This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening and welcome. Welcome to Tassajara. I say that for my own benefit, too. Welcome to the last weekend of the summer guest season. And I know there are three retreats, workshop things going on. So I'm in the one with Zen and yoga. And there's another one with Zen and the law, right? Yeah, you can't beat the law.

[01:04]

But the law, for Buddhists, it means something a little different. It means true Dharma, the true teaching of the Buddha. I'm not sure if you're getting into that in that workshop. Yeah? Oh, good. And then there's another one on natural history, botany, ecosystem, Native plants of Tassajara? Yeah. So that's also part of the Dharma. Native plants of Tassajara. Part of the true reality, true law of the mountains. So anyway, to welcome you all is my first... maybe the first and last thing I can do.

[02:05]

When I welcome you, I don't just mean who you think you are. I mean to completely welcome you, including all the parts of yourselves that you don't even like, in case you brought some of those with you. Maybe I'll come back to that. And I want to express appreciation, gratitude to everyone here who's helped Tassahara thrive this year, particularly this summer I hear has really been good. I've been here a few times and it seems that, except for the phone system, things are really working well, you know. And people are taking good care of the place. And there is a feeling of some good-hearted practice energy.

[03:09]

So I want to thank all the staff and the students who are here, as well as the people who are coming and going. Everyone is helping to support and make this place a sustainable reality. People know this is the 50th anniversary year of San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara was acquired four years after San Francisco Zen Center formed as an organization up in San Francisco and was still located at the Sokoji Temple, the congregation in Japantown, we call it Japantown, in San Francisco where Suzuki Roshi came to be the priest. And out of that emerged this interest in actually having a monastic training place.

[04:13]

And Tassahara was discovered. Various people contributed to that. The story goes that when Suzuki Roshi came and visited and then looked around and as he was leaving, the car he was riding in, he said, stop the car and they were driving up the road. You know the road. You know the dishes. So he stopped the car and so he got out and he just went dancing up the road saying, It's great. It's great. Just like China. He'd never been to China, right? But to me, that communicates a sense of his own appreciation for the lineage of the heritage and the ancestors of Zen.

[05:17]

And Zen evolved in China. So it's great. And it's still great. I actually feel pretty good. I think the yoga is helping. I said today, we had a little period of zazen, a very short period of sitting after, what, about an hour and a half of yoga or so on. I should probably do that every day, do an hour and a half of yoga before. five o'clock Zazen I won't do it though I'm sorry but I say you know I say that yoga yoga is something to do all day you know just as Zen is something to do all day that Zen is actually not some discrete activity there is actually nothing in particular that is Zen everything is Zen with

[06:22]

the cultivation of a mind, an intention, to be aware in the present moment and to find a way to penetrate this kind of veil of separation of oneself from reality that we feel that we're separated from. I'd like to talk a little bit about something called precepts. There's a story in Chinese Zen of a monk who liked to sit in a tree. Someone was asking me today about how to stay awake, and I forgot to mention that. But if you sit in a tree, it helps you stay awake. And so he sat in a tree and he became known as bird nest monk or bird nest Roshi.

[07:28]

And sitting in the tree, he had a friend who was a government official, kind of like the chairman of the board of supervisors or somebody. And so the chairman of the board of supervisors one day came up and said, you look pretty insecure up there. And he looked down and said, I'm not any more insecure than you down there. In an election year, you know what that means. And so we actually don't know who's going to be the president or the chair of the board of supervisors at the end of the year. So that's something to pay attention to. But then he asked, the bird nest monk, he said, can you tell me what is, you know, I really, I want to know what is the most essential teaching of Buddhism. And a bird nest monk said, refrain from evil, do what is good, keep the mind pure, thus all the Buddhists taught.

[08:43]

And the government officials said, well, every five-year-old knows that. And the bird nest monk said, I think he was kind of chuckling, he said, yeah, right, every five-year-old can recite it, but even a 70-year-old can't do it. This phrase comes from early Buddhist teaching. These three statements, refrain from what is, evil or we could say from what is unwholesome do what is good or do what is wholesome and keep the mind pure so in Zen or in Mahayana this last phrase has become something to deeply inquire into what does it mean to keep the mind pure?

