This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So nice to be here. I have not been in this hall for two years because of the pandemic. So that's a long time to have not been here. sat in a seat giving a lecture. Thank Jiryu for inviting me and for hosting me here this morning. All of you are many good friends. And all of my friends who I'm now seeing here online, welcome to Ringgold on Sunday morning lecture. I guess I feel a certain amount of just the joy and thankfulness to come here to Green Goats and see it so well taken care of by all of you.

[01:08]

During this difficult time, we both take care of the physical environment, these beautiful temples, and take care of the practice so beautifully. So thank you very much for your practice. Yes, I noticed her when she came with a beautiful Jesus statue with her wish that Don John was standing behind me, supporting me. And in some ways, I feel that such a wonderful, great reminder of all the wonderful bodhisattvas all over the world, especially in Ukraine and Eastern Europe who are taking care of all the mothers and children that are running from. This enormous tragedy is happening over there. Bodhisattvas that are taking care of them are certainly to be held in our heart. Jizo is the manifestation of the heart's desire to take care of children all over the world.

[02:19]

It is even more so Yes. Go higher. Okay. I noticed it was last week we had some audio problem. We don't use anything at City Center. So I think that's the first time I've been in the window, and I've been offered incense in a couple of years, too. So I'm going to talk a little bit.

[03:25]

In January, Shinde, David, and I gave a four-week class on newly discovered recorded lectures of Suzuki Hiroshi. Maybe all of you are familiar with them, but these were 20 plus audio recordings as Victor O. G. that were done at Marian Derby's home in 1965. In fact, there were very early recordings done as Victor O. G. she had a tape recorder there and had a discussion with Victor O. G. said, could you let me record these? And she'd say yes, and then he expressed some input to her about having a book published, so it didn't turn out that she recorded there. did become Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And today I'm going to share a few paragraphs from the very first lecture Shinjo and I taught on, and the very last in the four lectures that we talked on. And it was very special because the first lecture that they discovered was the actual lecture that became the prologue with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[04:31]

It's famous saying, you know, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the beginner's mind there are three. and actually listen to Siddiqui Rashi give that talk. It's so beautiful to hear. And just to do a little commotion, you can go to the San Francisco Center website and click on offerings. And then you'll see a little box on the many offerings there that says Siddiqui Rashi archive. You click on that and it lists all these lectures that we're sort of rolling out every two weeks. We put a new one there. So there's 15 of them. posted now. And the audio quality is excellent. She had a great tape recorder back then and the tapes were preserved for over 50 years. What's interesting about the tape, when you actually listen to it, of course, is that you realize how much editing is done in producing the lectures that are in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.

[05:32]

That phrase, a beginner's mind, essentially becomes synonymous with Zen. Isn't that wonderful? A Zen mind is a beginner's mind. Makes you think you know what a one-known goal is. Unless you wonder, well, what is a beginner's mind? What does circularity actually mean by a beginner's mind? And this is the actual text from that audio, because those audios are all beautifully transcribed. it goes. In a beginner's mind, we have many possibilities, but in expert mind, there is not so much possibility. So in our practice, it is important to resume our original mind, our inmost mind, which we ourselves, and even we ourselves, do not know what it is. That's from the Master's mind. Even we ourselves do not know what it is, this original mind, this inmost mind, which is according to the antiquating of the original mind.

[06:42]

So this is a kind of exploration. What is this mind? The beginner's word has a kind of familiarity to it. A beginner's mind means And he goes on, and beginner's mind means our experience should always be refreshed and renewed. It means always have the joy of discovering something. The same joy as children discovering something new. We have an intuitive feeling for that. We can kind of cast our mind back to when we were... Maybe we can't. I kind of think I can remember early days when I was learning how to move on. But anyway, the discovery of what it was to have a human body, the discovery of what it is to walk, that beginner's sense, which sort of gets slowed down a little bit in our old age. But watching children would get that same kind of sense. So I think we get a feeling for that beginner's mind, kind of a mind of curiosity, curious, open mind.

[07:55]

that we've been connected. The kind of inquiring line, which we always say is such an important part of that. I've been fortunate or unfortunate, one never knows about this, but I've had many careers in my life. I've been cast into many situations where I had to learn anew what I was doing. So I was always having to be a beginner. I was a beginner at funding, a beginner at watching, many different things that I did. And of course, my beginner's mind always was clouded with a certain amount of anxiety. The beginner's mind, hopefully we have not so much anxiety, but more a sense of refreshing, inquisitiveness. But the more important thing is, he goes on, he says, an inmost mind, an original mind, like it's something we already have. Our original mind, a mind we had always, even before we were born, this mind was with us.

