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, bodhisattvas. How many people are here for the first time? Welcome. So I should define bodhisattvas. So a bodhisattva is an enlightening being, an awakening being. And everyone in this room is a bodhisattva. It means that in our lives, just as we are, without adding anything, subtracting anything, or doing anything, or messing with ourselves in any way, we all have the capacity for supreme, perfect enlightenment. And that every choice and every action that we make in this world, in this life, can express that for ourselves and other people.

[01:12]

And yet, because of our habits and preconceptions, we're likely to make mistakes. So please don't be embarrassed about making mistakes. They are the only way to learn. And so today, I would like to talk about the human shadow, particularly because it's getting to be Halloween week. And so I'd like to bring up, you know, what are we scared of? What haunts us? Let's make it a little less threatening. What might haunt people? Yeah. What might haunt human beings in this world? Does anyone want to take a, just shout it out. You don't have to raise your hand or anything. What might haunt or scare us in this world? The future? Greed? Dying, yeah?

[02:15]

Violence? Abandonment? Mistakes? Darkness? Isolate? Uncertainty. Uncertainty. Absolutely. Yeah. Pain. Completely dependent on others. There's a good one. Intimacy. Yeah, you're right. Money. Yeah. Being alone. Getting too excited. Yeah. Love. Uh-huh. That's pretty... Anger. Yeah. I think we're beginning to get the idea here. Everything. Good point. And it's because we're designed. I heard a statistic that 99.999992% of our experience is that our senses are designed to filter out that much of our experience so that we can cope with life.

[03:23]

And I don't know whether that's really the right amount, but it's something like that. If there are any neuroscientists in this room, please correct me, because I don't remember the statistic. But it's a huge amount of stuff that we're designed not to notice. And when we don't notice it, and don't acknowledge it, and don't take care of it, it haunts us. Or I should say, it haunts us. Yeah. And so we have these traditions. You know, Halloween, Day of the Dead, Obon, are good examples of traditions that humans have created to acknowledge us. acknowledge this part of life. Even like the ancient myths of Inanna and Persephone going down to hell and coming back as themselves are examples of this.

[04:36]

And we need this in our lives. We need this to take care of ourselves. If we don't have rituals for taking care of the huge part of the world that we don't notice, and instead we push it at a distance from ourselves, we will never live our lives. But if we know that we're designed to cut out almost everything and be limited... then we can take our place as enlightening beings in the world. I'm not saying that you have a special status as an enlightened being. I'm not saying that you're better than someone else or that any of us is better than anyone else. As a matter of fact, the only way that we can begin to enter this territory is by being equal and by...

[05:38]

finding the part of ourselves that expresses mutuality with everyone and everything. And if we don't, then our attitude towards what we isolate ourselves from would be either condescending or fearful, depending on in what direction our projection goes. I hope I'm making sense. So in that light, I'd like to recommend a little book on the human shadow. And I've had this book for a long time. This is by Robert Bly, the poet. And Robert Bly, in case any of you don't notice him, don't know who he is, is one of the, you know, he's a great poet and a great thinker. And for instance, you know, at the time when women were just starting to come into our own in this world, last few generations.

[06:38]

I think, wasn't it Robert Bly who was one of the people who noticed that men had to come into their own too? You know? So men, that men have an existence apart from, you know, whatever privilege, whatever male privilege has happened over the last... 25 to 100 to 12,000 years. You know, there's other parts of being male besides that particular thing, which is a very important thing. And so, but he noticed it, along with some other thinkers. And so this is important. So... Anyway, this is a great book, and I'd like to talk about this section of his book where he, well, he calls it five stages in exiling, hunting, and retrieving the shadow.

[07:51]

So there are many other good books on the shadow. but this one is so poetic and cheerful that I felt like I had to use it. So the first sentence of this is, when one projects, one is really giving away an energy or power that rightfully belongs to one's own treasury. A man may give his feeling side or relationship mode away to his wife. Then he is rid of it. And when a feeling problem with the children comes up, he naturally lets her handle the problem. This is just an example. Just like a woman may give the strength part or the doing part of herself a way to a man. And then she is rid of it. And when a doing problem with work or something comes up, she naturally lets her.

[08:54]

him handle the problem. Or anyone may give any side of themselves away to someone else. Like a disabled person may give the able side of themselves away. You know, a person who experiences class issues may give away the rich part or socially connected part of themselves and so on. And these are naturally parts of us that we have to reclaim in some way. I'm not talking about self-improvement here. I'm talking about haunting and scariness. And so let's just say what his five stages are. So he calls the first stage of projection the state of mind in which shadow material, well handled by trained conspirators, comes to rest outside the owner's psyche and seems likely to remain out there somewhere.

