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 morning. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, newcomers and old comers. Good morning to the people who are listening in the... dining room and online at home. Our subject today is one that I hope that everyone can use and that if we think about and try to understand where we stand in relation to this subject and what we want to do about it, if anything, that it will actually help us and everyone around us. And that by working with right effort, which is what we're going to talk about today, that we can actually be a force of cultural well-being and exemplify how to resolve suffering.

[01:24]

and live a happy life. So I think it's a really important topic. How do we manifest wise effort in work? And I want to thank Leanne and David for inviting me to give this talk and for leading a practice period about wise effort. Wise effort is how we turn our intention, particularly our transcendent intention, into reality for ourselves and the people around us. So it's not enough to understand what we want to do, although that in itself is a practice that takes some time. But how do we do it? How do we manifest it? How do we make it real? So that's the question.

[02:28]

And, of course, the Buddha had some advice on how to practice to find our, maybe not an answer for all time, but a response to the question of not only what we do, but how we do it. So let's begin. I want to ask that somebody, Roger, if you could, if you let me know when I'm getting close to 11 o'clock so that I don't overstep my bounds. That would be great. And also, as you're listening, if you could listen in a way that helps you attend, but not get too compulsive about it, because I don't want everyone overworking as we sit. So if you take a moment to find a posture... in which you can actually attend, but that isn't overly difficult for you to do.

[03:31]

That's what I mean. A posture in which you neither underwork, and you'll know you're underworking if you fall asleep or start to drift, or overwork, and you know you're overworking if you start to be in the kind of pain in which you question for a long time whether... you should be doing this to yourself or not. Okay? So go right down the middle between those extremes. And that is different for everyone. It cannot be legislated. It has to be studied in your own body. But some physical clues that might help are if you balance your weight equally on whatever you're sitting. And if you adjust yourself so that your buttock bones... are at enough of a height so that your thigh bones can drop rather than lift.

[04:32]

That gives your back a good chance of being in a fairly effortless place. And then if you can stay balanced, the act of balancing allows us to be with ourself. in a way that's sensitive and not just domineering. So let your sitting posture come from the body to the brain and not just from the brain to the body. And let yourself breathe. And if it gets... Is it stuffy in here or is it okay? Does anyone need a window open or are we fine? Because someone could open the window. There's a... There's a pole there to do that. And if it gets too cold, I'm sorry. Huh? The one over there? Okay, the door too? The window is open. Okay, and it's okay.

[05:35]

All right, so, work. trying to understand how to start, because I've been practicing here since 1975, and so that means I have 43 years of experience to talk about in a half hour, which may not be easy. But I think it's important to understand that in Zen practice, work is not separate from what we do in the meditation hall. And that the work opportunities that we have in the temple are a bridge between our sitting practice and our life in the world at large.

[06:49]

So there are actual training practices that we do here, which you can see if you stay for lunch, you'll see people washing the dishes, and you'll see how they wash the dishes. It's just as important as that the dishes get washed. And so that act of work, of assertion, of... our big purpose in the middle of a small or everyday kind of purpose is a practice, and it's been transmitted as a practice for many, many years. Now, in India, monastics did not work in the same way that laypeople worked. So laypeople held jobs, and monastics, was to study the Dharma, to sit, and to go on alms rounds for a living, to be able to get food.

[07:59]

And in the Vinaya, or the basket of teachings that's about how to conduct monastic life, there are rules against work, against holding money, and so on, against physically touching money, and so on. But when Buddhism went to China, a whole different thing happened. First of all, the climate in China was different than the climate in India. So instead of a social structure in which the monastics stayed no more than a day or two at any particular place. The monastics in China banded together and lived in specific monasteries. Not that there weren't monasteries in India, but they were used in slightly different ways.

[09:04]

And this is important. And because of the cultural value in China about work, there was also a very different attitude about alms rounds and beggings and so on and that the practice does survive and in Japan when I stayed and lived at the monastery I went on alms rounds called takuhatsu and we held our bowls and chanted and there's an exchange of the dharma for material resources and encouragement from the society at large. So I would stand in the middle of a shopping center with a hat that covered my face so that you could just see that I was monastic and you could see the name of my temple and I would chant. And then as I walked, I would chant and I would do this with other people and hold out my bowl and people would put in rice or money. And people would notice also that I was American, Western, because my chanting sounded different from that of other people.

[10:13]

And so sometimes they would give me brown rice. And so that was very encouraging, you know, that someone would care. Or sometimes they would say something in English to me as they put something into my bowl, which was very kind, very touching. And this exemplifies the relationship between people in society who support each other through giving. And we can see work as a practice of giving and receiving, in which the giver, the receiver, and the gift are one, just like the alms bowl. And how I learned about work practice was here in the temple. So every day, After we sit, there's a service in which we chant and offer the benefit of our sitting practice widely through the medium of sound.

