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, everybody in the room and online. It's the first time I give an online talk. So thank you all for being here in this place and time to listen. Thank you also to Nancy Petron who invited me. Nancy Petron, the former Tanto of Zen Center, of City Center, invited me to speak and to tell you a little bit about how I came to this. place, and I will try to do that.

[01:03]

So my name is Anna Thorn, Doshin Ji-san, and I have been invited by the abbots to be in the role of Tanto, head of the Tarn. The Tarn is the bench to sit on in the Zendo, head of practice here at City Center. For me, this is a major I have, for the last five years, I've been in Germany, in Frankfurt, living as a householder and a jewelry designer. And the pandemic had a massive impact on my life. Not only got I sick with COVID in 21, just before I was supposed to... received vaccination. But I basically lost my livelihood because of the shutdowns.

[02:06]

We had to close the shop for longer periods of time. And also, I could not have the sitting groups anymore that I had slowly, slowly gathered for the first two years in Germany. So San Francisco Zen Center again became a deeply healing refuge for me. I was invited to be the Tanto at Tassajara for the fall practice split last year to fill in for the Tanto, Linda Gellion, who had a sabbatical. And... Being there in the practice period and Sita Sahara coming back to life as the monastery was discovering again how this kind of homecoming to ourselves that we support in each other in practicing together as a Sangha opens us to being where we are, to feel that we belong to this life here.

[03:25]

right here. And I'm deeply grateful for this opportunity, for this gift. My first encounter with Tassahara happened in 1995. After a practice period at Green Gulch, my first practice period with Tension Rep. Anderson, I came down to Tassahara Zen Mountain Center in the Ventana Wilderness. And what I remember is I was caught by the beauty of the landscape. I thought this is the place. I did not think the second part of the phrase, here the way unfolds. But the second part became the center of my exploration during the following years. Sitting Zazen in training, with all these Zendo forms and ceremonies influenced me in indescribable ways.

[04:31]

Taking the Bodhisattva vows in lay ordination and then later in priest ordination gave me a deeply supporting framework to find ways to understand how we live together and how we can receive a taste of liberation. liberation from our delusional mindset. From 1998 to, I think, 2011, I trained here at City Center, San Francisco, in a number of senior staff positions. I was, for example, you know, when Paul Holler became the abbot. And when we had the first Gensui Shishin with Shohako Kumara, I think he was here for the last Gensui Shishin, last summer, right? My training during that time was basically, or was focused, the main piece, the main center point was taking responsibility and taking care of the Sangha, taking care of the practice of everybody.

[05:51]

practicing together. So finally, I was director here at City Center, and after that I returned to Green Gulch. And I say returned because it was a little bit like returning to the source for me, because I was able to study again with my root teacher, Reb, and also with Kiko Christina Lehnherr. who had become my teacher here while she was tanto at City Center. In 2017, before I left for Germany, I received Dharma transmission from Christina Lehner, and I would like to thank her from this place for her general support and for her guidance through all these years.

[06:54]

It is essential in training through Zazen to be in a trusting relationship with a teacher, to not completely get lost in our stories about self and other. We get lost anyway. I remember two sentences from the intensive from 2017 at Green Gulch. We can't sit without meeting a teacher face to face. We can't meet a teacher without sitting upright. Sitting upright in stillness is sitting face to face. Sitting upright in front of a wall. This is our ritual. coming as closely as possible to meet our lives, to meet what moves us.

[07:59]

We leave all commotion of body, speech, and mind behind to just sit and face the wall. It is our way to face our intention and to look at what it is we are here for in this life. facing the wall as an intense dynamic of not moving and being moved. And I found a poem by David White that is a nice image for this kind of dynamic. Titled is Stone. The face in the stone is a mirror looking into you. You have gazed into the moving waters. You have seen the slow light in the sky above.

[09:01]

Beneath you, streams have flowed and rivers of earth have moved beneath your feet. But you have never looked into the immovability of stone like this. The way it holds you gives you not a way forward. but a doorway in, staunches your need to leave, become faithful by going nowhere. Something that wants you to stay here and look back, be weathered by what comes to you, like the way you too have traveled from so far away to be here, once reluctant and now as solid and as here and as willing to be touched as everything you have found. Can we be touched by our life?

[10:10]

Can we touch our life? Can we open to our deepest vulnerability where our deepest seeing can be found? Can we rest in ourselves and listen to ourselves? Can we strip aside all our excuses and not wiggle, but be still, deeply still in ourselves? Can we face our trauma and give it a space? This space is like the space a grandmother or a grandfather might give to that granddaughter who is taking her first steps right in front of her or him. We have the intention to be kind to ourselves in the midst of sitting.

