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 see some old friends and some new faces. How many people are here for their first time? I'm always curious how people get here. Probably on the Internet. You rode your way here on the Internet. Or maybe a good friend told you. Either way, welcome. Please feel free to stay for tea and cookies after the lecture and lunch if you have the time. It's always nice. And a special welcome to the online participants in the practice period that are apparently all over the world out there. listening also to us on the internet.

[01:01]

So welcome to all of you. So this morning, this is the first talk I've given on Saturday since I led the winter practice period down at Tassara. So I thought I would share a few thoughts I had about that. And at the same time, we had a one-year memorial for Blanche Hartman, This morning Blanche was the first woman abbess of Zen Center and she died a year ago and she was dearly beloved by us all. And I think I'm going to include her a little bit somehow in this talk this morning. And also the talk, this is the second talk on Saturday of the six-week practice period we're holding. And the title of the practice period is Upright and Complete Practicing with Noble Speech. So I promised Linda Ruth Cutts, who's leading the practice period, that I would include something about noble speech in my lecture.

[02:06]

So we're going to sort of stir all that around and see what we come up with. So... So I picked, as the kind of title, kind speech. And this title comes from a Dogen fascicle, which is titled The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance. The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance are giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity actions. And just a comment on Dogen for those of you who are not at all familiar with Dogen. Dogen was born in 1200 in Japan and died in 1253 and there's a whole life story there which I won't go into but he was very precocious as a young man and when his mother died when he was young he decided to become a monk and find out what was true about life and ended up going to China and studying under a very famous Zen teacher there and ended up bringing Soto Zen

[03:27]

back to Japan and is the founder of our Soto Zen, which is the style of Zen we practice here. And one of the things that was particularly remarkable about Dogen as a Zen master is that he was very good at writing. Most of the stories we have about Zen teachers from China, which is where Soto Zen, where Zen actually started, are little anecdotes about interactions between the teacher and the student that get written up in these little stories. And they're usually kind of paradoxical, so they're called koans. So there's these collections of koans, but you don't have many of these teachers actually writing anything. Mostly they were just sort of living their life and interacting with students. And then there were stories told about them afterwards. And sometimes there were some lectures that were collected. Even Suzuki Roshi didn't write much. His famous book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and Not Always So, are just collections of his lectures that were edited.

[04:28]

But Dogen was unusual in this respect in that he was an excellent writer, and he wrote something called The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. The True Dharma Eye is a collection of 96 essays, some of them four pages long, some of them ten pages long. And they are really a marvelous piece of work and are studied actually widely by philosophers and certainly is a central teaching for us in our tradition. So I just might mention for those of you who are not familiar with the term bodhisattva, bodhisattva is a person whose central purpose is to wake up and wake up for the benefit of all beings. So the Bodhisattvas, four methods of guidance, as I mentioned, were giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action.

[05:32]

And just to bring a little bit of the practice period, and the theme for the winter practice period at Tassara was the Paramitas, the six perfections. These are... In Buddhism, we have six qualities of an enlightened character or a bodhisattva, and those qualities or practices are generosity, ethical conduct, patience, patience or tolerance, energy, meditation, and wisdom. Dale Wright, in his introduction to the book on the Sixth Perfection, poses the question, how shall we live as what kind of person? And this really is a question all of us at some point in time in our life ask. How should I live? What does it mean to be a human being? And how should I live my life? What kind of person should I become? And Buddhism has some recommendations in this area, and it's been going all the way back to Buddha's time,

[06:46]

The Six Perfections were a summary of what they thought a person who was a person that was living a good human life had. And it's an interesting collection, right? A person who lives a bodhisattva life is generous, conducts his affairs with morality, ethical conduct, has great patience and tolerance, has joyful energy. and meditates so he has some level of composure in his life and wisdom. Wisdom defined in the Buddhist tradition is usually there's great comments on emptiness or boundless but some sense that whatever view we have of what our life is in our mind is limited and let us not forget that the reality we're living in is much bigger than that and One of the things that we forget the most often in that biggerness is we're connected to all of that biggerness.

[07:47]

Biggerness. God, where did I come up with that word? It's a keeper, yeah. So bodhisattva ideal is a kind of a concept that we can model our life around and say, this would be one way if I lived my life with these characteristics. whatever I'm doing, if I'm building bridges, or if I'm singing songs, or if I'm living as a remote monk, still I would be living a good life. So, now we're going to get into this, some of this text by Dogen. And I'm just going to read straight through four paragraphs on kind speech. Kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, you arouse the heart of compassion and offer words of loving care.

[08:51]

It is contrary to cruel or violent speech. If kind speech is offered, little by little kind speech expands. Thus even kind speech that is not ordinarily known or seen comes into being. Being willing to practice it for this entire present life. Be willing to practice it for this entire present life. Do not give up. World after world, life after life, kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. Those who hear kind speech from you have a delighted expression and a joyful mind. Those who hear your kind speech will be deeply touched and they will always remember it. Know that kind speech arises from kind heart, and kind heart from the seed of compassionate heart. Ponder the fact that kind speech is not just praising the merits of others, it has the power to turn the destiny of the nation.

