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. Morning. Is this on? Yes. My name is KDU Lian Shutt. I'm... With David Tenzin, David Zimmerman. Is that better? Raise your hand if you can hear me. Are you back there? Okay. Right, so I'm co-leading this practice period with David. And we've been studying wise efforts. Actually, who's here for the first time? Anyone? Welcome, special welcome to you all.

[01:04]

So today's the last day of a three-day sashin. That's the ending of the practice period. And we've been studying wise effort in everyday life, harmonizing stillness and activity. Now, we chose that topic because I think it's an important one. We spend our time and energy, and that's important to us. And in a lot of daily talk, you know, when you say, hi, how are you, to people, often we hear ourselves or people say, I'm so busy, right? I have so much to do, I'm stressed out. So time and energy is important. We're tired, we feel overstretched, and over-efforted. And then we often collapse from exhaustion, from overwhelmness. And then when we collapse, we then often sometimes judge ourselves and think, now I'm under-efforting.

[02:08]

Let me just go do some more. That to-do list needs to be checked off, right? So we're always pushing and collapsing, revving up energy, oftentimes with a lot of stimulants. How many have had coffee or tea this morning? I know I have, right? Just to get more energy and then get tired again. So no wonder we're up and down. So we've been studying it. And also I think in our lives there's a lot of important happenings in the world that's really not so easy to be with. So we want to know how to best use our energy and our effort. And so life calls for us to respond, right? And this responding takes effort. As Suzuki Roshi said, Zen is making your best effort in each moment forever.

[03:10]

And yet it seems to me we resist making effort. For those who are not new or were paying attention, You might have been confused. If you notice that I did too many bows, you would think. Then some of you go, what? Where is she? What does she think she's doing? Right? I'm sure the Doan was going, when? When? Right, Drew? I did nine bows. Now, here's a story. And actually, to be honest, I looked this up, because, you know, we hear stories of a Zen center all the time, and then something like this, you think, oh, I want to know the source.

[04:13]

And I actually didn't find an exact source. Of course, I thought of this in the middle of Sashin, so I wasn't about to, you know, call or reach out to a lot of people. But this was on some blog. The traditional, and this is a story we hear all the time, so... And Blanche is not around, so I can't ask if it's true or not. The traditional Japanese Soto Zen service begins with three full bows to the Buddha. When the late Shinryu Suzuki was teaching in San Francisco in the 60s and 70s, students resisted the bows. So Suzuki Roshi had the service begin with nine bows instead of three. He says, in Japan, three is enough. But here in America, we are so stubborn, it is better to do nine bows. And I will say, I did practice briefly in Japan for one practice period, and we never did any nine bows.

[05:13]

Now, by students here, of course, they mean the non-Japanese Americans that were flocking to meditate with him. Suzuki... Roshi, of course, was sent to the U.S. by the Sotoshu, the Association of Soto Zen in Japan, to be a priest for the Japanese Americans in Japantown. And so the story goes that, you know, hippies heard about him and like a real Zen master that can, you know, help you change your mind without any of the side effects of drugs. So they all flock there. And so at some point... There was some clash in culture, and so at some point he made a choice to go with the non-Japanese students, and eventually San Francisco Zen Center was started. So you could say, perhaps, that San Francisco Zen Center was started with over-effort.

[06:18]

Nine bows instead of three. A lot of effort. And the story is also important to me because it talks about resistance. And actually I see two kinds of resistance. A cultural resistance, what you could maybe call an outside resistance, and an ego resistance, what you could maybe call an inside resistance. And I propose to you today that resistance is an example of the second noble truth. the cause of dukkha. Of course, dukkha is usually translated as suffering. Other translations are dis-ease, discontent, and dissatisfaction. You know, when the Buddhists set the first noble truth that in life there is dis-ease, dissatisfaction, discontent, that's just a natural part of life. You are probably either dis-ease, discontent, or dissatisfy

[07:23]

when I did the nine vows, right? And yet, we cling, right? We cling to how it should be or shouldn't be. We resist with our might, deluding ourselves otherwise, right? So the second noble truth is our deluded desires for things to be, right? Not as what is happening in life. And when do we resist the most? When we're on unfamiliar grounds. So for the Japanese American congregation, Suzuki Roshi was ministering to, the norms of Buddhism and temple practices in the 60s, and its late 50s and 60s, and its rituals were understood. For the non-Japanese Americans, this was foreign. And so their doubt arose. And given that cultural conditioning, and perhaps also part of the time in which institutions, everything was being questioned in the U.S.

