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. My name is Greg Fane. I'm the Tanto or head of practice at Tassahara. And my practice is gratitude. And I'm grateful to be here tonight and talk to all of you. I'm currently helping to lead a retreat. One I've done a few years in a row. with consulting ecologist Diane Rentschel, her husband Flip Didner, birds and wildflowers of Tassajara, and Zen.

[01:10]

I think and Zen is in there. I'm not positive. Anyway, birds and wildflowers, just they are Zen, as far as I'm concerned. So I think our retreat has been enjoying that, enjoying the Dharma of... what these mountains can teach us, what they can show us about beauty and truth and impermanence. I would also like to welcome the Santa Cruz Zen Center, Monterey Bay Zen Center Sanghas who are here today. They did a one-day sitting, awesome. That's also a regular thing at Tassajara. A wonderful, wonderful tradition. May it continue forever. Welcome. And I want to thank and acknowledge my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi, the abbot of Berkeley Zen Center.

[02:20]

And I'd also like to say that this talk is just to encourage you in your practice to Hopefully. Tonight, I'd like to try something maybe a little iffy because I want to talk about prajna. Prajna paramita. Something you hear a lot at Zen Center. Something we use those words a lot. But what does it mean? And I think, for me, maybe it's a little iffy because it's much too broad a topic for one Dharma talk. So maybe I can just talk around the edges of Prajna and express a little bit of appreciation and express...

[03:27]

hopefully express my idea, my story about how it functions, in my life anyway, in my practice. We'll see how that goes. To that end, I thought I would start with a little story, tell you a little story, personal story. The year was 1963, and the place was Dayton, Ohio, southwestern Ohio, January. JFK was president. And there was a little guy asleep in his bed one morning, sleeping comfortably and contentedly.

[04:45]

And as the morning light came in his bedroom, slowly coming to consciousness, slowly coming to consciousness and not yet fully awake. Just, you know, right there on the edge of waking up. And without any other thoughts, just two words came into his head. No school. So every day at Zen Center, we chant the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra. In Sanskrit, it's the Maha Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra.

[05:50]

Prajnaparamita. This sutra we chant every day, either in English or in Japanese, Sino-Japanese. In Japanese, it's Makahanya Haramita Shinkyo. So we chant it every day, either in English or in Japanese. So it must be pretty important to us. I like to say it's our school song. I regard it as a message of salvation. personally, a message of liberation. It's also considered teaching in emptiness. Prajnaparamita is usually translated as the practice of the perfection of wisdom. Prajnaparamita usually translated as wisdom or intuitive wisdom.

[06:55]

And paramita, since ancient times, is well known, an intentional pun. It intentionally has two meanings. It means perfection and it also means crossing over. Paramita can also mean crossing over. So it's supposed to have this dual meaning. It means perfection and it means crossing over. Crossing over from what to what? Usually you could say from suffering to liberation or from samsara to nirvana. Conventional understanding, what's being crossed over. But it means there's basically no independent existence. That everything exists interdependently. Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty and thus relieved all suffering.

[08:07]

Relieved all suffering because it was relieved from the view that anything has some inherent thingness. Everything is changing all the time. Everything is always changing. That's emptiness. That's all it means. It just means when you hear emptiness, you should ask, empty of what? Empty of some separate thingness, some defining quality that makes it some permanent thing. There's no such thing as a permanent thing. Everything exists interdependently with everything else. So this is, you could say, seeing into non-dualism, seeing into the interdependent nature of all being.

[09:10]

The Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says, we have to learn to see with the eyes of interbeing. If we want to be relieved from suffering, We have to learn to see like Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. Learn to see with the eyes of interbeing. Or, as Blanche Hartman used to say, self and other are not two. Here's a nifty quote from a contemporary teacher, Norman Fisher, from his book, Training in Compassion. Norman said, Though conventionally I am me and you are you, from an absolute perspective, a God's eye view, if you will, there is no self and other.

