I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I'm sorry I'm sorry.

[18:04]

Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is Tim Wicks. I'm the Tonto, or Head of Practice here at City Center, and I'm very happy to introduce today Zenshin Florence Kaplau, who was a Dharma transmitted Soto Zen priest. She was ordained by Zoketsu Norman Fisher in 2007 and received Dharma transmission from Bruce Fortin in 2022. She's practiced Vipassana and Zen for nearly 40 years, including Sashin's practice periods and residence at San Francisco Zen Center Practice Center. She's a Dharma teacher, essayist, change coach, and the co-editor with Reikitsu Susan Moon of The Hidden Lamp, Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women.

[19:13]

She's also a Unitarian Universalist minister. She currently lives in Washington State and is the author of Tend to Your Spirit, which she'll be signing copies of right after this Dharma talk. A warm welcome to you. Thank you very much for joining us. lovely to be with you. Oh, it's quite loud. In this sun-filled room full of beautiful faces, some I know, some I don't know. And to the people who, many people who are listening, who knows, all over the world, greetings to you as well. think the last time I was on this seat was about, what did I figure out, 12 years ago when The Hidden Lamp first came out. And my co-editor of The Hidden Lamp, it's stories from 25 centuries of awakened women, and I were here as part of a weekend of celebration of the release of that book.

[20:26]

And we had a whole bunch of the great women teachers from the Zen Center in a panel that happened later that weekend. So I feel the joy from that time and also the joy of being back. When I come back to San Francisco Zen Center, I always feel like I'm coming back home. Anybody who's practiced here has that feeling. This is always home. And this is a celebratory weekend again. because my new book, Ten to Your Spirit, Mindful Living with Chronic Illness, was just released on October 14th. And this is my first official book event. I did a sneak preview at Enso Village in September, but the book wasn't actually out yet. And so it's wonderful, again, to be back and to be sharing.

[21:26]

Part of my talk today will be about the book, but lots of other things, too, because it's a Dharma talk, not a book talk. But during the Q&A, that'll be an opportunity. I'll talk more about the book and also do some signing. So I hope that some of you can come. I know the bookstore got extra copies, so they'd probably appreciate having them go out the door. So one of the things that has changed in 12 years, and this makes me... very, very happy is the change in accessibility for this building. Because as a person with chronic illness, a degree of disability, as a person who works with other Zen students and people who are struggling with physical challenges, I'm really, really aware, as much as I love this practice, of how inaccessible it can be. And this building was inaccessible in some major ways or partially accessible.

[22:29]

And so it moves me deeply that Zen Center, maybe some of you donated to do the changes of this building to make it available to people who might otherwise not really be able to fully practice here or be a guest here. And also, of course, thanks to the pandemic, we now have this capacity to reach people all over the world. I have been teaching for the last three years through Zen Center a class for people with chronic illness called Dancing in the Dark Fields. And there have been hundreds of people who have been part of that over these years, and they would not have been able to participate in something like that. in person, many of them, partly because they're not here or where I am, and partly because it's just not possible some people are actually housebound. And I know that some of the people from the class are listening to this talk right now, and they're in San Francisco, but they can't come here.

[23:38]

So huge, huge gratitude to all of you who've made that possible. So Today I want to talk about the ways that my life, the life of a student of Zen, of the Dharma, the life of a person with chronic illness, over nearly half my life now, how these have circled around one another, informed each other, danced with each other, sometimes seemed at odds. with each other. And I also want to talk about energy and confidence and faith and the healing power of the Dharma. Now, some of you might be thinking, well, how is this talk related to my life? I'm healthy. I have a body that's strong.

[24:40]

If that's true for you, I hope you really listen because someday your life will not be that way. Your body will not be strong. That is nearly always the case for all of us, sometimes for short periods in our life, sometimes for a long part of our life, sometimes at the end of our life. But these teachings, these understandings can help us. And even if your body is strong, we all suffer in various ways. This is, of course, the first noble truth of the Buddha. And so the teachings of people who have lived with the challenges of chronic illness for a long time are teachings that can benefit anybody. So I'm offering this to all of us here, whatever your condition. But first, I want to talk about salmon. You might think, where is she going to go with this?