[08:30]

at the time, they dared to verbally challenge. Because a version I heard was some student actually said, Roshi, why do we need to do three bows? And so Suzuki Roshi responded by multiplying the bows three times. Maybe you could call that over-efforting. So for us, right, so you could say this was a cultural resistance maybe, an outside resistance, right? Maybe the students were resisting to some cultural norm they didn't understand. And by now, of course, it's become part of San Francisco Zen Center culture. So when Suzuki Roshi said, in Japan, three is enough, but here in America, we are so stubborn, it's better to do nine vows. I don't think the stubbornness he means here is necessarily just a resistance to the Japanese-ness, though some may have, and some people still do.

[09:41]

I will say that I give Zazen instruction a lot, or I have, and a lot of people take a long time to come into here, or they take a long time before they come back, because they see our forms, and it's very foreign and very religious-looking, and that's resisted. People resist that. And I think what he meant, though, is the stubbornness of our sense of self, right? Our sense of identity, our ego. So here's Suzuki Roshi on bowing. Bowing is a very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow, even in your last moment. Even though it is impossible to get rid of your self-centered desires, We have to do it. Our true nature wants us to. After zazen, we bow to the floor nine times. By bowing, we are giving up ourselves.

[10:41]

To give up ourselves means to give up our dualistic ideas. So there is no difference between zazen practice and bowing. Usually, to bow means to pay our respect to something which is more worthy of respect. But when you bow to Buddha, you should have no idea of Buddha. You just become one with Buddha. You're already Buddha himself. When you become one with Buddha, one with everything that exists, you find the true meaning of being. When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship. So this dualism that he's speaking of is our separation from ourselves and our lives, from the everyday doing and going about of our lives, the activities of our lives.

[11:54]

The separation is the making of subject and object. The subject is I, and the object is whatever is being done. And yet, life is about doing. yet the I keep interjecting itself with opinions about right and wrong, good and bad, should and shouldn't. Now, there's a place where, of course, in almost everything in the temple, we can see this, and nowhere do we see and feel and experience how we interject this I and our opinions into things, into what we're doing, then in forms, and in particular, in oreoki. Oreoki is this formal eating that we do in the meditation hall. And now that we're, you know, in the third day of sushin, we've done a lot of oreoki, two meals every day.

[12:56]

Now, one, there's lots of bowing in oreoki, isn't there? You bow... When the server comes, you bow when they're wiping the ton. They clean it off their meal board. You bow when the cook comes in. There's all sorts of bowing. You have to put things out in a certain order, right? We have these three sets of bowls that fit in each other, and they have a cloth. And you put it down, and you open it up, and then this goes like this, this goes like this, and you fold it like this. You know, it's very prescribed, and there's a right way and a wrong way. And there's a whole order of things. And at some point you have to put it all back and there's an order to that too, of course. Even when you're wiping the bowls, right? There's one. It should be just to the left. One, two, three. And then on that little half, then you put it in the middle, right? Comes from T, right?

[14:00]

The way of T. When you're folding up the wiping cloth. You hand it to this hand, then you let it go, then you hand it to this hand, then you let it go. There's a very prescribed. And then, there's lots of waiting in oriyaki, where you're just sitting there, waiting for other things to happen, so you have no control in oriyaki, or very little control, right? Even when you're going to eat, you have very little control, because You have to put the spoon in this bowl, and it can only be used this way. The chopsticks have to go from 10 o'clock to 4 o'clock or 11 to 5, and then it can only be used in the second bowl or the third bowl, never in the first bowl. You can only add this into this bowl, and if you're given permission, damn it, somebody has to give you permission to use

[15:01]

Mix the things from the third bowl into the second bowl. So there's just so much that you have no control over. In fact, and then when you eat, you only have seven minutes to eat. The whole thing takes like 45, 50 minutes. On a not good day, maybe an hour it takes to eat. Orioki. I know at Tasahara when I was there. You know at Tasahara, we do... The forms become more natural and everyone comes into harmony and rhythm much faster because we do it a lot. But I know that our first practice period, first or second, because it was taking so long that Tonto decided we would only have six minutes to eat, right? I will tell you that so many people got so upset. Recently, this was in 2002, happened i was visiting last year right and another center where one of my um practitioners of my dharma brothers at the time in 2002 is now at a different center and he brought it up right how many years has that been 16 years no there's a last year so 15 years he was so mad because he was so afraid that he wouldn't get enough to eat

[16:26]

even though we have something in Tuscarora called the back door, which is the back door of the kitchen, where there is always food, right? But we just get so worried about the sense of self, right? So I would say you could call Oriyuki the hell realm because it's so controlling. Not my controlling, but other people controlling. So naturally, our resistance arise. Why wouldn't it? So often our resistance arises. I'm just not going to do it, right? You just say, forget it. This is all stupid. I'm just not going to do it. And so, you know, you just put things wherever you want it. You bow whenever you want to. Or you pretend you didn't see something, right?

