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. It's nice to be back at Zen Center. I've been here before to give talks. I notice that you just get right to the point here. I start giving my talk without an introduction, so I'll introduce myself so that you have a little bit of an idea what the excuse is. My name is Grace Shearson. I first came to Zen Center around 1967 and met Suzuki Roshi. It was my first experience of Realizing I didn't know everything. It's still a problem to this day.

[01:00]

I keep realizing that. And he performed the wedding ceremony for my husband, Peter, and myself. Peter's there. Hi. And since then, I've practiced a lot at Berkeley Zen Center and was ordained by Sojin, Mel Weitzman, in 1998. with my Dharma sister, Baika, who's here. And I started my own group in the foothills of the Sierras. I felt like it's like kind of flinging something out into the soil to see if it will happen. And I think it's very important to take your teachings to a very inhospitable place. to see if anybody will come listen. And it's very interesting to do that, too, before one has credentials, because you need to make your teaching very useful.

[02:06]

So I've been teaching up in the Sierra Foothills since 1995, and my husband and I have built a retreat center there. Since then, he's been ordained with Lou Richmond, Chikudawa Lou Richmond. I've been teaching in the Central Valley. And I received Dharma Transmission in 2005 from Sojin Roshi. And then we did a mountain seat ceremony. My Sangha did a mountain seat ceremony for me there in 2010. And during all of that time, pretty much between 1995 And about 2009 or 10, I was making trips to Japan to visit Fukushima Kedo Roshi, who just died on March 1st of this year. And so I'm here to talk today about the teachings of Fukushima Kedo Roshi.

[03:14]

And we have one visual for you. I brought some calligraphy. of Fukushima Roshi. And the visual is there. Actually, it's the calligraphy of Shibayama Roshi, who was his teacher. And so Fukushima Roshi received Dharma transmission from Shibayama Zenke. And that Enso, I brought to the Enso exhibition for today. And I connected with Catherine Space through a visit I made to Empty Hand Zen Center. And she asked me about coming along with her exhibit today, or for the month, I think it is. Where's Catherine? For the month?

[04:17]

It's for the month. But during this month, I'm having a practice period up at Empty Nest, Zendo, my center. So today was the only day I could come. She originally asked me if I might bring some Rengetsu pieces because of the roundness of the teacups and the teapot. But because it was so close to the time of Fukushima Roshi's passing, I thought I would bring his Enso, which is out in the hall. and is a familiar Zen saying, practice 10 years, and then practice another 10 years, and so on. So you'll see that one with the Enso when you go out in the hallway. Fukushima Roshi died on his birthday, which I thought was rather skillful. My own birthday is December 8th, so I think I'll give it a wallop when it comes to my time. We'll see how I do. I might try to squeeze out a few more days.

[05:19]

I think that's always the problem. But he was a really remarkable teacher, and I'll tell you a little bit about his life. There's a book about Fukushima Roshi called The Laughing Buddha of Tofukuji, so this is his picture, and you could pass the book around if you like. I must say about the book, it was written by Ishwar Harris, who was a college roommate of his at Claremont College, and that's how they were connected. And Mr. Harris, while he's a professor, I guess, in various Eastern religions, is not a Zen student. So some of the presentations on Zen maybe won't be quite as much as you would hope for. But nevertheless, it talks a lot about its life. And the reason I became connected to Fukushima Roshi is a lot about the reasons I do anything.

[06:19]

Because when Catherine asked if I might be able to come during this time, the only day I could come today was the day, the morning after I returned from Italy last night. So I thought about that, and I thought about Fukushima Roshi's life and his teachings. And I have a scroll outside. By the way, I'm not a good traveler. So that's why this is relevant. Fukushima Roshi taught that you need to be the master of circumstances. That's the purpose of our Zen practice. And oftentimes, when he was coming to the States, he would send me his schedule which just listed one talk after another, some of which included calligraphy demonstrations. And, of course, he had to be exhausted coming over from Japan that he would just dive right in and do things. And I thought, well, in honor of his passing, it's better not to just think about the way he taught, but actually to live it.