[25:45]

So I live now on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, one of the most beautiful places in the world. And not long ago, a few weeks ago, I went up into the Olympic National Park, quite deep into the park, to the Solduck River. And the Solduck River is a wild river that starts very high in the mountains, ends up at the Pacific Ocean, And so it's one of the places where the salmon come far, far up the river to their place where they came from, much like I'm returning to San Francisco Zen Center, actually, I just realized. And through what is mostly old-growth forest, this mossy, moist, ferny, mushroomy forest, through clear, clear water. And there's this place where you can walk out to the edge of the river.

[26:51]

And there's a series of cataracts. It's not huge waterfalls, but a kind of stepping stone cataracts. And below it is a huge pool. And there are all these people there who've walked in on the trail through the forest. And it's very quiet. It's like you're in a sacred space. And in the pool, which you can see from the cliffs above, when we were there, there were, I don't know, maybe 40 or 50 big salmon that you could see down below the surface of the water. They're dark shapes. And they're all turned the same way. They're all turned upstream with their noses pointed upstream. And then every once in a while, one of the salmon starts up towards the cataracts and they get to where the white water is and they make this big leap. And most of the time, especially that first leap, it seemed they don't make it and they go back.

[27:59]

Maybe they even go all the way back to the pool and they rest for a while and then they try again. And then you see one that with this just immense effort goes all the way over the first step of the false and gets to the next little pool, kind of small pool before the next big jump. And people actually clapped for them when they did that. It was really great. We were all there. And this process of sort of attempting and failing and going back and trying again and going back is very, very powerful. and that they were returning. I think about that line from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, you know, to return to the place where you began as if for the first time, in a way. That's what the salmon are doing. And, of course, they die there, right? They go up and they spawn, and they leave their bodies there, and it feeds the forest that protects the river,

[29:02]

that made it possible for them to be born. And they bring the ocean deep, deep into the mountains and leave the vital nutrients and minerals of the ocean for the forest, for everything in the forest. So I speak about this because this year I do a lot of online teaching. One of the things that this change has meant is that people like me can do a lot of teaching without having to travel from place to place, which is wonderful when your body isn't as strong as other people's. And I've been teaching through Upaya Zen Center a year-long program on the paramitas, or sometimes they're called the perfections, although that's kind of a tricky word. They're the deep practices of the bodhisattvas. And there are various numbers of them. We often think of, in Zen, we talk about six paramitas, but there are There are various, sometimes 10, we're actually doing the 10.

[30:04]

And one of them is this word viria, or energy. And this is the quality that I see in those salmon. That determination to keep going, even when the challenges just seem quite literally insurmountable. And it's also the quality that I see in the people with chronic illness and chronic pain who come to my Dancing in the Dark Fields class. They are practicing with this tremendous energy right in the middle of the challenges of their lives, as are all of you in your own way. I just wanted to read... So this virya word gets translated in different ways, sometimes joyful effort. Thich Nhat Hanh describes it as diligence. Roshi Joan Halifax uses wholeheartedness.

[31:10]

That might be my favorite translation, actually, wholeheartedness. And so I think that this feeling here of virya is... is really powerful. You know, virya shows up in our Zen practice. Really, we couldn't do this practice without virya. We cultivate virya when we sit zazen in the morning, even though our legs are hurting and we're falling asleep and we're doing that nod that you see in the zendo in the morning, even if we'd rather sleep in. We cultivate virya when we make a commitment for a practice period or a sashin. or when we wholeheartedly weed a garden or sit by the bedside of a dying person. Even sitting upright as you are now, this is a practice of virya.

[32:12]

But when I, in some of the small groups that were studying these paramitas, there are people who are actually also have severe fatigue and different kinds of health challenges in those groups. And they were like, well, I can't really practice Birya. I don't have much energy. And so we talked about how, in a way, it isn't about physical energy. It's about that wholehearted. It's your heart. What is the energy of your heart that you bring to your life? And one of the people that was tremendously important in my own Dharma journey, although she was never officially my teacher, was Darlene Cohen. And if you don't know her, I suggest that you take a look at some of what she wrote. She wrote an incredible book called Turning Suffering Inside Out, based on her life from the time she was in her early 30s of absolutely crippling rheumatoid arthritis.

