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, everyone. Welcome to Beginners Mind Temple at San Francisco Zen Center. Welcome to everyone who's joining us online. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I left my talk at home. Can you go get it for me? I think it should be on my bed. I'm 104, number 104. Oh, my gosh. What a fantastic nightmare.

[01:04]

We just had a practice period recently and it was led by former abbess Christina Lenhair and she, her very first talk of the practice period, she came out and did what I did, got her notes out and everything. And said that she was just working on her talk up in her room. And she pressed a button somehow and the entire thing was erased. Mine's not erased. Hopefully Atta, my faithful Jiko, will be able to find it. My apologies. I'm going to be talking about the Platform Sutra today a little bit. That's what it is that we are doing for the practice period that we just started. It's a month-long practice period, and practice periods are periods of intensified study.

[02:12]

And in Zen, there's usually at least two of them a year that last for three months, oftentimes three of them a year. Sometimes they'd last just for two months. The one we just had was two and a half months. And this one is one month. And I'm leading it with my Dharma sister Lucy Shao. And so far we're having a lot of fun. At least we were. Until I left my talk at home. First of all, I want to thank Central Abbott David Zimmerman for letting me hold the Dharma seat here. And as always, I want to thank my teacher, Rinso Ed Satterson. Let's see, how did that talk start? I was just practicing it.

[03:14]

Yeah, how did it start? Oh, I need a prepared talk. I can't do this off the top of my head. We have people who can do it off the top of their head. People who don't use any notes at all. Former abbot Paul Haller. I've seen him. I've seen him because I usually sit over there and I've seen him come in with notes because he's being humble and Thank you so much, Atta. Oh, my gosh. Making time here. And I'll see him never refer to his notes at all, unless he's got a quote. He doesn't refer to them. And he'll point at them like this while he's making a point, but he's not reading from the notes at all. It's awe-inspiring. Okay. All right.

[04:22]

So, today is... Today is a one-day sashin. Sashin means to gather the heart-mind. And so, it's a retreat, and we started early this morning, and we're going to go all the way to dinner tonight, where we are going to be... Meditating, sitting in meditation, walking meditation, sitting meditation, walking meditation. And always a part of a session or a retreat is a Dharma talk, which is what this is, a Dharma talk. The Dharma are the teachings of the Buddha. And it's a dialogue where it's this... Talk is being co-created. Even before the actual talk got here, we were co-creating this talk. I was bearing myself to you. There's nothing else I could do. I had to admit the fact that I didn't bring the talk with me.

[05:27]

And you were all, for the most part, I think, except for a couple of you, very sympathetic. So we're co-creating this. It's kind of a dialogue between the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, me and all of you. And really that's what all of Zen is, is a dialogue. It's a dialogue between the teachings and the individual practitioners, the teachers who have kept this teaching going. and what it means to actually be alive living on planet Earth. On Fridays and Saturdays, every morning we have service here in this room. This is the Buddha Hall. And we do chanting. We chant some of the sutras and some other sacred texts and do lots of bowing. And on Fridays and Saturdays,

[06:29]

we recite the names of all of our ancestors, the ones that we know anyway. These are all the people who nurtured this teaching and who kept it alive through the ages so that we could be introduced to it in the present. And when I first came here in 2001, about 25 years ago, I heard the reciting of the names of the ancestors and I really had absolutely no association with it whatsoever. I don't come from like a strong cultural background. I am formally I'm a Jew, but I was not raised. Jewish at all really, except the only thing that my Jewish mother taught me before she passed away at a young age, the only Jewish thing that she taught me is how to eat with chopsticks.

[07:32]

And so, you know, my background and my lineage goes from my father and mother to my grandparents, who I know sort of a little bit about. And then it's just a mystery after that. So this reciting of these names, this long list of names where we recite all the names of our ancestors, starting with the Buddha, all the way through India, then into China, then into Japan. And the final person on that list is Suzuki Roshi, who founded this temple, who came to the United States from Japan in 1959. So it's a long list. And one of the people, through repetition, I began to feel a little bit more comfortable about doing it after initially having no association whatsoever. And then it began to kind of get into my body through repetition which is a lot of what happens you need to be careful don't come to Zen center too often because it starts to really get inside you I didn't like any of the bowing or all the robes and all the chanting when I first came here and now I totally love it so watch out one of the people on the list is called Bodhidharma and Bodhidharma was the first ancestor

