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. So by now you're getting a little bit more into your body, which is kind of nice for a change. Kind of feel yourself. wandering around the world. And you might also possibly be experiencing some irritation from your fellow practitioners. I'm curious if any of you have been getting annoyed by things. And this is a very... normal thing to happen when we're living in such tight quarters.

[01:03]

Our little seven-day monastic retreat together, and we might be meeting some people we didn't know before, running into some people we never did really like much. So I thought I would just talk a little bit about What happens in case, now maybe this doesn't apply to anyone here for this practice here, but in case some irritation or annoyance comes up in you, what is our strategy about that? What is our practice in relationship to that? Well, first of all, you admit that this is an arising phenomenon in your mind, and we look first to ourselves. Our practice in Sashin is to be paying attention to ourselves. So the usual thing, if we're annoyed by somebody, we go like, you stepped on my foot and you shouldn't have done that.

[02:05]

You interfered with the way I was walking down the aisle while I was serving. So that's not what we do in Sashin. In Sashin we go, oh, wow, I was irritated by the way that person did that, etc., I, what's going on in me with that? So that's the first thing, is to take it back to ourselves and notice that we're having this experience of some irritation or some annoyance or possibly even a little bit of anger, which is useful because that goes on in the world outside all the time, but we're usually too busy to pay attention to how that's happening in ourselves. we fall back on the precept that we practice with around these things, which is not to harbor ill will. So we're not going to harbor any ill will towards anybody during this practice period. And one of the first basic ways we do that is we forgive ourselves for feeling angry instead of giving ourselves a hard time about it.

[03:14]

Oh, I'm a bodhisattva. I'm an enlightened person. practicing Zen student, I shouldn't be angry. No, you forgive yourself for that. And you forgive the other person who may have actually been thoughtless or possibly in some ways done something. You forgive them for their behavior if it was bad or thoughtless. And sort of move towards peace. because we're trying to generate a sense of peaceful cohabitation here for seven days. I mean, this world is filled with enough violence, we don't have to add any extra violence here in our sashin, and we know that actually this is the noticing any... Violence in our mind is where the root of all of the violence that happens in the world.

[04:14]

So this is a chance for us to practice some way with our own mind. I remember in a sashin, a student came to me and I was so angry with a fellow server on the serving crew because of the way they had treated them. And he swore to me he would never talk with, interact, or deal with that person again in his life. Pretty strong statement. I happen to know both these people well, obviously. And, you know, there was some little thing, but really, you know, so. I mean, it is true. It's complicated on a serving crew because you've got a lot of interactions that are going on and you're all trying to be perfect and make sure that you do things right. And this guy was messing up his perfect serving in some way.

[05:16]

I mean, he deserved to be treated that way, didn't he? Really? But maybe we should look past that and accept that maybe I wasn't perfect and maybe it had something to do with the way he passed me and it's okay. We're all living here together. Anyway, so we're practicing mostly on our cushion here, but our practice continues through all of our movements around the building, and it's easy when we're in tight quarters like this to make some form mistake or interfere with someone in some thoughtless way, either because we're busy dealing with some internal issue, which is important, and those things happen, and I think it's just generally for us to forgive ourselves and move on so that the next moment we're more present and can take care of things. So, I'm going to continue with Vimalakirti and the great love of a bodhisattva, which is what

[06:42]

introduced yesterday and just to refresh your memory because it was a long time ago yesterday lecture a lot has happened since then Vimalakirti had described the insubstantiality and emptiness of all beings in a long paragraph with similes like reflection of the moon in the water clouds in the sky and my favorite the previous moment of a ball of foam so that was our insubstantiality and Manjushri the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, queried Bhimala Kirti on this subject, saying, Noble sir, if a Bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love toward them? And this was the question that was brought up in the Genjo Cohen class on our last day, which is all that sounds like wonderful wisdom teaching, but what does this have to do with the great love of a Bodhisattva? And Bhimala Kirti's reply was, Manjushri, when a bodhisattva considers all living beings in this way, he thinks, just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings.