[11:23]

And then we stand up and we line up in front of someone named the Shisui, or work leader, and we receive a 10-minute assignment for cleaning the temple. institution is called soji, or samu, temple cleaning. And there's a form for it. You bow and you receive an assignment. The work leader gives the assignment. And then you go and get your tools and you do whatever the work leader said. So if the work leader said, clean the bathroom. you go to the bathroom and there'll be a little card that says something like scrub the toilets, sweep the floor, change the toilet paper, make sure there's enough paper towels and soap, and so on. And so you'll go down the list and do those things. And then the work leader will go to the altar and say,

[12:30]

and bow and get a bell and ring the bell. And even if you're in the middle of changing the toilet paper, you have to stop. And then you stop and then you go to the next thing, which is offering the food that we're about to eat for breakfast. And there are other kinds of work practice in the temple. So there are training positions that... residential practitioners hold and volunteer positions that non-resident practitioners can do. So those include like ringing the bells and chanting the chants, being the chant leader, and sitting by the door to make sure that people who come in and go out are part of the sitting practice and are okay.

[13:31]

And so there's many positions like that, and all of those positions together form the mandala of the temple. And so right now the Saturday Sangha is a group of people who practice here on Saturdays, and the Saturday Sangha assumes the mandala of temple work for Saturday morning and creates that from the background of lay life as well as the monastic tradition. So this is very important. This is a custom that happens at San Francisco Zen Center in the United States. And it's actually been studied by scholars. So Nancy Van House, who... is a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, once did a study on Soto Zen work practices, practiced at Green Gulch, which is one of our three main temples.

[14:33]

And I was looking for the study, but I couldn't find it, so I can't tell you more about it, except that she asked a lot of questions through appreciative inquiry and found some things out. So what's important about work practice? I mean, there's also people who come to the temple as guest students, you know, or as work practice apprentices. And all together, there's a Zen saying that says, a community for a day, abiding forever. A community for a day, abiding forever. And so cleaning the temple and doing the positions is is part of this. So the temple positions range from physical tasks, simple physical tasks, to being president or abbot, or the abbot emeritus like Paul, sitting over here, past president like Susan, past program director like the current head of the practice here, David, past Tenzo and guest manager.

[15:45]

You know, all of those positions, past Tenzo, you know, all of those positions are represented in the room. Present programs, present head of the meditation hall, present work, you know, to maintain the temple are all here. So... You know, as part of preparing for this talk, I interviewed some of those people and asked them what was important. And I have a couple of people's permission to transmit what they felt was important about work practice. So stop me if... Stop me if I don't have your permission, okay? It's okay? Okay. So... One of the people I spoke with was Roger, who was my Jiko today.

[16:50]

Jiko means someone who helps carry the incense. We don't use incense anymore, so let's just say carries the fragrance. Roger spoke to me about the dichotomy, the apparent dichotomy between practice and work. Like practice is what happens on the cushion. And work is what happens during the day. And that when he moved to Green Gulch to work in the conference, with the conferences there, that suddenly the huge influx of tasks became what was right in front of his eyes. And he couldn't actually make it to the Zendo as much as he had wanted to. And he couldn't He had gone to Green Gulch to study with particular people, and the work demand was so great that he couldn't end up really studying with them a lot.

[17:52]

He could hear tantalizing snippets as he changed the coffee filters, but that's what he got to do. Stop me if I'm overstating the case, okay? So, hmm? A little embellished? Sorry. Well, you can take that with a grain of salt, okay? And so Roger told me that he thought, I'm not practicing. But that, as he continued in that job, that wasn't so. And from this experience, Roger told me the teaching he took away is that one must realize that practice includes everything. we have to not get resentful because, quote, work takes you away from practice. Some of this dichotomy could be generational, relating to how different generations study work.

[18:59]

But most people don't take work practice as seriously or as being as close to the heart as zendo practice, at least not at the beginning. So then I asked Terry, who's the work leader. And Terry had some beautiful things to say about the fundamental practice of work in the temple. And they're real teachings. And you can read the basic teachings in a book called The Pure Rules for Zen Practice. And the translation that we use is by Taigen Dan Layton, and it's a translation of the Ehe Shingi, or the Rules for Practice at Eheji, which is one of our head temples. And the book is by Dogen Zenji. Dogen Zenji was the founder of our school in Japan. And so the book talks about...

