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 and welcome. And also a good morning and welcome to everyone who is listening remotely as well. And thank you for braving... the environment to actually be here. I want to just acknowledge the fact that we've all been living in this very smoky city for a number of days now, and that that has its own kind of wear and tear. So just stopping for a moment and checking with yourself, how is it?

[01:03]

How is it to be alive and present right now in this total situation? in San Francisco and knowing that not so far north of here fires are literally raging. And mostly I had been just fine, although this morning I was sitting and there was some little knot in my heart. And I kept sitting, I kept sitting, and then I realized, no, what I really needed to do was get up and lie down on my bed and sob. that I was really feeling so much in my heart and to allow space for all of that. I'm curious just how many people here know people who are directly impacted by the fires north?

[02:04]

Is there anyone here who is themselves directly impacted by the fires north? Okay. So invite us to sit for just a moment and hold ourselves present. And any wishes that you might send for the people who are experiencing this pain and difficulty right now for their well-being? And also any wishes of well-being for yourself. Holding yourself gently. And if you'd like, also an invitation to bring to mind some kind of gratitude or appreciation that you feel this morning, either something you're encountering today or something more broadly in your life.

[03:31]

Just noticing as you bring that to mind, whatever this may be, where do you feel it? Can you feel it in your heart, in your body? And if you'll indulge me for just a minute to break with tradition and invite you to turn to someone near you, threes are okay or twos, and just express either how you're feeling or a gratitude that you're feeling right now. And I'll ask just a couple of minutes back and forth, and I'll ask the Doan to ring the bell in a minute to finish. So just turn to someone next to you. How are you feeling? And or what is the gratitude you're experiencing? your partner and coming back.

[06:37]

And maybe just a couple of word shout-outs of how you're feeling. Who's feeling something? A word. How are you feeling? Tired? Okay. How are you feeling? Sad. Other feelings in the room? Sorry? One more time? Guilty. Interesting. Yes. So a range, a real range of feelings. And any gratitudes or appreciations in this room? Yes. Gratitude of all friends come back. All friends. Wonderful. I saw someone else. Yeah. Grateful for this practice. Yes. I'm grateful to my friend because I invited some people to stay with us. Yeah. Beautiful.

[07:56]

I also sense a lot of care and kindness for yourself, which is very important. There's someone on this side of the room, yeah. I just feel that your needs are going to be so great. And I don't even feel like meditating is enough right now. I wish it were. Thank you. Maybe one more, either gratitude or feeling. Oh, back here, yeah. That your friends are alive. Lovely, thank you. So taking a moment and just settling with that. So everything that came up for you, everything you heard, with your partner and that others in the room have expressed. And so what we're doing here is in this coming together, there's a kind of harmonizing.

[09:12]

kind of attuning that we're creating this practice field together, this chance to inquire deeply and support each other. And my name is Meg, and I've been asked to say a few words to put myself in context, and I'll do that in a minute. But I want to share, yesterday I... went to the zendo downstairs, and then came up here. And I thought for service, but instead we were asked just to sit down in rows. And there was a really skillfully, I thought, led form review that the tanto and the eno offered. And There was something that Tanto said early on that really stayed with me, which was that even though we have a lot of forms, as you might have noticed, a lot of little things to do, step this way, turn this way, hold your chant card this way, and he said that all these little things, in a way they seem little, but actually they help create this harmonious field

[10:35]

for us all to feel comfortable in this space. It's kind of like choreography of a dance. And if you know the steps, if they're in your body, you can just relax into the dance and the way that all these many people come together into this one harmonious dance. I'm elaborating a little bit. And then the Eno I thought was very skillful in going through a lot of different forms in a very short period of time, but also with both strictness and clarity, but also a lot of, I thought, kindness. So I appreciated that very much. But as I was sitting there, I had this realization that even though I've been coming to Zendo's pretty much all my adult life, that I never actually learned the forms in this particular temple. And that I have not felt comfortable in this space because of that.

[11:37]

And it's so funny, having practiced Zen for a fairly long time, feeling like, but I don't feel totally comfortable in the forms and to realize that. And so part of the reason is I first encountered formal Zen practice in 1991, very briefly at the Berkeley Zen Center and then lived in Asia for a little bit. And then pretty much since 1994 have continually been in resonance, mostly at Tassajara and Green Gulch, a little bit here. And when I was here before, one reason I didn't learn the forms was that I was doing my own forms with a brand new baby. And that was my practice. And I was not so interested in like how you hold the Susha book and where you put it behind you. Like there was plenty on my mind. Just like for people who know Kat and they're right across the hall from us.

