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. I'm looking out for where Marcia is sitting. It's a very strange life, this change. Nothing is as it used to be. And it's really hard on us, changes. Because how we are reflected, how we are brought forward, is just not happening the way it used to. So we become a little bit estranged from ourselves. We don't know... who we are because we're put together differently.

[01:04]

It's much easier for me because I have lived here before. So, and I'm, you know, I get reflected back a thousand million times, you know, on the stairs, in the dining room, getting food, eating food, bowing, making mistakes, everything. And Marsha is at home and she comes into the house and I'm not there. She goes to bed and I'm not there. She wakes up and I'm not there. That part is the same for me. But I wake up in a different place. So I'm not in quite the same way expecting her to be there than in the place where I always was. So when I go home to Mill Valley, I come home and I think, wow, I haven't been there.

[02:09]

I can feel my own absence. I go in my office and the feeling is like, ooh, somebody must have died here. Because the door is in general closed up to now. So a room that is not lived in... emits a feeling of like somebody died. That life is not there anymore. So, you know, there's new life being installed as Abed Shinme means new life, you know, new life coming into the temple. And everybody is full of expectations and apprehensions and whatever is up. But that new life also means some going away, dying, not being there anymore of old life.

[03:10]

They go hand in hand. And how do we negotiate that? One of the things Marsha and I and each one of you here are dealing with in your own way, more impacted by it, less impacted by it. Some of you may be here the first time. Is that true? Who's here the first time? Welcome. I hope you enjoy it. So for you, everything is new. It's new life right there. For the ones that are here since a long time, You know, it's new life here and there. You know, Paul used to do it this way, and what is she doing doing it this way? Or finally she's doing something else, you know?

[04:14]

So we're all impacted all the time. When your office worker leaves, you have to wonder, why am I staying? You have to re-find out why you are not leaving because leaving is suddenly in the room. And you can't just go, that has nothing to do with me. It just raises the question whether you want it or not. And that's one part that is so fascinating that these things happen totally independent of our plans, what we want or what we don't want. They just happen. And they impact it. impact us. So that wasn't at all how I was going to start to talk again. So there it is, you know. And that what we do here fundamentally and what others do in other traditions is

[05:26]

a way whose goal is to allow us to negotiate the way with all these impacts, in the midst of all these impacts that consciously or unconsciously affect us, and to re-find the balance, and re-find the balance, and re-find the balance. And that's not something... We do once and then we have it. We wish we would, but it's not how it works. And then it's so easy to go, oh, it's the fault of this, or the fault of this, or the fault of that one, which actually distracts us from just going, oh, wow, I'm unbalanced. Where is the new balance? Where is that? So maybe I can find my way back to what I wanted to say before all this, before all this happened, just came up.

[06:32]

So this year is the year that Zen Center, this organization, you could say, began by when they got this building here. That's the birth of San Francisco Zen Center. Its roots started earlier. It started when Suzuki Roshi came to the United States as a minister to the Japanese community here in San Francisco. And he just started to sit. Every morning he was sitting. And slowly the word got out that people would get to know him and wanted more of him or wanted more contact. He would just say, I sit at that time in the morning and you're welcome to come. And all he did was sit. And at the end of the sitting, I guess he would wish them a good day and let them go.

[07:39]

That's what he did. So a group of bedraggled and... stoned out of their mind and creative kind of beats from all over the streets started sitting with him. Something about this guy, this short little Japanese guy that was just sitting there attracted them. So then, you know, it grew and grew and grew and at some point it was time to he felt it was maybe a good idea that they would live and practice together more fully, kind of not just in the morning, but through the morning and through lunch and through the afternoon and through dinner and through the night. So they found this building, which is still standing, and that was 50 years ago.

[08:47]

And it's a wonderful building to live in. It's a Julia Morgan building and there is a Julia Morgan year going on, I think. So at some point there will be something happening that actually celebrates this building and its many, many, many needs which are also here. It's an old building. So there's creaking pipelines and pipes and Stuff like that. So when you come in or when you go out, you may see this. This is the 50th anniversary. And in the back are a few special events, one of which we just had. It was fabulous. It was Laurie Anderson who just was a delight to experience in Mill Valley. And she has a practice of... of music, of poetry, of storytelling.

