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 very nice to see all of you. And welcome, especially to those who are here for the first time. Is anyone here for the first time today? Great. I hope you'll find some nourishment in this building and in your experience here this morning. And I hope that some of these words may be of help to you. I first want to thank Rosalie, our head of practice, for inviting me to give the talk today, and also would like to thank my teacher, Agent Linda Cutts, for her support over the years, and many other teachers that I've learned so much from, including everyone in this sangha.

[01:15]

So this date is very significant for me, and perhaps for some of you as well. August 8th, it's between August 6th and August 9th, which were the days when the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred 70 years ago. And 10 years ago, I was in Nagasaki on this day with a group of Zen students and teachers and a couple of filmmakers, and there were about 35 of us. We were on what was called a Jizos for Peace pilgrimage, and we were in Nagasaki to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombings. I want to talk a little bit about that pilgrimage, about how my path led me to participate in that experience, and also a little bit about Jizo Bodhisattva, who some of you may not be familiar with,

[02:26]

and how Zen practice can be both a path of refuge and support, and also a path of engagement in the world. So I thought I would start with a poem. Poems Can Be Our Teachers. And this poem, when I first heard it, I found it very hard to listen to. I've heard it several times since. It's by W.S. Merwin, an American poet who lives in Hawaii. He's in his 80s now. And in the spirit of poems being our teachers, I thought I would start my talk with this poem called Thanks. Listen, with the night falling, we are saying thank you.

[03:30]

We are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings. We are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you. We are standing by the water, thanking it, smiling by the windows, looking out in our directions back from a series of hospitals, back from a mugging. After funerals, we are saying thank you. After the news of the dead, whether or not we knew them, we are saying thank you. Over telephones, we are saying thank you. In doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators, remembering wars and the police at the door, and the beatings on stairs, we are saying thank you. In the banks, we are saying thank you. In the faces of the officials and the rich and of all who will never change, we go on saying thank you, thank you.

[04:40]

With the animals dying around us, our lost feelings, we are saying thank you. With the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives, we are saying thank you. With the words going out like cells of a brain, with the cities growing over us, we are saying thank you faster and faster. With nobody listening, we are saying thank you. We are saying thank you and waving, dark though it is. So with that sense of all of the challenges of the world in which we live, how can we say thank you? And I think one of the clues in this poem is we are saying thank you to one another.

[05:47]

We're waving and talking on the phone and acknowledging one another and realizing that we're not alone. And I think that's one of the fundamental teachings of Buddhist practice, this awareness that we're not alone. And that was one of the important lessons that I learned on the Jizos for Peace pilgrimage. And before I talk more about that and about Jizo, I also want to acknowledge that This weekend is the one-year anniversary of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a teenager, an African-American teenager, who was shot by a white policeman in Ferguson. And that event and many others since have really awakened an awareness in our country of racial inequities. And somehow I think that's not unrelated to what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[06:50]

And again, I think our practice can help us meet situations, incidents like that, killing, and like some of the other events that are very disturbing that happen in our country and in the world, in our neighborhood as well. So... I'll say a few words about the Jizos for Peace pilgrimage first. This was the idea of a Zen teacher named Chozen Beis who lives in practices in Oregon at a place called Great Vow Monastery. Chozen was born, tomorrow actually would be her 70th birthday. She was born the day the U.S. bombed Nagasaki and her parents were pacifists so she knew from a young age what the meaning of that day was. And as she grew up, she went to medical school, she became a pediatrician, and at some time later in her life, she became a Zen teacher, and she and her husband, Hogan Bays, co-founded that monastery in Great Vow, called Great Vow, and that's named after the Great Vow that Jizo, Bodhisattva,

[08:16]

takes to save all beings, no matter in what difficult realms they may be. And that great vow inspires, I think, when we can learn about how we're not different from Jizo, can inspire us to find our own ways of responding to the cries of the world. So Chozen had the idea of, on her 60th birthday, the 60th anniversary of the bombing, going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with 60 images of Jizo Bodhisattva. And I've put an example a statue of Jizo on the altar. It's the one right here in front of the flowers.

[09:19]

Jizo is very beloved in Japan and is thought of as a protector of travelers, so there are many altars at crossroads in Japan with images of Jizo, and also a protector of children. Jizō can have a very healing quality to people who are ill and to people who've lost, particularly young children, babies, but also has great meaning to older people. Jizō is universally cherished. So Chozen wanted to bring 60 images of Jizo, and then she had a conversation with her friend Kaz Tanahashi, who some of us know, he lives in the Bay Area, and he said, why just bring 60?

