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 evening. How many people are here for the first time? Well, welcome. How many people are here with Joe? For people who don't know, there's something extraordinary happening at City Center this month, this week. How long is it for? Month? So a group of archivists is coming to clean out Zen Center's closets and put them in some sort of order that makes sense to present and future generations. And that group of people is following the schedule, and I think that maybe you might not have been Zen students before today.

[01:08]

Is that so? Or yesterday or something? Yeah? So Suzuki Roshi said, Zen mind, beginner's mind. You remember that? And he said, in the experts, in the beginner's mind... There are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are a few. So in the beginner's mind, you know, I can imagine some of the possibilities, like what's going to happen tonight? But by the time you're an expert and you've been doing residential practice for quite a long time, you know that it's Wednesday night lecture and you're going to be doing your best to keep awake. So I had a lecture prepared and somehow I have lost my notes and maybe they're in the archives.

[02:11]

The reason I think how it happened that I lost my notes for this lecture, they might still be there. I teach a class Wednesday nights and I have to come back very quickly and get into my robes. And that kind of search of my apartment turned up no lecture notes. But they might be on the altar or someplace I didn't look. So I have no notes, no subject, nothing to say, no wisdom. I'll try for compassion. The confusion is coming because today I've just started the paperwork and my family has just done the necessary arrangements for hospice care for my mother, and that just happened a couple hours ago.

[03:17]

She's been in the hospital twice. this past month for a total of about 13 days. And when that happens and someone is perhaps 89, perhaps 90 years old with Alzheimer's, at the end stage, this is what happens. And we have to take care of this situation. And so although I did lose my lecture notes, I still can practice. and speak about practice and practice at this moment is pretty poignant. I last saw my mother about two weeks ago. I went to New York to fix things in the house that were falling down and to read her stories. and take care of her in ways that caregivers cannot.

[04:21]

And when I go to visit my mother, I spend quite a lot of time sitting zazen. So I wake up early and sit zazen, and then sometimes in the middle of the day or at night I'll sit zazen. Because it is, although in zazen you don't do anything, and nothing happens, It's a profound education in cultivating a body that's wide enough, deep enough, and upright enough to hold anything that arises. And so I do sit zazen, and then sometimes if I'm at her bedside and things go particularly wrong, I will also do one full zazen breath. And what that involves is just sitting upright and arranging myself. I breathe in, breathe out, and settle myself in the present moment.

[05:31]

And that means that all the wisdom and all the compassion that there is is accessible at that moment, even though I might not. understand exactly what that means. And although it's not precisely comforting, it does help. So a couple weeks ago, I did go and see my mother. I spent about five days with her, sitting zazen pretty often. And my Australian sister came to pick me up. and fly me to Austria. Just before I left, I spoke to my mother and said, I'm going to visit the graves of your brother and your father, and I'm going to look for records of your mother and our other family members who died in World War II.

[06:43]

is there anything that you need for me to say to your brother or to your father? And it took quite a long time for her to understand what I was saying. She couldn't really understand the question because she doesn't have that much language ability. But after many repetitions and holding her hands and mentioning their names, She did understand what I was saying. And then she said, tell him I love him very much. Tell him I miss him very much. And then I said, and your father? Tell him I love him very much. Tell him I miss him very much. And then she started to cry. And she cried for two days. And then finally I was able to soothe her and go and deliver those messages.

[07:54]

We do what we need to do in this life. We do what we need to do to fulfill the deepest intention that we can articulate. And in zazen, we can understand that we're part of the family of all beings, and that our intention encompasses all beings. That's one of the ways in which zazen helps, even though it might not precisely be comfortable. I think the Diamond Sutra says it perfectly, and let's see if I can remember what it says. As many beings as there are comprehended under the term beings, egg-born, born from a womb, moisture-born, or miraculously born, with perception, without perception, with neither perception,

[09:15]

nor non-perception. All these I must lead to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana, which leaves nothing behind. And yet, when all beings have been led to nirvana, no being at all has been led to nirvana. And why? Beings, beings. As no beings have they been taught. by the one who comes thus, by the world-honored one. Therefore we speak of beings. So pretty much what this is is a list of names of all the different kinds of beings that the author of the sutra could write, could say. At that time it was could say. And then the intention, all these beings, I must help. to the realm of perfect peace with my body, with my words, and with my mind.