[08:57]

in China. He brought in the fifth or sixth century, we don't really know exactly when, he brought the teachings of the Buddha in the form that would become our school, Chan, which would then be called Zen. He was the first one to bring that to China in the fifth or the sixth century. And so we call him the first Chinese ancestor. For some reason, the Chinese ancestors, the numbering of them only goes up to six. Even though there's a seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth and all the way up to like 20th Chinese ancestor, we don't call them by their number. But the first six we do. Bodhidharma is the first ancestor. And... It helped me in this process of learning the names, reciting the names. It helped me that I practiced with people who had practiced with Suzuki Roshi, who at one point was living.

[10:02]

And he actually was my teacher, Ed Satterson's teacher. So he was my teacher's teacher. And it was really helpful in learning about the relationship between teacher and student to know that my teacher had had this living relationship with one of the people on this list. And we really stress the importance of this teacher-student relationship. My first teacher, I was his Jiko. And so I would come here. I didn't live in the temple then, but I would come and park my truck outside early in the morning and come on Thursday mornings And I would carry the incense for my teacher as he walked around the temple and awoke the temple. And it's just a really beautiful thing to do. I had never had an experience like it before where you're in close proximity to someone who you really care about a lot, who you respect, someone who's teaching you something.

[11:11]

And to just be in close proximity with them, there begins to develop this unspoken closeness, this energy that is passed between the two of you. And this began to be a part of my relationship with this long list of the ancestors. The feeling that you get from working with a living person, like my teacher Ed Satterson, whose teacher was Suzuki Roshi, that feeling begins to be transferred back to all of these ancestors. And it's especially helpful if they left some kind of writing, like Suzuki Roshi did. But also Bodhidharma left sort of a little bit of writing where not totally sure if it was two some scholars say three pieces they're all pretty short most of what we know about Bodhidharma comes from stories about him and there's actually a picture of Bodhidharma out in the hallway when we're done here you can go and have a look at it and many of the pictures of Bodhidharma are very terrifying and this one is so terrifying and so big that

[12:25]

that we can't put it on the wall that you'll see when you come in because it would scare people away from here. So it's on this wall right here. So you have to go walk down into the building and already be in the building in order to see it. But it's a beautiful, great, big, massive drawing of Bodhi Narama's scary face. What we know about him, like I said, comes mostly from stories. And one of the stories, which I choose to believe, is that he sat in a cave facing the wall for nine years. And I oftentimes feel like I make contact with him when I'm downstairs in our meditation hall. So Bodhidharma, once he got established, he, and I presume after the nine years, he had a disciple. And his disciple's name was Huike. And so Huike is the second ancestor in China.

[13:26]

And when Bodhidharma was identifying Wike as his student, his main student, Bodhidharma gave Wike the Lankavatara Sutra. And Bodhidharma said to Wike, this is the only sutra that you need to read. You don't need to read anything else. Everything you need to know about the Dharma was in this sutra. And the Lankavatara Sutra is considered to be or is referred to as the mind-only sutra because it focuses on the mind. In it, it states that the 10,000 things, which is Buddhist talk for everything, the 10,000 things, all phenomena, what we perceive in the world, everything, are manifestations of the mind. So everything is somehow a manifestation of the mind. It says that suffering, Buddhism's main concern, which is suffering and the end of suffering, even simply to be alive, even if everything goes great, you're going to suffer, at the very least from old age, sickness and death.

[14:41]

And that that suffering arises from ignorance and delusion and attachment to, at the very least, the opposites of old age sickness and death. So youth and good health and not dying, all things that we are very concerned with today as they were concerned with them in the time of the Buddha. And although ignorance, delusion and attachment are felt in the body, They're based in the mind, said the Lankavatara Sutra. The Sutra asks us to meet this suffering, understanding that the suffering is directed by this false idea of reality that we have. And in this meeting of reality that we're encouraged to do, we transform the mind through meditation and direct experience. asking us to have a direct experience with the present right here, right now.

[15:44]

So by transforming the mind, we begin to transform our suffering. Buddhism has always really been concerned with the mind. It's just in this era, it becomes a little bit more intensified. An early poem, Buddhist poem, the Dhammapada, beautiful poem, begins with dichotomies where it says, all experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind and suffering follows as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow. So this idea of transforming our suffering by transforming our mind has been one of the basic tenets of Buddhism since its beginning.