[09:52]

She is a chap of all trades in the art world and so creative and so relaxed and present and has that capacity to just find a balance in what comes from within and what comes from without. So when I, and this is my first talk on a Saturday as the new abbess here. So this is a new beginning too. You know, it's different to talk as the tanto or talk as a nobody or talk as an abbess or, you know, it's different and it's not different because it's always just the being that is here. But it's impacted by function, projections. You may all have some ideas of what that is, and those ideas actually have an impact on you, on your perception, on the ones that are receiving them, the thoughts I have about it, the projections I have on it have an impact.

[11:08]

So I asked my new assistant, which I never had before in my life, if she could find the first talk Suzuki Roshi gave in this building. And she did. Fabulous. I can just ask her and then it's on my desk. I wouldn't even have known exactly how to go about finding. So, Suzuki Roshi says, I am so, and this was on November 22nd, 1969. That doesn't sound like 50 years. Oh, okay. I just noticed that now. Okay. 50 years since it got incorporated.

[12:09]

So they started a little earlier to try to figure this out here. So that's... what he's writing when they're just starting to move in the building. I am so grateful. I read it the way he said it because his English is really, he's trying to find the words. I am so grateful with you to have chance to practice Sassen in this maybe magnificent laughs building. I think we must be very grateful for Buddha and our successive patriarchs, which means in this tradition there's an unbroken line of keeping this teaching or this practice alive. Then he asked, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Because at that time I don't think they had a microphone.

[13:13]

My voice doesn't carry very much, so I will probably be asking, can you hear me all the time if it wasn't amplified? I don't think I have much time to speak. And what is lovely, this speak is just two pages long. So he didn't feel like he needed to talk for a long, long time. But first of all, I want to express my gratitude and my confidence or my... I want to express my confidence in practicing with you. Whether we will be successful or not is for me out of the question. If I, if we are bothered by that kind of idea, we cannot do anything because our practice... is always concentrated on present moment. So I think what he's saying here is, if we are concerned about whether we will be successful or not, we can practice.

[14:28]

Because our practice is always concentrated on present moment. If our practice in this moment is good, the next moment we will have good practice. And in this way, if we continue our practice naturally, we will have good practice forever. That is, as you know, our confidence in our practice. So what I think he's saying is, if we are practicing, if we are present, fully present in each moment, moment after moment, it will unfold, and in that unfolding we have confidence. And then he says, I think we will have, we will naturally need some way of life as a group.

[15:34]

It may be difficult to set up all at once, but if we try hard, we will find out our precepts, which include both sides. So the precepts have a side that is prohibitory and they have a side that is nurturing. So you could say, you know, the precepts... A disciple of Buddha does not lie. That's prohibitory. But you could also say a disciple of Buddha is supporting the truth. That's nurture. This is a very important point for our practice and for our practice to help others and to help themselves and to help ourselves. So our practice is always due to the you know, to the complete interconnection of everything, never just for ourselves or only for the others.

[16:40]

It's always for everybody. So in China, Hyakucho Senshi established the Hyakucho Shingi, which is the pure rules of the monastery. And then he says, I think... that we have to find the American shingi. We have to find out what the rules are in this culture to live together that support the harmony of the sangha. And he says, let's practice hard and let's concentrate our life on zazen practice and organize our life so that we can sit well. So for him, as from the beginning when he came to the United States, his practice was SASE, sitting still.

[17:41]

And he did it and invited everybody to join him. And that was the root and the foundation and the basis on which everything else came from and to which everything returned back to. So here we are 50 years later, still trying to figure out how to live together. Because Zen Center, I think, was the first Western community that actually moved into a building and started living together and practicing together and working together, cooking together. And... It was also the first one that was totally mixed. There were men and women, which is not the case in Asian countries in general. There were families with little kids. And there were, you know, the 70s were, you know, free love and everything was just blooming.