[17:27]

Maybe. I wonder. I just had this thought. I wonder whether some people flip things on the floor just to make things happen. Because anger will come up, do you know? I get angry when I can't have what I want. What about you? So, you're always justifying that my way... is the right way. I would tell you that in March, I came to a sashimi, and, you know, I have priest bowls, and I went to open them, and in a priest bowl set, you have a little board that you put on, which lay people don't have, and it's to protect your robes from getting wet, because a satsu stick is wet, right? I forgot it. I forgot it, right? And so I looked down, and I was like, It's not there. And I was just, and Paula was next to me, and I was just pretending. I was having a conversation with Paula, going, one, she did not notice.

[18:32]

Two, I kept thinking, if she said something later, I'll just pretend that that's not how it is. You know, I'm just, I'll just pretend, right? And yet, it's me that kept going, you forgot it, right? That's how it is. Or, You know, you add things to our yoke. One practice period, you know, at Tatsara, I was saying this the other day, I had all these rashes. And one of them was because there were too many beans in the diet, right, that I wasn't used to. And also because beans were affecting my stomach. And so at the time at Tatsahara, we had a Tenzo ahead of the kitchen who served a lot of beans. I heard the theory, I never got the real truth, but I'll just share with you my story about it. Is that the Tenzo before him had overspent the budget so much, so then he coming in had to prove that it was possible to be in the budget.

[19:43]

And by the way, I heard at the time in 2002 through five, the budget for each monk in the winter was $3 a day for us to eat, right? So a lot of rice and beans, right? So we would have beans in almost every meal, beans or lentils, right? And so my stomach was upset. So often, you know, you get a grain, then you get... Sometimes a protein or a soup at lunch and then a salad. And since there were a lot of beans, I couldn't eat a lot of the food. And yet, I was a good practitioner. That was my idea about myself. And so I decided I was just not going to take seconds because I was practicing renunciation. That would make me a good monk. That I could... work with my greed and desire, right? So, you know, if it was a bean something, then I couldn't eat it, but then I would be thinking, oh, a salad, I could eat the salad.

[20:51]

I'm just, I really want salad. And so when the salad was coming, I'd be like, you take it, you take it, I'm salivating. And I'm like, but I am practicing with my greed. So I would just watch the salad bowl go by, right? Right? But then I would be justified that once again, I'd overcome greed, right? And then, and then one time, as I'm sitting here, and the salad bowl had already passed, right? And I thought, wait a minute. If I cannot eat the second bowl, right? Or a lot of time at night, right? Remember, we have, we technically aren't eating at night. So we, they use leftovers because of That's why it's called a medicine bowl. And they mix the leftover for the day, which often had beans. So then I wouldn't have been to eat that, and I'd just eat the vegetables. So then I thought, wait a minute. How many times a day can I not eat something?

[21:55]

At least twice. So why am I not taking seconds of the things I can't eat? So it was stupid, basically. I was adding on. I was... making it more than it needed to be. The other big brouhaha of that practice period was that Blanche, right? Blanche was the abbess then. You're still the abbess, my first practice period. And Blanche had this habit of, in Oriyoki, the Buddha tray comes in, which is a tray that has... little miniature things of the oreo key on a tray, and we offer it to Buddha. We literally put it in front of the altar, Buddha, and Buddha eats before we do, right? And then at a certain point before seconds are served, the Buddha tray is taken away when they serve seconds. So Blanche had this habit where she would stop eating when the tray, the Buddha tray was being taken away.

[23:00]

And the tanto at the time said to her, in the Shosan, in an exchange, right? She said, you should not be doing that. I said to the abbess, right? Why do you do that? And Blanche said, I think it's respectful that when the Buddha, you know, it's a ceremony, taking that tray out. And so I'm just respecting that moment. And then, the doctor said, but Blanche, You are the abbess. So when you stop eating, other people stop eating. You know, especially when you're new and you're confused, which many people are doing oreochi. You're looking around and you're going, what am I supposed to be doing? So when Blanche stops eating, of course you're going to look at the abbess. She should know everything, right? So when she stopped eating, a lot of us stop eating. And so the Tonto said, no, you can't do that.