[12:38]

Just like that. And now I live in 340 with my husband, Jeremy Levy, who practices here. But I'm also not in this building a whole lot because for the last 10 years I've been focusing on how do you bring the foundations of this practice, these insights, this inquiry to a broader field out in the world. So my attention's been figuring out other forms and also not learning them here. So it was actually just perfect that I found myself there, getting a form review and remembering the power of these forms, of this practice, of a shared field to support us all in this deep inquiry of presence and of what's going on here. What is it to be a human being?

[13:41]

How do we live? I mean, these are the basic questions that this practice orients to. I'm going to read a poem. And probably a lot of people in this room are going to think, oh no, not that poem again. And then some of the people in this room are going to think, oh, that's a great poem. Either way, I'm wondering if you can just open your sense fields and see what happens. Actually, there's gonna be a first part of the poem you might not know. I'm gonna read that first and then see if you can guess it. For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn't decide what to do.

[14:42]

Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. So hearing that, what is the message that you remember? Don't go back to sleep, right. Quite a worthwhile message.

[15:44]

But as I was reading this poem, I was looking at it, or it came to me in the context of a text that's being studied here right now in what's called the practice period, for those who are visiting, led by the abbot, Ed. And it's called The Harmony of Difference and Equality. And it's chanted weekly in this temple and in Asia. And it goes back to the 8th century. And it's quite condensed. But as I was... Looking at this poem again, the line that came up for me more strongly than I had noticed before was, people are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. What does that mean? Where the two worlds touch. And what does that have to do with not going back to sleep?

[16:47]

And then something else came to mind. There's a case, a koan in the book called The Book of Serenity. And it's called Yangshan's Mind and Environment. Some of you may know this. So Yangshan's the teacher and he asks the monk, he says, so where are you from? And the monk says, from you province. And Yangshan said, do you think of that place? And the monk says, I always think of it. So right now, think about where you're from. Think about what comes to mind. So there's this monk. Yeah, I'm from this place. Maybe I'm a little bit homesick. I think about it all the time. And then Yangshan says, the thinker is the mind and the thought of is the environment. Therein are mountains, rivers, and the landmass, buildings, towers, halls and chambers, people, animals, and so forth.

[17:59]

So if you're from New York or something, you might think about the Brooklyn Bridge or your grandmother in Queens or Carnegie Deli or just all this stuff that you think about. And then he says, reverse your thought and think of the thinking mind. reverse your thought and think of the thinking mind. So if this is a living instruction and not just something in a book, for yourself when you think about, okay, where am I from? All the stories, places, memories, all the stuff out there. If you stop for a moment and listen to this instruction, reverse your thought and think of the thinking mind. Just try that on for a minute. What does that feel like?

[19:02]

And one way I heard it explained is that we often have this flashlight beam going out. We're looking outward all the time at the environment of what we encounter, of people, et cetera, life, stuff has to happen. What does that feel like? is it to stop and turn that light, like a flashlight, inward into our own experience, into our own consciousness. It's actually a kind of a radical thing to do. And this is one reason that we have this whole building and we go sit for hours on end quietly so that we can have the space to explore this radical turning inward. Reverse your thought and think of the thinking mind. And he says, Yangshan says, are there so many things there?

[20:11]

Are there so many things there? The monk takes this invitation seriously and really looks Looks deeply. And then he says, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. When I get here, I don't see any existence at all. Yangshan said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of a person. The monk said, don't you have any other particular way of guidance?

[21:16]

Don't you have something else for me to help me along here? You know, I don't get it. And Yangshan says, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Then he says something kind of interesting. He says, based on your insight, when I get here, I see nothing at all. You only get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe. You started on the path. After this, see on your own. After this, keep looking. It's not complete. You know, so we might think part of practice or maybe the goal of practice, we're in this busy life, there's so much going on, and the idea of simply stopping, of turning inward, of realizing whatever that is, a oneness, an openness, an emptiness, full presence, that's it.

[22:22]

But he's saying, now there's something more. There's something more. So the notion on one hand, there's lots of stuff. And then on the other hand, there's nothing, oneness, non-differentiation, however we want to understand it. But not like, oh, I see that and I see that. What if you see that or that? And I would invite, suggest, now, right this, right now, this moment.