[10:23]

There's only being and there's only love, which is being sharing itself with itself without impediment and with warmth. It just happens to look like you and me to us because this is how our minds and sensory apparatus works. This love without boundary is emptiness practice. Norman doesn't say emptiness teaching, he says emptiness practice. The invitation there is to take it on, to try it out, to see how that can operate in your own life. How can that operate in our lives? Okay, let's get back to this little guy in Dayton, Ohio, laying there.

[11:25]

Lights coming in the bedroom. Thrill goes through his whole body. No school. Now, you could say, you could break it down, you know, and say, well, the light was very different, right? The light, the morning lights being reflected off nothing but pristine snow. And sound is very different. Sound is very different. It's completely muffled. Normal sound, it's not carrying, it's completely muffled. It's a different world. So the sound, the light is completely different. But he wasn't, it was me. But was it really? Was that me? I don't know. I thought about that. Was that me? This little guy. He was kind of cute.

[12:30]

His mom thought so. Anyway. He wasn't thinking all that, right? No. No, of course not. He wasn't even conscious. He wasn't even fully awake. But yeah. Sound was different. Light was different. It was a whole different world. Whole different world. A world with no school. On that morning. And that he knew. Interesting. I don't even think he knew how much he hated school. Yeah. It was just completely in the body. just completely in the body. Prajna, the word, the Sanskrit word, etymologically is made up of two elements that are common Indo-European word roots that are shared with English,

[13:51]

and other languages. Pra is the same as pre, like prefix, before. And nya is the same like knowledge or gnosis, knowing. So prajna means before knowing. It's one of the six paramitas in Mahayana Buddhism. we practice the six paramitas. There's another list of ten paramitas. Did you know that? It's also taught. If you read Robert Aiken Roshi's book about the paramitas, he's got a list of ten. And the four bonus paramitas, one of them is the practice of the perfection of, all right, are you ready for this? Nyanya. That's knowledge, knowledge. That's the perfection of knowing things, actually, like studying.

[14:55]

Like, you know, read a Dharma book. That's the perfection of knowing things. But prajna is the practice of the perfection of wisdom before you know. So, intuitive wisdom. Trusting your experience. just learning to trust one's experience. He wasn't even fully awake and he knew no school. Boom. That's right. I think that this is really important and the importance

[15:56]

kind of what motivated me to try to talk about it tonight. Because we live, we're living currently in a time, I'm not going to grace it with the word era, but the current situation, I think that many people are having a disconcerting experience, shared disconcerting, uneasy experience of lies, [...] truthiness, you know. fake news, alternative facts, that kind of thing.

[17:06]

And not knowing what to trust. And subsequently, I think, my impression is a lot of people just deciding not trust anything. Don't trust anything. And as I've said before from this seat, that's dangerous and the danger is giving over to cynicism, corrosive doubt, paralysis, despair. And I see a lot of that too. I see a lot of real hunger for authenticity and sincerity.

[18:12]

I don't know. Anybody else here feel that way? I could be whistling in the dark. I don't know. It's kind of what I'm feeling anyway. That's where I'm at these days. And I think, oh wait, this is time for me to pick up my stick. For those of you who had lasagna and tiramisu, good evening. I think we got the goods. We can deliver. Yeah. I think so. Sometimes in a practice period here at Tassajara, actually twice a year, there's two ceremonies we do, which if you've never been in a practice period at Tassajara,

[19:33]

you might be very surprised about because they might just blow away all your preconceived ideas about what Zen practice looks like. Most of the time we are very quiet and we are formal in our formal Zen robes. It's true. There's a ceremony we do both the one celebrating Buddha's enlightenment and the one celebrating Buddha's birthday where we bring that drum inside, we circumambulate the zendo, we throw flower petals everywhere, some people are literally dancing, and we're chanting the school song at the top of our lungs in Japanese. Actually, we do both, English and Japanese, but when we do it in Japanese, We do it with the drum.

