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. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. where the mind is always fresh. I'm already moved by so many fresh minds. So we have the practice of sitting together. And so people have been sitting together this morning. And then we regroup and someone says something for a while. And then we have tea.

[01:01]

This is all the practice of silence. I just returned from several days in Los Angeles, attending a conference of the Soto, the Association of Soto Zen Buddhists. ASZB. And this association is people who are ordained priests recognized by the Soto Zen sect in Japan. So there are about 30 of us at this meeting at Zen Shuji, which is... the Los Angeles counterpart of, actually, of Sokoji Temple here in what we call Japantown.

[02:08]

And Los Angeles is just on the edge of what's called Little Tokyo. Unfortunately, the neighborhood's kind of deteriorated, Tom, and so they have a big fence across the front of the temple. So I think really very few members actually live in the neighborhood. But a question came up at the meeting, is there any need for some organization? And there was a challenge from the Japanese for the Americans to get it together and get more organized. Soto Zen groups around the country and different lineages. And we do have some organization forming called the Soto Zen Buddhist Association.

[03:09]

But it was an interesting meeting because we're trying to understand each other. Japanese and Americans And we have a long way to go. At the same time, we have the same fundamental practice. So I just wanted to let people know that that's happening. I don't want to talk about it so much. But it's something I'd say that senior members of our community need to pay some attention to. or anyone who's particularly interested. We can talk about it some more. What I thought I would talk about today really is having to do with being free from fear.

[04:19]

There's so much difficulty in the world, so much difficulty... between human beings, among human beings and between human beings and other species. There's a lot of suffering and acrimony, and I'm sure everyone here is aware of that. But I thought, if we aren't comfortable in our own bodies, How can we help? So our practice, we have a very basic practice of working with the fear in our own bodies. And then in our immediate environment, Suzuki Roshi said, when you sit zazen, you become one with your environment.

[05:21]

The sound from the street. Whatever that is, you know. Without even knowing what it is, it's part of our bodies. So I thought this matter of becoming one with one's surroundings begins right here. in one's own body, which, as you can just tell, already includes sounds, vibrations from everywhere. And then, coming down the hall, there's a new piece of art on the wall that says, Ancient Twisted Karma.

[06:32]

Ancient Twisted Karma, and it's got some of the letters turned. Someone named, I think, Laurie Shuska, something like that, an artist having a show here. But Ancient Twisted Karma is a phrase that we use when we do our full moon ceremony. In two days, it'll be full moon. So each month we do a full moon ceremony. And then at Green Gulch Farm and at Tassajara we actually chant each day during the practice periods and we chant all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion that is born from this body and this mind and the words that come from this mind. And I simply acknowledge it.

[07:36]

We say, I fully avow. I fully avow. So this could also be the talk. Ancient twisted karma. It's the same thing. To be to be say at one with your surroundings and to be at one with your ancient twisted karma. Some people object to the word twisted. Isn't that too much, the twisted? How about... Find some other word. But karma is not something theoretical. Karma is this body.

[08:38]

Now, at the same time, we have this teaching of karma as this body. And we're all entangled with the entire environment. We have the teaching that this body is the gate of liberation. I was just studying some of the words of Zen Master Dogen from the 13th century, one of the founders of this lineage, saying the entire universe is the true human body. The entire universe is the gate of liberation. The entire universe is the dharmakaya of the self. the entire universe is the Dharma body, or reality body. So maybe not everyone here is familiar with the word Dharma. Dharma is a word with many subtle meanings, but we could simply say it means true reality.

[09:50]

Reality. So the entire universe, so Dogen is saying the entire universe is the reality body. of you, of the self. But then he says, this is not a temporary body. So that should raise some questions. Knowing that everything is temporary. Everything is temporary. for him to say, this true body, this true human body is not something temporary. So this is something to investigate carefully. What is your sense of your body? Now, it's not easy, actually, to accept this body.

[10:55]

It's actually a Dharma yogic practice to accept this body. I remember painful memories, right, of being a teenager. The body changes rapidly when you're a teenager. And I had this great realization looking in the mirror, and my nose was too big. Oh, God. And there were zits, right? How can this ugliness go out in public? Anyone have any thoughts? So other people feel that, but I felt all alone. I was the only one who felt like that. I was convinced that this ugliness really shouldn't even go out in public.

