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. So as Kodo said, we are in the end of the second week of our intensive, the Harmony of Zen and Vipassana. in which Paul and Gil Fransdale and I have been looking at these two traditions through the classical lens of the three trainings. Morality, shila, concentration, samadhi, and wisdom, prajna. So the first week we studied concentration practices in both traditions, and this week we've been looking at wisdom, and next week will be morality week. So before I turn toward the Buddhist precepts, Paul and I are going to talk a little bit together about how our experience of the Vipassana tradition during these three weeks being taught by our good friend Gil has perhaps better informed our understanding of Zen and in particular of Zen training.

[01:11]

So I actually had a pretty big insight, personal insight this week that resulted from... engaging with the guided meditations that were given by both Gil and Paul. Meditations that are based in the ancient teachings from the Apali Canon, such as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Maha Satipatthana Sutta. So mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings and of thoughts, and when possible, in very deep meditation, mindfulness of the components of thought as they relate to the Buddha's teaching itself. So having followed the skillful instructions that were given by Gil and Paul and having watched my own mind turn toward and attend to the exquisite details of my body, of my feelings, and my thoughts, I was suddenly struck by an appreciation of the contribution of Zen training in my experience and what it's made to what I'm going to be calling the other side of those explorations.

[02:19]

The other side being what it is that we do and how we do it once we leave the meditation hall. In other words, turning my attention back around from the details of my own seemingly internal clockwork and onto the external clockwork of the everyday world. And I want to say a little bit more about what I mean by that. So when I came to Zen Center, I was first given... in my view, a somewhat limited instruction on how to meditate. And then I was offered a number of tasks to attend to, cleaning the altars, sweeping, cooking, eventually helping to organize each of those managerial events and work practices. And I was told this was what we call our work practice, in which practice is taken from those early hours of sitting on a cushion and then performed through the varieties of tasks. that are required for our life together in community, and by extension, in society as a whole.

[03:22]

I was also told that the style of our house, the house of Sotozen in Japanese, means careful attention to detail. I then began to study with Mrs. Suzuki, the Japanese tea ceremony, which seemed to me to be the artistic performance of our school's primary mission, careful attention to detail. So in my view, the mindfulness training of the Vipassana tradition, together with the mindfulness training of Zen, make a complete whole. Inwardly, the mind, and outwardly, our activities in the world. So with deep gratitude for the contemporary nature of these two essential elements of Buddha's teaching, I want to say a little bit more about the Zen side and the side of enacting our practice in the world. And I'm going to use as the example my years of study of tea as the case in point. And I could also speak about learning how to offer incense or eat with an oreoki set or wearing Buddha's robe, chanting Buddha's teachings as further evidence of the many beautiful ways that Zen has come to actualize the fundamental point, as Dogen calls it in his teaching, the Ganjo Koan.

[04:37]

The fundamental point being the mind of awakening, instructions for which... Here, in Dogen's own words, studying the Buddha way is studying the self. Studying the self is forgetting the self. Forgetting the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So as we study the Buddha way, the self, through mindfulness of all the many elements and tendencies of the self, we forget the self. We drop body and mind and we enter, as Gil has taught, the steady current within the stream of our existence that carries us along on the Buddha's enlightened teachings. Forgetting the self as we turn the gaze of our attention back toward the world, we are actualized by myriad things. the tea bowl, the whisk, the hot water, and above all, the guests.

[05:41]

When actualized by myriad things, our body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. That sounds very nice, doesn't it? It does to me, and so it is, just like a bowl of hot green tea. So here are a few more thoughts about how the ritual aspects of making a bowl of tea exemplifies the heart of Zen practice, beginning with a haiku written by Mitsu Suzuki Sensei in honor of her husband. First calligraphy of the year. Today again, I write Beginner's Mind. First calligraphy of the year. Today again, I write Beginner's Mind. When I first heard the title of her collection of poems, A White Tea Bowl, I thought to myself, I've never seen a white tea bowl. And I thought, I'd really like to see one. So tea ceremony is an expression of Zen itself.

[06:45]

It has just this kind of effect on people who practice it. You know, we love to see, touch and talk about these objects that had been brought into the tea room for that day and to hear what are called their transmission stories. Stories about how and when this object was made and what kind of clay, what kind of glaze, who the artist was, who acquired the object, and who is taking care of it now. So it's these stories in exquisite detail that empower these objects, thereby revealing to us their aura and establishing the strength of their presence. For example, there's the tea bowl itself, the Chawan. such as the one that was given to my teacher by her mother over 80 years ago when she was just a little girl, or the one memorialized by Suzuki Sensei in the haiku that she wrote for her husband shortly after he died. I pour Sencha into the white porcelain tea bowl he loved.