[07:30]

And I think that when we have faith in our practice, We trust that the airlines will get us to the church on time, and that whatever bundle of jet-lagged body and mind arrives, we can find our way. This was his teaching. His teaching was about becoming Mushin. He taught koans, and obviously the first one being the Mu koan. This notion of becoming Mu Xing, transcending life and death, was really fundamental. This transcendence of life and death to find what there is when there's nothing left. I said, well, that'll be good. Let's put our money where our mouth is on the cushion and see what comes out when, you know, I'm exhausted and got the flu while I was in Europe to get a little extra pizzazz out of it.

[08:32]

And what I learned when I was practicing at Tofugiji Monastery, I would go to do seshin there between 1995 and about 2010, was the first few seshin I did there, I did by staying at the temple, which meant I got up before 3 a.m. I mean, getting up early is no big deal to Zen people. And stayed up through 11 o'clock. And the only injury that I had that was permanent was when I did the winter session there. I tried to eat a power bar in my room, and I broke off part of my tooth. That's how cold it was. It froze in the power bar. So it was very severe circumstances. And I recognized that I myself, Grace, could not do this. And that becoming mushing... was about entering the Buddha's body.

[09:37]

Now, one can only enter the Buddha's body so many times in this lifetime. It's like a cat has only so many lives. So I soon realized I had used up several of them by doing the sejin at the temple, so I found a nearby inn. after I created an international incident by fainting on the Tan during Soshin. So I said, I think this isn't working so well. So that was the last time I stayed there for the full week. And after that, I stayed at an inn, and Fukushima Roshi allowed me access. But he felt this becoming Mushin, another way he described it, was by the word G-U. In Japanese, the word G-U generally means freedom. And G is self. And it actually does not mean the same freedom that we think of in the United States or in the West.

[10:47]

It has to do with the meaning of it has to do with depending on the self. And he said, which self is it upon which we can depend? It is the mu self, the self that we let go out. Actually, when I was in Tofuku-ji, practicing there, the conditions were so severe during Zazen, it was a little bit like Animal House then. And I realized the difference between Japanese and what we do here is that they create these Horrific circumstances in which you need to find your peace or your toast. You just have to go home. And so you have to really find a way to practice in the midst of this pandemonium that they do in the Zendo, these severe beatings, antics, back and forth. And the way I practiced there, actually there was a slate floor. And I would...

[11:52]

The meditation I developed when I was working on the Muko on there was pouring myself into the cracks between the slate. And then what's left? So coming back from Italy last night after 20 hours on the airplane, a 24-hour trip, what's left? What is it that can... see itself and meet itself. That is this awareness that we develop on the cushion. I like to say that the awareness we develop on the cushion, this energy we have, is for self-reflection. Most of the important teachers have said that the mind itself is Buddha. And what I came to understand in practicing with Fukushima Roshi and what attracted me to practice with him was another expression that he used very often in his teachings called shoko kyaka, which means look under your own feet.

[13:04]

It's not about what someone else is doing. So what we do is develop sufficient stability of concentration So we can actually put up with the most idiotic of our companions, ourselves. And shoko kyaka is actually, the actual literal translation is, the light shines even on your own foot or your own leg. And this focus of looking at yourself and particularly linked as he did to an earlier Zen master, I think of the 9th or 10th century, helped me to make a connection between the very old, authentic, essential Zen teachings and the world of psychology that helps Westerners self-reflect.

[14:11]

So this... All this energy that's developed in Zazen is energy to illuminate oneself. And I'm a clinical psychologist, and I thoroughly follow science in the belief that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Therefore, energy that we use for self-promotion, stubbornness, and self-clinging, is not available for awakening. And so, as we deepen our practice and this mushing, this mind that does not, that includes everything, that is not focused on our own needs, as that deepens and as our connection to that deepens, it's like a bigger light and more warmth that melts these frozen places where we've hidden energy or we're stuck in our habitual ways of reacting.

[15:17]

So this kind of increased energy of being aware of awareness itself develops a kind of power and strength for us to examine ways that we're really hung up and to open those places. I like to say that all these defilements, all these habits and neurotic patterns are self-liberating in the great space of awareness. So as we develop this relationship to awareness itself, what is it that's watching you think in Zazen? What is that? In fact, what is this is korewa, nandesuka. That's what's written under the end, so then. And this is mushin, or true nature, and this is what we become aligned with in our practice, and that we try to use in our everyday life.