[11:58]

And that it was completely unlovable. Could not be lovable. And yet there was something else I thought that this is not quite true. It's not quite me. There is some other me that's not just the appearance. So what is this? What is this truth of each person? when we meet each other, when we gaze upon each other, when we pass by each other? How is it possible to see the true body, the reality body of the person? So, what is the path? What is the path? Is it to deny the existence of the particular or pretend that it doesn't count?

[13:09]

Or is it to fully acknowledge the existence of the particular? So when Dogen says the entire universe is the reality body of the self, can it mean that every particular in the universe is reality. Every particular in the universe. So every feeling and every part of one's own body is the body of, we would say, the body of awakening, the gate of liberation. I'd like to consider a poem which I've been studying lately, actually. Studying for a while. It's kind of a koan.

[14:14]

Something to investigate carefully. This is a poem written by Jane Hirshfield called Against Certainty. I imagine many of you have read this poem. And each time I think it may speak. So the title is Against Certainty. So just to say at the outset that we tend to want certainty. We tend to want to know something. We tend to want to base our next move on something that we're sure about. So here's the poem. There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.

[15:21]

Each time I think this, in quotes, it answers that. Answers hard. in the heart grammar's strictness. If I then say that, it too is taken away. Between certainty and the real, and ancient enmity. When the cat waits in the path hedge, no cell of her body is not waiting. That is how she is able so completely to disappear. I would like to enter the silence portion as she does. To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live. One shadow fully at ease inside another. So it's a relief that there's a cat in the poem, right?

[16:30]

I'm so happy that she has a cat. And to imagine, you know, observing cats and their own, cats are, in a way, it's a cliche. The cats are always finding their comfort. Curled up in the sun, lying by the fire, finding a lap. And cats are also hunters, and they're also out exploring and just endlessly curious. You know, we say curiosity killed the cat. Cats are willing to be killed by their own curiosity. That's the nature of a cat. But to be at home then, for the cat to be at home in its own curiosity, for a cat to be willing to

[17:34]

Say, work, move, get up, walk, curl up, lie down. Always within its own capacity. So this is something marvelous for human beings, actually, to contemplate because it's so difficult for us to have that same kind of suppleness. that same kind of willingness to actually be who we are. So we experience it as, as she says, there's something out in the dark that wants to correct us. So usually this is annoying, right? At least. At least annoying to have something out coming from the unknown that wants to correct me.

[18:35]

When I think I know something or I want to know something, and then something else comes along that knocks me for a loop, let me say. Something comes along and points to something that I hadn't taken into consideration. And I begin to feel some tension in my body. I begin to feel some distress. Maybe just a little. But sometimes... It's excruciating. To be contradicted by something coming from the unknown, from the dark. But this dark is Dharmakaya. This dark is also what Dogen is saying is true body. That your true body is not just what you are certain of. Your true body includes everything that is unknown. and yet is you, and as yet is supporting you right now.

[19:42]

Without everything that's unknown, you wouldn't exist right now. I wouldn't be here. I couldn't say anything. Without everything that is unknown contributing, it's fair share, right? She works with this, saying, okay, this answer is hard. She said, the heart's grammar. I don't really quite know what she means, heart's grammar. But grammar is a kind of, what, rules, right? But she's saying these are the rules of the heart, actually. Big heart. The heart that includes the dark. And it's strict, she says. The heart grammar strictness. Reality is pretty strict. It's just what it is.

[20:47]

None of us in the room can just be, by thinking about it, be any shorter or taller. Maybe a little bit. I just had a memory of doing a I think it was a Feldenkrais workshop and the person leading it said that it's guaranteed that you'll come out of this day of this workshop taller so we were measured at the beginning right and then we did this workshop for the day and then measured at the end and sure enough you know we were we were all measurably taller I don't think we could do that day after day after day, though. Have Feldenkrais giants walking around. So after a while walking around, you return to, you know, the tissues between your vertebrae may settle back into more of their regular spaces.