[11:13]

We bring gentleness to the stress or fear or excitement or pain or joy encounter. Our teacher can support us in finding this gentleness, even if they seem to be rigorous or strict in how they teach us. The emblem of this direct transmission, the original scene of this face-to-face between teacher and student, is Shakyamuni Buddha holding up an Udambara flower and winking, and Mahakashapa smiling back. No words are transmitted. A winking of an eye, a smiling back. A moment of no confusion.

[12:18]

A moment of no self or other. This face-to-face transmission is re-enacted in the ritual of Dharma transmission, or of late entrustment, as we just witnessed last Saturday. We cannot know each other because we are in delusion throughout delusion, but we know moments when all delusions are cut through, facing a teacher. Meeting in Doksan, or meeting in practice discussion is our commitment to confront our blind spots and to understand that we are in delusion about our being in the world. Great ancestor Vasubando, fourth century, has given us helpful explanation about our delusional mindset in his 30 verses.

[13:23]

Everything conceived of as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. Conceiving self and other is what we study in Zen to understand how we make up our world. Ben Connolly points out in his great comment on Vasugandhu that both self and other... are merely conceptions occurring within the process of consciousness. And this transformation of consciousness is a constant flow. When we look at what we experience right now, there are no fixed elements or moments but permanent change. We think that we sit in the Buddha Hall on tatami mats and zafus, or at home in front of the screen.

[14:26]

And we constantly receive this world in separating it in me at the center and things around me. This division in self and other and this underlying self-centering are both conceptualizations of our mind and cause a great deal of problems. because we take this as reality, and each of us lives in their own reality. Thakme Zangpo, 13th century. Whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations. Know that, and don't generate... self-other fixations. This is the practice of a bodhisattva. We become present through everything else.

[15:35]

We are able to wake up if we can completely trust what is happening, if the conceptualizing process comes to rest. We initiate this coming to a halt or stop the stories through being mindful of our body, to remember our body. The Buddhist term translated into English as mindfulness originates in the Pali term sati and in its Sanskrit counterpart smirti. The meaning of these terms has been the topic of extensive debate and discussion. Smirti originally means to remember, to recollect, to bear in mind, as in the Vedic tradition of remembering the sacred text.

[16:44]

To be mindful of our body is to remember our body without conceptualizing our body. When we sit zazen, we take a posture that allows us to calm down to deep stillness and to a stillness that allows us to see our process of conceptualizing and not be driven by it any further, but be present and be right where we are. For example, when our mind has calmed down when we sit and we just listen to any sound occurring while we sit, we might catch our very first response to what we hear when we have not identified yet what it is. And at this very first instance of contact, we might notice a negative, a positive or a neutral reaction.

[17:50]

And if we are able to notice this very first reception of the sound, we might also notice that this turns into a concept of the thing we hear in no time, and then turns into a story and an idea of this being a car starting loudly outside the Zendo, and I don't like it. This all happens in such a short second that we might recognize how important it is to stop right here, to have no preferences and no wantings after all. And this is the place to start. In being mindful of our body, we come into our place. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point, says Dogen.

[18:52]

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. For this place, this way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others. The place, the way, has not carried over from the past. And it is not merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice enlightenment of the Buddha way, meeting one thing is mastering it. Doing one practice is practicing completely. Here is the place. Here the way unfolds. And this is what we train in Zazen. Doing one practice is practicing completely. Our practice of mindfulness opens this place. Mindfulness, sati, is understood as awareness of the present moment.

[19:59]

Mindfulness of the body is at the same time remembering the body and being the body. The mental state in which sati-mindfulness is well established is characterized by a breadth instead of a narrow focus of the mind. It is the ability to hold the various elements of the present moment, coming into being with a collectedness that enables memory and being right here at the same time. And sometimes we need another Sangha member to help us to find the adequate response and be present with what is right in front of us. Saturday after the Dhamma talk, I left through the back door and ran into a bunch of personal belongings spread out on the street.

[21:03]

that looked ripped apart but not really left behind. I ran into Tanya and told her about it. Curious as she is, she examined the pile a bit and then came back to me and said, It was stolen. It is not a homeless pile. Can you take care of this? I need to go to work. I examined the pile and looked. for any contact information. And I found an email address of a nurse from Heiler, Germany. I wrote her an email in German and after a while she connected me. She was just at the police office. She and her family picked up their luggage and were very grateful, although the money was missing. Their car had been broken in at Land's End. and they will return to Germany in two days.

[22:07]

On some level, my body had recognized that this pile was not the usual pile of things lost and left behind. That's why I told Tanya about it. I also realized how much I have gotten used to seeing things or even people lying around on the street and feeling completely helpless. in this situation. I was not ready to be curious, to engage with it. I was not exactly present to be able to respond. I was not in my body until Tanya put me there. Thank you, Tanya. To be fully embodied means to be at one with who we are. In every respect, including our physical being, our emotions, and the totality of our karmic situation, it is to be entirely present to who we are and to the journey of our own becoming.