[10:27]

Why not bring 170,000, one for each person who died in the first year after the bombings? So Chozen took that to heart, and she and the students at Great Val Monastery sent out a message far and wide inviting people to make prayer flags with images of Jizo and they created Jizo stamps so you could stamp a design on a prayer flag, paint it or color it and then at the bottom you'd put your name where you lived a message and the number of Jizos on your prayer flag so it wasn't 270,000 separate prayer flags, but they added up, and also people made origami jizos. I made one this morning to show you. And these were put on strings, strings of these, like strings of paper cranes you may have seen, which have a special significance I'll talk about later.

[11:39]

but we made strings of origami jizos, and also some people made small clay jizos. And in the end, the pilgrimage brought 400,000 jizo images to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and gave most of them away. So Chozen's idea was that by bringing gifts of jizos and visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, talking with people who'd survived the bombings, going to the commemorations, that we were doing this as an act of reconciliation and recognizing the part our country played in that devastation so long ago. And one of the things we did when we got to Nagasaki, we were greeted by an 82-year-old man, Matsuhiro, Hirose was his name, who had survived the bombings.

[12:41]

He was 15 at the time. And he took us to some nursing homes where many of the residents were survivors of the bombing. This was in Nagasaki. And we talked a little bit about Jizo. There's a Jizo mantra that we chanted. And then we... brought out some of our prayer flags and origami jizos and clay jizos and gave them to people and they were so delighted to have them because they believed that jizo had a healing quality and would be helpful to them in their rooms or they could carry them or put them in some special places. So just a little bit more about Jizo. There's a tradition that Jizo can appear in many different forms, and these are called division bodies of Jizo, so that when there's a need, Jizo will take whatever form is appropriate and meet that need

[14:04]

come to that person who's suffering. And when someone cries out even silently for help, a transformation body or an emanation of Jizo can respond to it. And Chosen has written a wonderful book about Jizo, Bodhisattva. She talks about... so many aspects of practicing with Jizō and some of the qualities of Jizō, but one thing she says about the implications for the division bodies of Jizō is that if we are in need, or if we're in need of spiritual help, we can ask for it. And that can awaken in someone else the mind and heart of Jizō. Jizō is a bodhisattva or an awakened being. and can evoke a response in someone so that we're actually benefiting the other person as well as ourselves by asking for help.

[15:13]

And we can also ask ourselves, who have we been born to help? In what way can our lives be a manifestation of jisobodhisattva and whether that occurs in our families, in our workplaces, wherever they may be, in our communities, in our sangha here, how can we develop our own ability to respond, as Jizo does, to the cries of the world. So, recently someone asked me how I decided to, Yeah, what led to my wish to be a priest and ordain. And I think that's somewhat connected to what led me to participate in the Jesus for Peace pilgrimage. So I thought I would tell a little bit of my own story.

[16:16]

And I think, you know, just as for the Habakusha, the survivors of the bombing, it's really important for them to tell their stories and especially since each year there are fewer of them left to tell the stories. I think as I grow older, I feel perhaps that telling some of my story may be of benefit to others. So, I mean, that sounds a little grandiose. I don't have any story like a hibakusha would have to tell. But, you know, how did I get to this place? It sometimes even puzzles me. There were a few things that happened along the way. So I'm just going to highlight a few things related to the Jesus for Peace pilgrimage. And... The first one, the first moment, I would say, was...

[17:24]

when I was 17 and coming back from my first semester at Antioch College to New York, where I grew up, and my father met me at the Greyhound bus terminal, and we were walking across town to catch the subway to the Bronx, and as we passed a storefront that said SANE on it for SANE Nuclear Policy, I was very excited. I wanted to go in because I had heard about SANE on campus. Antioch College, for those of you who may not have heard of it, is in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and it has a long tradition of activism. It was founded by Quakers, and there were many people on campus who were involved in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement. So I had heard about SANE and wanted to go in and pick up some literature, and my father froze, and he wouldn't let me go in, and he said, what difference can one person make anyway?

[18:37]

And I think in retrospect, I didn't understand it at the time, but my father had lived through the McCarthy era, and I think he was... He just thought this might be too radical. I might get in trouble. I don't know exactly, but anyway. That question, what difference can one person make, really resonated with me and has stayed with me. And I think one person, together with many other people, can make a great difference in many ways in our world. But I think that led me much later... I'm going to skip ahead to 1982, when I took a weekend workshop with Joanna Macy. Joanna is a Buddhist scholar and activist who lives in Berkeley. At the time she was living on the East Coast, and I was too. And I went to a weekend workshop called Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age.

