This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Hi, everybody. Hi. I took a sip of this and I feel a little guilty doing so. I'll just pass it around. It feels very special to be gathered together. Tonight is Saturday. It's the last night for several people. We'll be leaving tomorrow. We've been here as guests. We've been here for the Saga Week, several different Saga's we're visiting this week. You know, and so I just wanted to take a moment to just encourage us together, gathered here together, whatever provisional category we're in.

[01:10]

Student, resident, Sangha week person, guest, first-time guest, pilgrim, when I was living, I used to call guests who would come every year. Pilgrims. This is a practice place. Tasahara is a practice place. And I always felt that whoever came here was going to be practicing, no matter what you called yourself, guest, student. So I just wanted to just take a moment to just encourage us, you know, and confess. Oh, let me just say it that way. Thank you, Adam. for the opportunity, the invitation, to just share a few words of what I hope will be encouragement or comfort, maybe inspiration, but at the very least, maybe something interesting to consider.

[02:15]

And I also want to say hello to Paul, expressing gratitude, to my elders, just feeling deep gratitude for a practiced life, the opportunity to live a practiced life. A warning on Mediterranean, so I may cry. I'm okay. I hope you'll be okay. It's deeply moving to be here. This is what I was about to say. you know, especially if it is your last night, to encourage all of us, right here, right in this Dharma talk, to just simply feel whatever it is that you're feeling. Pardon me, I wondered whether I would say this, wants to go around and put my hands on your shoulders, each one of you.

[03:21]

making contact body to body. Not as, you know, an adjustment or any kind of postural correction, but just simply making contact body to body. I do this in my sangha kind of regularly, and I really appreciate, with permission, the opportunity to connect like that. To go, oh yeah, bodies. Here we are embodied on this planet. This planet body. And it does feel, while we're at Tazahara, and you know, I feel this in other places too, but maybe I feel it more deeply because I was trained here. for my body to be in relationship with other bodies, other human bodies, rattlesnake bodies, rock bodies, you know, the creek body, the mountain bodies, to have a chance to actually live my life and not just think right way through it.

[04:47]

with all my assumptions and conclusions and critiques. So yeah, if you haven't yet, hello body, just sitting here together as practitioners, each and every one of us, in this practice of being human, feeling the support that's right here underneath each one of us, holding us, receiving us. cushion our chair, the earth beneath this wonderful wood floor. And then how we extend up and out from that. You know, when I, when I offer Zazen instruction, a lot of times I'll think of a sunflower. You know, sunflowers planted, but these incredibly long stems that allow for flexibility.

[05:51]

You know, the sunflower, for anyone who speaks Spanish here, girasol turning to the sun, turning to light, our faces turning to light. When I say that to people on the Marshall of Boston, I always think of the sunflowers in the water garden. When I was practicing, have you seen them? When I was practicing here, sometimes they could reach 12, 12 feet tall. Those are the sunflowers I think of to this day, 20 years later. When I experience my own body, and I want to encourage other bodies in Zazen, in this practice of being human. Um, 8.15. What was it? 8.15. I promise we're going to end on that.

[06:53]

So, there's an astrophysicist in the valley along us. And ever since I've learned of this, I've been thinking about Tasselhara as a telescope. You know, with a telescope, There's an aperture. It's not that big, but with focus, focusing, looking deeply into that aperture, the whole cosmos is revealed. And seeing Tassahara as like this. We're all here, so we've all experienced the road. We have that in common. So we know we're deep in the mountains here. But especially if you drove in, you know how steep the descent is, how deeply in and down we've gone. There's a psychological aspect to this of entering kind of a pretty narrow valley.

[08:09]

being surrounded by mountains, being able to look up and see mountains, to experience mountain bodies with our body. So I've been kind of in the last few days just sort of thinking about this, of entering this narrow space, how it kind of feels like in the specificity of Tassahara. This is a Soto Zen practice place. In addition to being, I don't know what you call it, what guests call it, is it a Hotspur's resort? I don't know. There's a specificity to this place and the practices here and the life here. But we shouldn't be fooled by that. I have the sense of this movement of going in. deeply in order to come back up or to open back up again and I do feel that each one of us again no matter what the provisional category is we're coming deeply into ourselves and from there opening back up again how wonderful for the world

[09:38]

when we all get back in our vehicles and drive out. For a human being to make that kind of contact with themselves, whether or not, you cognize that. So here's a teaching. It's a very short, it's just one sentence from ancestor Dogen Zenji, Ehi Dogen. You still hearing me okay? Because I really want everybody to hear this beautiful phrase which maybe many people have heard before. It's worth repeating and keeping close. Although we say that mountains belong to the country, actually they belong to those who love them. Mountains belong to those who love them. So I'll just focus on three words.