[16:25]

One of the other teachings that was very important for Shimuroshi, that he taught on, was shibutsu and shobutsu. Shibutsu is the Buddha of death, And Shobutsu is the Buddha of life. Now, he said that he believed 99% of our effort should be in Shobutsu, in the living Buddha, and that the practice in Japan of just coming around to Buddhism at the time of death for the memorial services and so on was probably... a little skewed, that what we're attempting to do is to become the Buddha in this lifetime. And the founder of Tofukuji, Eni Bennan, who founded it around the same time that Dogen came back from China, they were contemporaries.

[17:35]

In fact, it's probably the reason that Dogen went off to a Heiji because there was the competition between the two of them for the first temple that was built for the actual practice of Zen, Tofupiji. And he said, practice for one second Buddha, one minute Buddha, practice for an entire lifetime, an entire lifetime of Buddha. So that was Eni Benen who said that. So we do need to prepare for our own passing, but we need to spend most of our practice working on our relationships and our activities in this lifetime. I must say that I thought it would be a sufficient challenge for me

[18:41]

to give this talk the morning after I returned from Italy. But actually, my higher teachers had in mind that I should also have the flu so that I was completely leveled. Actually, when I did my mountain seat ceremony, I had the swine flu. And you have to go through it, right? Right? So I had to do everything really slowly. And afterwards, people said, Grace, I think you've become enlightened. I said, no, I just had the flu. And my usual hurried way of doing things and manic personality was not quite as evident. So... as I was saying about Fukushima Roshi, he really united for me the historical teachings with modern psychological insight.

[19:53]

And he was the first traditional Zen teacher that I heard talk about conscious and unconscious delusions. And he did this through his discourse on one of the cases in the record of Joshu, which was translated by the modern translation of it. It was done by one of the students, one of Fukushima Roshi's Western students. It's James Green. There was a case which was something that he really liked to teach on, and that was Joshu's senior monk, Gonyo, came to him and said, I have thrown it all away. He didn't say he had the swine flu.

[20:58]

I have thrown it all away through my practice, and there is nothing left. What do you say to the one? who has thrown it all away. And Joshu said, throw it away. And Gonyo said, what do you mean? I just told you. I've thrown it all away. What on earth could there be left to throw away? Joshu said, very well then. If you can't throw it away, keep on carrying it. At which point, Gonyo saw that he had become attached to what had happened to him on the cushion. And so he let go of it, and as all of us need to, keep going through this process.

[22:01]

Throw it away, pour it down the cracks in the slate, but whatever sticks, we still don't. need to examine. We still need to keep looking at and be honest with. I brought two groups of students with me to Japan, and he was very excited about teaching. Fukushima Roshi was very excited about teaching Americans. And someone asked him, What is the most important thing? And he said, watching yourself. I've always said it was honesty. Honesty is the most important quality and the most essential quality we develop. Being able to tolerate what we see about ourselves. Everyone else can see it. It's about time we took a look.

[23:05]

This watching yourself is what Fukushima Roshi taught and what Joshu was talking to his disciple about. You can't say you've thrown it all away. You can't say that. Not until the truth, because the next self arises in each moment. Another thing Fukushima Roshi used to say about that was even the Buddha and Bodhidharma go on practicing. We have to do this over and over again throughout our entire lifetime. And he said the reason he liked, I think the reason he liked this teaching story so much about Throw It Away was because It not only illustrated these conscious and unconscious delusions, this was clearly an unconscious delusion of Gonya Sonja, who couldn't see himself, he couldn't see what he couldn't see.

[24:24]

So it illustrates this point of conscious and unconscious delusions, like, I know that I get manic and pushy, That's a conscious delusion. I already know that. You can tell me anyway. But I already know that. But there are many other ways that I am totally irritating that I am not aware of yet. You can also tell me that. I think Shanti David said very well, too, that when somebody says something to you that you don't like, it's no point in getting angry about it because that person... is your teacher. If they're right, they're your teacher. If they're wrong, why do you care? So this notion of conscious and unconscious delusions and the relationship of teacher and disciple was very much illustrated by this story. Really the whole of the teacher-disciple relationship.