[24:03]

The power of your position, you're stopping people from eating when a lot of people, remember, are already worried that they're not getting enough to eat. So I will say, you know, it was a challenge for Blanche to continue to eat. So this is why, you know, following the form isn't just about what I want to do. or whether I'm following the rules or not, doing it right or not, right? We all affect each other. So, and of course, I'm talking a lot about Orioki, and some of you are going, I have no idea what she's talking about. But I was thinking about how we can also over-effort in life. I knew somebody, this is back in the 80s.

[25:05]

Do you remember when Ralph Lauren's polo shirts were really big? And it was a huge status symbol. I knew someone who didn't want to be in that kind of status symbol category and was shopping secondhand. And they would find that style shirt. And now we even call it a polo shirt, but you know... that kind of shirt. And then they would spend their time taking out the polo figure. And those things are sewn on really tight. And they just spend hours just taking that out. And I remember thinking, wow, isn't that putting more emphasis on that than is necessary? Of course, that was important for them. So that was just my thought, right? Not as judgment, just more as I thought. So we're doing it all the time. So forms are like container for us to see how ego arises and gets in the way of life, of the doing, of the living of our life.

[26:14]

Also, orioki is not just about rules of right and wrong. It's also ways to show us some other aspects. For instance, respect. bowing together with the server. You wait for the server and you bow with the server. You don't, you know, decide to bow with them or not with them. The request is that we bow together. We chant the lineages, right? We chant the Buddhas. We're chanting for all the beings that help to bring this practice to us. That's showing respect. It's about mutuality. The reason you only have seven minutes to eat and then technically two minutes after seconds is served is because we're waiting for everyone to be served first before we all eat together. It's mutuality.

[27:17]

It's about the interconnectedness. We reflect on the effort that brought us this food. It's one of the lines of our chant. All the beings that made this meal possible. the Tenzo or someone in the kitchen that cooked our meal comes in and bows, right? This is the interconnectedness. In fact, I found out in this practice period that this is the only temple that does that, right? And it was done because technically they bow in the kitchen, the Tenzo with the kitchen crew. But here, we do it because I was told that, or I heard that doing one meal was cohabit, there was a sense that it felt really divided the zendo practice and the kitchen practice, which is true because the kitchen crew is often on a whole different schedule than the rest of us. And so it was a way to bring in that the kitchen offering is just as important as our seated practice in the zendo.

[28:25]

So that's why the cook comes down and bows, right? It's not done anywhere else. And there might be a sense that it's May or may not be going away, right? But that was the intention behind it. Also, this is probably just a me thing, but there's so much beauty in orioke, right? Especially if people do it in, not tandem, what's the word? Like one after the other, right? When the millboard towel goes, when they're wiping off The mill board, right? So the person comes, they stand at the end, and the hands, you bring your hand up and go show, and ideally it should go ding, [...] ding. And then as they run it, right, then they bow. Then it's ding, ding, ding. You bow and respond down, [...] right? So it only, if you're sitting across where you can see the long way, it's so beautiful.

[29:29]

Hands go... That wasn't so beautiful. And then down, or the same thing with the bowl, and then down, right? But if, and it has to be, it's also mutuality, interconnectedness, right? If we all have to pay attention to each other, and then we all have to trust each other that he or she next to me knows what they're doing, and even if they don't, that I just relax and let it happen, right? If you decide, oh, I know what I'm doing and he doesn't know what he's doing, then you're going to bow and then just go, yeah, not so pretty, right? And I appreciate the beauty. So to me, it's also beautiful and also all the doing. Then I'm a form queen, so what can I say? And then, of course, it's about the awe, the capacity for awakening. We offer to the Buddha first.

[30:34]

We offer to the one who showed us the capacity of our aliveness. That's important. So again, practice is the container that helps us see our resistance in action. You could say the manifestation of our conditioned inner constructs. of what the past has conditioned for us. However, now we have a choice. It's interesting. One of the practice period, there was a Dharma sister who, again, I think must have been in Shosan. This is when we can talk publicly in the Zendo. Her name was Ren. I remember her saying, wow, I had a realization. Right? So at Tasahara at night, we have the medicine bowl, then always a vegetable of some kind. And in the winter, it was often roasted things.

[31:37]

And there would be roasted rutabaga, is that how I say the word? She hated it. We would hear about it on days off, how much she hated it. And then one of these, Shosan, she said, I realize that when I think, I don't like it. as it's coming around, that that was extra. Because it was coming around anyways. Right? And she could say no. She had a choice. She could say no. But just thinking, why are they serving Winabaka again? It was extra. It was totally extra. So it's there. This dropping away of ego. A self that likes or dislikes. That efforts. or doesn't effort and resistance that participates or doesn't participate. Life is happening.