[10:22]

And yet, when I've done that, even if I should happen to be able to do that one by one, and think of how many beings that is, and you can't do it more than one being at a time. That's a lot of beings, a lot of moments of helping. or trying to help and no doubt making mistakes. And yet when that task has been accomplished, no one has really been led to perfect peace. And why? And it's because no matter who or what we think of, we speak to, we help, we take care of, that person or that being isn't who we think of as a being. or isn't even the person we're thinking of. It means no matter how well I know you, I don't really know you. You know, I was, although to try to walk in your shoes or to try to work with you or to try to let you help me, I might find something out about you, like you're here for a month helping.

[11:37]

Isn't that great? Or like, you know, you're male or you're female, or you were born in such and such a place. Actually, it's one of the most profound things that we can do with other people is care about who they are and where they're from, what their life is like and how we can help. And to be able to really ask that question with our... with body, speech, and mind. We have to be deeply settled, and it is a question of deep wisdom. And yet, when we ask that question, and to ask that question is to allow that person to help us and allow ourselves to help that person, we don't know who we've asked that question of, even though they've answered us.

[12:39]

We don't know exactly what they've said, no matter whether we memorize their words or not, and they'll feel really helped if we do. So that's what this means. That's what this vow means. And it means that because helping people reach peace, including ourselves, starting with ourselves, is... perhaps our deepest intention. It means that we'll never know who we've helped, what we've helped them do. And we may never 100% thoroughly even know ourselves. All we can do is sit, observe in a state of peace, in a state of oneness and allow that process to water whatever seeds there are in us.

[13:55]

I hope I'm making sense. This is zazen that I'm talking about. And it's hard to talk about zazen in a way that really does make sense, except to say, I do it, and will you join me? You know? I remember one time when I was very young, I'd been practicing for about four or five years, and I was in my 20s, my early 20s. And I realized... I was talking with someone one day, and I was trying to say something important to me, and I couldn't get it out. And I had the feeling, I had a very uncomfortable sensation, that even though I was sincerely speaking, that my words were in a way a lie, because they didn't say what I was trying to say.

[14:57]

And no matter how much I tried, I couldn't say what I wanted to say, 100%. And then I realized, oh, I have to study speaking. I have to study the process of speech and expressing myself. And when I turned that arrow around and looked at myself and looked at my speech, I realized that 99% of the time, I didn't even know when I was speaking. The words just came out according to some idea or some image or habit of speech and so I picked up a pebble from the ground and washed it very carefully and put it in my mouth for several weeks and then every time I spoke I would have to speak around this pebble and it stopped me just enough that I was able to drop the habit of speaking before I understood what it was I wanted to say

[16:06]

Even after I understood what I wanted to say, I still couldn't necessarily get the words out. But at least that part of the habit was slightly changed. And then I spent about three months just saying things that I was pretty confident in, like, good morning, and please pass the salt. And I could... I could manage, I could believe in those statements like, please pass the salt or let's read this. And I remember at the time I also very much enjoyed the four vows that we say at the end of lecture. I very much enjoyed the precepts. I very much enjoyed the refuges. because those words felt authentic when I said that.

[17:10]

I thought, oh, let's build out from here. And so I did. And now my habit of speech is different than it was. And I'm able sometimes to listen and speak instead of just speak. And that's been about... 35 years since that intention. Zazen doesn't change the habit of speech, but it might illuminate something about the habit of speech or about our intention of speech. Zazen doesn't change the thoughts that we have, but it might illuminate and settle some of the habits of thought that we have. Anyway,

[18:11]

I do sit every morning and I really enjoy your company when you sit with me. And I really enjoy seeing you sit and sitting next to you and chanting with you and chanting, knowing that you're chanting with me. When I sit zazen with my mother, it helps her. She doesn't like Zen. She's scared of Zen. And when I was a young practitioner, my mother had me deprogrammed from Zen because she thought it was a cult. The shaved head really scared her.