[09:47]

What is the mind? What is mind? Is there an edge to mind? How do you keep it pure? Can it be impure? Can there be in mind can there be impurity? When we do our precept initiation, we say, we have various translations actually that we use depending on who's leading the ceremony. But we usually change the last one to say, to save the many beings. Or sometimes we've changed the first word,

[10:53]

is to, to translate it more literally, is to embrace and sustain. It has a connotation of listening, of actually paying careful attention and sustaining a concentration so that you even know what is wholesome, what is unwholesome. And then the third, rather than keeping... Sometimes the idea was, keep the mind pure, people would interpret it to be their own mind. Keep your own mind pure. As a particular self. So when we say, save the many beings, then we are saying that mind is not one's own possession. that mind belongs to the whole, even the whole universe.

[12:06]

So there is then a different understanding of what does it mean, what does purity mean, what does it mean to be pure? Suzuki Roshi, went through the war in what we call the Second World War, the War in the Pacific, as a temple priest in a little town on the coast of Japan. And after the war, he felt that it was really so important to promote the education of the children. So he focused on starting the kindergarten. reviving the kindergarten. And he wanted to get the best teacher for the kindergarten. Many of you know this story, but he asked a friend of his who asked his father, who said, oh, in Shizuoka, there's a really excellent teacher.

[13:17]

She's the one you should get to meet. the head teacher of the kindergarten. So his friend took him to introduce him to Mitsu. And so he went and I think they got there early and she came out for lunch or something out of the building and here was this person she knew, Uosuzuki, who was a relatively young monk at the time, in his 30s, maybe 40s, What year would that have been? I won't go into that. Anyway, his friend said to her, said to Mitsu, I brought you a monk. She said, oh, is he looking for a wife? He said, oh, no, no, he has a wife, actually. So he's a monk with a wife, which was not unusual in Japanese temples.

[14:22]

In fact, it often worked better, you know. I said, oh, he has a wife, but he's looking for a principal or a head teacher for the school. And she said, well, I'm fully employed. I don't need to. I'm actually, I feel loyal to this school I'm teaching in now. I said, okay. And they went away. And then next week, Suzuki Roshi went back again. And this time he met her and he said, whatever he said, something about that kindergarten in Yaizu. She said, Yaizu? That's a fishing town and I hate fish. So he went away. Came back the next week. Finally it was clear that he wasn't going to give up. He was actually very persistent. He had clearly seen that this person should come and be the head teacher.

[15:27]

She said, well, this is a Buddhist kindergarten and I'm a Christian. He said, that doesn't matter. It's better than no religion. I don't think he meant that as disrespectful. But... And I don't know all the things that transpired, but eventually, finally she gave up. She said, okay. I think it meant he had to come and invite her to come. He said, I want you to come and at least visit some of the people in Yaisu. And so she came and visited and said, well, and they treated her very well and they persuaded her, I think. So he was working with a way of persuading some people in order to have the kindergarten really be a happy and successful place.

[16:28]

But then after she was the head teacher there, he said, well, now you have to come and listen to these Buddhist lectures. And so they would go and listen to these lectures by really kind of complicated scholarly talks by Ian Kishizawa. Some of you may know who that is. He was a Dogen teacher. scholar of Zen master Dogen who was the founder of Soto Zen in Japan and he wrote a lot and it's not easy to understand reading Dogen and his explanations made it even more confusing and so finally she said to Suzuki Roshi can you just say something about what's the point of Buddhism in language I can understand. And he said, it's to accept what is as it is and help it to be its best.

[17:35]

And she considered that and said that made sense to her. So it's something that she could actually put into practice. To put into practice accepting what is as it is and help it to be its best was something that she could bring to each meeting with her co-workers. Something she could bring to each meeting with the children in the kindergarten. Each one of them, unique, could she accept this person and then help them to be their best. So from that point on, her time at the kindergarten and the school went much more smoothly. She found that her working relationships with others improved. And she began, I think, deepening her practice of listening. She was someone who tended to talk a lot. And now she shifted to listening.

