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 evening. I'm just curious if there's anyone here for the first time tonight. Wonderful. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. I'm curious, did you hear about us on the internet? Or through friends? Through friends. That's the old way, a traditional way. Excellent. Yeah, some of the people that studied here have spread out all over the country, and other countries as well.

[01:01]

Maybe you practiced at Tassara too, you could go there sometime, although not now, because it's closed. It's our mountain temple. So, tonight I'm thinking of covering four more lines from the Sando Kai, which we've been studying together in this practice period. The Harmony of Difference and Equality, And the four lines that I'm going to talk about are all the objects of the senses interact and yet do not. Interaction brings involvement, otherwise each keeps its place. So these lines are about the relationship between ourselves and the world we live in. We interact with this world and also we don't. You and I are literally unique and beautiful expressions of life. And at the same time, there's this constant interaction.

[02:04]

It's actually more than interaction. One of the translations of that third line is when interacting, they also merge. So it's more like we're merging with everything. And at the same time, somehow a unique expression of it. And last night, I showed a 14-minute video in the class of... Suzuki Roshi lecturing on this topic and had a beautiful segment where he talked about the blue jays. And for those who weren't in the class, I thought I'd share that story because it sort of captures most of all of the objects of the senses interact. He said, Buddhism understands a sound as something created in our mind. And I may think the bird is singing over there But when I hear the bird, the bird is me already. I didn't get quite close enough to read this.

[03:08]

It's me already. Actually, I am not listening to the bird. The bird is here in my mind already, and I am singing with the bird. Peep, peep, peep. I didn't do it as well as he did it. I think he had a special Japanese accent to it that made it somehow work better. Plus, he was feeling kind of impish. If you think while you are studying, the blue jay is singing above my roof, but its voice is not so good. Those of you who are familiar with blue jays at Tassara, their singing is not like beautiful song singing. It's more like... They usually do that just before they steal your food. So they're not very popular at Tassara. So there's a general... tendency to think blue jays are like not the greatest birds and they're certainly not great when they're distracting you from writing a lecture that you're supposed to give in the zendo that night. The blue jay is singing above my roof but its voice is not so good.

[04:15]

That thought is noise. When you are not disturbed by the blue jays, the blue jays will come right into your heart and you will be a blue jay and the blue jay will be reading something and then the blue jay will not disturb your reading. When we think the blue jay is over my roof, the blue jay over my roof should not be there. That thought is a more primitive understanding of being. Because of our lack of practice, we understand things in that way. Because of our lack of practice, we understand things in that way. That the blue jay is out there disturbing us instead of singing in our heart. The more you practice zazen, the more you will be able to accept things, something as your own, whatever it is. It's a great teaching there. A part of our practice in zazen is to accept everything as our own. Sounds outside, emotional things going on, pain in our knees, these are all things that are our own for us to accept.

[05:23]

So, you know, there's very many famous Zen stories that are like the blue jay, you know. What's the meaning of bodhidharma coming from the West? Jaojo was asked by a monk who had traveled a long distance to meet him, and Jaojo's famous answer to that was the cypress tree in the courtyard. That was the end of the story. That's the meaning of Zen, the cypress tree in the courtyard. Can you feel a cypress tree? Can you relate to a tree? Can you, sort of to use conventional terminology, become one with the tree? Can you disappear into a tree? Can you disappear into another person? So these are sort of... ways in which we study the way we're relating to and interacting with the world around us.

[06:25]

All the objects of the senses interact and yet do not. Interaction brings involvement. Otherwise, each keeps its place. So Shoako Kimura, when he was talking about everything interacting with each other, and where did I put that piece right from? talked about a symphony orchestra where it's all one sound when it's played together and yet each one of the individual instruments is a unique voice. The violin is the violin. The other instruments are their own instruments and yet they're harmonized together in one thing. There are differences and equalities harmonized. And then he went on to... write a paragraph about how this is also true of the Sangha. Each one of you is a totally unique and individual person, and yet when we all practice together, we create one entity.

[07:35]

We don't sacrifice our individual self for the community, and yet we're also melding with the community. So in this little paragraph, he made a reference to Dogen Zenji's Four Embracing Dharmas, the Bodhisattvas' Four Embracing Dharmas, and especially the fourth one, where he said, Identity action means not to be different, neither different from self nor different from others. This means we have to find a way for both self and others to be peaceful, harmonious, and beneficial as a whole. This is called compassion. It doesn't mean that I sacrifice myself for the sake of the community, but that the community should include this self. We have to find a way that this community can include this individual self and be healthy. This is the Bodhisattva way. So I got to that place, and I said to myself, wow, that's an interesting thing.