[23:25]

What do these words mean right now in this environment in San Francisco, sitting here for you and all of us? So many things. Not so many things. Same? Different? Now? What does that feel like? So going back to the harmony of difference and equality, There are a number of lines that go together and a couple that jumped out at me were, the spiritual source, the spiritual source shines clear in the light.

[24:35]

Branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. with sameness is still not enlightenment. So that last line sounds to me a lot like what Yangshan and the monk were exploring. That according with sameness, this oneness is still not enlightenment. And the grasping, this is just how our brains work. I mean, there's grasping like, no, I want to, that's real and it's mine and I want to hold on to it no matter what. But there's also, you can think of that more subtly as just how we normally encounter, perceive through our mental processes, create our world and think it's real and true.

[25:38]

That this is our basic natural tendency as human beings. And there were good reasons for that. problem is that it's not really how things are so when we encounter that discrepancy we suffer a lot so part of practice is to look under the hood as it were how does this process work how am I perceiving things can I trust my perception maybe not And as human beings, we need to do this. We need to create an environment that we can function in. We need a relative stability so that you have a house to go to and you have long-term relationships and you have commitments and your car is going to be there tomorrow morning.

[26:42]

All these things, there's a creation of a story of a relative permanence. But we get in trouble when we think it's a real permanence. And occasionally we're jolted awake by something quite dramatic, like a fire that burns thousands of structures in a matter of days. Someone's whose home is lost in a matter of hours. What? It's not supposed to be that way. So the proposition is, how can we start to attune ourselves to understand that Inherently, none of this is stable. We try to prevent the fires. We try to have continuity in our life. We need to do that. But if we think there's actually anything stable, touchable, that we can really depend on in a permanent way, then we are living in a diluted state.

[27:51]

And not only stable, like houses and papers, but ourselves too. That we think of ourselves as solid and unchanging. So one way to think about this is there's this term emptiness which may or may not be the best translation, but the idea that there was a house there. There was a house up in Santa Rosa on a lot. It was a house. But even before the fire, if you had dismantled that house and put all the beams, et cetera, tiles, et cetera, all spread out, is that a house? Or there's a house and there's a fire and there's no house. So where's the house-ness of the house? One way to think of this is relative and absolute, sometimes called two truths, that we need this conventional life.

[29:03]

I need to be Meg, and you need to be you, and this needs to be Zen Center, and this needs to be San Francisco so we can live, and that needs to be Santa Rosa. But at the same time, once we really look, when we turn that light inward, we realize those things are... A temporary understanding. A temporary reality. Some people might have seen the movie The Matrix. Somehow I missed this when it came out. So I just saw this the other day. It's like, oh, this is a really interesting movie. Has anybody seen this movie? And apparently, you know, we just had to read all kinds of stuff. Some of it Dharma-related beforehand. But there's that one scene, which is a turning point in the movie, where there's this sort of virtual reality and everything really is code. And he suddenly, the agent people, the bad guys, say to him, you're empty.

[30:09]

And then he says back to them, you are too. And then he sees everything as this sort of glittering code. And that's the moment of his power. That's when it turns around. That's when he's free. So this may sound all kind of depressing, but that's not really the point. The proposition is that if you really look at this, and not just intellectually, but in your body, in your life, in your sitting, that there is an aliveness and a freedom, a... Reduction of fear. When we realize that everything that we were trying so hard to hold onto, we can't hold onto anyway. How do we relate then from that sense of full meeting, full connection, full openness, knowing it's all slipping through our fingers, that our fingers are slipping through our fingers.

[31:12]

Thich Nhat Hanh has written, he said, the word emptiness should not scare us. It's a wonderful word. And then he goes on to talk about the other side of emptiness, which is dependent co-arising or interbeing. And he very famously has taken up, held up a sheet of paper and said, well, what's in this piece of paper? You have the sun. You have the earth. You have the water. You have the trees. You have everything in this sheet of paper. And sometimes when I'm teaching in different organizational environments, we talk a little bit before lunch just very simply about mindful eating. I say, OK, you're about to go to lunch. Maybe pay attention to what you're eating for lunch. What is that? Enjoy it. Smells, flavors, tastes, colors, et cetera. And then sometimes I also say, and if you'd like, also before you eat that lunch, say it's spinach on your plate, look at that and just ask yourself the question, what did it take for that spinach to get on my plate?