[33:20]

I happened to share that illness with her, although luckily there are better treatments now than there were at the time that she became ill. And she, if you knew Darlene, she lived her life with utter wholeheartedness. She was the personification of Viria, despite a life of disability, or maybe because of a life of disability, because nothing was easy. Everything was that leaping up the waterfall. And yet she embraced it. She embraced her practice of the Dharma wholeheartedly. And the other word that I see with those salmon going up the Soldak River, this one might be less familiar to even people who've been around the Zen world, but it's a great word, is shraddha. And shraddha is a Sanskrit word that...

[34:21]

is sometimes translated as faith and sometimes translated as confidence. So shraddha, to have that feel, and I think it's a feeling. I don't think it's like up here in your head. I think it's down in your gut. To have that feeling that I will go on. You know, those salmon, they're following this scent. right, that's in the river, that they can actually smell way out in the ocean. They smell the current of their whole river and stream, and they follow it. They follow it from the ocean to the, you know, it's been years since they went out to the ocean. They were teeny when they went out, and now they're huge. And they're following it up and up and up and up to literally the very place where they came out of an egg. That's what we do with Shradda. We don't even know.

[35:22]

Probably, maybe you don't even know why you're here today, why you showed up this Saturday morning. But there's something. You're following a scent. You have some sense. And maybe you've had some experience in your life of how the Dharma has been of benefit, has helped you. But we don't always even have that feeling. We just... We're just following. We're following that scent. That's Shraddha. So now I'm going to say a little more about my own journey. So my journey with the Dharma actually started as a young teenager. I came across the writings of Alan Watts in the Midwest. There were no Zen teachers. I guess maybe Katagiri. Nope. I don't think he was even in Minneapolis yet, and I wasn't in Minnesota.

[36:22]

And it was the first thing I felt like I'd ever read about the nature of reality that made sense to me. It was just a revelation. And I had lots of questions about the world, those big existential questions that teenagers ask, and then we get older and we think it's not cool to ask those questions. But teens know that it matters. So I was asking those questions, and I... Wasn't getting any answers. And I was really worried about the nature of humans and what we do to each other and the kind of suffering we cause each other and to other beings and to the world. And it broke my heart. Just broke my heart. But luckily, before my heart was completely broken, I actually did encounter a Dharma teacher. And I learned how to practice. in my late teens. And I often say that the dharma saved my life. So one part of my shraddha is that part of what keeps me going is because I know that, because I know that the dharma showed me something that was a way, was the stream that I could follow.

[37:38]

I won't ever leave this stream until the day that I leave my body on the banks of the stream to... feed the next generation. And so I threw myself into practice wholeheartedly. First Vipassana practice, and then I met Norman in about 1990 and began to practice Zen, which was kind of a surprise to me because I wasn't all that attracted to all the Japanese stuff. Sometimes that's what brings people to Zen, but it wasn't for me. It was meeting a poet you know, a deep thinker and a deeply grounded person that did it for me. That's the other thing that's sort of sent, like to see a person who inspires you. That's part of what can be our shraddha. That's part of what can give us virya and the energy for the practice. And And that was really wonderful. And I would come down here. He became Abbott. I would come down and practice at Green Gulch.

[38:40]

I'd do practice periods and then at Tassajara. I was living up in Washington State then too. And I would come and just experience such deep joy, such joy. And then I got really, really sick. And I was only 34 years old. And it's really hard. when most people around you are still quite healthy and you are not. And various autoimmune illnesses, I sometimes say people with autoimmune issues tend to collect them. So I have collected a number of them since I was 34 years old. And so the first thing that happened was that I was too sick to do this formal practice. I would come and try to do a sashin, and I wouldn't make it through. It would actually often, even if I came and when I arrived, I was doing pretty well. At some point, the rigor of the practice was too much for me, and I would actually collapse physically.

[39:46]

I had to leave a practice period at Tassajara because I couldn't get all the way through. This was real grief for me. This was deep, deep loss. Actually, at the time that I left Tassajara, I was sewing robes to become a priest. And I didn't know if that would ever happen. And I had to put those robes away for a long time as I struggled with what it meant to be a Zen student who couldn't actually practice formally. And I had to get very creative. But luckily for me, I had encountered Darlene Cohen's teaching around This is your life. Whatever it is, whatever your limitations are, whatever your capacities are, this is your life. Practice with it right now, wholeheartedly. And by the way, have a good time, too. That was a big part of her teaching. It was the teaching of pleasure, of joy, no matter what, along with your grief and rage and everything else that's there.