[16:54]

So the second ancestor, Vike, is said to have said to Bodhidharma, This is one of my favorite koans. And Huike famously asked Bodhidharma, my mind is anxious. Please pacify it. Bodhidharma replied, bring me your mind and I will pacify it. And Huike said, although I have sought it, I cannot find it. Bodhidharma said, see, there. I pacified your mind. Problem solved. So as I think probably all of you know, the mind's perceptions help us to understand reality. We really need our mind. The mind is very useful. It aids us in maneuvering the world so that we can feed ourselves and so that we can procreate. and build productive communities so that we can then develop systems like Zen to address our suffering.

[18:04]

The mind is where our idea of a permanent self is also formulated. And this is one of the great delusions for Buddhism that causes our suffering, that we have a permanent, separate self. And this permanent self engages in clinging and all kinds of activities that are based in the ego. And it's in the mind where this idea of a permanent self can begin to be broken down with the help of wisdom. So the environment brought about by the Lankavatara Sutra is the environment that early Chan, which is what Zen is called in Chinese, found itself in with this focus on the mind and on consciousness and the role of the mind in perceiving suffering and in developing an end to suffering. The next big sutra in China,

[19:10]

was the Platform Sutra. And when this was developed, it marks the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in China, which is sort of considered the golden era of Chinese culture, the early 7th century to the 10th century. And in our current practice period, I think I mentioned this already in my fumbling through while Atta was getting my talk, that we are studying the Platform Sutra in our current practice period. And in the Platform Sutra, which by the time of the Platform Sutra, you're up to the fifth ancestor now in China. The fifth ancestor, whose name was Hongren, was wanting to name his successor, so the sixth ancestor.

[20:10]

He wanted to find out who the sixth ancestor was going to be. And everyone in the community in that temple was pretty sure that it was going to be Xinchu, who was the head monk. He was the most advanced monk, the senior monk in the community. And to choose the successor, the fifth ancestor, Hongren asked everyone in the community to please write a poem illustrating your understanding of the Dharma. And everyone was, you know, so impressed with Shinshu. They just said, we're not going to bother. Let's just let Shinshu write his poem. And we all know he's going to be the next ancestor anyway. And this is Shinshu's poem. The body is like a Bodhi tree. The mind is like a clear mirror stand. Time and again we must polish it and not let dust alight.

[21:13]

So it's a nice short poem, I'm gonna repeat it. The body is like a Bodhi tree. The mind is like a clear mirror stand. Time and again we must polish it and not let dust alight. We just had our first class on Monday, and Lucy was very generously translating this poem from the Chinese to the English, and Tara asks, what about the mirror stand right there? I knew someone was going to ask that question. It just rhymes in Chinese. So that's why there's a mirror stand in there, because it rhymes. There's no big dharmic lesson right there. So Hui Ning is a member of this community who works in the rice shed. He's illiterate. And someone reads Shinshu's poem to Hui Ning.

[22:17]

And even though he's illiterate, he understands it and immediately says, I've got a poem here. As well, write this one up on the wall. And this is Wei Ning's poem. Bodhi originally has no tree. The mirror has no stand. But in nature is always clear and pure. Where can the dust alight? So once again, Bodhi originally has no tree. The mirror has no stand. Buddha nature is always clear and pure. Where can the dust alight? So Wei Ning, this illiterate temple worker, of course, wins the battle. And the fifth ancestor chooses him as the sixth ancestor. And Hongren knows that

[23:20]

Everyone in the community is going to be really upset about this, Xinshu not becoming the next ancestor. And so he sends him off. He gives him his robe and his bowl, symbols of his being the next ancestor. And Wei Ning goes into hiding for like 15 years until it's safe for him to come out and start teaching again. And there's a koan that I like featuring Wei Ning. from the Wominkan, which ties him in with this focus on the mind. In it, two monks are arguing about the temple flag, which is waving in the wind. And one says, the wind moves, and the other one says, the flag moves. And they couldn't agree. They kept arguing about it. Wei Ning comes along and says, it is not the wind that moves. It is not the flag that moves. it is your mind that moves. And as is often the case in koans, they were enlightened.