[20:06]

the practice of the work leader, and just to give you a taste of what it says, what the tradition says. The job of work leader is generally to take charge of arranging all the work in the temple. And then it lists a lot of places and tasks. And then it says, circulating throughout the temple, the work leader must protect it by keeping out burglars. and must assign and supervise the various workers. All this must be managed with an attitude of serving everyone with strong effort, understanding when and knowing how each task must be carried out. And the work leader must always be attending and thoroughly review whether or not the workers have accomplished their tasks. And for instance, the Sutra of the 3,000 Deportments says, There are five things to teach people about chopping firewood.

[21:09]

First is not to do it in pathways. Second is to start by making sure that the axe handle is secure and safely anchored. Third is not to chop green wood. Fourth is not to chop lumber disrespectfully taken from monuments. Fifth is to pile up the wood in a place where it can dry. So, you know, these rules have the taste of experience. Like, I don't think that the suture of the 3,000 deportments randomly thought of people taking wood from monuments. I think that was something that must have happened for there to be a rule about it. And so, the Zen En Shingi, which is a... a precursor to the Ehe Shingi that I was just telling you about, says, for work for the sake of the community of monks, there is the work leader.

[22:11]

Even before being informed by monks in the assembly, if there are things that are old and broken, the work leader should repair or replace them. And the Shingi says, for monks to be peaceful and value and protect temple property is the... compensation of the work leader. Therefore, the work leader's efforts are the assembly of monks' efforts. How could this job be only the spreading of conventional truths? How could it be only something received and used as a means to achieve? Let me give you a taste of some of the work leader's wisdom. And I recognize it as wisdom because I was work leader myself for two years in 1984 and 1985. And I say work leader, but there are five other main temple positions and all of them have their own flavor and practice.

[23:20]

So Dogen said that all daily activities are Zen practice. Physical labor can be Zen practice too. Work practice manifests what happens on the pillow and vice versa. It depends on an aspiration or intention different from the one we automatically assume in a job profession or career. In work practice, the main product is harmony and connectedness. In work practice, we cast aside habitual thought and selfish concerns, so we instantly become one body. We become the sangha or community or interconnection treasure when we all focus together on this one time and this one place. So, Soji, that 10 minutes of cleaning, is more important than we think. because it's a time when, while doing work, we set no goals and pursue no results.

[24:30]

So we study the self, and soji is an intimate practice that we do together to realize its true form. So there's nothing to seek. We just do it and realize the dharma. So practice and realization are the same thing. And so there isn't a practice outside the act of continuously refining oneself in activities such as this. So I think this is very important that we point to Sangha as peace and harmony when we do work. all throughout the temple. And one of the main teachings of taking refuge in Sangha or in community or interconnection is the virtue of peace and harmony.

[25:38]

This is called the one-body refuge in community. And so what Terry is saying is that Soji itself, is taking refuge in that single body of peace and harmony. So it's important. And there's not that many times in our life when we can practice something that has such a clear purpose, which is at right angles to all of our worldly purposes. It's not that it doesn't clean the temple, it does. And having beautiful environments is part of what makes people want to come here. And we can do this at home, of course. We can work, we can figure out a way, a place, a time to work together in this way. So... Working in this way is also...

[26:45]

It's part of the transmission of the practice. It's not just something that we do right now, although that's an incredibly important part of it. So there's a story about Rinzai. I hadn't intended to tell this story today, but I think it was Yunyan who asked him, who saw him planting pine trees outside the temple gate, and said, why are you planting pine trees outside the temple gate? And Rinzai said, first, to beautify the temple. Second, to act as a guidepost for future generations. You know, so to beautify the temple, but to act as a guidepost for future generations. So what is it that's the guidepost? Is it the trees? So... I think that the trees are important, but even more important is what Rinzai was pointing to about activity as the guidepost for future generations.

[27:57]

So this kind of activity works through space with everyone we touch and works through time to acknowledge the past and to open the future to... peace and harmony. Anyway, I have so many notes on this. I'm going to put them away right now and just speak from the heart. How many minutes do I have left until 11? Do we know? About 12 minutes. Okay. What did I do with my glasses? Oh, okay, thanks. So what do we do with work?

[29:05]

So, of course, we can... some of the practices in place or some of the feeling of a simple task like Soji. But in our regular work lives and in our regular life of trying to find out what is wise effort or what is the perfection of effort, we run into a few more problems. So if you think about your day, I guess, how many people have peace and harmony and serenity all day. I just want to know because... Oh, phew, nobody raised your hand. So I can continue this conversation. Okay? So peace and harmony and serenity may or may not be so easy to come by. And I don't know if you've noticed, but since the Internet really took hold and since social media and connection... the increased levels of connection that we have, have made our lives a little more complicated in certain ways.