[20:35]

And there's two people on either, there's a person on either side of the drum. Boom, boom, boom, boom. It's very dramatic. And fun. And my favorite part, my favorite part of the sutra. Yes, I am that big of a Zen nerd. I have a favorite part of the Heart Sutra. And it's kind of a crescendo when we do this ceremony. We go, musho toko bodhisatta e hanyaharamita. Musho toko bodhisatta e hanyaharamita means, with nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajnaparamita. A bodhisattva relies on prajnaparamita. So, you're okay.

[21:41]

You don't have to have it all figured out. In fact, we often say things like, not knowing is closest. Because you can rely on this inner sense of connectedness, of interbeing. You can rely on this intuitive wisdom. You know where you are. We got the goods, I'm telling you. Bodhisattva relies on Prajnaparamita and thus the mind is without hindrance, without hindrance. There is no fear. Remember this one? No fear. Abhaya mudra. Non-fear.

[22:43]

Confidence. You have confidence in your way. I went to So, you know, as you know, as you know, my wife, Linda Gallion, is not here right now. You might have noticed. I go and visit her every month, and she comes and visits me here in Tazahara, visits all of us here in Tazahara every month, usually at least five days each way. This month, it got divvied up because I'll be leaving, actually, on the... The moment this retreat ends, Monday morning, I'll be leaving to go to San Francisco, and then I'll come back in time for no race on Friday. So that's not the whole five days. So I took another day. When I went to that wedding in Green Gulch with May and Kodo, remember? I went to May and Kodo's wedding. I was the G-shot for that wedding.

[23:48]

And... I had a nifty conversation with a total stranger. This happens at weddings a lot, you know. Someone I'd never met before. And then suddenly we're just like old, old friends. We're having this deep conversation, you know. And the conversation, I wasn't like trying to make it about Dharma. But, you know, she's like, I'm talking to a Zen priest. I think I'll ask him some questions. I mean, it really was a general conversation until we got up to the part about, you know, What about this confidence? What about that? What about trusting what you trust? What about trusting your experience? And she said, how do you do that? Good question. Good question. And I was so just about to say thousands of hours of zazen. But I thought that would not be, I stopped myself. I stopped myself. I said, that would not be a skillful response.

[24:50]

So I said, well, it's in the body. You've got to get it in your body. It's not the mind. The body. The body, body, body. The other day, I did zazen instruction for 30 people. That was so much fun. Oh, my gosh. Every time I do that, I think, I have to do this more often. And when I get back, after no race, lately I've been saying a lot of things, after no race, after no race, after no race, I'll do zazen instruction, instruction, because any continuing monk, if you've done one practice period at Tassajara, I want you to have that thrill too. I want you to have that enjoyment of sharing your practice. Anyway, I said something. in Zaza Instruction, that I often say, when you sit upright like this, when you're in alignment, when you are taking up the posture of mind like a mirror, and this is a shout-out for the yogis here.

[26:04]

I forgot. There's also a yoga retreat going on. People doing yoga practice. Hi. Welcome. This is a heart-opening pose. It's a balance pose and it's a heart-opening pose because you let your shoulder blades slide down your back. You feel this lift in your sternum. You lift up like this, like Prajnaparamita, the mother of Buddhas, is holding your heart and gently lifting it up. You're open across here. You're open here. It's a heart-opening pose. When you open your heart, you can practice. Warm-hearted practice. You can practice connection and courage. Courage means of the heart. Courage, de la cour. It means from the heart. You can cultivate this courage. You can cultivate this connection.

[27:05]

I think. That's my premise. My teacher, Sojourn Roshi, was leading actually a Vipassana retreat for the first time in his life. He was invited to co-lead a retreat with his Dharma disciple, Gil Fronstel, and another student, Max Ersteen. The three of them co-led this retreat. And part of the retreat, I wasn't there, but Linda Gallien was. And she told me this story, and I love this story. Somebody in the retreat asked Mel, do you do metta practice? Metta practice is loving-kindness meditation, actively extending loving-kindness. It's kind of process-oriented. You're doing something actively, actively cultivating loving-kindness.

