This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. My name is Robert, for people who don't know me. Do you want to come in?

[01:02]

So, in 1993, I was living in San Francisco. And I had a girlfriend who lived on Russian Hill. And I would stay at her place sometimes. And we would play Joni Mitchell, which she loved. and we would make dinner together in the evening and hang out. It was so much fun. And one evening, we were doing this that we did, that we'd like to do. It was kind of our thing to do, was to make dinner together. And I think I needed a... My memory is that we needed a bottle of wine.

[02:05]

So I went to the store, and it was starting to get dark. And it was one of these beautiful San Francisco evenings where the sky was just so blue, and it was kind of warm out. not very cold, and I was walking along the street, and it was so beautiful. And the trees, these large trees, were kind of hanging out over the street. And I was walking along, and all of a sudden I noticed this loud squawking in these trees above me. I was like, what? What is going on? And I was all by myself. There was nobody around. And I looked up into these trees and there were parrots flying across the street, you know, back and forth between these trees.

[03:10]

Huge, huge flock of parrots. And they were just like going crazy. I don't know what was going on, but they were just like going back and forth and squawking. And I stood there and I looked around and it was like, what is happening here? And this was before the movie, Parrots of Telegraph Hill and everything. And I had been living in San Francisco for like 10 years, but I had no idea that there were parrots in San Francisco. And so I went to the store and I went back and I just couldn't wait to tell my girlfriend about the parrots. So I walked in and I said, Megan, Megan, you won't believe this. There are parrots right out there. And she said, fine, Robert. I need the carrots for the salad. Cut the carrots for the salad. And I was like, okay.

[04:21]

So I didn't bring it up again. And we had dinner. But like, A week later, we're doing the same thing. Joni Mitchell's playing, and she hadn't come home yet. I was there, and I was starting to make dinner. And all of a sudden, like this force came through the door, and like the door slammed, and she came running into the apartment. She says, Robert, Robert, you won't believe this. There are parrots out there in the trees. I said, well, I know. I saw them. And I think this was before. We couldn't even Google. She said, we have to go to a bookstore and find a book and find out what's going on with these birds. So that relationship ended up not going ultimately so well.

[05:34]

But something happened that was very important soon after that. She came home one day. We were there and probably playing Joni Mitchell again. And she said, Robert, you have to do something different. You have to do something different. Your life is out of control. And she was right. My life was completely out of control. And she said, actually, I decided what you're going to do. I said, what am I going to do? She said, I decided where you're going to go. You're going to go to Tassajara. I said, what is Tassajara? She goes, it's a Zen Buddhist monastery, and you're going to learn how to meditate.

[06:35]

And she had known, the year before, I had been in Asia, and I'd stayed in a Buddhist monastery, and it kind of, it affected me, and she knew that. But I said, no, I can't go to a Zen Buddhist place. Those guys are, like, way too serious for me. And she says, well, you're going? I already made the reservation, right? And I signed you up, and you're going in three days. This weekend, you're going. I'm going to drive you there. I said, okay. And so she drove me to Jamesburg and dropped me off there. And I went to Tazahara for 10 days, and I had a terrible time. And I came back, and I knew that something about what she said was true.

[07:38]

So I thought, well, maybe I need to go somewhere else. Maybe not a Zen monastery, but maybe doing some traveling, some more traveling. That would be good. Get myself, you know, together. So I went to South America for like four months. And I came back. On December 28th or something like that. And I stayed with my girlfriend. And I was out one day. And I came back. And I was walking back to her place. And it was a nice big high rise on Green Street. And I noticed that there was a pile of clothes out on the sidewalk. And I thought, oh, that's so strange for this neighborhood. And then the weirdest thing happened. I noticed they were my clothes. And I was like, why are my clothes out here on the sidewalk?

[08:40]

It turns out she'd really had enough. And she thought I'd had an affair when I was in South America. I really didn't. But that's okay. It doesn't matter. She threw all my clothes out from the fourth story onto the sidewalk. And so I kind of pulled them together. I put them in a bag, and I said, okay, well, I guess I need to do something else. So I went and stayed with a friend. And we had New Year's Eve together, and that was kind of a not-pretty scene. And the next day I was recovering from that. And then I thought, I really need to do something different. And the next day, January 2nd, I came and knocked on the door here at City Center. About 8 o'clock in the morning. With my bag.