[07:48]

And then the tea scoop, some of them carved by Suzuki Roshi's son, Hoitsu Suzuki. And the tea whisk and the lovely tea caddy, inside of which is a little mountain of green tea that was formed by my teacher. Eventually, we talk about all these items in the alcove of the tea room, which is called the tokonoma, such as the lovely woven flower basket that Suzuki Roshi had repaired for his good friend here in America, the couple called Mr. and Mrs. Tapa. Nakagawa, excuse me. Mrs. Nakagawa has been my tea teacher now for many years since Mrs. Suzuki returned to Japan and then sadly passed away. So of all these objects, now have been imbued with the presence and the kindness of these remarkable teachers as the founding family of the San Francisco Zen Center. And I think tea is all about feelings as far as I can tell. Those exquisite feelings that come from being with old friends, from learning new things, from honoring age-old crafts, but most of all from the dance.

[08:54]

It's the dance, I think, that gets you hooked on tea or on Zen and on life. As Paul has been saying, the dancing together creates the delightful rhythms of Zen training throughout our working day. Cutting carrots, cooking the rice, cleaning the Zendo, hoeing the fields, putting the library books back on their shelves. Careful attention, detail so each of these actions as in the way of tea and in the way of zen requires of us as students to rely on the innate wisdom of our bodies as well as on repetitions of daily practice tea itself is in fact a very tightly woven net of highly visible consequences informed by your level of training from which there are only a very few elegant ways to escape So if you drop the whisk or you forget to add water to the tea or you leave the room without a bow, all of which I've done, you receive the unwanted, albeit kindly, attention of your teacher and of all your comrades in training.

[10:00]

If we become frozen in the course of our training, someone will most likely remind your body of what it needs to do next. I remember many times Suzuki Sensei's voice ringing in my ears, Fusan, many times I have told you. Little front saido saido, meaning the placement of my fingers on the tea bowl. One of the most basic and simplest of instructions. Much akin to Dogen Zenji's instruction for upright sitting. Think, not thinking. How do you think, not thinking? Non-thinking. Now, how many times have I told you this is the essential art of Zazen? Over and over again. So as I said, whether in the tea room or in the Zendo or the Buddha Hall at Page Street, practicing is all about feelings. Feelings that lead us to know how wonderful it is to be alive. Whether standing, walking, eating, or working alongside our friends. Feelings that are all too easy to forget. And so we practice them again and again. We practice having feelings.

[11:02]

All kinds of feelings. So personally, I've decided after nearly 30 years of studying tea and 40 years of studying Zen that the entire enterprise is designed to challenge and thereby to re-educate our neuronal pathways. The pathways of form, feeling, perception, impulse, and consciousness. The very five heaps that make up the Buddha's teaching that we call the self, the illusory self. And although not truly there, it is the only thing we've got that can be trained. So the roots of tea and zen have been entwined from their earliest beginnings in China. In fact, it's rumored that tea plant itself grew from the eyelids, a bodhidharma, when he tore them off and cast them to the ground in his determination to stay awake while sitting upright in a cave. So that's why these Daruma dolls have these big, unblinking eyes. It may be more factual that the drinking of powdered green tea called matcha entered Japan from the Song dynasty in China at the end of the 12th century.

[12:05]

with the Buddhist monks who had gone there to study Zen. At first it was used to overcome their drowsiness during long periods of meditation and soon after was recognized as a cure-all medicine, being fully loaded with both caffeine and vitamin C. So of the many stories about the tradition of tea that I particularly like, the ones about Sen no Rikyu, the 16th century tea master who perfected the tea ceremony, raised it to a level of art. Senorikyu re-established the practice of tea and all of its aspects in keeping with its earlier monastic forms. Under Rikyu, the ritual, the utensils, the tea garden, the landscaping, and the tea house itself were all governed by the aesthetic ideals of wabi, meaning deliberately simple in our daily living, and sabi, appreciating the old and the faded, thereby the saying that tea and zen are one. Here's a brief story about Riku's practice of tea that we Zen students really like to repeat.

[13:08]

One day, Riku was invited by a tea grower, a farmer, to come for tea. The tea grower was very fond of the tea ceremony, and he practiced as often as his time would allow. Riku arrived at the old man's tea house, bringing with him one of his promising young disciples as a second guest. Being very nervous, his hands visibly shaking, We've lost your sound. Can you hear me now? Okay. I'm sorry. My internet. Later I'll tell you the panic I had this morning. But anyway, let me continue. The story of Riku. Did you hear that beginning of that? Yeah. Yeah. So Riku, with his young attendant, has just had this bowl of tea from the farmer, and the farmer has made a number of mistakes.