[28:08]

You can use words like, may I be happy. free from suffering, at ease in body and mind. May Kathy be happy, at ease from suffering, free in body and mind. I lost it up. But you can practice. You can do that. Well, somebody asked Mel if he did that. And he was quiet for quite a while. And then he said, I think that's all I'm ever doing. Yeah. I think that's all I'm ever doing. You sit upright in this heart-opening pose. You cultivate warm-hearted practice. You're cultivating connection and courage.

[29:11]

And you're just like a meta machine. You're a meta-generator. Yeah. I know. I'm being a little silly. But I'm also being... Here comes the stick again. Very serious. Very serious. Or, as Norman Fisher said, there's only love. There's only love. When people ask me what I believe in as a Buddhist, one answer I like to give is I believe in cause and effect. For example, I've been washing dishes a lot lately. I've really been enjoying it, not lingering over breakfast and just getting up and going to the shack.

[30:14]

Between that and the time I have to be at staff stand-up meeting at 8.15, I can often get most of the student dishes done. Then I'm standing there getting everybody's dishes, and then I'm asking people to scrape their dishes carefully. Please scrape your bowls. Please use the spatula. And then sometimes I even say, scraping your bowl carefully is Buddha Dharma. It is. Scraping your bowl carefully is Buddha Dharma. It's taking very good care of what's in front of you. If little itty-bitty scraps of food don't go in the compost and they go in the water, they go in the water and they go into this holding tank where there's this biofilter which some poor person from the shop has got to scrub out, or worse yet, more of it, and I definitely include your tea leaves and coffee grounds from the coffee tea area,

[31:15]

if it winds up past that point, it's going to go in the leach field that goes beyond that. And then we'll all be like, phew, what a pong. Yeah, you don't want that. We had to fix that. It's fixed. Thank you. Well, something similar is going on in our world, right? Yeah. EPA does not stand for Earth Plundering Alliance, it turns out. Yeah, no, it's not funny though. That man is under 11 separate federal investigations for ethics violations and he still has a job. He still has a job because he's doing exactly the opposite. of what EPA is supposed to stand for. And if you're scared, you should be.

[32:19]

But it doesn't mean you should be paralyzed. It doesn't mean you should give in to despair. Buddha is Sanskrit for woke. We sit zazen with our eyes open. We don't turn away. We don't turn away from what's difficult. My zazen instruction in five words, stay present for whatever arises. You may love it. You may hate it. You may be terrified. Stay present. Stay woke. Keep your eyes open. Buddha is Sanskrit for woke. Pay attention. Reverend Angel, she's coming back this summer, Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams, she said this a year and change ago,

[33:36]

She said, be careful because humans can normalize anything. Yeah. Be careful. Everybody can rely on Prajnaparamita. Everybody can have, does have a moral compass. You just have to find it. And then when you find it, You listen to it. Then vote. Okay. That's pretty much all I wanted to say from the Dharma seat this evening. Like I said, I'm leaving on the 14th.

[34:37]

And I'm sad in a way that I won't be, well, I'm definitely sad. I won't be at the first meeting of the book club, which will be in the evening of the 14th. But in another way, I'm tickled pink that, you know, Dawu and Tim and others are stepping forward to facilitate it. And I don't have to be at the first meeting. But I'm reading the book. I brought it again, awakening together. And I brought another. Well, to finish my talk, Awakening Together by Larry Yang. This is what we're studying in the book club this summer as we're studying racial justice and inclusivity as Buddha Dharma. Larry Yang says, do not think awakening is not possible. The freedom we seek from this life of suffering does not occur by inflicting more suffering. no matter how much pain we are in.

[35:38]

The restorative work of love must be done with love. This is the transformation of our heart that leads to the transformative liberation that we seek for our communities and for our world. It is the path of living together, growing together, and awakening together. Thank you very much for your attention. Good night. 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.

[36:37]

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