[19:16]

It reminded her of collaborationists after World War II. And her decision was to deprogram me. And that actually did happen. My family took a contract out on me. And I got wind of it and decided to go voluntarily. So I did. And the first few hours of the deprogramming were somebody talking to me. The person was asking me questions about the tragedy of youth leaving their religion and going off and practicing other religions. And so it was a very scary, threatening moment for me. But I tried to sit zazen in the breaths between answering questions.

[20:25]

And I remember at one point, after taking a full breath, I looked around the room, and I saw some beautiful Jewish ritual objects all around the room. And I asked the person, may I ask you a question now you've been asking me? He said, yes. I said, it's not often that I have the chance to be with somebody who really sincerely practices Judaism, even though I was brought up Jewish, even though I'm from a family of Jews, practicing Jews. It's not often that I get a chance to be with someone who's really practicing. Could you please tell me if there was a moment that you began to practice, really practice, or whether you always were really practicing?

[21:28]

And the man just stopped. And he said, why, yes, there was that moment. There was such a moment. I said, would you mind telling me about it. And he said that his whole childhood and all the way up until he was an adult, he attended the Western education system and then the Jewish education system. And he was quite deeply involved, but he did it by rote. But one day he was sitting and And looking at a commentary in an ancient text, he said he came across the line, and you shall guard them and keep them. And in keeping them, the treasure store will be revealed. And he said that at that moment, God spoke directly to him.

[22:32]

And he really began to practice. And then he looked at me and he said, All that time I guarded and kept them. And only then was the treasure store revealed. And I said, can I ask you something else? And he said, yes. And I said, was it that all that time you guarded and kept them and only then the treasure store was revealed? Or is guarding and keeping them the treasure store? And he got really inspired and started talking very, very vividly and dramatically. And we had a real conversation about guarding and keeping and what that means. And then I went back to San Francisco Zen Center and received the precepts. And I understood why I was receiving the precepts. How?

[23:34]

What it meant. Because of his story. He saved me. That deprogramming saved me from running away from my religion that I was born in. Actually, when I went to Vienna after New York, my sister took me to Vienna, and I could really vividly feel my family heritage and how that has evolved. how that has affected my zazen practice over the years. So one of the first things I did was go to the resistance office. We were seven family members from four countries. And the resistance guy has spent 12 years writing down the names of 65,000 people from Vienna who died. And he spent 10 years

[24:39]

writing to people around the world and finding records of people who died. And he has found 63,000 records out of the 65,000 names. And some of the people he found were people that no one in my family had known what happened to. So for instance, there was my uncle, Moses. And Moses was actually saved by his older brother, Emmanuel, who was a resistance worker. Emmanuel was my father's oldest brother. And he used to have a habit of taking photos of people who were politically or religiously or in other way threatened. And those people could be taken away. And he would take photos of them and then go to different countries, get phony passports made, go back home, pick up the people and personally escort them to a safe place.

[25:57]

And so that's what he did with his brother Moses. Except that Emmanuel got... He had done it one time too many. We don't know whether it was that trip or a different one. But he got captured and shot. And then Moses was taken to an extermination camp. And he escaped. He was one of the few people who escaped. So Moses walked from the corner of Italy and from the Italian-French border. down to Monaco, where a beautiful Italian woman found him and hid him under her floorboards and fed him day after day, letting him out as necessary. And during the course of that time, during the time that he was hiding in her house,

[27:07]

She was getting more and more paranoid and sensitive about the possibility of exposure, but they were also falling madly in love, madly, deeply, and permanently in love. And as soon as the war ended, they got married and they had two children. One is an organizational psychologist who lives in Nice, and the other one is a retired judge in Lyon. And I had last seen him in 1969. Anyway, so these are family stories, but I could see some of the character traits of the family and what they believed in. And the suffering of the family that was completely unexpressed my whole childhood, it was never spoken of once.

[28:15]

And I could see that as a very strong motivation to practice oneness with all beings and insight into life. And that is given by Zazen. And I'm sure... every one of the people in this room, although it may not be a dramatic story of escape, that every single person in this room has come to practice for the best of motivations and the most thorough workings of reality have brought us to this point. Even if it is I signed up, I filled out the application, and I'm here for a month. And I don't know anything about zazen. That just happens to be one of the most profound states of mind in which to be here and do this.