[30:15]

That we now can hear everything from everyone about what we've done or what we're about to do. You know, my niece even sends texts to people, okay, I'm in the subway now, the doors are closing. Anyway, she used to, she doesn't right now. She's outgrown that, but... But people do this. So just the amount of communication opportunities we have and comment opportunities that we have make our life more difficult in certain ways, and particularly because those things can never be erased. Anything that we've said once in the forum of the Internet cannot really be erased without a lot of trouble. So sometimes we hear about things years later. I wrote an article 10 years ago and only recently found out that somebody completely panned the article and thought it was really unintelligent and ill-thought-out.

[31:22]

And so, of course, my immediate impulse was to write back on the same social media and defend myself. And that would have simply complicated my life. because I would have had to field another 20 or 30 emails and, you know, maybe rewrite the article and do a number of other things. Then this is just an example of how we get involved. You know, we look to see how many hits there are to our post, right? And then we interact with people, and it's great. It's a wonderful way to connect, but also we can get lost. And there's many other things like this. There's metrics and quantification of our work output. There's the way that jobs get filled and how the duration of these jobs, the tenure of these jobs is getting shorter and shorter. And there's more and more manipulation about putting the right person in the job to actually fill the metric and so on.

[32:30]

And then when we get there, into a job. There's so many other people who can do the same job. I don't know if you've noticed that. But every job that I have, someone else can do it just as well. In a different way, perhaps. But it's difficult. It's very difficult. And also, traffic is high. It's a lot of people. a lot more people than there were in the world in 1953 or 1954. And the problems of the world seem to have increased. The climate has changed, and we know more about people's issues and problems, and it's much harder to stick our head in the sand because we're... hearing about things all the time, and we have to.

[33:33]

If we actually want to live in the world, we have to take responsibility for it. So I believe that there's a sense of increased pressure when we realize all the things that we could or should be doing. And so how do we... Increased stress produces increased tension. unless we have a practice that takes care of it. And so how do we take care of it? How do we take care of our work? I mean, there are things that we can do. And I think one of the first things to understand is what is your goal in working that leads to your happiness? So it might not be an overarching, like, quote, enlightened, end quote, goal, it might be, you know, I want to eat and have a stable life.

[34:35]

That is actually making me happier than if I didn't eat and didn't have a stable life. So that's a good goal. It's not a bad goal. You know, we have to acknowledge that there are all kinds of goals that people have, and, you know, not everyone can work in, the job of our dreams. Sometimes we have to work in the job that presents itself to us. But in the job that we have and the actual goal that we have that's conducive to our happiness, what are some examples? What is the support for actually doing it in that spirit? And I think it's important to understand that. Like, let's say, even if my goal is to eat, to pay my rent or whatever it is, what are some examples that I have access to of people who actually do that in a happy way?

[35:47]

People for whom I can take their daily life as a model. of peace and harmony with that kind of work, whatever it is. And then what are the arrangements that I have at work? And are they obstacles for me or are they not obstacles for me? So I think it's important to understand that. Let's say you give up everything and decide to live in a Zen temple. You know, you might end up working for a small amount of money. And that might or might not actually work for you for a long time. Maybe it works for you for three months every five years. Maybe it works for you for one time for two or three years. We don't know. You know, you have to know. No one knows except you. And you don't know.

[36:50]

You have to discern it. You can't kind of decide it or... Just simply enact it. If you're a teacher, are you earning enough to live where you live? So that kind of question is an important kind of question. And to actually respect that the questions you have are your questions to resolve is an important step. And then, of course, I would encourage you and me to think about our job or our work in the context of our own life, what resolves suffering and leads to peace, in the context of the institution we work for, and in the context of our country and our world. So those are some of the things, the tasks that we do, are not just a list of things to check off.

[37:50]

There's a context to them and there's a practice to them. And I would encourage all of us to take time to contemplate these important things about our work, to take time to contemplate whether we are overworking or underworking or whether we are practicing a kind of effort in our work that we could sustain forever, even if part of it is like short bursts of activity. So I encourage us to think about this kind of question so that our work can itself be a form of concentration leading to insight and peace. Okay? So that's all. That's the outline. I probably have another... 10 hours of things to say about this or more. I could probably speak about this continuously for a really, really long time, but I won't.

[38:55]

And I hope that you have a good Saturday in which you can rest. And if you want to speak about any of these issues some more, there's a question and answer in the dining room after lecture. May you be happy and peaceful. at work and in everything that you endeavor to do. And may you do it with the heart and mind of awakening for the benefit of all beings. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:55]

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