[40:49]

So... I'm going to read, I think, a little bit here. So this is this book, which I love the cover, Tend to Your Spirit, the one that just came out. And I just wanted to... So this book is full of readings and spiritual practices and journaling practices and poetry. But each chapter has a short essay written either by me or my co-author, Julie Lapp. And this is actually from the last chapter. which is, so each chapter's on a different aspect of working with challenge. And this is from the very last chapter, which is on acceptance. That's why it's last, not first. So I'll just read a little bit of it. It's called, Can I Love the Life I Have? Earlier this summer, I was struck by the realization that it has been exactly 25 years that chronic illness has been powerfully shaping my life.

[41:57]

That's a quarter of a century. In fact, my first autoimmune illness began in the last century. If illness was a child, they'd be out of the house at this age, I hope, and working somewhere, renting an apartment. Instead, chronic illness lives in this body, sometimes at the wheel of the car, and determining the direction of my life, sometimes sitting in the back seat, temporarily quiescent, like a child looking out the window. There is a tremendous humility in living a life so marked by chronic illness. I've had to learn to respond with compassion to the requests of the body, to treat the body as a partner rather than an enemy. This is most true when the lights go dark and we will once again whirling into the territory of pain and weakness. It's easy to fight and resist, but I've learned the hard way how resistance increases the suffering.

[43:02]

Instead, there has to be a kind of surrender. The body is firmly in the lead and my job is to follow it. That's what this partner has taught me. We're taught in Buddhism that the degree of suffering is directly related to the degree of holding on. Despite this teaching, most of us don't let go of anything very easily. Illness, like a new puppy who chews anything and everything in sight, helps us get rid of things we thought we needed but really didn't. Somehow, miraculously, every time I lose some part of my self-image, something fresh and beautiful comes my way. Because of this illness, I'm way less impressive. But there's more room for grace. In some circles, we are told that illness is a gift. I have found that the gifts of being sick are far more complicated than that.

[44:06]

I can remember snarling at someone years ago when they suggested that my illness might be a gift. Don't ever do this to anybody. Don't ever say this to anybody. You can say it about yourself, but you can't say it to anybody else. They won't thank you. Finding the gift of illness can only come from some genuine place, far within, not from without. From without, it feels like a way of minimizing the tremendous suffering of the person who is sick. So, actually... You know, most of the time, I felt like my illness was something entirely undeserved, unwarranted, and unnecessary. I have to say that it still feels like a curse some days. And Darlene would have said the same thing all the way through. But there are gifts there, too. And the greatest and hardest gift?

[45:08]

The visceral, direct knowledge that life is not limitless. that tomorrow is completely unknown, and that literally there is no time to waste. Like what it says on the Hans, you know, the sound that we hear, the wooden call to meditation. In various ways, that's what it'll say. No time to waste. Acceptance has meant to me over these years, seeing both my times of health and my times of fatigue and pain as the life I have. I now see this particular life as a long dance with illness, though it wasn't the dance I would have chosen. Nonetheless, it has led me in life-giving directions. I am grateful for my times of relative well-being over these 25 years. I'm in one of those right now, though it's a little shaky. That's part of the reason I can be here. Though I never take them for granted.

[46:10]

I know that physical well-being, like everything else in life, is impermanent, maybe especially impermanent in my case. And I allow myself grief when life is harder. But I've also learned that there can be plenty of joy, plenty of beauty, plenty of spiritual deepening even then. So, and then because this was the last essay, I ended with this. And writing this book, Julianne, my co-editor, author, and I, have hoped to give you a taste of these possibilities and resources for your own journey through chronic illness or pain or life. So because this is a Zen talk, it kind of feels like I should bring up a Zen koan. So here's one. There's actually quite a few of them about illness because, of course, it is a big part of human life. So this is from the Blue Cliff Record, one of the great Tang Dynasty collections of koans.

[47:17]

And this is case 87, for those of you who like numbers. Yunmin said to the assembly, medicine and sickness cure each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is the self? So I'm really struck by this line. The whole earth is medicine. Wow. Because, of course, a huge part of having chronic illness is that you are searching for the medicine that will make you well. I cannot tell you how many rheumatoid arthritis drugs I have gone through unsuccessfully. But what if the whole earth is medicine? What if this ground, you know how the Buddha touched the ground? So just for a moment, take your right hand and touch the ground. This whole earth is medicine. It's there for you.