[32:38]

Are you willing to not separate yourself from life? Will you participate? Here's the rest of that section. Where am I going with it? Again, when everything exists within your big mind, all dualistic relationships drop away. There's no distinction between heaven and earth, man and woman, teacher and disciple. Sometimes a man bows to a woman. Sometimes a woman bows to a man. These days, I would say, it's perhaps a they. Sometimes the disciple bows to the master. Sometimes the master bows to the disciple. A master who cannot bow to his disciple cannot bow to Buddha. Sometimes the master and disciple bow together to Buddha.

[33:42]

Sometimes we may bow to cats and dogs. In your big mind, everything has the same value. Everything is Buddha. Buddha. He says himself. I would just drop that one. Last for me to cut off a word from Suzuki Roshi, but I'm going to do it. In your big mind, everything has the same value. Everything is Buddha. You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is. In your practice, you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to Buddha. Here there is Buddhahood. The Buddha bows to Buddha and you bow to yourself. This is the true bow. If you do not have this firm conviction of big mind in your practice, your bow will be dualistic.

[34:46]

When you are just yourself, you bow to yourself in its true sense and you are one with everything. Only when you are you yourself can you bow to everything in its true sense. Bowing is a very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow even in your last moment. When you cannot do anything except bow, you should do it. This kind of conviction is necessary. Bow with the spirit and all the precepts, all the teachings are yours. and you will possess everything within big mind. So resistance is over or under efforting. Non-effort is just responding to conditions. I'll say that again.

[35:48]

Resistance is over or under efforting. adding or subtracting. Non-effort is just responding to conditions. The beginner's mind or the beginner's heart, that's the name of this temple, is the mind or heart which is inclusive of all possibilities. It's a world in which nine vows are possible. In fact, in this lineage, when we want to say we really respect, you know, like we're really respecting you, we don't just, we say nine bows, right? When you sign off nine bows, that means this is the deepest respect I'm giving you. Maybe that's what Suzuki Roshi saw in those young people, this world of possibility, who came to sit with him in the early days.

[36:51]

It's interesting, you know, I see pictures of that time, and I have heard a story that there were hippies that came, and yet a lot of the pictures I see are people with their hair really coiffed and in like matching suits, have you noticed that? Shirts and skirts, and really pressed ties, and like dress pants, right? So... I don't know, I was in here. Blanche is not around again for me to ask. So very typical of the look of people in the 60s. So we might call that, when I look at them, I'm going, wow, they're so overdone. All dressed up, maybe over-efforted. And yet during that time, I suppose it was like going to church. And my mother certainly made me dress up when I went to church. So was the culture of the time. So here's from Suzuki Roshi on June 1, 1969. I will say I flipped the paragraphs.

[37:59]

The way we behave, the way we do, should always be renewed according to the time and according to the place you live. On each situation, we must find how to live and how to practice a way. This is right effort. And actually... What is right effort is very difficult to explain. So to realize our mistake and to start to find out how to behave, how to make our right effort, will be our practice. This kind of practice also will be continued forever. So how do you want to put your effort? In life, we are asked to respond. Suzuki Roshi asks of you, or says, Zen is making your best effort in each moment forever.

[39:02]

Do you make your best effort moment after moment forever? Do you resist just efforting or non-effort? the just making effort that is life, that is living, that is simply being with life as it is, simply being yourself as you are, letting us be simply as we are. Here's from the quality of being. The purpose of Zazen is to attain the freedom of our being, physically and mentally. According to Dogen Zenji, every existence is a flashing into the vast phenomenal world. Each existence is another expression of the quality of being itself.

[40:06]

We say, in calmness, there should be activity. In activity, there should be calmness. Actually, they are the same thing. To say calmness or to say activity is just to express two different interpretations of one fact. There is harmony in our activity and where there is harmony, there is calmness. This harmony is the quality of being. But the quality of being is also nothing but a speedy activity. When we sit, We feel very calm and serene. But actually, we do not know what kind of activity is going on inside our being. There is complete harmony in the activity of our physical system, so we feel the calmness in it. Even if we do not feel it, the quality is there. So for us, there is no need to be bothered by calmness or activity, stillness or movement,

[41:13]

When you do something, if you fix your mind, heart, on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you're prepared for the activity. Movement is nothing but the quality of our being. When we do zazen, The quality of our calm, steady, serene sitting is the quality of the immense activity of being itself. Thank you for your kind attention. 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.

[42:14]

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

[42:23]

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