[22:01]

Anyway, This is pretty strict. Totally strict. That's what makes it hard. It's totally strict. Then she puts it in this way. Between certainty and the real and ancient enmity. Enmity and opposition. An opposition between what is certain and what I know and reality. Everything that I don't know. But don't want to have to deal with. I'd rather not have to deal with. So then she brings in the cat. And the cat waiting in the hedge pass. She says, the cat waiting, waiting. Well, the cat's just waiting. So the cat is still. She uses the word waiting. I don't know if waiting is right because the cat may not be...

[23:03]

Waiting. Usually we think of waiting as anticipating something. When you're waiting in line at the bank teller or the supermarket or the bus stop, you're waiting in line and you're anticipating that you're actually going to do something, move forward, receive some service, get lunch. Your mind tends to go to that rather than just being present. But the cat's mind, we don't know. The cat's mind may simply be present. Not necessarily waiting in that sense of anticipating something. No cell of her body is not waiting. So no cell, not an iota of cat, is somewhere else doing something else. This cat is totally doing Stillness. Are you okay with that?

[24:12]

Are you okay with becoming totally still? With not a thought, not a cell of your body, not any sensation, not any sound taking you away? from being completely present, completely who you are. If you think that some sound or some idea is not who you are, if the certainty of who you are or the identity of who you are is being contradicted by something else, then you can't actually be completely still. So this is the strictness of zazen practice, of our practice. Strictness of our practice is being willing to be completely who I am.

[25:16]

There's no room for judgment. No room for fooling around. No room for pretending anything that is otherwise. No room for self-deception. No room for other deception. So this is how the cat is so able to completely disappear. So the cat, in this poem, disappears into the hedge, disappears into the path, disappears into the environment. This is what Suzuki Roshi said is becoming one with our surroundings. And naturally, this looks good.

[26:18]

The poet says, I would like to enter that. I would like to live like that. One shadow fully at ease inside another. This is a beautiful image, I think. One shadow fully at ease inside another. How can I be the shadow fully at ease inside the dark unknown? The big shadow. This is a daily challenge. A friend of mine was telling me about her commute the other day. a friend who's a Zen student, maybe a very advanced Zen student, she was telling me about her commute, and in her commute she had to ride in the car with a colleague who was someone she didn't know very well. She didn't know her very well, and she thought, well, we should have a conversation and get to know each other.

[27:21]

And so she tried to start a conversation a few times, and the other person just kind of grunted, didn't want to talk. And so my friend, the Zen student, started getting irritated at this other person who was not following her rules about how they should be together. They should be having a conversation and getting acquainted. She was certain of that. And the more she was certain of it, the more she felt irritated. And then she noticed that that was what was... a problem just for her. They're riding along in the car, there isn't really any big problem, and she's getting more and more irritated. And so she came back into her practice at that time and said, what if I, what if I just let go of any ideas about what should be happening?

[28:23]

What if I just let go of those ideas and I sit here and find my own breath and my own body and just see if I can be as comfortable as I can be. And when I notice an expectation about the other person to just kind of let that be set aside, what if I do that? And then she said, an amazing thing happened. She was looking at all the things that were passing by on the road, and everything started to look perfect, just the way it was. she was just amazed that her whole experience could just turn in a few seconds from being really upset and getting more and more irritated and angry at this other person to seeing that everything, including the other person, just the other person just being her private self became perfection.

[29:33]

So, and then she started figuring it out, and then she started thinking, well, wait a minute, if everything's perfect, what about the people who are dying right now? What about the people who are attacking each other? What about children who are starving? And that didn't fit her idea of perfection. So then she became upset again. So this is something to investigate carefully, how the whole universe is created by mind, by one's own mind. Can you, for a moment, let the universe be just the way it is? What does it take to do that? One element of that I think is very important is the practice of letting everyone be exactly who they are means to forgive them.

[30:43]

And I talk about forgiveness from time to time because it's so hard to do. It's so hard to actually practice. It means to understand that everyone is doing their best, even if they're doing something terrible. even if they're most deluded and misguided, even if they don't understand me at all. As I was walking in Los Angeles yesterday morning, I was taking a walk early in the morning down the street, and I started walking into this, and I noticed as I was walking down one street, the neighborhood was beginning to deteriorate, and I was and the fragrance shifted to the fragrance of stale urine. Okay, I realize I'm going into a different neighborhood here. And there were people sleeping, or getting up, or just lying on the sidewalk in various places.