[32:36]

Like seriously. And just like with paper, first you think, OK, it needed earth, it needed sun, it needed water, it needed all these things and the spinach. But then you also can start to think, who planted that spinach? How did they get to work? Who cooked them breakfast? What were they wearing? Where did that cloth come from? Who designed it? Once you just open that door a little bit, you pull one little thread, spinach on a plate. And if you start to actually inquire, you realize, where do you stop? This vast interconnectedness. How would you ever say anything is separate? And what does this do when we look at the world this way? When we encounter everything this way? Encounter ourselves this way? Is anyone familiar with the Mind and Life Dialogues?

[33:48]

Raise your hand. Just a few. This has been going on... some time now, but way back when His Holiness the Dalai Lama made an overture to various scientists and some dialogues were created. First it was very small, just a very small group of scientists and the Dalai Lama. And they started comparing notes, if you will. You know, what's a Buddhist understanding? What's a scientific understanding? What can we learn from each other? And this has evolved over time and it's pretty much been between Buddhist traditions and Western scientific inquiry. But just recently, a couple of months ago, they held a mind and life dialogue in Botswana, Africa. With the idea or the possibility, yes, Buddhism, the Eastern traditions are very skillful in looking at these questions, but there are other wisdom traditions that are looking at the same questions too.

[34:51]

how do we step beyond just a Buddhist Western scientific dialogue to include whole world wisdoms and contributions? And the theme of this conference, which included some Western scientists, African scientists and presenters, traditional healers, a wide range, musicians, artists, was Ubuntu. Has anyone heard this phrase, Ubuntu? A few, yeah. So the idea of I am because you are. I am because you are. And starting to explore what would it be like to live in our now quite globally connected world with that understanding. I am because you are. I think what I want to leave us with as an ongoing question or inquiry is the sense, the invitation, that this exploration really is not theoretical.

[36:36]

It's not something that just happens at the Zen Center or in certain texts written a long time ago. that this is a living inquiry. These texts are pointers, invitations to opening to a different way of living with ourselves and the world, a different understanding of what even the words ourselves and the world mean. I'm really, I have a question for you and I'm really quite curious. You may not all be able to see this. This is a painting that is in the San Francisco International Airport, very near Gates, like 68 to 83, United Terminal. And I'll describe it for people listening, but does this bring a recognition for anybody here?

[37:37]

I'll do it slowly. It says void in big, white, jagged... Letters. I know you can't, I'll take it to Q&A if anybody wants to see it. I'm curious, does anybody recognize this painting? Does anyone? Just one or two. Okay, this is, I'm going to tell you about this painting. So for people just listening, it's a very, very large painting. It is sort of mosaic-like, splashes of color, kind of jagged. It says in big jagged white letters, void. You can kind of see some nature there, some people, semi-abstract. And I know you won't be able to see this, but I'm going to tell you. It says void. And then tiny over here on the left is a tombstone. And it says void is the big letters. And then it says is form is void. Void is form is void. So for people familiar with

[38:40]

Buddhist tradition, we probably will recognize form is emptiness, emptiness form. So this is where you take this and this and this and this. All of this goes together. And right down here it says gate 68 to 83, baggage claim. This is Prajnaparamita, the Heart Sutra, in plain sight for all international travelers passing me through United. It's been there for years. Every time I bow. And it's by a modern artist who has worked at MoMA up here named William... I know I just wrote it down. No, William T. Riley, is that right? Wiley, thank you. William T. Wiley. And at the bottom, it says, one might see all have a lot in common.

[39:43]

After the dust settles, the glittering remains. One might see all have a lot in common. After the dust settles, the glittering I'm going to finish up with a poem that I just discovered and it mentions Ryo Khan who's a beloved Zen poet of a couple of centuries ago but I'm pleased to say that it was written by Dave who is the brother of Juryu, who lives at Green Gulch. And David also is a Zen priest. And this was in this month's issue of the Sun magazine.

[40:45]

So here we go. It's called, I was reading a poem. I was reading a poem by Ryokan about a leaf. and how it showed the front and the back as it fell. And I wanted to call someone, my wife, my brother, to tell about the poem. And I thought that maybe my telling about the poem was the front of the leaf, and my silence about the poem was the back. And then I thought, that maybe my telling and my silence together were honestly just the front of the leaf and the back was something else, something I didn't understand. And then I thought that maybe everything I understood and everything I didn't were both actually just the front of the leaf.

[41:52]

so that the totality of my life was actually just the front of the leaf, just the one side, which would make the other side my death. Unless my life and death together were really still on the front of the leaf, I had left the branch. I was falling. I was loose now in the bright autumn. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[42:51]

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