[09:02]

It kind of reminds me of that wonderful koan, ordinary mind is the way. Jago asked Nan Chuan, what is the way? Wonderful question. Jago was probably like some of you, maybe. Not some of you, my friends would have been here. for years that some of you that have been What is that? What actually is the way to ask that for some kind of sincerity? I think it's our training. So Nanshpan's answer was so beautiful. Ordinary mind is the way. And then GiaoGyo, wondering kind of what he's talking about, says, should I try to direct myself toward it? Nanjuan said, if you try to direct yourself, you betray your own practice.

[10:11]

GiaoGyo said, how can I know the way if I don't direct myself? And this beautiful, almost poetic answer that Nanjuan said, the way is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and engagement? Well, that's great news. everyday mind is the way, and I always got it here, no problem. I mean, that's great, except for I came to Zen because my ordinary mind way was probably suffering, filled with delusion and craziness.

[11:13]

So what's the act I'm talking about here? The nonchalant is saying, everyday acting, ordinary things, speaking to someone, having breakfast, cleaning the dishes, and so on. These things that we have limited and reduced by our preconceptions and habits of mind, by our conditioning, these things are in fact something wonderful, something vast, unknown, and mysterious. only we can let go and shed ourselves of our limited ways of looking at things. We can find joy and satisfaction with everything. This is the Zen message and understanding. Let the light inside of everything shine forth.

[12:18]

I think that is what makes Zen practice so wonderful. The recognition that it's not about special activity. It's about each and every activity and each and every moment. It can continue a little bit with a poetic aspect of this beautiful story. Wulman has a verse that goes, spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon, summer with breeze, Winter with snow. When the idle concerns don't hang in your mind, that is your best season. Returning to the beginner's mind, he was kind of a living example of that mind.

[13:21]

a very fortunate man to live through that kind of mind. The meeting was to feel this immediacy. Trampa, who I met in those early days, said in the memorial to the literature, all his gestures and communications were naked at this point, as though you were dealing with the burning tip of an incense tip. At the same time, this was by no means irritating, for whatever happened around the situation was quite accommodative. My experience with the leaders was similar. He had an uncanny sense of the moment and how to respond to it. But when I think back on him, the most important part will give time to us. which is clear in this quote at the end of The Beginner's Mind Cough, where they live in January, for that small group, that small group, that small group, that man would let him go.

[14:29]

This is maybe 15 or 20 people in the living room. This was before Tassar, before City Center, and the director would go and visit them in Los Alamos, and go over to Berthring, visit Nell's Place, Dr. Mill Valley, visit the students there, small groups thinking, and he said, I was very much impressed by your practice this morning. Although your posture was not perfect, you know, his laughter on the face, not just his laughter, but everybody's laughter. But the feeling you have here is wonderful. There is no comparison to it. The feeling you have here is wonderful. There is no comparison to it. At the same time, we should make our effort to keep this feeling forever in your practice. This is a very, very important point. I've been to Aheiji where Suzuki Roshi is trained.

[15:33]

Their posture is quite good at Aheiji. Suzuki Roshi knew what good posture was. And so that laughed. And we knew our posture was so great, you know. But the feeling was so wonderful. Our effort, our sincerity, needing his effort and sincerity is what established this practice here in America. And I also like that comment, you should keep this feeling forever. It's a kind of, a little bit of a tricky, It's not recommended that we try to measure how our practice is going. It's confusing and it's not very actually impossible. But still, you should have some feeling in your practice that it's kind of going okay with the right thing for me to be doing.

[16:38]

Even if you're going through a tough phase, There's a part of you that knows, okay, I need, this is difficulty that's coming up in my life that I need to deal with because this is what I need to take care of. A friend of mine who was doing couples therapy with a student of mine, I don't really look forward to going to therapy. But I know that I should. I know that this is important. So you have to have some feeling like that in your practice because practice is what you should be doing. I think it's time for us to come back and be with us.

[17:53]

I'm hoping for that. That's our city center. Thank you. So I'm going to switch, because I have a little bit more time, and talk about another lecture that we previewed that four-week session. And in that lecture, Suzuki Roshi said, the purpose of studying Buddhism is to study ourselves and to forget ourselves. When we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of big existence or reality itself. When we realize this, there is no problem whatsoever in this world, and we can enjoy our life without feeling any difficulty. So this teaching we're just familiar with, it comes from a well-known paragraph, and again, the Koan, and the cause of Hanakashi's translation is, to study the little ways, to study the self, to study the self, but to forget the self.