[25:31]

Because whatever... Gonya Sonja did, Joshu continued to keep on carrying him too. He didn't abandon him, although there are some cases where that might be called for. But he didn't abandon him. He was there, and he continued to watch what he was up to. And he could see things that his disciple could not see. He could see his disciples' unconscious delusions. And this really, for me, helped me understand what the basis for my most annoying role as a teacher was about, which is how to keep reflecting, without driving away, how to keep reflecting the habitual, unconscious delusions that students bring. And I felt that this was a very important understanding because after practicing in Japan,

[26:35]

And I realized that it didn't make sense, although I received tremendous benefit from practicing there, and I think anybody would who could survive it. I didn't think it was going to sell here. Not only that, I thought it was the basis of a great deal of litigation. So even though the methods of helping you to see what you were holding on to and to let go of your attachment to even your physical survival in order to do sesshin, was just not going to happen here in the same way it did for the young monks in Japan. We needed to find some other methods. So, I concluded that my job, therefore, would be, instead of creating the same kind of physical hardship, was to create some emotional hardship. And that that emotional pain would be the basis of people paying attention to what they couldn't see.

[27:48]

So, I mean, if someone even insults your littlest toenail, you can feel it in your whole body. Your ego extends through every cell into your toenails and up to the top of your head. So any time we pick on the ego, there's some emotional charge. And that is what we study. And that is what we use the energy of zazen to transform. And that is the teaching that I received from Bhikshima Roshi. And I'm going to ask for questions now, even though I will have a Q&A in the dining room. The reason I want to ask for questions now is because I'm not sure if I made sufficient sense. and I want to make sure we're all as connected as we can be before we end. Yes? Just to clarify, were you studying Xan actually in Italy, and what institute you were there?

[29:01]

No, I wasn't there to study Xan, although I did meet with Dario Girolami. of Blanche's disciple and Linda Ruth's priest in Rome. And had the Italian internet performed a little more efficiently, I would have gone to Roma Zen, but as it was, I had to meet Dario. And I was in both, and I went to Dublin Zen when I was in Ireland and met Mary Lahine who is a priest in the Deshimaru lineage. I've always wanted to actually practice Zen in Italy, ever since I practiced at the Paris Dojo. And they had a cocktail party at the end of Sesshin. And they gave a toast to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And ever since that happened, I said, well, if that's what they do in Paris, I definitely want to do a Sesshin in Rome.

[30:07]

They explained to me very carefully in Paris that those were very intense, Sachin, and the hours were from 9 in the morning till midnight. And I could see that was very intense. And I said, well, do you also sit those long periods of time as early as 9 in the morning other times of the year? They said, huh? No, only during Rohatsu Sashin. They get up, and they do from 9 to midnight. So they have their own way. And they also, even though they had translated all of the meal chants, I love the spontaneity of the teacher who, after dedicating all the food, said, Asante, in the French, as a toast to the food. So I'm sorry I didn't get to see Roma Zen or do a Sashin there. But the reason I went to Europe was to take my 11-year-old grandson, who had... My husband Peter and I are the paternal grandparents.

[31:16]

And the maternal grandfather, Bill Lyle, died about five years ago, five or six years ago. And he was Irish. And when we asked Jacob... where he would like to make a special trip with his grandparents. He said, I want to go to Ireland. So I took him to Ireland so we could trace his Irish roots. And then we took him to, I took him to Rome because we were there. And because I wanted to have my cappuccino with Lucendo. I don't know if it's too superficial of a comparison, but when you spoke about the sort of turmoil that was created in very harsh conditions at .

[32:20]

Do you think that that's kind of needed in a very ordered culture like Japan, whereas in the United States, we had a very disordered culture? People come to Sashim already for the challenge and displaying the results of injuries of an extreme culture. So I just would like to know what you think about that. Thank you. I think it's an important clarification to talk about what I mean when I talk about what will work in the West. is really not about lawsuits, although those could become very prominent if we decided to go off the way with our Japanese training. Because I heard of a case where Roshi hit a monk on the head and he died. There were no charges filed in Japan.

