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, everyone. A delight to be here. Recently, I was at Tassajara at the summer intensive and received this beautiful book, Remembering the Dragon. Some of you might be familiar with it. Many of you might be familiar with it. And reading in that book, I ran across something that Sojin Mel Weitzman said about Suzuki Roshi. He mentioned that one of his main teachings was don't be selfish. Don't be selfish.

[01:00]

And that reminded me of one of the watts, the temples I spent time at in Thailand. I practiced there. And the main teaching of the teacher there, which was posted on these giant white and blue signs, was don't be selfish. It was a beautiful, beautiful monastery on a limestone karst, this little island in the Bay of Thailand. There was no natural water source on the island, so they lived in harmony with nature, this very simple human-scale life. All of the temple buildings in that Thai-style, these sloped roofs, you know, dramatic curls, had rain catchments built into them. And the rain would go into cisterns under the buildings. And then because it was a steep hill, each cistern cascaded to the cistern below it until all the water cascaded into the ocean, returning to the ocean.

[02:13]

It was a very human-scale monastic life there. They gardened for themselves. They provided all of their own water. They actually gave extra water and extra food to the villages on the island, surplus from their own garden. And it was this life of work as practice, simplicity, Dharma expressing itself through action and contemplation. There's this sense of place in the world there. And there was a phrase that the teacher used, it was written also everywhere, we are meditators under the open sky. This idea of being in harmony with nature and the vastness of everything. The formal practice there really put this life in context. The first formal practice was maranasati, mindfulness of death.

[03:22]

The second was open-eyed ocean gazing. Where the eyes, you would sit on the top of a little platform somewhere on the island and cast your eyes out towards the horizon. And the instruction was to sit and be still until the sky and the ocean became one. to sit and be still until the merged sky and ocean were all that remained. It was a beautiful teaching. It was this one taste, a taste of freedom in the ocean. Just as the Buddha says in the ancient discourses, the ocean has a single taste, that of salt. In the same way, this Dhamma and Vinaya has a single taste, that of release, freedom, nirvana.

[04:33]

This practice was an oceanic attunement to everything. An oceanic attunement to everything. The most refined, subtle details in the smallest ripples of the ocean were taught as a teaching to notice the most refined and subtle details in the mind and heart and body. And then the larger waves of the ocean were to teach about posture, movement, comportment. Just as the waves are always part of the ocean yet individual, the teaching was so too are we. Very naturalistic bias. So the Vinaya that I mentioned in that quote from the Buddha, the monastic rules often do deal with comportment, how we move through the world.

[05:46]

physically and metaphorically. The wake, the waves, the ripples we leave behind us. And particularly, the vinyas focuses in on sila, ethical behavior. And that's what I'm going to talk about a little bit tonight. Awareness of impact, of the ripples. I'll just briefly touch on I know there are more precepts in Zen, but we have five precepts, ancient lay precepts. Many of you are familiar with them. And really, though, all of them, whether they're the 200-something that Theravodata monastics take or the grave precepts taken here, all of them boil down to one single overarching precept. Do no harm. Or, in that Ajahn's words, the Thai forest tradition's words, don't be selfish.

[06:51]

And I want to be clear, this doesn't mean self-sacrifice or being a doormat. Rather, the Buddha offers a simple question we can ask. And that is, will this lead to greater benefit for myself and others? Or will it lead to greater harm for myself and others and all concerned? That's the heuristic. That's the compass. That simple. This can be a rich contemplation, or it can be a feeling into. And some people find, I certainly have, that the longer I practice, the more visceral, the more simple, this feeling into becomes. It cuts through ambivalence or thought flurries, worry, justification, even strong desire or strong fear.

[07:56]

Asking, feeling into that question. Remember in the sort of early-ish days of COVID, before the lockdown even perhaps, I was called to jury duty. And I'm high risk. My doctor had no intention of having me go to jury duty. And so she wrote me a note, and then I gave the documentation, and they said, well, is this just for this time, or is this in perpetuity? And, oh my goodness, the thought flurries that that brought up. Like, oh, this note, I could be off the hook forever. Like, you know, all this activity inside. And as I was feeling into it, I started feeling, oh, this is contraction. This is stress. This is restlessness. And made the decision, no, this note is for this time.