[07:54]

Thereby he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. Thereby he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. So this is a tricky transition. And I went through it kind of quickly yesterday, so I thought I would expand on this, because we've gone from thinking of the insubstantiality of all beings to this statement that Bhimala Kirti made here. When Bodhisattva considers all living beings in this way, he thinks, just as I realize the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings. So I looked up in the notes to this particular translation by Bob Thurman, and he had a wonderful kind of explication on this, and I thought I would read it to you. So he says, Manjushri voices the pressing question about the great love and compassion of the Bodhisattva.

[08:59]

Seeing living beings as non-existent, how can he feel love and compassion for them? As Vimlich Kirti indicates the bodhisattva's love is not merely commiseration, but a spontaneous overflow of his great joy and relief in realizing the radiant nature of reality. Want me to read that again? So a bodhisattva realizes, is not... but a spontaneous overflow of his joy and relief in realizing the radiant nature of reality. So he said up here, just as I have realized the Dharma, the Dharma is the radiant nature of reality. So a bodhisattva waking up to the reality of his life has a spontaneous overflow

[10:00]

overflow of great joy and relief. That makes sense, right? When we actually wake up to the fact that we're alive here, our problems are just our problems compared with the fact that we're alive and we feel a great joy and relief. And standing with that great joy and relief, although he grasps In living beings, the being, he, well, let me see if I get this right. I typed this very poorly this morning, so I'm not sure I got it right. I'm gonna read it from here, because I believe that I didn't quite get that right. That's what I typed wrong.

[11:09]

Although he grasps no living being, he, being empty of himself, is utterly sensitive to the oppressive gravity of the living being feeling of others. So he grasps no living being because he sees there's insubstantiality there, so he's not attaching to it. because he being empty himself. But he being empty himself means he has no self-concern. He's given up himself. So he is utterly sensitive to the oppressive gravity of the living being feeling of others. The other people actually feel like they're substantial in our suffering. And because he has given up his self-concern, he can feel that. And his love is an outpouring of his awareness of their true nature. His love is an outpouring of his awareness that they are all Buddhas, in spite of the fact that they are suffering with this illusion that they're this substantial being.

[12:21]

Does that make sense? So that's how we go from this transitoriness to an outpouring of love. It's based on, one, our feeling that we are actually alive, and the reality of that is so overwhelming compared to our preoccupation with our problems that we're usually in. And we can see that another person is caught in that, and our natural inclination, since we are not so self-concerned, is to try to help them. So, that was the setup for the, that was the transition that was sort of tricky, and I wanted to make sure that we reviewed that one more time. So, Vimalakirti continues.

[13:23]

So then we go into this long rap about all the different kinds of love, and I just, I added it. In my first time through, I just grabbed about a third of them in the long paragraph, and I decided to add a few more. So I'm going to read it through because it's marvelous, this particular sutra. So here, Vimalakirti, having gotten to this place we just described, goes, Thereby he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. The love that, what a wonderful sentence, truly a refuge for all living beings. When you feel loved, you have a refuge to go to. The love that is peaceful because free of grasping. The love that is not feverish because free of passions. The love that is non-dual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal. A love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate.

[14:24]

Thereby, the Bodhisattva generates the love that is firm, its high resolve unbreakable like a diamond, the love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature, the love that is even, its aspirations being equal, the Buddha's love that understands reality, the Buddha's love that causes living beings to awaken from their sleep, the love that is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously, the love that is enlightenment because it is unity of experience, the love that has no presumptions because it has eliminated attachment and aversion, the love that is great compassion because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance, the love that is never exhausted because it acknowledges voidness and selflessness, the love that is giving because it bestows the gift, of dharma free of the tight fist of a bad teacher, the love that is morality because it improves immoral living beings, the love that is tolerance because it protects both self and others, the love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings, the love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time,

[15:47]

the love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation, the love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness of the Buddha. Such, Manjushri, is the great love of the Bodhisattva. Wonderful, beautiful, fairly covers a lot of ground there, that love. So in yesterday, I took a few of these sentences, which I'm going to continue on today and sort of explicated them a little bit. The first sentence I grabbed was, the love that is enlightenment because it is unity of experience. That's the sense of when we have dropped all the boundaries and we're in the oneness with another person, we have that unity of experience. That's a love that's enlightenment, that awakening to that deep connection between us. A love that has no presumptions because it has eliminated attachment and aversion. We talked about how love has a lot of attachments.