[31:52]

And then someone came walking along toward me, and as he came up to me, he said, Are you a kung fu guy? because I was wearing my Samui. And I said, no, Zen guy. Zen guy? He looked very puzzled. But we just passed. I don't know, maybe I should have said, yes, kung fu guy. But to him, maybe it made sense. The appearance of me in the street could make sense if I was a Kung Fu guy, maybe. And so it may not have been so helpful for me to contradict that. But then I think, yeah, I don't want to let him go away in his delusion.

[32:59]

But bringing Zen into it may be too much. That would be a whole other thing. way too much to get into. And so I don't know whether he forgave me for not being a kung fu guy, but I felt okay about him, thinking I'm a kung fu guy. I just met, you know, I just met a kung fu guy. I'm going to read a little bit from another poem here. This is a poem I learned about from the film Smoke Signals. Has everyone here seen the film Smoke Signals? Not everyone. That's a wonderful film, I think. It is a film about redemption.

[34:03]

It's not clear, is redemption possible or not possible? I also have right up on my wall right now a statement from a poet, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, which says, what does it say? The impossibility of redemption is something we had not figured on. Sometimes redemption is impossible. And so that is also our gate of liberation. Dogen is literally true when he says the entire universe is gate of liberation. There is nothing in the universe that is not Buddha mind. Not an opportunity right there, right here to wake up to who you are, But forgiveness is a part of it.

[35:11]

So in the end of the film, Smoke Signals, which was, by the way, completely made by indigenous people, by Indians, Native Americans, mostly from the Coeur d'Alene and Spokane tribes up in Idaho. But at the end of the film, there's this... I'm only going to read part of this poem, which is called Forgiving Our Fathers... But it could be forgiving our mothers, forgiving our fathers, forgiving our mothers. It's very important to become one with your own body to forgive the people who gave you all this DNA trouble, right? Whatever it is, right? To forgive them for the DNA that's all wrong, right? Wouldn't it be better to have better DNA, right? You can look around.

[36:12]

People want to have better DNA. I actually heard on the radio just a few days ago there's a problem with sperm donors. They have such great DNA, apparently anyway. Sperm donors, you want to have a good sperm donor and you want to have a great DNA. So now there may be some sperm donors who have hundreds and hundreds of children who don't know each other, don't know that they're half brothers or half sisters. Um... Is that a problem? We don't actually know. Sometimes problem, sometimes everything goes along just fine. But if there's some genetic weakness, then of course that can get replicated and then you have that. Whoever it is who inherits that has that. So we all inherit many, many, many, many millions of generations. DNA. So forgiving our parents, we begin with that, but mostly what we have to forgive them, we think, is their behavior.

[37:22]

Their terrible behavior. The things that they failed to do. Or the things that they did that they shouldn't do. And that is something that we all carry, you know, right in our bodies. So can we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often or forever when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage or making us nervous because there seemed never to be any rage there at all? For marrying or not marrying our mothers? for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning, for shutting doors, for speaking only through layers of cloth, or never speaking or never being silent?

[38:32]

In our age or in theirs or in their deaths, saying it to them, or not saying it, if we forgive our fathers, what is left? If we forgive our fathers, what is left? It ends with that question, which points to the fear of the unknown. We actually don't know what happens when we forgive someone. We're afraid that if we let them off the hook, we'll be in danger. Something like that. What is it that stops forgiveness? Each person here, I think, should investigate that carefully. Forgiveness, then, is a way to accept your own body. Forgiveness is a way to accept the fact that your body and mind are not two.

[39:37]

That your emotions and your body are not two. That your emotions and your mind are not two. That everything that has ever happened is right now supporting this moment. So why hold it against the past? If we forgive our mothers, if we forgive our brothers and sisters, if we forgive our parents, if we forgive our parole officers, if we forgive our politicians, our mayors, then what? What's left? How do we go forward then? To forgive is to acknowledge this big ouch, this big pain. And to acknowledge it is, first step is to find it actually in one's own body.

[40:50]

Can one be present with it like the cat in the path hedge? Can one be present with these cells of distress in one's own body? To do this is to liberate the entire universe. Each of us working within our own capacity. Thank you for listening. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[41:53]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:56]

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