[24:23]

So in this sutra, in the Platform Sutra, a debate is laid out that has continued to, in my opinion, be unresolved for 1,300 years. And the debate is between the argument for sudden enlightenment and the argument for gradual enlightenment. Shinshu's poem, the first poem, is provided as an example of gradual enlightenment, which would become called the Southern School. This is indirect awakening. And Huining's, the second poem, illustrates the Southern School. The other one, the first one is the Northern School. Thank you, thank you. I can feel the tension over here. LAUGHTER Wrong, Tim, wrong. But that's not all that's in the sutra about this argument.

[25:29]

That's a part of it. It's a really wonderful sutra. It actually doesn't take that long to read. You should read it several times, though, because it's pretty heavy in parts. The sutra also teaches that the nature of mind is inherently pure, and that's really what these two poems are trying to get to, and that our false ideas about the self, the self as a permanent thing, arise from our compulsion to cling and be attached to preferences. And so this idea of removing dust from the The mirror, the mirror is often used in Zen as a metaphor for the mind, which reflects reality. And if there's dust on it, the idea of that first poem was to erase the dust, keep the dust off it so that the vision can be clear. The sutra stresses non-duality, the unity of all things, that everything arises in connection with and in collaboration with

[26:33]

with everything else. Everything needs everything else. It also talks about the direct experience of ordinary activities, something that is a big part of our practice still today. Realizing liberation from our suffering in everyday life rather than just having it limited to formal meditation practice. There's kind of like an expansion of your formal meditation practice out into the rest of the world. And we still do this here. So we sit first thing in the morning facing the wall in the meditation hall. Then we walk. We take our meditative awareness into movement by walking really slowly. Then we take that meditative awareness out to chanting and bowing. up here in the Buddha Hall. And then, which is very important to Japanese Zen, we take our meditative awareness into Soji, which is cleaning.

[27:41]

We clean the temple. Only then do we eat. And this morning we had Orioki breakfast, which is ritual ceremonial eating. It's really beautiful. It really got on my nerves when I first came here. I had a friend who referred to it as... OCD picnic. And, yeah, it really got on my nerves because it's very complex, but it is a way for us to have meditative awareness with the process of eating, and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to do. So realizing that... Liberation in our ordinary activities. A couple of quotes from the Platform Sutra. Our very Buddha nature, our very nature is Buddha. And apart from this nature, there is no other Buddha.

[28:43]

The kingdom of Buddha is in this world within which enlightenment is to be sought. To seek enlightenment by separating from this world is as absurd as the search for a rabbit's horn. And this is kind of a reference to an older, more ancient form of Buddhism, Theravadan Buddhism, the Way of the Elders, it's called, where the ideal is sort of this lone monk who goes off to the mountaintop to become enlightened. Our ideal in our Mahayana school of Zen is the ideal of the bodhisattva who stays in the world, stays in the everyday world, stays in the world of suffering, continues to work towards enlightenment, but stays in the world of suffering until all beings can be liberated together.

[29:45]

Finally, in the mind there are no distinctions between the sacred and the ordinary. These are all arguments that awakening is to be found in this very moment, in this very life, and that's really what our Zen practice is, is for me a reminder that I am alive in this, and how rare it is to be a living organism, My Dharma brother, Dan Gudgel, gave a Dharma talk a couple of Wednesdays ago. And in it, he said something that I'd never heard before, but knew somehow. And that is that one of the rarest things in the universe is life. And if my memory serves me correctly, Dancer, if I'm misquoting you, it's even rarer than diamonds and gold. which there's probably a lot of in the universe. But life, we don't know very much of life.

[30:54]

Some of us hope there's more life out there. If there is, though, it's clearly very, very rare. And for me, that's what Zen is, is a reminder to remember the rareness of life and what an amazing thing it is to be alive. So to finish up with Suzuki Roshi, who once again founded this temple... He said that each activity is important. If you want to make your life sacred, you should think about each step that you make. And in his famous book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, this is called Beginner's Mind Temple, many of you have heard the famous quote that in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities and in the expert's mind there are few possibilities. Thank you all very much for listening to me today. Unfortunately, because this is a one-day sit, we don't get to have Q&A and discussion, which is my favorite part of the dialogue that happens here.

[32:02]

But thank you all very much for coming and listening today. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[32:33]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.17