[19:43]

And at that time, the U.S. was making a lot of nuclear weapons and sending them to England and Germany. Some of you heard of Greenham Common. That was a time when there were protests around the place in England where the weapons were being stored. And a lot of concern about the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. And in that workshop, I... realized that I had, from my earlier days in the 60s, when I'd been more involved in peace and civil rights activism, I had kind of taken a back step, and that workshop rekindled my concern about these things, and I decided, because at that time I was a social worker, and I did a lot of work with groups, so I wanted to learn how to lead workshops like the one Joanna Macy led.

[20:47]

And I studied with her and then at the end of one of her workshops I had the idea, the workshops always ended with setting some goal for yourself. You kind of thought about what kind of world would you like to live in and then what could you do to move even a little bit towards that vision. So at the end of one workshop, I had the idea that I wanted to go to Japan, meet peace activists there, and offer despair and empowerment workshops in Japan. And I also had, at that time I was part of a support group, an activist support group, and the members of my group helped me think about how to make connections with peace activists in Japan. And again, Kaz Tanahashi helped me very much at that time, because he had many connections with peace activists in Japan.

[21:50]

And I went to Kyoto, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and was able to do some workshops and meet peace activists in Japan. But I wasn't yet... I had been meditating at that point for a while, but I had not yet started practicing Zen. So it was when I moved to the Bay Area in 1990 that I started going to Green Gulch, and I also then met a number of people who were involved in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. And the Buddhist Peace Fellowship is a wonderful organization. It was founded, let's see, 19... in the 70s, and the mission was to bring a Buddhist perspective to the peace movement and to bring the peace movement to the Buddhist community.

[22:52]

So there was, I think it's more of a separation than there is now among Buddhists. I think now many Buddhists really feel this commitment to... be engaged in the world. And the term engaged Buddhism, I think, by engaging in practice and particularly in Mahayana, in the practice of Zen or some of our other traditions where we are committed to practice for the benefit of all beings, not just ourselves, that is a manifestation of engaged Buddhism. But when the Buddhist Peace Fellowship was founded, I think it wasn't so popular, that view. Anyway, when I got to know some of the people who were active in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which had its office in Berkeley, I discovered many of them were Zen students.

[24:02]

And that was an added incentive for me to... and I started going to the Berkeley Zen Center during the week, because I lived in the East Bay, and then to Green Gulch on Sundays, and that's where I met Agent Linda Cutts, who's been my teacher for about 18 years now. As my interest in Zen practice grew, I became... more interested in being part of a residential Zen community, and I moved into City Center in 1999. And then a year and a half later, I went to Tassajara Center in the Ventana Wilderness near Big Sur. And when I was there, I just felt, I thought I would go for a year.

[25:03]

I ended up staying over four years. And during that time I became interested in priest ordination. So I had some conversations with Linda Ruth about ordaining. And part of the process is talking with all the other abbots and senior dharma teachers and kind of talking about your reasons for wanting to be a priest. And I... Yes, I was convincing enough because they all agreed that I could begin sewing my robes, which takes a while. And then Linda Ruth's expectation was that I would live and work at Zen Center for five years after ordination. And that seemed fine to me until I found out there was an opening at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship for a new director, and I was very drawn to that and had conversation with Linda, and I agreed, probably, I couldn't do that and live and work at Zen Center, so I let go of it.

[26:22]

And then September 11, 2001, I was in Berkeley on my way to New York to see my family when... The friend I was staying with said, you have to look at this, and she had the TV on, and we could see the Twin Towers in New York dissolving, and there were no flights the next day. I couldn't go to New York, so I called the BPF office in Berkeley and asked if they were doing anything that I could help with, and they were organizing a community meeting. So I did help with it, and while I was in Berkeley, I... spoke with Joanna Macy about my dilemma. Should I work for BPF? Should I ordain? Because it had come up again. And I applied for the job, and then I went back to Tassajara. And I hadn't been able to reach Linda Ruth during that time. She was on the East Coast.

[27:25]

And so when I did talk with her about submitting an application. She said she understood that this was a difficult choice for me and just gave me a little bit of homework, which was to pay very careful attention every time I've put my hands in gasho and bowed. And then one day in the zendo, We were having a formal breakfast or yoke, and one of the servers bowed to me, and we bowed, and I just kind of, deep in my body, I knew I wanted to go ahead with ordination, and I withdrew my application for the job. And when I let Linda Ruth know, she sent me a card with the most wonderful message, which I will share with you, I'm happy you have settled around this and have turned towards the priest ordination.