[48:19]

And if you can't reach the ground, well, then just touch whatever you can that's near the ground, right? That whole earth is medicine. The whole earth is supporting us. We are not alone with whatever our struggles are, with whatever our challenges are, to remember this. We are not alone. And then that kind of interesting question, which could be a full other Dharma talk, what is the self? I mean, if we're supported by everything, then what kind of separateness are we? Maybe not as separate as we think. So there's a really interesting commentary. So in the Blue Griffith record, there are these commentaries saying, and I was really kind of fascinated with this. So I'll just read this little bit of commentary, and then I'll tell you a little bit about the background. One day, Manjushri, who's often sitting on a Zen altar, if you go to Green Gulch, it's Manjushri.

[49:20]

One day, Manjushri ordered Sudhana to pick medicinal herbs. He said... If there is something that is not medicine, bring it to me. Sudhana searched all over, but there was nothing that was not medicine. Every herb was medicine. So Sudhana is a really interesting character. He was a student of Manjushri. So Manjushri is the Bodhisattva of wisdom, which is why Manjushri is often on the altar in a Zen place. Sudhana was a pilgrim. So this is all happening in a somewhat magical world. And the Flower Ornament Sutra, which is quite a magical sutra, involves kind of the stories of Sudhana's travels as a pilgrim. And he meets 53 wise people. And Manjushri is the one who kind of sends him out on this pilgrimage.

[50:22]

So he goes from one person, and that person will say, oh, go talk to this person. And then that person will say, oh, go talk to this person. And in a way, they're all good friends that can help in various ways. One of them is actually a physician, which I think is interesting. Another one is a courtesan who actually shows up in The Hidden Lamp who talks about awakening through the passions. So he meets a lot of interesting people on his pilgrimage. And I think I appreciate Sudhana because I actually myself went on pilgrimage at one point, which seemed like a crazy thing to do as a person with chronic illness. I actually sold my house, gave up my job, which I was starting to fail at anyway, and started traveling around in my car because I was like, well, if I'm going to die young or be really completely incapacitated, there's a few things I want to do before that happens.

[51:23]

First thing I did was a two-month silent retreat. But I traveled around for about eight years. I met a lot of good friends. And I went where I was needed. That was my mantra. I'll go where I'm needed. And a lot of it was in the wilderness. And so I appreciate Sudhana and this search for medicine and finding that everything in the world is medicine. And another important story for me is actually from another early sutra, Mahayana Sutra, called the Vimalakirti Sutra. Vimalakirti was a lay, like brilliantly wise layperson. And it takes place kind of in the time of the Buddha. And it actually starts that Vimalakirti is sick. And the Buddha says, you know, as you might, if you had a kind of congregation of people, says to the assembly, well,

[52:25]

will somebody go and make a visit to Vimalakirti? He's sick. He's in his little room. And nobody wants to go because every time anybody's visited Vimalakirti, he always makes them feel foolish, even the wisest of the people in the Buddha's assembly. So Manjushri, same guy, finally says, okay, well, I'll go. And then the whole rest of this book-length sutra is about what happens in Vimalakirti's little tiny sick room. Which, I mean, it sort of described how tiny it is. It's much smaller than this room. But apparently the entire Buddha's assembly, you know, of 500,000, 10,000 people could all fit in this little room. And again, you know, that's where the sutra takes place. But one of the things that Vimalakirti says is, I'm sick because all beings are sick. Because the world is sick. And oh my goodness, doesn't the world feel sick right now, right?

[53:27]

We are in a world that is so sick. It is running a very high fever. It is full of autoimmune illness. And we're all part of this world, right? So in that way, we're all sick. And so this world is calling us, really calling us to recognize that, And to bring whatever wisdom we can bear to this situation that we're in of a sick world. And here was Vimalakirti, you know, almost 2,000 years ago, reminding us that our sickness and the world's sickness are not separate. So maybe some of you know that there, that, oh, I wanted to mention, so I was at the, how many people were at the Sajiki ceremony last night? Yeah. Good number of people. That's what all this stuff is on the walls. If you walk around the building, you'll see more of them. They're fantastic.