[14:13]

At the finish, Riku says to him in all sincerity, this tea you have made for me is the finest. So on the way home, the disciple asked Riku how he could have made such a comment after this amateur performance by that man. Riku replied, he made tea for me with his whole heart. When you can do that, you too will be a master of tea. So when I think about Suzuki Sensei and I think about Zen practice, wholeheartedness is certainly the dominant quality through which we are asked to live our lives. Whether Suzuki Sensei was teaching us tea or she was doing her exercises up and down the hallways or whether she was singing children's songs at the top of her lungs or carefully bowing each time she passed in front of the kaisando, And each time she passed by each of us, she was wholehearted. So I would propose that through the wholehearted practice of art or work or sitting or through sharing the old and the new, a synthesis is evolving within Buddhism as it wends its way ever further from the West.

[15:19]

I think we are learning and even more deeply, I trust that we are. And yet there is so much more for each of us to learn and among them how to be a good guest and how to be a good host. a profound social form which among all the world's cultures, the tea ceremony may know best. It's also what Zen practice may know best. The host and guest are not two, and yet they are not the same either. There's something in that relationship that each needs to learn from the other by taking turns, by altering our points of view. The essential meaning is that there is no essential meaning referring to something other than itself. While making tea, You make tea. While eating lunch, you eat lunch. While washing the dog, you wash the dog. It's so simple and yet almost no one can pull it off. We lost you again, Fu. Fu, we lost you again. Can you hear me now?

[16:28]

Yes. You can. Okay, great. So while washing the dog, you have that part? Okay. When you're washing the dog, wash the dog. When you can't be heard, you're not heard. It's so simple. And yet almost no one can pull it off. Pull off the veil of concepts through which we continuously evaluate and view the world. You know, that's my tea bowl. Today, I'm going to have soup for lunch or what dog, you know. So perhaps it's not a matter of time or some duration of time. It's always exactly what is happening right now. It's always in the form of you yourself as both the host and the guest of the present moment. Whether you're walking, kneeling, serving, or receiving offerings, the practice of awareness rises as a boundless stream when you and the world appear inseparably together. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing to break. No one to protect. and no one to hate. So how about you? Shall we sit together, work together, and after we do, shall we have a bowl of tea?

[17:33]

Wouldn't that be nice? Thank you very much. Thank you, Phil. That was lovely. You're welcome, Paul. You wove together some beautiful images. It reminded me of what I love about Zen. And then in a way, how I was always more comfortable in the workshop than in the tea ceremony. It reminded me of the sixth ancestor. And I don't know how much these details are accurate. In some ways it doesn't matter. I actually relish in the notion that the Zen way was founded by a person who may not have existed.

[18:35]

Modern scholarship still wrangles with the notion. Did Bodhi Dharma really exist? Was Bodhi Dharma the compilation of a couple of different people that, for convenience, sort of coalesced into one person. So it's easier to say there was a finder rather than, well, it was a combination of different people's ideas and that find it. My own disposition enjoys the fact maybe our finder didn't exist. And When you delve into Buddha's teachings, you can start to say things, given the scholarship and the research and the historical physical evidence, you can start to say things like, almost certainly, Shakyamuni existed.

[19:45]

Now, all those teachings that are attributed to him, well, almost certainly, He said several of them, many of them, and almost certainly there's something that were just added later. To me, it's representative of the fact that in a very interesting way, as we hear the teachings, as we experience the teachings, as we practice the teachings, there's a subjective bias. Even if it's just, of all the things Fu just said, what stood out for me? And then we can extend that. We can say, of all the things and the practices and the Dharma talks I've heard over the extent of my practice time, what stood out for me?

[20:51]

And then maybe more interestingly, What has become part of me? And what is now an integral part of how I express the Buddha Dharma? When I think of myself at a certain point, I lived in Japan and I learned a lot about Zen with the emphasis on I've learned about Zen from I became good friends with someone who was training to become a Soto Zen priest. And he gave me, he guided my studies. He'd say, read this book next, and then read this book next. But then there was a beautiful quality to it all, was that my Japanese was pretty much non-existent. His English was quite good. But when you get into the intricacies of Zen ideas, you can't be sure.

[21:56]

Like here's a wonderful for instance. I said to him once, what is karma? And he tapped the table. And I didn't know if he didn't understand what I said. Maybe he said, he thought I said, you know, What is the substantial existence? And he responded appropriately. So that kind of training was wonderful because I could never say with conviction, okay, I know what karma is. It was more like, was that a wise teaching that I'm just too stupid to get? Or did he not understand me? Okay. Or is he pointing the finger at what's considered to be conventional solid reality? After a year in Japan, I went to Thailand with the intention of practicing.