[29:20]

So congratulations. If you don't know, and you're sitting, you've touched, a way of being with zazen that you may not get to experience for another 40 years. So enjoy it. So for residents, of course, zazen is one of the sets of activities which is known in Japan as all invited. Fushin, all invited. Okay? All invited. is kind of a euphemism for all really, really invited. You know? So we have these rules and guidelines and ways of being here that when we fulfill them for and with each other, it...

[30:29]

Not only does it requite everybody's kindness in being there for us, but also it enacts interconnection and creates a safe place in which everybody can be settled on his or her deepest intention. So this is what I want to say. Just be here and do this. Let's be here and do this together in all the fullness of our own lives. May I tell you one more family story? It's about the person I was named for, my English name. I have an English name, a Hebrew name, and a Dharma name, and they're all different. They all mean different things. But my English name is Victoria, and it's for my Uncle Victor. And so the resistance records show that Victor was...

[31:32]

picked up in a regular sort of pickup, exile, transport, and taken to Auschwitz and killed. But before that, Victor was a great guy. And his... Now, remembering him and seeing his grave, which the community put together a grave from 7,000 people who were killed. So there were 6,000 or 7,000 people were killed in the same way, in the same place. And so after the war, what the community did, the whole community, had to decide what to do with these remains, and they divided them up and put them in different grave sites for the different families to remember.

[32:41]

And so there is a grave for Victor, though we don't know who's actually interred there. Victor's grave, the best I can understand, because the lettering is very worn, it says, he was a great guy. And so some of the family people, I remembered some stories I heard about him long ago. And it seems that Victor believed in humankind having a universal language. And so he studied Esperanto. And he was also kind of a bad boy. He used to... sneak onto the bridge and dive from the bridge into the Danube for fun, you know, on dare. And he was a vegetarian, and he was very kind to my mother, so kind that even in her Alzheimer's, the mention of his name makes her say kind.

[33:55]

So... And I'm named after this person. This is a tradition of Judaism. And taking traditional names or taking names that mean something is a tradition of Zen, which we do. My Dharma name means something. And the Dharma names of all people wearing robes in this room mean something very deep about their intention. Something unconditional. But our conventional names also mean something. They mean a whole set of relationships and history that is helped, a whole set of conditions that is helped by our practice here. When we practice, we practice for and with everyone who has brought us to this spot. Okay? You may hear the phrase detach or renounce.

[35:02]

It doesn't mean that you don't have a life, that you just throw it away. What it means is that you're willing to have awakening, to have kindness and compassion, be even more important. Kindness and compassion for everyone be even more important. than kindness and compassion for a specific small group of people. That you're willing to have understanding of everyone and everything be even more important than understanding of just a few things. So I think we have to be very clear about that. It doesn't mean throw out your life. It means take care of your life and let's meet here. I only have one quote that I want to say, and this is from the commentary to a case in the Book of Serenity.

[36:08]

And that case is the world-honored one, the Buddha, was walking with the community. And he stopped at some place. We don't know the name of the place. It was just a place. And the Buddha's words were, this spot is good to build a sanctuary. At that time, Indra, the king of the gods, picked up a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground, and said, the sanctuary is built. The Buddha smiled. That's the story. So what that story means to me is that this spot, this spot, is good to build a sanctuary.

[37:13]

Actually, why don't you try this? This is a very interesting experiment. Just take your hands and do that. Okay? That's the spot. This spot. Try it again. This spot is good to build a sanctuary. And so what Indra did was he marked the spot. He took a blade of grass, stuck it in the spot, and said, the sanctuary is built. So if you just take a finger, we don't have a blade of grass, but take a finger, put it on your nose, the sanctuary is built. Okay? Sanctuary is built. So that's the case. It's not a very complicated case, but it is hard to understand because it takes many years to understand. But this one line from the commentary that I want to bring in today is a community for a day abiding forever.

[38:14]

Community for a day abiding forever. So thank you. for being part of the Wednesday night, June 22, 2011, first day of summer, community for a day. And let's sit and understand abiding forever. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:15]

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