[19:01]

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. So I thought it was interesting that in 1965, Sikoroki introduced this. Up until 1965, Sikoroki lectured mostly on the Blue Cliff Record. I have all the early transcripts of those, and they're all beautiful Blue Cliff Record. Hopefully they're coming out soon in another book from Zen Center. Anyway, Kaz Tanahashi has been a long-term friend of Zen Center and a great activist in the world. He met Zikrishi in 1964. He'd come over from Japan and he said, what kind of text do you teach? And Reverend Suzuki said, the Blue Cliff Record. I said, why not Dogen? Dogen is too difficult for American students, Suzuki said.

[20:03]

As if Luca record is easy. But anyway, and then Todd said, don't you think you should present your best when you teach foreign students? I think Dogen is your best. I believe Dogen is not only an important Zen master and imaginative poet, but the greatest thinker Japan will ever produce. He is fantastic. It doesn't matter if your students don't understand him. Teach Dogen. This is from a very young, 20-year-old person, telling Tsukiroshi what to do. So, I think Tsukiroshi immediately asked him to give a lecture, which I think flummoxed his callous a little bit. But anyway, whether influenced by cause or not, in 1965, Tsukiroshi began teaching Dogen. It isn't as if those early lectures around Lucas directed me. They don't have the feeling of Dogen, because I think that's mostly what Tsukiroshi taught. But he started in 1965 doing a series of lectures on the Gangrel koan, which is sort of the text that most often studied in the Shogo Gansai.

[21:20]

And he chose this paragraph that was very familiar to how the first he presented, kind of in some ways, the essence of the Gangrel koan and that's the essence of the Shogo Gansai, as some would say. Anyway, he gave 15 talks between 1965, a lot of them 65, a lot of them 66, and some of them 67, on the Gendry of Cohen, which were assembled as a book, Dogen's Gendry of Cohen, Three Commentaries, a beautiful collection of these. They weren't, he didn't teach sort of systematically, but they managed to assemble all the lectures into a systematic way through the Gendry of Cohen. Just for those of you who are not familiar with you out there in the world, all the students here are familiar with Genjo Koan. Genjo Koan has many, at the title of this particular essay, has many translations.

[22:22]

The Koan of the present moment or to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity. That's Shohata Okunua. I kind of like that. To answer the question from the true reality. In this moment, there's a question for you. And through your practice of everyday activity, you answer that question. Salud Gershi's translation of, again, the koan of everyday life. Everyday life's koan to do. The Zika Roshi taught the practice of zazen and the Genjo koan are inextricably bound. Our practice of answering that koan of everyday life and zazen are inextricably bound. The Genjo koan, distilled through his years of practicing zazen, was the core of Zika Roshi's.

[23:25]

So I'm going to talk a little bit about, just study the whole way, just to study the stuff. That means observe your life honestly. Be willing to admit, this is how I feel. Not, I wish I felt some other way. I mean, you can say that, and then you can notice, oh, this is how I wish I felt. But anyway, view your actual life. What are you thinking? How your body feels? What you're doing? This is time interacting with the world. And to study yourself in this way is without prejudice or judgment. We study ourselves to accept ourselves, to settle into ourselves, to stand in our actual life, and to begin to see our lives as much bigger than our mind thinks it is, and much freer than our mind thinks it is. which is a quote from an earlier Lecture of Sousa Dirty that I ran into and thought it was appropriate here, then may be said indeed a practice of cultivating our mind to make it deep and open enough to accept the various ideas and thoughts that are there.

[24:51]

When this kind of acceptance takes place, everything will orient itself according to its own nature and the circumstances. We call this activity the great activity. Reality can be said to be the bed that is deep and soft enough to accept everything as it is. Deep and soft enough to accept everything as it is. So I'm going to... go in a little bit different direction and talk about what studying, another sort of aspect of studying the characters that this study comes from can be translated to be intimate with. We're trying to be intimate with our life. And the characters have two components. One meaning is wings of a bird and the other is being self.

[25:54]

So to study means to study the way a baby bird studies his parents to learn the fly. And I was kind of fascinated by that, so I went on the marvelous internet. Sometimes it's marvelous. And they have these videos of these sea birds up in Alaska that are raised on 300-foot cliffs above the ocean. And after about 20 days of their parents flying out and getting cruised in the ocean, bringing it back, they have to fly. And they don't get any referrals. This is just watching their parents flying and then... They just jump off and score. And they have to make it all the way to the ocean. The beach is down there. It's just amazing to watch. And somehow when I was watching that, I had that sort of sense of become intimate with our life. It's also sort of in some ways to plunge into it. You know, to dive into our life, to take a risk and live our life.