[18:48]

So that was quite a fertile and alive kind of foundation and ground. So we take refuge. In this tradition, you take refuge. And one of the refuges in Sangha, which is the community of practitioners. In this case, I'm making it now relatively small because it's actually ultimately the community of all beings in the universe. Because there's, you can't just say it's just these because these don't exist without the others. So, but... To write today, I'm talking about how do we practice in the community, and that can be the community here at City Center, the community at Green Gulch, the community in your family, the community in your workspace, the community on the bus, the community on the street, in the cars.

[19:56]

You can actually think of it all the places, the community in the store, the community in front of the cash register, to bring that there and kind of think about it that way. And we say, I take refuge in Sangha, in community, before all being, bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance. So the vow and the intent... in taking refuge is to bring harmony to the community, to support harmony. On the street, in the store, with your child, in your family, in this community. You know, here, like almost everywhere, even in a family, you think you're not, but you're thrown together with people you did not choose exactly that way. You know, your child that gets born is not exactly the child you would have picked out of a catalog.

[21:01]

It may really surprise you, you know, what gets born here, you know. And that must be your family, you know. That's nothing to do with me, what came out. You know, it's really amazing how even in what we choose, we are confronted with something that is changing. that never stays the same, and that we did not expect, and that challenges us, and that makes us happy, and everything. So we can practice this everywhere. So bringing harmony to everyone free from hindrance. I want to read you a poem that Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. And that is not here.

[22:09]

And he wrote this quite a long time ago, I don't know the year, but when there were these... people fleeing from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand. And he's in Plum Village in France where he has his community. And he says, we receive many letters from refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it. We have to be in contact. We try our best to help, but the suffering is enormous, and sometimes we are discouraged. One day we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate. She was only 12, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

[23:31]

When you first learn something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply, you will see differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But... We cannot do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, there is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in 25 years, a number of them will become sea pirates.

[24:45]

That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we may become sea pirates in 25 years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs. After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. Call me by my true names. Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow, because even today I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

[26:00]

I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river and I am the bird which when spring comes arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog, swinging happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.

[27:12]

And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names. So I can hear all my cries and laughs at once. So I can see that my joy and pain are one.

[28:17]

Please call me by my true names. So I can wake up. And so... the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. As human beings, we have a hard time seeing that everything is all the time changing. That actually everything is in a continuous movement, including ourselves.

[29:20]

Because that's not so easy for us to see. and our mind kind of keeps track and keeps count of impressions, we have a tendency to create. It's actually a creation, it's not a fact, which we miss, that it's a creation. We create, for example, a fixed idea about another person. And... we usually don't examine that assumption. And if we do, we look back and say, well, I have this big pile of evidence, of experience, that they are like this. And that you cannot dispute. That is one of the experiences. What we miss is that

[30:24]

By starting to create that idea about a person, that idea shapes what we perceive. So when that person is different than our idea, we either don't notice it, or if we do, we dismiss it as irrelevant. Or if it's stronger, we think, well, that's just a mistake. That was just a once-in-a-lifetime. That was the exception that proves the rule. We don't go, oh, maybe my idea is completely off. That we usually don't do. It has something to do with the sense of self that would like to have a stable environment that you can count on.

[31:27]

You know, if I know what to expect from this person and not to expect from that person, then I, you know, it's easy. It's like if I take sides, it's easy. Just get rid of the pirates and we have no problem anymore. But it's not the reality of this. That's why the suffering never ends. It's one of the factors. And in community, this is very easy to do, but that's very easy because now I think, I hope I have established that community is everywhere, you know, It's not just here or in little pockets. It's happening all the time.

[32:30]

And are we willing to step back, to actually pay attention when there's this solidification, this solidity around another being starts happening? And what is also interesting, we tend then to feel very, very supported if others have the same view. And we tend to go with what has the same view. I think I brought this example once before. I worked once on a kiosk, which is in Switzerland, at the train station in Basel, which trains from Germany and trains from... France and trains from Switzerland arrived because Basel is right at the corner of those three countries. And so from all we had, like, I don't know how many hundred different newspapers that came in every day in all languages because also Turkish and Persian and Greek and, you know, from all Europe, Italian, all the papers were there.