[28:29]

These are very difficult times and you have set forth on a path that is a benefit to the whole world. I am confident of this. This will not be easy. I will help you in any way I can. Are you ready? So that was... a very strong message, and Linda has helped me over the years in many ways, and including my last summer at Tassahara, I heard about this Jizos for Peace pilgrimage, and it just spoke to me as an opportunity to go back to Japan with a group of practitioners, Zen practitioners, and... to express that concern that I had felt in the 80s. Again, but this time with people that I knew and shared a practice with.

[29:33]

And Linda totally supported my going. At the time in 2005 when we went, I had moved to Green Gulch to be her assistant as part of my training. So that's... the piece of my story that I wanted to share, and I think the way in which I express my activism has probably changed over the years, and that's partly, I think, how my energy has changed and shifted, but I feel that this practice is a very important way of creating not just an inner resilience and ability to meet some of the difficulties of life, but it enables us to really reach out to one another and help one another, encourage one another to be the very best people we can be and take that into every situation we encounter.

[30:51]

and I especially think that's true for people who don't live at Zen Center. Most of you don't, and most of you have jobs and families or in school, and, you know, the ways in which you interact with people in your lives, the ways in which you prioritize your time, making time to come here on a Saturday is not easy. And what you take back with you really can make a difference. So I just want to appreciate everyone for being here or for tuning in online. And the more division bodies of Jizo there are, I think the better the place the world can be. So... I think many of us think of Zen center as a place of refuge.

[31:56]

And refuge, the word refuge comes from the Italian, I don't speak Italian, but refugere, which means to fly back. So it's a place we come back to, a place we come to for protection. It can also be a refuge, a person can also be a refuge. But to come back when we... feel things are really challenging or we need refreshment, we need renewal. Many people experience that when they, especially when they go into the courtyard. I've heard so many people say how much they appreciate the courtyard. But it's not just the building. I think it's the practice that happens in the building. And yet, can we also think of how we can find refuge within ourselves? And that is one of the things that I think zazen practice really helps us with, to develop compassion towards ourselves, to develop more patience, a greater ability to listen to ourselves as well as to others, and

[33:19]

those are qualities that really make it, really are beneficial to ourselves and others. So yesterday I spent part of the day in this Buddha hall where Norman Fisher was talking about a work he's done with a Tibetan practice called Lojang, which has a lot of slogans. but it's basically training in compassion. And Norman said at the very beginning of the day, our practice is all about love and compassion. And working with the slogans are some ways of helping us wake up to that awareness that we're interconnected, that we're not alone, and that practicing compassion begins with ourselves and then spreads far and wide from there.

[34:19]

And some of the slogans are very matter-of-fact, like one is, whatever you meet is the path. And we may not always see that, especially when things are difficult. We might say, well, why do I have to deal with this illness or the loss of a friend or some other challenge that is facing either us personally or our community or the world. And sometimes it can feel like, why me? And... I want to share just a few of Norman's words. To be sure, your situation is certainly grave.

[35:22]

You are a temporary, vulnerable human being in a limited, vulnerable world. And not a day goes by when you are not exactly by the measure of that day closer to death when you will lose absolutely everything that you hold dear. So yes indeed, you are in a perilous situation but so is everyone else. Rich or poor, fortunate or unfortunate, whether they won the lottery or lost all of their money, everyone is in a very rough situation. We are not alone in this sadly poignant situation. We are together in it with everyone else. And that makes it beautiful and even joyful, no matter how hard it is. no matter how hard it may get. I think that's what enables us to say thank you when we experience pain, our own, our friends, our neighbors, and it's also what opens us to joy, to the appreciation of beauty, and to gratitude for our lives and one another.

[36:40]

And I think in that way, we are all Jesus. We can all respond to the cries of the world. We can all, and I think all do our best to wake up and be present with our experience, no matter what it is. So I just want to mention that as my talk comes to an end, that we'll soon be doing the closing chant. And when I thought about it, sometimes I just chant it without really paying attention to what it says, but may our intention equally extend to every being in place with the true merit of Buddha's way. And then we chant the Bodhisattva vow, the vow... bodhisattva again as an awakened being and these vows are you know incredibly challenging one might say impossible but we do our best so I'm just going to invite you when you do the closing chant to think about what the words mean and take them with you so thank you so much for being here this morning

[38:06]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:31]

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