[16:51]

I want, oh, I love you and this is good, but I want a little bit more. Or, you don't like, it's not so good, that aversion. And these are based on presumptions, that is preconceived ideas about who the other person is or who we are or what's going on. And by eliminating these presumptions, we can actually have a love that's enlightenment. And I told a wonderful story about Sigur Shih taking care of Ed Brown without the formality of a ceremony. I mean, in ceremonies, of course, we're actually practicing together, and we're going to do a few ceremonies. We're already doing a whole bunch of ceremonies. In fact, we're basically in one ceremony for seven days. The formality of those ceremonies will increase quite a bit on Friday when we do Suzuki Roshi's annual memorial ceremony and on Saturday morning when we do Buddha's enlightenment ceremony and on Saturday afternoon when we do the Shuso ceremony.

[17:58]

And those are, of course, wonderful ways to express our love for each other and our warm feelings for each other in those ceremonies without getting too caught up in... The love that is without formality because it's pure in motivation. But the story I told was just about casual things that happened all the time at Tassar without being in such a formal situation. Then I went to the love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time. And I told the wonderful story of Master Ma and Bai Zhang walking together. And Master Ma saw some ducks flying overhead and said, what are they? And Bai Zhang said, they're wild ducks. And Ma continued, where have they gone? And Bai Zhang said, they've flown away. And Master Ma reached out and grabbed Bai Zhang's nose and twisted it.

[19:04]

And he said, they have been here from the very first. and Bai Zhang had a spiritual realization at that moment. So, of course, the title of this is The Love That Is Wisdom, because it causes attainment at the proper time. How did Master Ma know that that was the right time to twist Bai Zhang's nose and wake him up to what was happening around him? And, of course, this is one of the skills in teaching that we talked about, which is... when is the right time to nudge someone, encourage them to wake up to the life that is happening around them? And, of course, the answer is the time is always there. But we can't see it. We can't see it because we think it's a secret.

[20:09]

There's some secret going on that we don't know about. Some secret. If we had the secret, we could see life as it was. We could wake up to our life. But there's no secret. The secret is that we're hiding from it. It's right there. It's like a self-secret. We're keeping our awakening a secret from ourselves because of a whole bunch of reasons. We don't have to keep it as a secret because it's right there. It's so close, so close you can't see it. So sometimes we have a spiritual friend who goes, oh, there you are. So we had a little talk about that yesterday too. The love that is morality because it improves immoral living beings.

[21:20]

So that's interesting. Morality is ethical conduct. Ethical conduct is the precepts that we all take in precept ceremonies. And Bhimala Kirti is suggesting that practicing ethical conduct is love. Does that make sense? when we are actually conducting our affairs, right speech, not killing, not lying, all of those things, when we're living our life ethically, that's an act of love. The love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings. love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings. I was just thinking about that term responsibility this morning when I read that sentence.

[22:31]

It seems to me that we have a great responsibility being a human being living on this planet with all these other human beings right now. We have a responsibility to make our best effort to help in whatever way we can, whatever way makes sense for us. And for each person, that's an individual decision and choice. But I think we cannot walk away from that responsibility. And that responsibility comes from love. That's what Bhimala Kirti is saying. Our responsibility to help the planet, to help our fellow man, and to help ourselves because we have some things to take care of. The next sentence I picked out was, the love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness

[23:44]

of the Buddha. So when you're happy, it's a way of expressing your love. And this is everybody taught. I remember when I first lecture I went to Atasara, I had just driven in there in a van. I didn't know much about Zen and I sort of expressed some interest in Zen to the guy at the desk, and I was all of a sudden, you know, giving zazen instruction and sitting zazen, and so I was very excited to go to my first lecture by a true Zen master, you know, having read Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and wanting some real deep philosophic stuff, and Sikiroshi got up there, and the first thing he started doing was just, he said something about something, and then he was laughing and laughing, and he kept laughing, and then he, told a story about Dogen going on some boat trip and some more laughing, and I was going like, you know, get to the deep stuff here.