[23:10]

I went to a Thuravadan temple. It was a Vipassana center where you could go for retreats. I asked if I could learn meditation there. And their way of teaching me meditation was to plunge me into a 10-day solo retreat. I didn't quite get it, you know. They sort of fed it to me bit by bit. Oh, yeah, we'll teach you how to meditate. And you'll be staying in this room, about three feet wide, about seven or eight feet long, with thick walls to insulate the signs. And I stayed in that room for 10 days. I left to go to the bathroom. And so...

[24:13]

My introduction to meditation, my introduction to practice, my introduction to the Theravadan tradition was immersive, intense and full immersion in what it is to have a human consciousness. in a way we could say, it worked. I come out of that room, three feet wide, eight feet long room, with the notion, it's like, okay then. That's it. That's the rest of my life defined. And in some ways, it has been.

[25:17]

My engagement in what I think of as the Buddha way is the teachings of immersion in existence. And as I've gone on since then, done a lot of things, a lot of things related to practice. One way or another, I stayed in Thailand for a couple of years, culminating in, for the last six months of it, being ordained and living in the forest. And interestingly, here's an image that came up for me when Fu was talking. I was in the forest, spending almost all my time alone. We would gather together at dawn, walk to the village, get food, eat it, and then go back. of our separate dwellings in the forest. And in that time, in the forest, or jungle, I'm not sure which way was best descriptor, I felt like I was becoming more feral, you know, less part, less the consequence

[26:45]

of society and more elemental in existence. Like on an average day, I would meet insects, creatures, animals that lived in the forest, the birds, the trees, the plants. the notions of society, like where it had come from, even my own ideas started to feel more like whimsical constructs. And then from there, went back to Bangkok, flew to San Francisco on the advice of someone I'd met in Bangkok, another monk, and came to San Francisco Zen Center, and carried that kind of feral approach to Zen, which, in my own workings, I align with the sixth ancestor, we know.

[28:06]

Considered to be an uneducated woodcutter. The skeptical part of me says, Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But what the heck? Let's go with it. That kind of... He didn't come at it with a sophisticated, well-versed, well-educated in book learning. He came at it with the kind of the genius of the human condition. That way, each of us has a capacity, innate capacity when we settle. It's something in us that creates a fuss, settles time and allows the wisdom of what we are, the deep sanity that arises.

[29:17]

when we just accept our individual being and our collective being. So being in the jungle in Thailand, right back to that initial 10-day retreat, something imprinted. In some ways, Still there. Still makes sense to me. Not in an intellectual way, but in a kind of literally primitive way. It's how I see the core of practice. And then in this last couple of weeks, of the intensive, to hear Gil and Fu expand the Dharma, give pointers on how to practice the Dharma.

[30:35]

It's become a very informative counterpoint to my own tendencies. It left me thinking, How intriguing and valuable and informative it is for each of us to think, what were my formative experiences with regards to the Buddha Dharma? And how do I relate to them now? How will they shape my future in terms of my spiritual practice? And I think of this intensive, and I think of this time of the awakening of Buddha Dharma in the West as an auspicious moment. Here we are equipped with the internet, able to access, you know, you want to hear Tibetan teachings?

[31:47]

In five minutes on the internet, you'll find YouTubes of wonderful teachings. Do you want to hear Vipassana, Thiravadan, Zen? Exactly the same. We have now access in a way. Bodhidharma went the whole way from southern India to China. Probably took months and months. Maybe it took a year. Chinese monks would walk across the country. They'd walk a thousand miles to visit a teacher and hear his teachings. We're not obliged to do that. Maybe to our detriment. But that's how it is.

[32:49]

And here we are, also able to appreciate our local society, their national society, and our global society, to see the influences of it. This is an information-rich time for us. With what eyes and what heart do we see it? With what biases do we come to it? And how does all that influence and shape our engagement in the Buddha Dharma? And how will we collectively help it to flourish? Like here at San Francisco Zen Center, you know, Like everywhere else, or almost everywhere else, we sort of shut down our in-person activities during this period of COVID.

[34:03]

And we're, we think, on the verge of opening up. Will we endeavor to resume what we were before? Or is this time for a paradigm shift? And I think what we're doing now in this intensive, in comparing and contrasting and harmonizing these different teachings, is sort of setting the stage. And I think listening to you, the specimens of this time in society, in this time of the history of the Buddha Dharma as pioneers on the journey of Western Buddhism. And so we'd like to pass it over to you now and hear your questions and your comments.

[35:13]

That they may be a contribution to how practice takes shape in the West. That they may be a contribution to how San Francisco Zen Center tries to shape itself to meet the current needs of expressing the Buddha Dharma. That's our vow. That's the reason we have the organization, is to make accessible the teachings and to create an opportunity for them to be practiced. 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.

[36:19]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:22]

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