[10:01]

But sooner or later, then he says, for instance, he talks about a bride and groom. It's a particular kind of metaphor that he uses in this book. And there are other metaphors that one could use, but this is the one that he uses. So, for instance, he says, he talks about during the marriage service, what takes place between the groom and the bride's mother. What takes, I'm sorry, what takes place between people, between the groom and the bride's father. And this is the flavor of it. Perhaps their spirits meet in the garage, their actual bodies being in church, and the bride's father passes over to the groom as much as he can find of the giant or tyrant that he has been carrying for his daughter. The bride's father leaves the church door lighter, the groom heavier.

[11:08]

Anyway, we do this all the time. So, for instance, in an argument, one may pass a bully. over to the other side. We end up feeling relieved and right, and the other person ends up feeling a different way. That's called projection. And so then the second stage is that after a while, the projections we have, if we're sitting and noticing ourselves, our projections start to rattle around. We're not quite fit. We notice inconsistencies, for instance, that the bully is actually sensitive to somebody else. And oh, I didn't know that he or she knew how to do that. And so there's a troublesome inconsistency. And so, you know, so somebody may be carrying our, you know, fearsome patriarch or

[12:15]

you know, other part of our psyche. And we notice that they're not like that all the time. They love their dog, for instance. So anyway, it says, a right-winger may be compassionate, a leftist may be disciplined. I mean, this book has a lot of cliches in it. And he uses it because he's outlining projections. This is distressing. In this stage, one gets nervous. Anything can happen. Exuberance, life force, inconsistency, and spontaneity become threatening to us. I'll call the third stage that state of mind in which the distressed person calls on the moral intelligence to repair the rattle. You know? The idea is scary because we need our moral intelligence, yet here it becomes a tool for continued unconsciousness.

[13:18]

So people with moral intelligence are often very dangerous types because the moment the mask is about to fall off, they step forward on request to pull it back. Okay? So, you know, he said... When our saturation bombing from high altitudes, use of napalm on civilians, and policy of village massacre began to cast doubt on Lyndon Johnson's belief that Americans were noble, Johnson began to compare himself to Lincoln. And Rostow spoke of moral fiber, duties of the peace-giving nation, and so on. In child abuse, the rule is every act of cruelty, conscious or unconscious, that our parents take, we interpret as an act of love. So the moral intelligence redefines gross human abuse as an act of love.

[14:22]

So anyway, basically what he's talking about is that we begin to scramble to repair the breach, and that those scramblings become, they make our thought change. thought process more and more bizarre. And that's what's called being haunted. So that's the third stage. The fourth stage. The state of mind in which we feel the sensation of diminishment. When that whole projection and repair thing begins to become a little transparent to us. And we begin to notice what we've done and feel our actual pettiness and smallness. Okay? So it's like the witch. I want you to separate these seeds by sunset, and I'm going to eat you up if you don't. The witch doesn't say, well, let's just check the I Ching to see if you should separate these seeds.

[15:25]

Okay? So... Anyway, so he uses these examples. And he says, if we've given away 30 parts of ourself, we'll then eventually feel ourselves diminished in 30 different ways. Men and women usually take back their spiritual guide from a guru when they feel sufficiently diminished. Actually, I'd encourage you to take that back right now. Don't wait until you feel diminished. That doesn't mean they were wrong to give it to him or her in the first place, but the idea suggests that each student should be as alert to his or her diminishment as to the initial elevation or empowerment. And then he calls the fifth stage in this process, amounts to the state of mind in which you retrieve the giant, retrieve the hero, retrieve the witch, retrieve the wicked child,

[16:30]

Retrieve our brutal national character. And the whole process of retrieval could be called eating the shadow. Okay? So we actually do take back those parts of ourselves, and there are ways to do it in Zen practice. So I'd like to talk about two ways that are expressing themselves this week. So the first one we did this morning, and it's the full moon ceremony, or Riyaka Fusats. We do it once a month, so don't feel like you missed it if you didn't come this morning. But if you want to, you're welcome to come to this ceremony, or for people who did this ceremony this morning, maybe you'll know what I'm talking about. So every month at the time of the full moon... here at Zen Center, we have a ceremony in which we restate our intention to practice.