[08:58]

And immediately, something just lightened up, got spacious, and there was a sense of peace. That was the internal compass, right? Operating. In terms of the contemplation, the Buddha offered a teaching to his seven-year-old son, Rahula. And in it, he asks his son, we can kind of picture this, off in the woods they are together or alone. What is the purpose of a mirror, Rahula? For reflection, sir. Just as a mirror is for reflection. These reflect on your actions of the mind, in other words, thinking or planning, speech or body before doing something and consider, will this be a good thing for myself and others or will it lead to worry or harm?

[10:08]

And if it's good, do it. If it's not, don't. And then during an action, Ask the same question. Is this leading to benefit or to bad results? And then after the action, the same reflection. Is this leading to benefit or harm for myself or others or all? And use that as your guide. This kind of reflective process can help the heart move away from inner divisions, worry, complexity, affliction. That's actually the word that's most often translated there, affliction for self and others. And it instead allows the heart to move towards joy, lightness of being, wholeness, integrity, integration.

[11:11]

So notice, noticing the difference before, during, and after. And of course, none of us are perfect. Sometimes after, it's like, oops, that wasn't so good. The Buddha then advised his son to take it to a trusted friend in the spiritual life, an advisor, a colleague, a teacher, and talk about it, not from the perspective of shame or blame, but with the intention not to do it again and to talk through it. How we show up to clean up matters. In some ways it matters even more than how we showed up in the first place. This process of rupture and repair, as they say nowadays. So, I mentioned the pancha sila they are in Pali, the five precepts.

[12:20]

Not killing, not stealing, not engaging in sexual misconduct, and abstaining from false and divisive speech. The last one, abstaining from intoxicants of mind that lead to heedlessness. So these can be considered in their most simple form, as I just read them, very straightforward. or in more refined and more expansive ways. Keeping the precepts at the most simple level really builds confidence, peace of mind, self-respect, inner strength. Another Thai forest tradition teacher and scholar, Tonis Robiku, talks about how learning to live even imperfectly by the five precepts, is a cure for low self-esteem because it drops away two of the conditions or causes for self-esteem, regret and denial.

[13:26]

That simple spaciousness can be there. Even the simple spaciousness of oops or oh. At a more refined level, this can become a mindfulness practice that increases subtlety, increases an attunement with those around us, with ourselves. No matter what works for your own practice, for me, a major benefit of the precepts is that they function as a container. They're like a structure within which I can relax. live. They're also a reference point. I slip up on one or contemplating breaking one. It's a wake-up call, right? So I'm just going to go through them very briefly. Many of you have heard these before, probably a number of times.

[14:33]

Not killing. This includes the tiniest creatures, and I'm not talking about bacteria here. We don't have much control over that. But insects. Recently, I was assisting a retreat with a dear friend and mentor, a woman. And it was in the height of the summertime. And the ants, ants love Buddhists. Have you noticed? They love Buddhists. So the ants had figured out that that kitchen was the source of something good. And they were epic. They were just coming in knowing that we weren't going to do anything to hurt them. And after a while, you know, we kept it meticulously clean in there. And they were still coming. And we finally figured out they were coming in to drink water in that little tiny lip between the drain and the rest of the sink. There's this like 16th of an inch divot. And they would come drink. I'm like, oh, well, they're not asking for much.

[15:34]

So we decided to water the ants. We put a little water dish outside like you would water a cat. You know, we've water out. And sure enough, they left the kitchen, and they were in little ring around the bowl, drinking. It almost looked like an aerial shot of a waterhole in Africa with creatures drinking around it. And they didn't come in again, the whole retreat. So, refinement, not killing, but there was also, we came to some kind of harmony with these little tiny creatures. And as you can probably pick up from the way I told that story, holding this precept can bring a sense of joy and relationship with the natural world, right? Like regarding other sentience as valid. It's restraint, respect, all the way on a continuum to a celebration of life.

[16:42]

curiosity about life. Respect, right sizes, relationship with reality, with sentience, whether it's insects or animals or that massive systems of forest trees and roots and fungi that scientists are now discovering also communicate. Right? Killing unnecessarily can lessen fear and bring about more congeniality towards these other forms of life. It can even open up to awe. So not stealing, quite straightforward, not taking what is not given, is the original formulation of the Buddha's teaching. It encourages honesty, integrity, respect, restraint.