[08:43]

I'll go study... a little bit up and talk about identity action and combine that with Sangha practice. First of all, identity action, what an odd term. It's a translation of something in Japanese, which I don't know, but it's really hard to know what identity action means, but we'll get into that. But the second idea, the idea of talking about what it's like to live together in community when I look out at you and you all know deep in your bones what community life is about. What an odd thing we do here living together in this temple. And even those who come here from the outside, you participate in very odd things. having to take all your jewelry off, step through the doorway in a certain kind of way, sit in some strange posture.

[09:46]

So we're going to talk about that a little bit, hopefully. So Dogen goes, identity action means non-difference. Okay, that sounds straightforward. Non-difference. Identity action means... Oneness. Everything appears as one reality. Resting in oneness. And then he makes this interesting statement. It is non-difference from self and non-difference from others. So identity action is to identify with yourself, to have no difference with yourself. Well, at first glance, that seems strange. How can I? Am I different from myself? Clearly I'm not. I'm just myself, right? except for there's this part of your brain that's going, well, gee, you didn't do so good the other day. There's a constant dialogue going inside of your head about you, that part of you that's not doing so well, so clearly you haven't quite completely identified with yourself.

[10:58]

You get what I'm talking about here? I mean, this is actually a classically difficult Zen. statement. There's a statement, when you become you, Zen becomes Zen. When you are actually merged completely with you, you're Zen. That's Zen. It's like one of those little Zen riddles. I'm not merged with myself? Am I merged myself? What is myself that I'm supposed to merge with? Anyway, he's saying, In identity action, that's one of the things you do, is you try to find yourself. And we sit zazen a lot to merge with ourselves, to actually set down all of our distractions and find our mind, find our body, be in this place. entering fully into your life, being right here, right now with your life.

[12:13]

So non-difference from others, that's pretty straightforward. We know that. That would be to actually empathize with another person, to become one with another person, that sense of deep connection to another person. So how would you live a life that's both One with yourself and one with another person. That's identity action. And there's this odd thing when you actually meet something, whether it's a blue jay or a tree or another person, that you actually... kind of give up yourself. You sort of lose yourself in that interaction and that connection, and that's a wonderful way to be liberated.

[13:17]

There was a marvelous example. We were having a little discussion this afternoon about practicing together, and someone was very caught up in their issues, their self-concerns, their problems, which happens to all of us, and they were supposed to be the GICO for the... evening person who was opening the zendo. So they were up there waiting, and the person who showed up, and then they realized, oh, I've got to get it together to serve this person. And Fujiko's the one that carries incense down to the zendo for the person who's opening the zendo. And in the act of stepping forward and doing the service for this person, they were liberated from their self-concerned suffering by the fact of serving someone, by giving them their life up to this activity of taking the incense down. This happens to us all the time.

[14:19]

We are so busy. Whenever we can step out of our small world of self-concerns and actually help somebody, we're typically liberated. So then Dogen does one of these marvelous comments. He goes, so when we know identity action, others and self are one. Lute, song, and wine are one with human being. Human being is one with lute, song, and wine. Lute, song, and wine are one with lute, song, and wine. And human being is one with human being. This is to understand identity action. Everybody catch all that? Possibly I should repeat it one more time. This is classic Dogen. Lute, song, and wine are one with human being.

[15:21]

Human being is one with lute, song, and wine. Lute, song, and wine are one with lute, song, and wine. And human being is one with human being. This is to understand identity action. So this is completely non-understandable, basically. Except for the editor of this Fasco by Dogen has a little footnote saying, you know, go to the back of the book where he says, this little lute song and wine comes from a very famous Chinese poem called The Poem of Three Comrades at North Window. And this is the poem as translated by Kaz. Who are the three comrades? Lute, stop playing, Wine is raised up. When wine is finished, a song is sung. The three comrades lead one another, going round and round endlessly. So the three comrades are Lut, Song, and Wine, and Lut, Song, and Wine stands for our ordinary, everyday life.

[16:28]

I mean, we in the temple aren't doing a lot of wine drinking, but... But let's say it's a metaphor for ordinary everyday life. Singing, playing the lute, and drinking wine. That's our ordinary life. And round and round and round it goes endlessly. Our ordinary life of joy and suffering and delusion and craziness goes round and round and round. And if we... go back to Dogen, and this is understanding identity action. That is, identity action is in every moment of our crazy, wild, joyous, suffering life. It's not just in special niches in our life, but it's supposed to be involved in every joyous aspect of our life. And this is very familiar to another famous koan.

[17:38]

Same kind of general thing. Instead of what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West, the young monk comes up and says, what is the way? To the teacher. And the teacher says, ordinary mind is the way. Ordinary mind. The mind that you have at this moment and the mind that you have at the next moment. This is Zen's understanding of practice. Practice is embedded in and lives in everyday life, the everyday way we live. So Dogen continues, action means right form, dignity, correct manner. This action part of identity action means right form, dignity, correct manner. So I'm going to make a little leap here and say what Dogen means here is action is ritual.