[10:44]

Mountains, belong, and love. I just want to say a few things about each of those words. You know, and I encourage you to join me in this. study this inquiry of these words. Interact. Engage with this for yourself. Mountains. You've been with them for 50 years here at Tassajara. Some of you for the first time. Maybe today is your first day here ever. Is there anybody in the Zendo right now for the first time tonight in this meditation space? When I hear this phrase, when I think of the word mountain, when I see these mountains, there's a phrase I've said in my training, to sit like a mountain, to experience that.

[12:06]

magnificence, that stability, that solidity, that apparent unmovingness. And I say apparent because according to Dogen and others, the mountains, along with everything else, are moving. Even us. Even those Buddhas you see, if you're new to Tatsuhara, sitting in the Zendo, they look so still. Because they're alive, they're necessarily moving. Our heart is beating and the blood is circulating. So when we talk about the stillness of mountains, we're really talking about the aliveness of mountains. A kind of aliveness that includes stability. And so, personally when I'm here, I'm deeply encouraged by being able to relate with these mums.

[13:20]

It's like a check-in, it reminds me of my own mountain nature. The long... Belong is, you know, has become an important word in justice spaces, racial justice, social justice. They're now, you know, departments of equity, inclusion, diversity and belonging. What is it to belong? I think it's a primary need that we all have to belong, to have a sense of belonging. The other side of this that I just want to propose, especially as someone, me, who's trying to lead a sangha, I think another way for practitioners to think about this belonging is taking your place, showing up fully, completely, entering that circle of belonging.

[14:42]

that never excluded you to begin. Yes, there are structural issues we're working on, systemic issues of racism. But in a place like this, Tazelar, mountains, this is an interesting practice to take up, I think. What is it to take our place in the circle of belonging? What is it to take our place in the circle of belonging that includes the model is kind of encircled. We're kind of in the midst of these models. There's another monk that I wanted to just bring in, in the context of this word belong. I'll make a big leap. The mountain is Kilimanjaro. Has anybody seen it, experienced it? Okay. So. Our sangha has a dear friend named Esther.

[15:44]

She seems to pop up, and all my dogs don't matter where I am. She's Kenyan. And I went with her a few times to Africa, to Kenya in particular, two times. And she is Kikuyu. which is one of the 42 tribes of Kenya. And Kikuyu people, maybe you've met Kikuyu, maybe you never knew, but if you've met a Kikuyu person, have a kind of power. It's very interesting. I first started using Lakotsu. This is Lakotsu. Several years after I received one, because I didn't really know what it was for. I didn't really feel a connection with using it until I saw a Maasai elder holding something like this.

[16:48]

The Maasai people are another tribe in Kenya we met. We were at an ordination ceremony of Maasai elders and one of the elders was carrying what we would call a kotsu and shared with me that it was his responsibility to his village to carry. The concept is responsibility. Now connecting with this, this sense of responsibility is something Esther told me about belonging that I want to share with you. First of all, it started with, I called her my friend. She never called me her friend, but she did call me her sister. And one time I asked her, why don't you call me your friend? And she said, oh, I call you my sister. Because friends can come and go, but sisters, no matter what, are with you for life. That was like the first layer of commitment.

[17:52]

And then a few years later, she told me, Joanne, we have a saying in our language. You actually belong to me. You belong to me. And I got very nervous about that. I started to feel uncomfortable, constricted, trapped, not sure this is something I want to sign up for. And just in the last few days, I've been thinking about this, about this belonging. In the context of mountains belong to those who love them, I'm thinking about this belonging. It's going to lead us right into love. Are you ready for this kind of belonging?

[18:53]

By the way, this you belong to me, the constriction I felt, also reminded me of a term, a phrase, an image we use in Zen for Zen practice and training. Like a snake in a bamboo tube. that kind of constriction. We call it the container here, to hold us. There's another way of seeing this as simply being embraced, being hugged into the circle of Balani. Are we ready for that? So love, what is it? What is love? Maybe it's one of the most important practices we can engage in as human beings, the practice of love.