[09:46]

Clothes. Slightly dirty from the street, but that's okay. And I knocked on the door. And somebody in wonderful Zen Center style, somebody opened the door a little bit and said, hello, what do you want? And I said, well, I'd like to come stay here. And they shut the door. So I stood there. And like 10 minutes later, somebody came and said, do you want to stay here? And I said, yeah, if I can. They said, well... okay, you can stay for two days. And that was almost 23 years ago. I'm telling this story because I'm now going

[10:55]

out of residence here at the San Francisco Zen Center. And I wanted to talk about that just a little bit and talk about coming and going. The Buddha sat down under a tree and saw two things. He saw that everything is going all the time. Everything is moving, changing. Going. And he saw that and felt that and realized that deep within.

[12:05]

And he understood what that meant, that everything, as far as you could possibly see, was just going. And it was not only just going, but it was going through. together with everything else. There wasn't anything going outside of everything going. Everything's going together. Everything is just going.

[13:14]

All of us are just like that too. Just going. Our health is going. Our eyes are going. Our thoughts are going. Our care is going. Sometimes our equanimity is going. Our happiness is going. Our anger is going. The oceans are going. All the fish in the ocean, all the oceans are going.

[14:27]

The elephants are going. The snails are going. The snakes are going. The clouds are going. The birds are going. like birds go. The trees are going. It's just going, [...] and it's never stopping. The mountains are going. The rocks are going. They're going. Recently I had the opportunity to go take some people to Muir Woods and stand in the big trees and just feel how they were going.

[15:40]

That is so wonderful. John Muir said, I never saw a discontented tree. They gripped the ground as though they liked it. And though fast-rooted, they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind coming and going like ourselves. Traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day And through space, heaven knows how fast and how far. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, coming and going like ourselves. Yeah, so the fact that things are going means that things are coming too, right?

[16:45]

I mean, depending on our perspective. There's a nice little Zen story about two Zen monks who are walking along. And one of them asked the other, actually, they're walking along and they see some geese flying in the sky in the distance. And the one monk asked the other monk, what is that? And he said, oh, those are wild geese. He said, where are they going? He says, they're going far away. And then the friend reaches over and squeezes the monk's nose and twists it and he goes, ah! That's the whole story.

[17:57]

so the geese are going right and and and one one way to think about that is yeah sure they're going and they're going far away and that may be good or bad And this is what we do. We decide that, oh, well, how are things going? Well, how are they going for us? How are things going for me in my small little box? They're going good or they're not going so good. They're going how I thought they were going to go or not how I thought they were going to go. We have this wonderful conversation capability as human beings to kind of imagine how things might go, right?

[19:03]

And then we have this wonderful capability as human beings to like how we imagined that they were going to go, or not like how they imagined that they were going to go, right? If we like, then it's like, oh, that's nice, and let's... Actually, maybe they're going to go like that, and we add a little bit of extra on, and we're very upset when they don't go like that. Or if we're afraid about how things are going to go, and we're anxious, or we're upset about that, then we try to make them go how we want them to go. control a little bit. But another way of looking at that is that the geese and everything else is not just going away or going how we don't want it to go or going how we do want it to go, but it's actually just going.

[20:20]

They're just going. And maybe we don't actually have to add that away on there. They're just going. Maybe the away is a little too much. Or maybe it's okay, but maybe we just have to see that they're also just going. I was walking down the street in Pacific Heights the other day, and I was thinking about, I was totally wrapped up in my own little box of how are things going for me, and how am I actually going to go up leave zen center and how is it going to go and it might go good it might go bad and i and i started it i was like in this beautiful on this beautiful afternoon and i was just totally in my own little world and i came across a garage sale two two women were there having a garage sale and there was like nobody around and uh it was a woman and her daughter in this in front of this huge house and they had their things out there and um

[21:48]

I felt kind of bad, but I wasn't really in the market, so I was just kind of walking by, you know. And then a woman came out from across the street, and she said this wonderful thing to her friend. She says, hey, Sally, how's it going? And the woman said, just as I crossed, she says, it's going. That was such a wonderfully kind of generous thing to say. She could have said, it's going really bad here because there's nobody around. Or she could have said, you know, it's going really good. But she said so much, and there was so much wisdom in just, well, it's going. I'm here. We're here. We put prices on things, and we showed up, and we're just out here, and we're just going to see how it goes. Maybe it'll go okay.

[22:51]

We're having fun because it's going, right? I thought how wonderful that was. It's just, it's going. And that was enough. And they knew what they were saying to each other. Life is happening. You know, I have no idea what happened from the time that my girlfriend at the time told me to go to Tassajara and now I really have no idea what happened. But something happened. And I got to participate in a way of going that changed my life.

[24:03]

Practice is a particular way of going, going about the going. Suzuki Roshi came to the United States and he some ways he gave a lot of teachings but I think what he actually did was he showed people as a real human being in a body just like everybody else he showed people how to go how to go how to go with the going. Because these things aren't easy to learn in a really deep way.