[33:42]

So every morning we would have tons of papers to... put out, and the old papers to go back that weren't sold. And after a while, you would know some of your regular customers that would come on their commute and pick up their paper, their chewing gum, and their cigarettes at that time, and whatever else. And you would know what they wanted. You would already have it ready. You saw them coming. You would gather those things, and you would know how much it costs. That would just start to be. And one day, it dawned on me what an enormous industry is working to confirm the view I have. Because everybody only picked up the newspaper that was confirming their view. There were very few people who took right-wing newspapers and left-wing newspapers and mid-liberal and whatever. It was one newspaper that would keep

[34:46]

your view of the world solidified and intact. And that's what we tend to do, and that's what we tend to do in interpersonal realms too. And the sad part about that is, A, it creates an enormous amount of suffering, and B, it's killing life. Because the moment I have a fixed image of another person, I not only trap that other person, I trap myself. I resign to a position. And resignation is not alive. Resignation is a static position which is meant to reduce suffering, but actually it reduces your aliveness. That's different than acceptance.

[35:48]

Acceptance is to say, this is how I perceive it, but it's only my perception. It's not the truth. It's just what I can see. And the possibilities around this are innumerable and change is always possible. Acceptance is not then... trying to make change or get the other one to change, but to be open that when change is happening, I'm actually there to see it and not dismiss it because I don't count on it or it disturbs my safe little prison I built around myself of my ideas. And we do that to ourselves. I can do this and I can't do this and I'm this way and not that way. It's the same thing. It's a static thing, but life is not static.

[36:53]

And we do it in different ways. When we don't like something because we don't know how to deal with it, we can just start... to kind of withdraw the energy from it. We have overt ways of manifesting our views, and we have very silent, not so overt, but incredibly powerful ways of expressing our views. We can just ignore somebody who's standing there while we... talk to somebody else. And it's different if we ignore that person by withdrawing the energy rather than by including them while we're still talking to that person, but we don't turn away and say, what do you want? That's different. You can keep not be interrupted by...

[38:00]

energetically include the person that's there waiting, or you can exclude that person energetically. So that's what I would like you to take home with you. Because to pay attention, where do you do that? Do you do that? Do I do that? When? How? Do I experience it? Does it happen to me? How and when? And pay attention to the effect of what that happens. how that is. The effect is actually almost more powerful than words. You know, what comes to my mind is there are African tribes and their communities and the members of those tribes are capable to go and live in another town and live their life and they thrive. But when they're expelled from their community, They go out and they die.

[39:01]

They cannot survive. They are unable to survive. The same people that could do it as long as they feel in connection with their community. And that is the power of just creating a vacuum around a person. Not sharing the information with them. not sharing the energy with them. And that's what I would like you to start looking, because that might be very helpful, and then you can start experimenting. How is it to not do that? What would help you to not do that? Or which ideas make you do that? that you have about the situation or about the person.

[40:01]

And that's what this meditation practice is about. And other spiritual practices are about forms that are helpful, that are in place so that they can help us to get beyond that or to see it when it's happening or to be aware and to start seeing that everything is continuously in flux and that we or each single one of us is all that is happening in this whole universe. And that kind of blows the mind, you know, the thinking mind just can't deal with that. But that's not who we are. Thinking mind is just a little part, a little area of our being. So are we able to see that every day

[41:27]

And all day long, we are still arriving. And everybody around us is still arriving. There is continuous arriving. And are we interested in the arriving? Or are we more engaged in holding to how the person arrived 10 days ago? Or we thought they arrived 10 days ago. Are we open? to wonder in the morning when you wake up, who the hell is waking up this morning? Who is this? Who is this being? What is waking up this morning? Rather than, oh, old me, you know. Or sometimes when we wake up in a different state, we can watch ourselves scramble to kind of get the old familiar one back. You know, when... It is really an interesting thing to pay attention.

[42:29]

What, who, what is waking up? What is arriving? Okay, it's time to stop. I could read the poem one more time if you want. No. That's good. Okay, thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:20]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.55