[18:43]

So this is another way of looking at these three pure precepts that this practice of accepting what is as it is is embedded in the notion of not doing what is harmful or what is unwholesome embedded in doing what is what is good or what is wholesome and embedded in saving, saving the many beings. Often when I'm doing three bows, I'm doing as I did here, doing three bows, I'm recalling the three pure precepts. Sometimes I translate them myself as the first one being renunciation, refraining from doing what is harmful or what is unwholesome so there's a sense of what is renunciation it is to give up what one might be attached to to give up what one might be attached to because it is interfering with even seeing what is wholesome or unwholesome

[20:15]

And the second one, I use the word cultivation. So I'm doing renunciation and then cultivation. So cultivation is to do that which is wholesome. To do that which is helpful. To do that which is promoting a clarity of mind. So this is the practice of listening. The practice of... By listening, I mean... Setting aside any preconceptions that you might have when you meet someone. Any preconceptions you might have when you're not meeting someone. Any preconceptions you might discover that you have when you're just sitting in the zendo and the blue jays come up and make a racket. And when I say racket, that might be a a biased term, right?

[21:20]

So when they make music, the Blue Jays make music, that also might be a biased term. What is it just to appreciate the experience of the sound without evaluating it, good or bad, but just to know what it is? And when you meet your old friend, Can you meet them as unknown, new, mysterious person? This is a practice that I take up with my wife. If I think I know who she is, right? It's not as good as if I don't know who she is. I don't mean I forget. LAUGHTER that we've been married for 25 years or something. I don't mean that, because it's important to remember anniversaries and birthdays.

[22:23]

But can I have an anniversary with someone who I don't know? Who is this person? When you approach, here at Tassara, we approach each other, we pass... each other. And after a while, we kind of get to know each other by the shape of their body and by their, even if it's kind of dark, by the rhythm of their walk, by their posture, all of the subtle movements of the person. And yet, it's very important to not think that I know who this is. So to greet someone with respect means to include everything that's known and include everything that's not known.

[23:26]

Include everything that's history in the past and to include everything that's unknown potentiality. So when Suzuki Roshi says, accept what is as it is, it's not so simple. And our Zazen practice, and actually our yoga practice, yoga of, what did you say? It's connection. Yoga, the root of it means connection. I always thought of it as, yoga is kind of like, you know, when you have oxen, two oxen yoke together they're connected by the yoke I think it's the same yoke yoga so yoke may be to go into that a little bit what's your attitude about the yoke when you're connected with someone else do you feel that as a problem it's a limitation right

[24:39]

And at the same time, it is supporting you. So the third, when I do my third bow, I think this is the pure mind that includes all beings. So sometimes I just say total accord. This is the practice of being totally in accord with what is. For this moment, everyone is yoked to everything else. You're yoked to the floor. You're yoked to the light. You're yoked to the air that you're breathing. You're yoked to the dinner that you're digesting. You're yoked to everyone else in this room. The room wouldn't be the way it is without everyone here. So this is a practice of finding this reality and being completely at home in this reality.

[25:54]

This moment that includes everything just the way it is. It includes all the past history of everything that ever happened from before the Big Bang. All the DNA that we're sharing with the trees and the fish. and the crickets that is given right now, supporting us. So for this I have gratitude. A feeling of gratitude naturally arises when you take this first phrase of accept what is as it is. This is not a passive thing because What is, is changing so fast. Moment by moment. Fresh new universe. Our brains are pretty good, but we're kind of also clumsy.

[27:01]

We form conceptions of things after the experience of things. So this practice of tuning in and listening is to... more and more feel that intimate experience and let go of what I called earlier today the tyranny of one's thoughts. The tyranny of one's beliefs and conceptions and some of them are embedded in your body. One of the great things about yoga practice is finding where your karma is embedded in your body. So you can fully appreciate it. Then, you see things clearly enough to be able to do the next thing.

[28:03]

Help. Help it be its best. And it can be anything. It can be your own your own back, your own hips. Help your own back be its best. Help your own hips be their best. It can be your mind. Help your mind be its best. It can be anything around you. When you're lighting the candle on the altar, help it be its best. That feeling is right at the heart of this practice. Your greeting as you pass someone is helping them to be their best. Noticing any notions that may diminish what is their true potential, their true full Buddha mind.

[29:14]

their full enlightened nature. So this is what the bird-nest monk had in mind. He said, yeah, well maybe a kindergartner can recite it, but it's a lifetime of practice, deepening, deepening this practice. If I stop now, the tanto will be happy. So I want the tanto to be his best. A happy tanto. Tanto is the head of the practice here, right? Is that right? Thank you. So I'll conclude and we'll have happiness on the tan. Thank you for listening.

[30:18]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[30:39]

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