[25:13]

It's not like you can actually read in a book. Well, just go with the going. Make yourself ready to accept how things are going. But that's what Suzuki Roshi said. He said our practice was about making ourselves ready to be with this going. And then he showed people how to do that. It's something we can actually notice from other people and we can learn from other people. Oh, we see how people are going. And in the going, we see how people are. And we notice that, and there's a kind of a transmitted presence there of the going. So I was lucky enough to have a lot of people who weren't afraid to

[26:29]

experiment with going, weren't afraid to actually fully go with things as they were going, and they showed me how to do that too. I don't know how they showed me how to do it, but they did. It's kind of weird. And that's what we do when we sit in zazen too, is we sit down, we stop part of our going. At a gross level, we sit down and we stop our going and we just notice the going. We just receive it. We listen, we feel, we watch. How's it going right now? moment after moment after moment, receiving, meeting, accepting.

[27:44]

And this wider sense of, you know, there's the going of this particular body, the sensations of this body And then there's an opening up into the going of everything. Together. And being with that. Actually, it's not being with that so much as it's just being that. Practicing being that. Okay, I'm going to stop going in my own little box right now, and I'm going to go... in this wider, boundless circle that extends as far as I could possibly imagine. I'm going to go there with everything else. I'm just going to practice going like that. Just for a moment. And maybe I won't do a very good job of it, and maybe I'll start thinking about how things went.

[29:03]

a little while ago, or how they might go in the future. But maybe for a moment in there somewhere, I'm just going to go with everything. And I'm going to experience that. We had an event last night. that was a discussion about the election. And I came out of that discussion thinking, you know, this whole election thing is so much about just coming and going. It's so much, and it's so challenging for us on that level of thinking coming and going. You know, if things are going how I want them to go, I'm kind of happy. If things are going, if I... think that things are going how I don't want them to go, I'm pretty anxious, upset.

[30:10]

And then some moments I just step back and it's like, okay, well, they're just going. They're just going. And I can't control it. I can participate. And I can participate in a way that I am so happy to be able to say that I can put a mark there for possibly the first woman president in the history of the United States. And that's great. But I can't control how things are going to go. So it's actually a place, a better place for me to be not... in my own little box, but actually holding it all in a wider circle of just going. It's just going. And so I hope you're getting a sense.

[31:22]

I've probably said going about 2,000 times already today. But, you know, oftentimes we use very complicated words for this. Oh, there's impermanence and there's dependent co-arising and there's all this. But Suzuki Roshi just said going. We don't have to get too complicated about this. It's just going, you know? And the point is not to make fancy sentences about that, but actually to feel it inside and to be it. So sometimes these things work on a kind of a poetic or an aesthetic level better than with words even. So that's why we have poems about

[32:25]

Plum blossoms in the snow just going as a plum blossom. Or we have pictures of circles that are just going, that don't have a beginning and end, that are just moving constantly. circle. Receiving, coming, acting, engaging, stepping forward, going, going, receiving, stepping in, engaging, receiving. It's like a continuous circle that never ends. So the only question is, how are we going to participate in that? How are we going to be a part of that?

[33:27]

With what kind of intention do we bring to our going together with everything? You know, I think I think it doesn't take any... It's not just Buddhists who know this, you know? It doesn't take any special, really, language or robes or plate spaces to know this, to see this, to feel this, and to be participating in life like this. All kinds of people do. And it's not so easy, so it's helpful to get support to do it.

[34:36]

Because it's not easy to go with things. It's hard. But Joni Mitchell told us how to do it. She said, And the seasons, they go round and round. And the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on the carousel of time. We can't return. We can only look behind from where we came and go round and round. and round in the circle game. Yeah, that's all we can do, huh?

[36:20]

I want to say one more thing before we stop today. We never know who's gonna show up at that door. I mean, how could... We never know. Actually, I know that two previous abbots, one is here right now, Paul Haller, and there was another one, Steve Stuckey, have similar stories about just knocking on the front door. And it's a wonderful thing that there was a community here and a place here for them to be able to, a door for them to be able to knock on.

[37:27]

And so I want to encourage all of you to continue to make this place a possibility for people just like it was for me. And for people who come here and practice here and who are not members, not sustaining, supporting members I strongly encourage you to become a member and support this temple and make it possible for all of us to practice here. I know that they're having a membership drive right now, so if anybody's not a member, I really encourage you to sign up to be a member today. It's a wonderful way to actually...

[38:38]

participate in the circle to come and go. So thank you very much and have a wonderful day. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:29]

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