[54:29]

I particularly love this one with the demon and the monk. So a friend brought me, picked me up from BART because I was coming from the airport. And she said, well, I'll bring you a costume because part of what happens in Sujiki is some people come in costume. So I had no idea what my costume was going to be. And this is a... It's a Zen friend, but she's really wild. So anything was possible. Turned out what she brought me was a skeleton costume. So I was like, okay, I guess that's what I'm wearing to the tzaddiki ceremony. And it was pretty intense. It was a kind of long shirt that, actually, I think she used to work in one of the penitentiaries And I believe that it was actually made by somebody, an incarcerated person in the penitentiary. And it was like the whole, you know, all the bones of the kind of torso of the body.

[55:31]

And it reminded me of the five remembrances that are, they're not chanted here regularly, but in some sanghas, they are actually chanted every day. And the first three are the ones I kind of wanted to just remind us of. And I actually, I'm going to invite us all to say these out loud together. So I'll say it and then you can repeat it back. Okay. I am of the nature to become old. I am of the nature to become sick. I am of the nature to die. Now, you might think, and I think this is often the response of Westerners to these remembrances, that that sounds pretty morbid to say that every day. And in fact, James Ford, who's a Zen teacher and a friend of mine, said he made his Zen group do this every time they met. And they hated it.

[56:33]

They just hated it. It was like, why are we starting there? Well, because it's a foundational reality, right? That's why. We are about reality. It's a foundational reality, and it inspires us to remember that, you know, don't waste time. Let's be alive. Let's be fully alive while we are here. So I think what I will do here, I think I'm just going to read a couple last things. And then if you do decide you're going to come to the Q&A, I'll read a little more from the book. But I wanted to read, I wanted to read a little bit from Darlene. Let's see here. And a little bit from, and one poem to close that is not from a Buddhist person, but is a really great poem.

[57:38]

So this is from Turning Suffering Inside Out by Darlene. The world that opened to me through engaging the physical suffering and the mental anguish caused by my disease has turned out to be inexpressibly, inexpressibly rich. Because if we can engage with our suffering, connect with it, dance with it, tease it, coax it, curse it, as well as trying to change it, Just consider it our lives, experience it as our lives, the only lives we have. It changes the quality of the suffering. It's not just our suffering, it's everything. So can you hear the echoes of the whole world is medicine? And then, so for the closing, let's just read this poem. So this is by... somebody I know who is a former Unitarian Universalist minister at the Oakland UU, if any of you have ever been there.

[58:44]

And their name is Julian Hamaica Soto, and they have spent their whole life, you know, severely disabled in, you know, in a wheelchair with... Oh, I actually I don't want to say what the disease is, but one of the inherited diseases where, you know, that's your life, like from the time you're born. They're a wonderful, wonderful poet. And there's a collection of their poetry called Spilling the Light. So this is the this is the poem. When I was a child, someone told me that if you hold a seashell. Oh, and it's called Broken Shell Song. When I was a child, someone told me that if you hold a seashell to your ear, you can hear the ocean. When I was in middle school, I learned that what you hear is not the ocean. It's just the blood rushing through your ears. And that's fine. But I still wonder if a broken seashell has any good kind of song.

[59:50]

The song of half a wave might be a measure of grief. The bay of fundi when it is empty. The bacteria of flats in Yellowstone, steaming copper and blue smelling of sulfur, and somehow a cradle for life. Anklets of kelp forest. Even mostly empty, the ocean cannot help but brim with tokens of aliveness, reminders of beauty, and the plain, unabashed assurance that broken things, seashells, people, and times of love, have beauty all their own. If we can dance in the offbeat, if we can stand a little grit with the gorgeous gifts of this wide world. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for listening. And again, I hope that there's some part of this that if

[60:57]

If now is not a time of challenge for you, that if you find yourself in one, something will come back to you, maybe a little broken seashell to support you. And thank you again for your full, wholehearted listening. Thank you. with the true marriage. It's all on. It's really up. It's great. It's all on my mind. [...] . . .