[17:34]

And the words ryaka fusats, ryaka means short, and fusats means to take care of bad karma and create good karma. And it's the ceremony when we renew our intention by renewing our vows. And it has a very, very long history. It was done in India, in Vedic times, actually even possibly in pre-Vedic times. And you can still see that ceremony today. It's been continued all that time in the Hindu population, in which people just before the full moon really clean and renew the house. and put out fresh flowers, food offerings, water offerings, and so on. So there's a feeling of renewal and some ceremony associated with that. Well, one of Buddha's followers, King Bimbisara, decided it would be a good thing if the monks in Buddha's community continued that ceremony.

[18:41]

And so at first, what people did... what the monastics did was once a month at the time of the full moon, they'd gather together and just sit. So they would sit at the distance that we use now, which is about arm's length, and they would sit in a circle and contemplate their mind and how their intention, how they were doing with their intention. Just like practice period today... when we started with an intention, the first day of practice period, and every so often it comes up in zazen. This was a formal example of that, where the monks intentionally brought up once a month, how am I doing with my intention? And they would sit with that, and various feelings would arise. Well, it wasn't The monastic practice in India wasn't like the practice here at Zen Center in that the monastics did the practicing and the lay people did the supporting.

[19:49]

Those were clearly defined roles. And pretty soon the lay people began to be bored by the ceremony of watching the monks sit once a month. And so they asked that some dharma be recited or given. during that ceremony, and Buddha agreed. So what happened then was pretty interesting. The lay people didn't just want the monks to recite their intention or what the Buddha said. They wanted to know how the monks were doing and to be accountable for what they had done. Basically, it was like a donor's report. in which the donors want to know how the donation is doing in creating the thing that was promised. And so I think this was really interesting because it created the tradition of accountability, not just to Buddha, but also to each other and to the world.

[20:51]

So then the monks, a senior monk, would lead the ceremony just like Blanche did today. And... the senior monk would say the vow, and Joan was saying the vow so that everyone could repeat it. And then the senior monk would say, well, have you done it or not? And if you had made a transgression in relation to that vow, you would say so. And there were various things that then happened after that. various ways in which he could return that shadow or that transgression back into practice. And anyway, the ceremony kept growing over time. So it became simpler when there were various returns to what was felt to be the original spirit of Buddhism, the Theravadan monks,

[21:57]

continued the ceremony for over 200 vows or for women over 300 vows. But in later countries, the ceremony evolved to have simpler vows until it reached the form that we have today. I'm skipping over a whole lot. And so we do the entire ceremony. in this posture, which expresses our intention. And then there are a lot of full bouts as well. We invoke, the beginning of the ceremony is acknowledging, thank you, acknowledging our ancient twisted karma just in a blanket statement. All the evil karma committed by me since of old is the original statement. is a translation from the Japanese.

[22:58]

We say, all my ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So we're fully avowing it, which means we're acknowledging the shadow. And then we take, then we After we do that scary thing, we get support. We call the names of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the main ones, who are different aspects of awakening. And from that support, we recite the four vows. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. We'll recite those later. And then with those formless intentions, because they're really infinite, we take refuge specifically in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, awakening, the teaching, and the community of all life.

[24:16]

And then we say specifically in the precepts how we intend to do that. Okay, this is a little bit of a resting place. So if you need to change posture to refresh yourself, please do. So this week, we'll be doing Sejiki ceremony at the time of Halloween. And the definition of Sejiki is a food offering. And in the ceremony, we feed. the parts of ourselves that we have denied. And so we used to call the ceremony Segaki, but the name of the ceremony was Segaki, but we did not know that that was actually a racist term. And so the Soto School, a couple of years ago, changed the name of the ceremony from what it originally was to Sejiki, which means food offering.

[25:18]

And so... In the Buddhist cosmology, there are six worlds. And the worlds are hell, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, jealous or self-righteous gods, and gods. So those are six. And we think of them as different realms of transmigration. but we don't exactly know what transmigration means. Some people believe in transmigration like from lifetime to lifetime, and some people believe in transmigration from moment to moment or second to second or thought to thought. So there's a variety of beliefs around the six worlds, and different cultures and different people use this teaching in different ways.

[26:24]

But what I'd like to notice is that in the metaphor of the six worlds, human existence is the one in which human practice is possible. And in the other realms, there are obstacles or hindrances that prevent one from practicing. So hell, hungry ghosts and animals in hell beings are too tortured, hungry ghosts are starving, and animals are fearful in these worlds. There's something going on that doesn't allow them to practice. In the realms that we usually think of as higher, jealous gods are too self-righteous, to think of something outside themselves and their own beliefs.