[23:23]

This is Reginald Ray speaking. Our body is a karmic being. Our body carries all the imprints of our ancient twisted karma. Our feet know our world from walking. As I have lived at city center for a number of years, I know the weight of the front door when I push it open. My body knows the hallways and the stairs. I remember the height of the kitchen table in my body. and the light coming from the windows in the director's office. Many images appear in my mind of people that are no longer with us, that have already passed away, like Lou or Blanche Hartman or Jordan Thorn. I see them still sitting in their seats in the Zendo. Life has left traces.

[24:25]

Nothing that we do see, think, or speak is without consequences. Each little gesture reverberates throughout the universe. To come back to San Francisco Zen Center at this time of the pandemic, war in Ukraine, and mass shootings is to meet a different and at the same time the same world. Right now, it makes completely sense to me that sequential time is also just another concept, and that all times are here right now, in this moment. To be present means, to me, to be with all times and beings. And to enable us to be with all times and beings in harmony, We trust in performing rituals.

[25:28]

One of the most ancient rituals of the Buddhist community is taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. It is the core practice of all Buddhist lineages. It is a ritual of coming home to our true Self, to the teaching of liberation, and to the community of those practicing. We start every morning service with a confession of our ancient twisted karma of body, speech, and mind. And then we chant the refugees. To take responsibility for the consequences of our being humans, we align our body to our intention to liberate all beings. In bowing, we find us again and again in the motion of devotion. remembering to let go of egocentric holding and craving.

[26:33]

We bow first thing in the morning when we arise from sitting. We bow before we avow our karma, chanting all my ancient twisted karma from beginning with greed, hate and delusion born through body, speech and mind. I now fully avow. This is one expression of being with all times and beings. This chant has all the elements that we reflect on when we try to understand karma. The three poisons, greed, hate and delusion, lead to karmic actions of body, speech and thinking. Again and again, we look at the karmic structure, the karmic consequences of all our actions and thoughts, and vow to turn to wholesome action and thought. Karma is a Sanskrit term that literally means action or doing.

[27:40]

Karma refers to action driven by intention chattana, which leads to future consequences. Those intentions are considered to be the determining factor in the kind of karmic consequences that follow from our action. The same action can have different consequences, depending on the motivation or intention that leads to the action. For example, someone breaks, open a car. In one case, it might be they rescue a dog that is overheating. and that might be wholesome karma. In another scenario, a burglar gets into a car to steal something, and that would be accumulating unwholesome karma. In the Buddhist context, each individual has a responsibility and decides between creating wholesome karma or unwholesome karma.

[28:51]

At the same time, the notion of an individual doer is seen as an illusion. We come to be through everything else. We are not inherently independent beings. Our practice is to negotiate causes and conditions that come to be our life and, as much as possible, avoid wrongdoing. Karma is understood as action of body, speech and mind, and the result of how we live and we are never without the consequences of karma. Mind and body are one karmic being we practice with. To be fully able to fully realize our capacity We need to completely enter our karmic being and embody wholesome action.

[29:58]

The more we are aware of body, speech and mind, the clearer we can discern unwholesome and wholesome action. After confessing our karmic being, we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. We chant, I take refuge in Buddha before all beings, immersing body and mind deeply in the way, awakening true mind. Taking refuge in Buddha is taking refuge in practicing the Buddha way. We tune in to our intention to immerse ourselves in practice completely. Immersing body, and mind deeply in the Zen. We ask all beings to witness and allow us to immerse ourselves. Immersion seems to be making us utterly available, even vulnerable, without knowing where this is exactly going.

[31:09]

We do a full prostration with each phrase. In Japanese it's called Gotai Tushi. Gotai, the five parts of the body, refers to the parts that touch the ground, knees, elbows, forehead. Toshi means casting them to the ground. We cast ourselves to the ground, immersing body and mind deeply in the way. The bowing seems to be an immediate answer to the wish of taking refuge. So we return home again and again. As human beings, we have the tendency to run away from who we are by either thinking we should be different or by holding on to what we would like to be. We cannot run away from ourselves, even if we think so.

[32:14]

And taking refuge in Buddha is an antidote. to running away from who we are or we think we are. Taking refuge is a commitment to explore this one right here, just as it is. Refugere means to fly back. Taking refuge is to look for a sanctuary, a place of protection to fly back to. It is not a place in time. It is a place of becoming true with ourselves. For me, this taking refuge is a framework to understand if I'm hesitant or if I'm immersing myself into practicing. Tenshin Roshi says it like this. In essence,

[33:17]

To take refuge is to give up all alternatives to being Buddha, to being yourself. When you see and accept that you have no such alternative, you naturally and spontaneously go forward on the path of Buddha. When you are willing to throw yourself completely into your everyday life, moment by moment, you are taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Thank you all very much for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost 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.

[34:19]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[34:22]

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