[19:56]

You know, it's a bit of a surprise, for me anyway, to hear in Dogen's writings, whether or not this is a particular translation. He doesn't say, Mountains belong to those who care for them, who care about them, who climb them. I once asked, when we were at the base of Kilimanjaro, I was in a little bar in a town called Kimaga, right at the base of the mountain. The only non-African there. And I asked one of our guys, and he laughed and he said, only white people do that. So, that's here too, and in this, mountains belong to those who love them. In my own training here in Tessalara, we didn't, I don't remember us using the word love specifically so much.

[21:04]

We used Words like compassion, loving kindness. But it's very interesting to me that Dogen sends you, at least in this translation, the word is love. Mountains belong to those who love them. I want to say to each one of us, whatever you've been doing for the last two days, the last week, the last few months, the last few years here at Tasavara, I wonder if this might be our practice, our foundational unifying practice, again, whether or not we realize it. These human beings who've gathered here, right now, us in this womb, it's extraordinary. We've all come from such different places. You know, we've come from these apartments and these houses scattered all over the place.

[22:06]

And we got into our various vehicles to arrive here. In this very specific place. At this specific moment. So I have a specific request for you. You know, if you're interested. I know that... We're in a season of big change here at Tassamore. I know it. I feel it. I see it. And I think for some people, this is the first time coming back since before the pandemic. That's five years. So this is big for some people who've been coming for a long time. Guests, students, practitioners.

[23:10]

Hey, I think about this. You know, I was born in 1966. It's been a long time ago. And did we start inhabiting Tussle Heart as a Zen practice place that year? 66? 67? It was around that time. I think 67. Yeah. So around that time. I know all I've been through my life. You know, it was gonna happen at some point. One of my favorite things that Paul Haller told me was simply, so what? It was very helpful. So what? Again, with love. So what? My Portuguese grandfather He used to, there was a rocking chair in our, in their kitchen, in my grandparents' kitchen. He'd rock in this rocking chair. And my grandmother, he was Portuguese, she was French Canadian, he didn't speak English, neither did he, neither spoke the other's language, and they were married successfully for 50 years for a second.

[24:22]

But she would buzz and bother back and forth, and watch her, like, buzz body in the kitchen back and forth, and he'd just sit in that rocking chair. And if you caught his eye, he'd go... Like, connect that with this so what? And I'm connecting that now with this kind of love and the stability of the mountains and this belonging and this taking our place. Come on. All of us. Here's the question. Yes, we should know by now the truth of change. Whether or not you're a Zen student. We should all know that life includes change. We know that, right? Okay. My question to you is where I might cry. Because I would like, especially if you've been coming here for many, many years, and you're experiencing, yes, the enormous change. I know the dharma of the napkin table.

[25:24]

I headed the dining room crew in 2001, I think it was. And... One person who couldn't find their napkin had a meltdown. She felt like she didn't belong here, that she was some kind of imposter. Couldn't find her napkin. It's like her ticket in. I understand that. I would like to ask you, if you're stumbling with this, this week at Tussler, to find one thing that you love here, that has not challenged you. The reason this makes me want to cry is because it reminds me of my root teacher, Darlene Cohen, who had rheumatoid arthritis, and when she was flattened, in bed, couldn't move. The one thing that helped her, a body worker said to her, I want you to find one

[26:31]

Place in your body of pain one place. It doesn't matter how small it is. It doesn't hurt. And place your attention there. Place your love there. It doesn't matter how small it is. And from there, expand. It takes courage. It takes confidence. It takes practice. You can do it. And I would love, if you'd like, if anybody is strolling with these changes here this summer, to tell me what you find, what you land on tomorrow morning in lawyer, before you leave, if you're leaving tomorrow. One thing that you've discovered at Paso Haro, your beloved Paso Haro, that hasn't changed. So, these mountains belong to those who love them.

[27:40]

La Saqqara belongs to those who love it. I just want to say, is that right here? I mean the buster. The director, who holds a lot, you know. Maybe in this love, you know, if you also have been struggling, stumbling a little bit, and you do discover that one little thing that hasn't changed at Tassar that you love, maybe you share it with the director before you leave. In addition to me, I'd love to hear it. So moms belong to those who love them. Tassar belongs to those who love it. We belong to the moms. We belong to Tassar because guess what? We belong to each other. We belong to each other. Let's all realize it.

[28:41]

Practice it. Enjoy it. Okay? 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[29:11]

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