[27:27]

And people in heaven or beings in heaven are too blissful to care about practice. And so humans, with all of our shadows and desires and angers and so on, are the ones who can acknowledge them in practice. And so... At the time of the Buddha, one of the Buddha's disciples had a vision of his mother that she was suffering in a world in which she was starving, that food would turn to fire and water would turn to liquid fire and she could receive no nourishment anywhere. So because of his... he went to the Buddha and told him what he had dreamed. And the Buddha explained that his disciple was actually seeing the suffering of his mother in the world of the hungry ghosts.

[28:33]

And hungry ghosts are creatures who have huge bellies and very skinny throats. And so whatever they try to eat, they can't take in as nourishment. And so the Buddha suggested that his disciple Moggallana, make an offering of the food that his mother could eat. So he did. And dedicated in a ceremony. So then skip forward 2,500 years to Kobanchino Roshi, a teacher who helped us for many, many years until he died trying to save his daughter from drowning. Coben was an exceptional human being. Human, human being. And he was once speaking with Rick Levine. Rick was a priest ordained here who's a doctor in San Francisco. And Coben said to Rick that this ceremony of Sejiki...

[29:43]

makes a statement about how to deal with negative things, negative happenings, negative part of phenomena. It's a kind of reminding ceremony, expanding your awakening to the darkness. Awareness is expanded to existence, which is unseen, unknown, and unthought. And then he ended with this very profound statement, negative is another positive side, because awareness is already... round and pure. We can expand our practice of compassion in space as well as in time, maybe even with this ceremony. So because of the shadow, we need a ceremony like this. And in this ceremony, Well, let's just talk a little bit about it. Hungry ghosts are people who have died without completing their karma and also unfulfilled parts of us.

[30:48]

So maybe the first thing is just to name them, name people who have recently died and have unfinished business. And if you want to do that, you can actually suggest a name for the ceremony. There are two things to do. They both involve writing something down. So the first thing is that if it's another person, there's a little wooden box out there right by the door to the front office, and it says, names for Sejiki Ceremony. And if there's someone who has died without being able to finish something, especially something in relationship to you or people you know, please write their name, put it in the box, and it will be part of the ceremony on Friday night. And if there's something about yourself which is unfinished, it doesn't have to be read out loud in the ceremony.

[31:52]

You can take that, write it on a piece of paper, and put it in a space where you can see it in your home. And then New Year's Eve, we have a bonfire in which you can burn it. It doesn't mean you're killing it. It means you're letting it be part of all life. So in Japan, this ceremony of Seijiki is actually done as part of Obon. It's a ceremony within Obon. But we, in our culture, American culture, do this ceremony as we decided to do it at Halloween. So Day of the Dead, Halloween, are part of our culture that grew up right here. And Obon is also part of our culture, but we've transformed the time to include all of those at one ceremony.

[32:55]

Because we can't, basically at Zen Center, we can't do a ceremony every day. And if we try to include the separate dates, and do all the different ceremonies on all the different dates. We would never just have normal zazen, so we have to combine. So that's what we do. And in the ceremony, we turn the altar around. You see that statue in the back? That's Mahaprajna Paramita. We turn the altar around, and we have an altar, and instead of putting the traditional obon food... I'm afraid that we've made some traditions, so we often put like ho-hos and dig-dongs and Halloween candy and stuff like that, junk food that we think that denied parts of ourselves will enjoy. And then there's a procession in which the priest who's starting the procession uses a staff that makes noise, and that's to gently let...

[34:02]

the unknown parts of ourselves know that this is about to happen. We do a chant in which literally we offer the hungry beings food. We nourish every part of ourselves and of these beings. And during the ceremony, the priest is doing some secret stuff. I'll tell you the main thing, but they're going to be doing it in silence and in secret. So they'll be making mantras and mudras that invite the unfulfilled beings into the room, that open their throats and that send those unfulfilled parts now fulfilled back to their worlds. Okay? And... So there's so much about this ceremony to say, but we're getting to the end of our time.

[35:03]

So I do want to say that just like in the refuge ceremony from this morning, the unseen parts of ourselves have help. The first thing is that you're welcome to come in costume. The costume, it's okay for it to be outrageous. Just remember that it's a Zen temple, so... The costume has to be something that another person can actually practice next to, if that makes sense to you. So if the person's constantly like, okay, that won't work. So do what you need to do, okay? But keep in mind that there are people next to you who need to practice. So we're the help. Because in our costumes and in our choices, we're acknowledging the unfulfilled sides of ourselves and what we see. And the other help is that in the back, there'll be some banners with a lot of different colors on them.