[18:44]

And this gives me an excuse to talk about ritual here in Zen Center. We know a lot about ritual because we do a lot of rituals. Everybody that comes to Zen Center, There's a ritual in walking into this Buddha hall. You step through with your right foot if you're on the right side, left foot if you're on the left side. Then you've got to figure out how to get on the tan. Then you've got to figure out how to sit down on your cushion. If you cross over in front of the altar, you're supposed to bow to the altar. It's complicated. And that's just this room. There's the zendo. There's walking down the hallway. And if it's in the morning time before breakfast and you run to somebody in the hallway, you have to bow to them. And if you go to the bathroom, you've got to do something. It's a lot of rituals. And what do these, and then forget morning service and marriages and memorial services and there's a ritual for everything. So what happens in a ritual and why do we have a ritual?

[19:56]

What goes on when you're stopping at the baths and offering a stick of incense and bowing before going in and bathing? Slowing you down, right? You're in a hurry, you need to go to take a bath. This is at Tassara's most poetic place where this happens because you're bowing with the mountains on both sides of you. The sound of the stream, usually a bird singing off in the distance. And for that moment, when you're not doing anything, at all meaningful except for offering some incense to nothing at all or yourself or who knows what. That moment, that space that you get, something happens. You're reminded of something bigger than your problems. The carburetor you were working on in the shop or the plants you were trying to put in the garden or the person that didn't respect you properly in the kitchen or whatever those other things.

[21:02]

And for a moment, you can stop, you can drop into something different. Anyway, that's what ritual is supposed to do. Ritual is supposed to wake you up to something bigger than your small-minded self that gets trapped in all its problems. And it does do that. And that's proven throughout, you know, they build these huge... magnificent churches in Europe and all over the world. There are temples and buildings created to give us that sense of a moment. But what Dogen is saying is, well, yeah, that's true, but we want to have that moment be possible everywhere. We're going to extend this ritual sense to every movement we have. not just in the setup places, but the possibility that anything can wake us up to something bigger than our daily concerns.

[22:10]

So I wanted to talk a little bit about forms here, because I think it fits in with rituals. So, we use forms to promote awareness and to extend awareness into our daily life. Really, it's everyday life that we try to live with a kind of awareness and fullness of presence. Typically, we think of that on the cushion when we sit zazen. We have a lot of awareness then. But we extend it into all the other movements that we have around the temple through the forms that we have. So we're extending it past, say, observing our mind to how we're walking, how we're standing, how we're holding our hands, how we're eating our food, how we are chanting or striking a bell.

[23:23]

We're extending our awareness into all the activities of our body. This extension of our awareness into all the times and places of our living is the practice that forms bring us. We also extend this awareness into meeting other people. So as I mentioned, if we pass each other in the hallway, we bow to each other if it's before breakfast, And if it's after breakfast and we pass each other in the hallway, we maybe smile. Say hi or don't say hi. We extend our practice of awareness into meeting each other. And it really doesn't matter what we're feeling. I remember a good friend who was down at Tassara, and at Tassara you bow to each other no matter what time of the day it is, and...

[24:26]

passed somebody in the pathway, and he was particularly angry at that person that day, so when he bowed, he felt very angry. And he asked Tsukiroshi about that later. Tsukiroshi, when I bowed to this person, I felt very angry. And Tsukiroshi said, perfect. That's what you felt? But you bowed. You shared your connection with that person. So anyway, the first reason that we have all these forms is to extend and develop our awareness, our moment by moment awareness of what we're feeling and what we're experiencing out there. The second reason that forms are important is they connect us to our ancestors. What do I mean by that? Well, we could pick a whole bunch of different kind of forms. We could make up forms that would make us be mindful of things. That would be an easy enough thing to do. We could be very creative.

[25:28]

We could have all our American forms. And we do have some American forms. But we also have adopted a lot of forms that go back a thousand years into China. And the advantage of this is sometimes I mentioned our self-concern, how often we are involved in our self-centered thinking. And especially if you're thinking about your practice and I'm going to make my practice better and I'm going to... Earlier someone was talking to me and we were having this conversation about community and self and he was commenting that in some communities everybody's trying to get enlightened and they're all living in their little sort of isolated world working on getting enlightened and they're not even kind to each other. So how does this happen that you get so involved in your self-concern that you lose connection to the wider field of your life, your friends, and even something bigger?

[26:33]

That kind of self-concern eventually makes you unhappy, nervous, and upset. If you have less self-concern, whatever is happening, you have more self-ease and you actually have more concern for others. There's a thousand examples you could give of yourself in community practice where you dropped your self-concern to take care of something in the community or someone else, and almost invariably you felt better when you did that. Anyway, how does this connect to all these ancestors and these forms that come back from the ancestors? It connects in this way. I think when you're doing a form, that comes from a thousand years back that many, many people have practiced, you're connecting to something bigger than yourself.

