[37:18]

And when I don't, and so I... practice of that and I did it in my job. I said hi to everybody, people I didn't have to say hi to. And just noticing my resistance and my reaction. Yeah, so it's an act of showing up for myself and showing up for me being a human in the world of other people. It's kind of remarkable and I like to remember that. Because my first default is to feel less than, to feel separate. So try that. Extending yourself. Say hi first. All right. Thank you. Let's see. Thank you for your moving talk.

[38:28]

One thing I find easy to do, and I think it comes from my appreciation, is to say thank you to people when they do something. It could be something small. Just to say thank you. You mentioned gratitude. I think that to express it, we often Saying thank you and being appreciative. Thank you. Anybody else? One last comment? Yes, what's your name? Hi, Kate. is helpless because I'm acknowledging, how can I feel helpless if I'm acknowledging all these people throughout my day who through some small gesture helped me.

[39:56]

And then perhaps maybe, hopefully it accepted some goodwill to them for my recognizing their help to me. Perhaps maybe it was useful to them in some way. I don't know, but to me, I went through a section of my life where I was feeling really helpless. And I had to put you to practice, how can I not feel so helpless because I really don't believe that I am. And then throughout the whole course of my day, if I use this language, thank you for helping me, I was able to see all the ways throughout my day that I was helped. It felt really good. naming what you are grateful for, what you think, for when it happens each time. Yes. Thank you for your feedback.

[40:58]

I mean, for your input. Okay. Well, thank you all for spending this evening with me. And have a good night. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:39]

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