[33:25]

To enter a training monastery in Japan is to put your life on the line. So that's only one level. But the level that you're referring to for me, has to do with the complete embeddedness of Zen within a culture. And so in Japan, most of the monks have been brought, including Fukushima Roshi, been brought to practice by their grandmothers and had learned the flavor and style and kind of the non-verbals of Buddhism and Zen through their exposure as children. And everything that's done in the zendo is a reflection of a kind of attention that's relevant within that cultural context. So I think it's true that people come damaged in a different way. I don't think they're not damaged in Japan.

[34:28]

They're damaged differently. And I think when people come to practice, and I think if we're actually going to bring Zen to life in this Western culture, it needs to speak in a language we can understand in ways that we can relate and find ourselves caught by. That makes sense in our culture. For example, being beaten doesn't make that much sense in our culture. And when I was there at Tofukaji, I can't say it made any sense to me. In fact, I spoke to the Roshi about it every time I came. And in fact, I think while I was practicing there, there was some moderation, at least for what I could see in the level of beating. But I also realized that the young monks who were coming in, and I was practicing there long enough to see the ark of the young monks coming in and what would happen to them

[35:32]

over the course of a number of years. And I could see that they had really deepened and developed and become more compassionate people. And that the hardship of the practice that they experienced was what they expected. And there were moments when I felt like getting up from my place and grabbing that stick. And I realized, you know, what would these young guys think? They had come to do the practice of their ancestors. And here's some old lady from the West who thinks she is going to take that away from them. So it was completely what they expected and what they wanted and what made sense for them. I don't recommend it for anyone. But for us, I heard someone say, you know, when will we know that when Buddhism has completely transferred itself to the West? And the answer was when we produce someone on the level of, for example, a Hakuin or a Milarepa.

[36:39]

And for that to happen, this practice needs to start, like Fukushima Roshi, who was born in Kobe in 1933 and went through the war and was sheltered in a Buddhist monastery where he, in Hofukaji, in Okayama, by Okada Roshi, which is where he eventually went to train. He started training when he was, well, I'm sure before, you know, when his grandmother was strict on him about his calligraphy. And he started at 14. So... For us to really transplant Buddhism in this, in the West, it seems to me it's going to take many generations, and we're going to need to speak and appeal to people in our own language, with our own culture, about our own difficulties, the kinds of difficulties. We have the narcissism we have, the selfishness and grandiosity we all have.

[37:43]

So, to conclude, I want to say something about the calligraphy. and how Fukushima Roshi related this calligraphy to his practice. He really, well, he said that he became Wu in order to do this calligraphy, which was done very spontaneously. He did exhibitions. We saw him, I think, do one. Did he do it here in San Francisco? But he did it in L.A., I know. And he did come to San Francisco to give a talk. I'm not sure if he did the calligraphy demonstration here or not. It was very fast and very energetic. And in order to do that, there's no self-consciousness. Not in the way we think of self-consciousness. There's just a rush of energy. And since his grandmother...

[38:48]

forced him to do calligraphy from the time he was a little boy and take extra lessons in it. And so it became something that was really embedded in his body and something that when he talked to me and Peter about the calligraphy itself, he said, you know, there's a difference in Japan between professional calligraphers and the calligraphy of spiritual teachers. The calligraphy of spiritual teachers really displays their energy, which I think you will see on the pieces that are out there of Fukushima Roshi. You'll see one, the Enso, which is practiced 10 years and then 10 more years. You'll see another one, which is become the master of circumstances, one of the Zen expressions. And then you'll see another one. That's on a dark background, and it's a very large scroll.

[39:51]

And the furthest one, as you go out down the hallway, is his name, Koyuken, which is More Quietly. And this came, as he explained to us, from the Chinese poem that silence, becomes more apparent when you hear the sound of the bird singing in the mountains. So his name means something like more quietly enter the mountains. And I think the more quietly enter the mountains and the sound of the bird represent the show bringing to life the energy of meditation. So I think I will end there, and I hope you, after our Q&A, get a chance to look at the Sweet Cake and So exhibit.

[41:00]

And the pieces by Fukushima Roshi will just be here for today. We'll be taking them down after lunch. So I hope you get a chance to see those. And the same with this piece by Shibayama Zenke. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:39]

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