[36:11]

So I want to tell you about those banners now because they're not mentioned in the ceremony except in transliterated books. which started out as Sanskrit, were transliterated to Chinese and then transliterated to Japanese and then put in English letters. So they're probably, it's hard to discover what they mean. But those names that we'll be reciting, there'll be a big kind of booming sound on every name. And those names are... the names of the five families of Buddhas. And they're associated with getting the help of the very stuff from which the earth is made. Okay, so you know that when Buddha, that when Buddha, the night Buddha was about to be enlightened, Mara, who's the basically personification of trickster-ness in Buddha,

[37:16]

in early Buddhism, tried to get the Buddha not to get enlightened after all. So the first thing he did was to send all his desires out to greet him. So Mara got his daughters to dance seductively in front of the Buddha. And the Buddha said, uh-uh, I'm doing something important now, later, or never. Okay? So then the Buddha kept sitting. And then Mara realized that wasn't going to work. So Mara thought, why not send armies? And so Mara got armies to come with swords and flaming nuclear bombs and all sorts of things. And the Buddha said, no thank you, I'm sitting and I'm going to wake up. And kept sitting. And then finally, Mara hit on the lowest trick of all. and thought maybe the Buddha had a shred of unconfidence, lack of confidence, and started saying things like, who are you to wake up?

[38:28]

You're just a limited human being. What right do you have to the awakening of the fully enlightened ones? And went on in that vein for a while. So it was kind of the specter of doubt, the ghost of doubt. And what the Buddha did was very interesting. He sat for a while and then Mara continued, I have millions and billions of witnesses because every being is my witness and you don't have anything at all. And the Buddha said, the earth is my witness. And he touched the earth with his hand like this. And the earth responded in six different ways. It says the earth shook. But also I think the stuff of which the earth is made comes forth to support our awakening moment after moment.

[39:30]

And so... All of these elements and ways that the earth is have their own colors and their own forms. And those are called the five families of Buddha. So, for instance, Virochana Buddha. That's the wisdom of everything whose color is white and element is space. Okay? or the mirror wisdom of the lake, or of water, whose color is blue, the Buddha is Akshobhya. Jewel Buddha, whose color is yellow, and whose aspect is equanimity. The Lotus Buddha, whose color is red, whose element is fire, and whose Buddha is Amitabha, and the awakening in karma, whose element is wind or change, and whose color is green, and whose Buddha is a Moga City.

[40:49]

So all those Buddhas are in a banner in the back of the room, silently witnessing to the nourishing of the unseen parts of ourselves. Anyway, I could go on for a really long time, and I won't because we need to close. But maybe I'll close with a poem from Robert Bly. And maybe the real close of this lecture is if you help. acknowledge the unseen and unknown parts of ourselves and our lives. That's the real close to the lecture, is that you, all of us, are the enlightening beings of this age. There aren't other enlightening beings we can count on.

[41:53]

I feel like the... you know, that princess figure and the never, the never, what was it called? The never-ending story? It's you. You are, you know, help save, what was it called? Never? Storybook land? Neverland? I can't remember. What? Nirvania? Help save Nirvania, everybody. Help save Samskaria. Help show that nirvana and samskaria are the same and not different. Help all beings by acknowledging the unseen, unknown parts of all of us and enlisting the help of all good forces to do so. By doing that, you make all of us real. You realize. our life and our practice. And you hold up horizontal transmission of the truth, the transmission that says that all of us, each one of us is important, that each one of us is necessary, that every moment, every problem, every situation is a meaningful part of the whole.

[43:17]

So let's see if I can find this poem. Here we go. For my son Noah, ten years old. Night and day arrive, and day after day goes by. And what is old remains old, and what is young remains young and grows old. The lumber pile does not grow younger. nor the two-by-fours lose their darkness. But the old tree goes on. The barn stands without help so many years. The advocate of darkness and night is not lost. The horse steps up, swings on one leg, turns its body. The chicken, flapping claws onto the roost, its wings whelping,

[44:24]

And walloping. But what is primitive is not to be shot out into the night and the dark. And slowly the kind man comes closer, loses his rage, sits down at table. So I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness. When you sit drawing or making books, stapled with messages to the world. Or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair. Or we sit at a table with small tea carefully poured. So we pass our time together, calm and delighted. Thank you very much for your attention. Please take care. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[45:28]

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

[45:48]

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