[27:01]

Like that bird, a bird comes off the cliff and lands in the ocean. Maybe it was like that when we first learned how to get up and walk, or we can do it again. Not so much using our thinking mind to figure yourself out, to take the risk to really become who you actually are. a totally unique person, and figure out how to express the deep connection you have to everything else through you as a person. So, Siddhartha Archie says, if you try to understand who you are, it has been endless task, and you will never see yourself. It is very difficult to try to think about yourself. To reach a conclusion is almost impossible, and if you continue trying, you will become crazy, and you won't know what to do with yourself.

[28:10]

That is true. If you're going to use your mind to figure out who you are, you're in deep trouble. So he quotes the things from Dung Chan. Don't try to see yourself objectively. Don't try to seek for information about yourself. That is information. The real you is not that kind of thing. And Sir Christian gave a beautiful example of always love. He said, when you see someone practicing sincerely, you see yourself. If you are impressed by someone's practice, you may say, oh, he is doing very well. That key is neither you nor you. When you are struck by someone's practice, You see yourself. That is the real you. That you is the pure experience of practice.

[29:13]

You know, I think in some sense he was talking to us because you will look at the practice and say, I want to live like that. I want to do like that. But in seeing, in you being struck by the fact, quality of this practice, that is you. That is your practice. That's the rule of you, that connection. It's in that connection that your practice is, in that connection that you are. It's to experience life without the subject-object separation. It is not I seeing you out there, but me feeling the connection. To study the self is to forget the self. Almost worth figuring out who the self is and I was supposed to forget it. Well, there are many ways to talk about this but I'm just going to point out one area.

[30:17]

To forget the self is to see your own craziness and not take it so personally. Be with your experience in a non-judgmental way and you may notice how much of your experience is around yourself. your self-concern. Did I do okay? Why would this person disrespect me? They don't accept me. They don't like me. Self-concern is the organizing principle of all our thoughts and feelings. You almost get that feeling after you've sat on them for a while. Why don't you fall like thinking about you in some way or another? And this, of course, is the cause of great suffering. If we can let go of our self-concern, that is the root of happiness.

[31:23]

Such a relief to put that down for a while. He said, when we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of the big existence or reality itself. When you realize this fact, there is no problem whatsoever in this world and we can enjoy our life without feeling any difficulty. It doesn't mean that we don't feel suffering from the world. some capacity to have joy in the midst of all, of our suffering and the suffering of the world. Of course, then this is the magic part of this thing. To study the self, to forget the self, and then to forget the self, to be characterized by a million things.

[32:30]

We actualize on the other things. We let the entire world go through you. When you let yourself go, you can appreciate the world, even the tragic part. No longer dividing it into things that are good for you and things that are bad for you. This is renunciation. The wonderful story that I read in a book by Dale Wright, Philosophic Meditation on San Bulderno. He was talking about Juan Bo. Iconic. And Juan Vogt said, pictures enlighten ancestors in real life situations facing themselves so that the true contour of the situation comes to disclosure in them. It's a big sentence, a lot of them. Facing themselves. Forgetting themselves. so that the true contour of whatever situation they're in is disclosed in them and through them.

[33:41]

Open ourselves to the world and let it be us. They encounter the world not through acts of will and mind primarily, but through relinquishment, letting go of themselves, opening their own minds and will, for the larger context of the situation that then becomes manifest through you. Who knows that long ago, I think that somehow over a thousand years, somebody had assembled it into the beautiful idea. Maybe I've probably talked enough. And I think the Ashton Society of Gershi's teaching is if we live in each moment, that is then. Whether you're sitting or working, living in each moment is then.

[34:43]

It is our everyday life. Look and see what's going on in this moment of your life. Every moment is gone in a flash. Life goes by very quickly. Whatever our problem, difficult relationships, one great loss, pain in our body, suffering in our mind, that is your life, our life. But we get lost in our problems. We don't notice how marvelous it is to be alive because we are so busy. We don't notice how wonderful it is to be alive and share this life with other people and how great it is that we are together.

[35:49]

We forget. We forget to be grateful to live a human life and how good it is. It's natural. It's a part of being human to forget. But if we practice, we'll forget left off. May you all be safe and healthy. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:51]

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