[27:38]

You're connecting to something bigger than this group of people. You're connecting to something very long and deep and wide. And that is helpful too. That's something that makes you feel better. That's my second contention about it. why forms, these particular forms that we use are good. A circle of support that goes back through the ages and across cultures. We use ancestors a lot in our naming of people. My name, my last name is Grove of Ancestors. I feel all of these ancestors are hanging out, giving me support. And my third thought about forms that are the way we do them here that's important is they're beautiful. To have everybody in the zendo in the morning walking quietly the way we walk, kind of equally spaced, it's beautiful.

[28:46]

To have everybody sitting in the zendo doing oryoki, it's beautiful. And that beauty is inspiring. I mean, we could do it more casually, but there's something about that beauty that's created that connects us. And we feel the rhythm and shape of our connected practice in that setting. And of course, we're very fortunate in that we are able to practice in such a beautiful building as this. Although I remember there's a lecture that was given by Suzuki Roshi, the first lecture he gave when we opened this building. Speaking of beauty, he says, we say our practice is the ornament of Buddha. Even though students don't know what Buddhism is, if they come to some beautiful Buddha hall, then they will naturally have some feelings.

[29:54]

But essentially for Buddhists, the ornaments of the Buddha Hall are the people who practice there. Each one of us should be a beautiful flower and each one of us should be Buddha himself who leads people in our practice. I love that. Each one of us should be a beautiful flower and each one of us should be Buddha himself who leads people in our practice. So even if you've only been here twice, you can help somebody lead them in practice when they come for their first time. You can say, oh, that's where the Buddha Hall is. Sikiroshi used to say, when you all wear robes and look the same,

[30:57]

I can see your differences better. So that's kind of an odd statement, but that's what he said. And what does he mean by that? Because on the first hand, after we're all dressing up in the same robes and we're all walking in the same way and following all those forms, it feels like conformity. It feels like we've given up our individual freedom. But I think Suzuki Roshi's contention was when we were all expressing our individuality through all the different... colored clothes we have, all the different ways we're acting in certain ways, acting out, that we're actually maybe out of touch with our deeper inner self. And that maybe if we settle down and weren't so busy expressing ourselves in these ways, we might find out what was actually going on in ourself. That is maybe sometimes by all the ways we boldly express ourselves, we are separated from our inner life.

[32:02]

And that when we follow these forms and sit all the same in the Zendo, we have a chance to find what our inner spirit is and actually become one with our true self, not the one that we're busy paying for everybody else to function in this world. Anyway, that was his belief and I think he's right. Anyway, this living in community is messy business. I remember when I first thought of going to Tassar, I thought, oh, I'm going to go deep in the mountains and live as a monk. It's going to be very lonely and isolated. You're never with as many people as when you go to a mountain monastery and live with each other.

[33:04]

They're on top of you. You get up at the same time. You all sit in the same room. You're working together. You're just involved with people all the time. Sangha life is just a mess of people. It is something, you know, and there's no escaping it. you can't escape. So you are going to have to face things about yourself, things about other people, difficulties that you never imagined. And joy and beauty and love. That's what happens because you are really in it. You are in the midst of life practice with other people. Suzuki Roshi says group practice is the shortcut. And he's right. If you can stick with it, if you can hang in there with all your friends, it's the shortcut to developing some understanding of what your life is about and what other people's lives are about.

[34:15]

And some hope that you could find some love in your life. Chozon, a famous Zen master, said, the blue mountain is further, is far, wow, I got these glasses fixed. The blue mountain is the father of the white cloud. The white cloud is the son of the blue mountain. All day long they depend on each other without being dependent on each other. The white cloud is always the white cloud. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain. This is a pure, clear interpretation of life. There may be many things like the blue mountain and white clouds, man and woman, teacher and disciple.

[35:19]

They depend on each other, but the white cloud should not be bothered by the blue mountain, and the blue mountain should not be bothered by the white cloud. They are quite independent, but yet dependent. This is how we live and how we practice. You know, in Sangha life, friendship develops much more slowly than out there. Oh, out there, out there. I don't know what I mean. Since we don't always like share our backgrounds, you know, you've all had that experience. You go to a coffee shop and you meet somebody and you just click and in 30 minutes you've shared all your history, your college life, all of these, your three marriages, no marriages, whatever. And you've really connected. Here you can live with each other for months, a year, without having any of that backstory. But the kind of way that you learn, the things you learn about that person, the ways you connect, are the kind of connections that last a lifetime.

[36:31]

You get to know each other intimately in the quiet space of the meditation hall. you very much 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 sfcc.org and click giving may we fully enjoy the dharma

[37:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.51