[62:13]

Good morning, everyone. My name's Kevin. I'm the Hino here at City Center. I have a few announcements for you. As Florence mentioned, she'll be available for Q&A and book signing in the dining hall. So please head down that way. If you have any questions, feel free to ask her and pick up a copy of her book that will be available for sale there. As always, you are invited to come here to Zen Center and join us for all that we do. weekday and Saturday early morning zazen. We have evening zazen Monday through Friday, Dharma talks on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, classes, special events, ceremonies. You're welcome to join us for everything that we do. We love having you here with us, and your doors are always welcome. Hope for you. Next Saturday is a one-day sit, but we will have our regularly scheduled 925 zazen. Actually, 630 zazen is also open. 6.30 Zazen, 9.25 Zazen, and 10 a.m.

[65:08]

Dharma Talk are all open to the public, even if you're not signed up for the one-day sit. If you are interested in the one-day sit, I believe there's a waiting list now. You could put your name in. If a spot opens up, you could be notified. Please consider supporting Zen Center with your donations as well as your presence. A couple weeks ago, I started mentioning about the different membership levels, and a good number of people have signed up as members. So that's very exciting. There's four different membership levels. If you go to our website, sfzc.org, you can go to the page about memberships and sign up for a membership that suits your needs, starting with the meta level up to the virial level. So, again, thank you for your memberships and donations. There's also a donation box in the lobby where QR codes are on the front of the box, and you can make a donation that way. Today we will have lunch available. Actually, today and every Saturday, we'll have public lunch, 12 noon.

[66:08]

The only days we walk will be one day sits and sashim, so there won't be a public lunch next week, but today there is. So hopefully take advantage of that, and donations are graciously accepted. We will have a book event in a couple weeks, two weeks from today, Saturday, November 15th, in the evening, 7 to 9 p.m., with authors Peter Levick, Kazuaki Tanahashi. Blossom Awakening, the life and poetry of wandering monk Saigo. Saigo was a Japanese monk in the 12th century. He gave up his job as a guard to the emperor and became a Buddhist poet. One of Japan's most beloved poets. I will read one of his poems. They're very short. This is going to segue into the next announcement.

[67:10]

Just think of the moonlight. It even shines on the furthest edge of an unseen ordinary mountain. Speaking of the moon, this Wednesday we'll have a full moon ceremony. It will be in the evening. It will start at 7.30 here in the Buddha Hall. We'll break up into small groups and they'll meet with a practice leader here. And in that small group, we can talk about a precept that's relevant to you at the moment. If you don't know what the precepts are exactly, we'll have cards that have all the precepts on them and a little description. So you can share your feelings about a certain precept and how that's affecting you in your life. And then after that, 8 o'clock, the full moon ceremony will start here in the Buddha hall. Urban Gate Sangha are the folks that help to help us with the 925 Zazen as well as the 10 o'clock Dharma talk.

[68:15]

If the Urban Gate people can raise their hand for a moment. So all these bodhisattvas here help us in many ways to put these events on in the morning. And it's open to anybody to join, and it's open to anybody who wants to be there but doesn't have to commit to every week. So we never know who's going to show up, but every week enough people show up to really help us. So if you'd like to be one of those people, next week raise your hand. Actually, two weeks when I say ask you to the Urban Gate, you could raise your hand at that time also. You could talk to myself. You could talk to Tim at the door. Any other people who raised their hand will be glad to talk to you about Urban Gate. and all the joy that it brings them. We'll have tea and cookies. Today we'll have tea and cookies in the Welcome Center. So you can get tea and cookies there and then head to the dining hall to have Q&A with Florence Kaplow, or you can head out to the courtyard, whatever you like to do. So tea and cookies will be in the Welcome Center. If you could bring the Zafus back to the shelves, if you can bring the chairs back to the dining hall, if you're able to.

[69:23]

I've been asked to not don't bring chairs back to the table where the books are set up because they'll need that space for the book signing. So every other table is okay. So thank you so much for coming today. Great to have you here and have a beautiful weekend. Thank you. Thank you.

[70:28]

Thank you. Anyone else? So what's it? Is that how I'm? No. Sir, I'm sorry. [...]

[71:29]

Sir, I'm sorry. [...] It is just right there. It is. [...] I need to take this computer over and give it a... Yeah. What if it works out? Otherwise, tomorrow is for that thing.

[72:31]

Yeah. Oh, that's all right. Yeah. Yeah. ... [...] But I just thought that was interesting to be trying things to ask them to bring her to the spirit of [...] the spirit

[73:52]

Yeah, I'll do that. But it's like, sorry. Yeah. Thank you.

[74:22]

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