[17:46]

It can also be not stealing attention, not stealing space in an interaction. It can be an opening of a space to be interested in what others have to say or what my own impulses have to teach me. if I don't act on them, if I'm going to see them, still ripples in my own mind, but not to act. At a deeper level, it can open up to more generosity, to a paradigm beyond scarcity. And that can transform relationships. third precept, not engaging in sexual misconduct, the simplicity of this guideline belies its power.

[18:47]

It of course means refraining from sexual activity that's non-consensual or involves breaking another precept like lying to conceal, for example. And it also includes use of sexual energy, anything that has the impact of intentionally or even unintentionally manipulating another person. Certain kinds of flirtation can fall into this category, right? There's abstention from false, malicious, or harsh speech and from divisive speech. And it's said that originally a lot of this teaching, I mean the importance of honesty I hope is obvious, that the way of not speaking divisive speech was especially important in the Buddha's time to not divide the Sangha against itself or to divide the Sangha against the community supporting it.

[19:58]

And so that was deeply held as a value. And... I have a little quote, I'll just read part of it here. This comes from the Middle Link Discourses. When many voices shout at once, none considers themselves a fool. Though the sangha is being split, none thinks themselves to be at fault. They have forgotten thoughtful speech and talk by words alone. None knows what leads them so to act. And then the Buddha talks about a very ancient, even more ancient poem, about how those carrying on, talking about abuse, hatred, hatred doesn't cease. The second part is, he abused me, struck me, defeated me, robbed me. For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends.

[21:05]

For in this world, hatred never ends by hatred, but by love alone does it end. This is the ancient and natural law. So healing of relationships is the more expansive view of this precept, right? Speaking in a way that brings people together, harmonizes. of honest and kind, meaningful speech could be an entire spiritual tradition in and of itself. Right? This is especially true if we include internal speech in our own minds and hearts. What's the tone of your inner speech and thoughts? Check it out. Right? It's helpful to notice. Notice. All of this needs to be undertaken with wisdom.

[22:12]

There's an example often used, harboring a slave in the Underground Railroad, for example. If telling the truth is going to end up with someone being enslaved or killed, don't do it. The overarching precept is still do no harm. So there's a hierarchy there, right, in the precepts. Do no harm. Reflect on the impact. Wise speech is larger, broader than naive honesty. And then there's the last one, which is somewhat a safeguard for all of the others, which is not using intoxicants in ways that cloud the mind and lead to heedless, harmful behavior. And there are many stories about this that are kind of silly and long, so I won't go into them, that talk about how even a very upstanding monk can break this precept and then ends up breaking all of the others in a single night.

[23:27]

This is sort of a trope in some of the early Buddhist texts. But just to say that this can be a protector for all the others in the sense that Maintaining clarity of mind protects us and everyone around us. And it includes substances, of course, but also perhaps social media, news, doom scrolling, right? A beautiful effect of stepping back from that can be to be more settled, more receptive, more clear. It also includes intoxication of views, needing to be right. Most intoxicating thing of all for many people. The quote here, this is from the Ataka Vaga, the Book of Apes.

[24:35]

I don't need to find it. Some called themselves skilled based on how they call their opponents fools. In claiming themselves skilled, they disrespect others who make the same claim. Perfect, according to unwarranted views, they think. Drunk with conceit, thinking they're complete. They, by their own selves, consecrate their minds and their views. In other words, drunk on their own rightness. You see a lot of that these days out in the world, don't we? So a beautiful effect of not becoming intoxicated with views or anything else is the capacity for a deeper clarity, a broader base of wisdom and harmony within myself and especially with other people, particularly people who might think differently.

[25:53]

So to recap, there's one overarching precept in the ancient teachings. Do no harm. Ahimsa. And to hold to that, or at least use that as a compass point, however imperfectly, perfectly imperfectly, through life, allows for more clarity, and can also be an expression of greater mindfulness, spiritual maturity, and transmit that taste of freedom through the non-harming. I find when I'm careful about this area of my life, conscious about it, it's much easier remember that the wave of my individuality is in union with the ocean.

[27:03]

And each of us have that possibility to have our ripples be ripples of benefit for ourselves, others, and the world. Thank you for your kind attention. 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.

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