[24:49]

I'm ready for the deep stuff. I remember years later, I was down at Tassara, and I was just so depressed. I was so unhappy, and then all of a sudden, So Sikurashi's laugh came back into me. It kind of woke me up again and warmed me up and made me happy. His happiness extended through time while I was walking around depressed. The love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness of the Buddha. So it's okay. You guys can be happy. Don't laugh too loud in the zendo. But it's okay. You can laugh a little bit. You know, it's so funny. Yesterday, it seemed like I was barely halfway through the lecture by the end of the time period, and here I'm already at the end, and we're only like two-thirds of the way through the time.

[25:57]

Are we in a time warp here? Maybe time has changed from the second day to the third day. I think that's what's happening. We're in some kind of time warp. So I'll tell one story about Suzuki Roshi and Love, which was, I can't remember, I don't know. One of the problems when you get old is you remember events quite clearly, but you can't place them in time. So I don't know whether this was a lecture he gave in 1970 when I was at Tassar in the summertime or 1971 near the end. Anyway, it was a lecture. Sukiroshi had been, apparently had been angry with the staff. He'd had a staff meeting and he'd met with them and I guess he'd kind of given them a hard time. So this is my imagination of what happened from some of the conversation was that I wasn't in the staff meeting.

[27:03]

I was just a nothing, you know, a guy that carried rocks. Go over there and dig a hole. That's what I was. Go over there and dig a hole. It's hard to dig holes in Tassara because there's no dirt. They're just rocks. You know, it's like, excuse me, I'm a physicist. I don't know how to dig rocks out of... There were a lot of rocks being dug up at Tassara. I mean, that's how we built the kitchen. There was from the rocks we dug out of the ground and pulled out of the stream. There was a lot of rock moving back then. Anyway, so... I was just moving rocks, but apparently the bigwigs, you know, these were the older people. They were probably like 28 or 30 or something like that. The real old, the mature students, you know. They were complaining probably. You know what they were probably complaining about. They were probably complaining about the guests who were just out of control, or they were probably complaining about their other fellow students that didn't know how to dig the rocks properly.

[28:03]

They were complaining. Sigurishi gave them a hard time, apparently. So that night he gave a very short lecture. maybe like 20 minutes long, and he said, well, I suspect maybe some of you will have some questions. And one of the senior students raised his hand and said, you know, Suzuki Roshi, I've been practicing for five years and I still can't be kind to people when I get upset and angry. You know, he felt criticized and he said, I've been practicing for five years and I wasn't able to be thoughtful and kind and loving to people. And Suzuki Roshi said, five years is nothing. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. Five years is nothing. You don't know how hard it is to love some people.

[29:05]

And You know, it's funny, my feeling in the zendo that night is it was just like quiet. Because it felt like everybody in that room, 60 people or something, had been loved by Suzuki Roshi in a way they had never been touched by anybody else. And even me, a new student, a digger of rocks out of the ground, had been touched by him that way. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. That is the love, the great love of a bodhisattva. And that is a challenge for all of us to take, is how to bring as much love as we can into the world, and it is not easy. Because it's hard to love some people. So maybe I should leave you with just a couple of comments that might help you through this next day, day three.

[30:18]

This is from Be Kind With Yourself, a section in Not Always So. If you are very kind, this is kind of like loving yourself. If you are very kind with your breathing, one breath after another, you will have a refreshed, warm feeling in your zazen. When you have a warm feeling for your body and your breath, then you can take care of your practice and you will be fully satisfied. When you are kind with yourself, naturally you will feel like this. So that's where we start with love. Let's start with being kind with ourself. Let's be kind with our body and kind with our breath today. He goes on. So we put emphasis on warm heart, warm zazen, The warm feeling we have in our practice is enlightenment or Buddha's mercy or Buddha's mind.

[31:19]

You can feel that warm feeling, that warm zazen. That's Buddha's mind in your practice. That's Buddha's enlightenment. It is not a matter of just counting your breath or following your breath. If counting is too tedious, it may be better just to follow the breath Isn't that sweet? If counting is too tedious, okay, just follow the breath. But the point is, while inhaling and exhaling, to take care of the breath just as a mother watches her baby. If the baby smiles, its mother will smile. If the baby cries, its mother is worried. That kind of close relationship, being one with your practice, is the point. Be one with your practice here 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.

[32:22]

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.

[32:38]

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