[10:00]

Those are Dogen's comments on kind speech. I mean, all of us have some sense of Kind speech, this is a sort of ordinary English word, but there's something sort of soaring about the way Dogen brings that in to us here. So let's just deconstruct it sort of sentence by sentence because I think it's worth it. Kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, you arouse the heart of compassion and offer words of loving care. First of all, sentient beings are, well one definition is beings with consciousness, but sentience means feeling or sensation, so in some context it's just anything that feels or senses. So a sentient being is just anything that's alive. All living things are sentient beings. So we might say human beings are sentient beings, plants are sentient beings,

[11:04]

I had a neighbor who grows beautiful orchids, and I was always impressed with her orchids. And I asked her, how does she do it? And she says, I speak to them. She talks to her orchids. And we went on vacation for a couple of weeks, and we asked her to take care of our plants, which were not nearly as nice as herd plants. And we came back, and they were flourishing. So I decided to take up the practice of speaking kindly to plants. So there's many things one can speak kindly to. Kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, whether it's a tree or a human being or your dog or whatever, you arouse a heart of compassion and offer words of loving care. What a great... Wouldn't that be great if every sentient being you met, every human being you met, you arose the heart of compassion and offered words of loving care?

[12:17]

I mean, if you could say to the plumber that's come to fix your faucet, oh, please fix my faucet, and it had that sense of loving care, that would probably improve your relationship with the plumber, I think. And he's being very clear, it is contrary to cruel or violent speech. It's so easy for us to have an edge on our speech, especially if we have a little bit of anger. So, arouse the heart of compassion and offer words of loving care. He goes on, if kind speech is offered, little by little, kind speech expands. Interesting. Kind speech expands. Well, does that mean that if you start offering kind speech, if you start actually doing it, the next time you do it, it's a fuller level of kind speech? Or does it mean if you offer kind speech to someone, they might turn around and offer kind speech to someone else?

[13:29]

Anyway, if kind speech is offered little by little kind speech, I think I like it that kind speech in the world expands. Thus, even kind speech that is not ordinarily known or seen comes into being. So like kind speech that we don't normally see around the world comes into being. This is not special kind speech. kind speech that you don't see very often comes into being. Then he goes, be willing to practice it for this entire present life. Do not give up. Wow, what an idea. I'm going to practice speaking this way my entire present life, and I'm not going to give up.

[14:33]

World after world, Life after life. World after world. What is world after world? Well, our life is filled with worlds, like we're in a little world here. This is a particular kind of world. We're all sitting quietly in either uncomfortable or comfortable postures. But, you know, then we're going to leave here. And some of you will end up going home to your family, and that'll be a whole different world. And some will end up going to work, and that'll be a whole different world. And some of you will go climb a mountain, and that'll be a different world. But all these different worlds, world after world, we're going to be always speaking kind speech. And if you're on a mountain and there's nobody to speak to, then you can notice the speech that's going on in your head. And you can see, well, is that really kind speech? Be useful if that was kind speech too, how you speak to yourself. Life after life. Each one of these worlds we live in is a whole new life.

[15:38]

You're a whole new person. You're a person here, and then in an hour you'll be a new person. And you'll try to remember that speaking kindly is a good thing. Kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. Well, you know, we don't have to go as far as rulers and enemies, just think about our boss at work. Does kind speech reconcile our boss? Can you speak kindly to your boss? And subdue those competitors over there in Google that are trying to steal your business? Subduing the enemies and, is this really realistic? I mean, really? Kind speech? Shouldn't we be mean to them? I don't know. I worked in the business world for 20 years and actually found that even in difficult negotiations or with cranky bosses, which in the high-tech world I was in, there were plenty of,

[17:01]

kindness from me worked pretty well. It doesn't mean you roll over. Sometimes kindness is speaking truth to power. That's a kindness too. But you can do it without making it personal. Anyway, those who hear kind speech from you have a delighted expression and a joyful mind. Those who hear your kind speech will be deeply touched and they will always remember it. I think that's true. You must reflect probably on your life to someone who was really kind and spoke kindly to you. It carries with you for a long time. Know that kind speech arises from kind heart and kind heart from the seed of compassionate heart.

[18:02]

Ponder the fact that kind speech is not just praising the merits of others. There is a difference between... There's a special term for that, praising, you know, being especially kind to your boss because he's your boss and telling him how brilliant and handsome he is. Ah, you're so smart. You're so handsome. Would you please give me a raise? No... It has the power to turn the destiny of a nation. Anyway, I offer these rather bold words to you around kind speech from a great teacher, Dogen, to think a little bit about. And not more than think about a little bit, but practice being a little kinder in your speech. So anyway, Partly why I chose kind speech is I was thinking about the memorial we did for Blanche Hartman, our wonderful teacher who was with us for over 40 years.

[19:17]

And her practice was kindness. Moment by moment, kindness was Blanche's practice. I knew Blanche when she was young. And she was kind of crusty and tough. She was an engineer. She had a really sharp engineering mind. But 40 years of Zen practice, and at the end she was, as Norman Fisher said, a saint. She had become a saint, which is proof that Zosman actually works, which is encouraging. Anyway, we miss you, Blanche. So she has this marvelous book here that was put together by one of her students, Zenju, and just came out just about six months before the end of her life. And so I picked up a couple of quotes out of it. And she was commenting on a Suzuki Roshi talk, I think was in Not Always So Called, entitled Be Kind With Yourself.

[20:23]

And this is a paragraph from that talk. This is Suzuki Roshi now. If you are very kind with your breathing, one breath after another, you will have a refreshed feeling, a warm feeling in your zazen. When you have a warm feeling for your body and your breath, then you can take care of your practice and will be fully satisfied. Well, I don't, I assume all of you have had some experience with them, but maybe there's a few of you who haven't, and having somebody tell you, be kind with your breath is an interesting idea. What does it mean to be kind with your breath? What does it mean to actually pay attention to your breath in a very kind way? Your breath is always with you.

[21:26]

It is so familiar. fundamental to your life. We have so many problems. Big problems. Friends get sick. Friends die. We have medium-sized problems. We maybe lose a job and we're out of work for a while. We have really tiny problems. We're rushing to get somewhere and the line in the grocery store is going slow and really getting irritated. We got all kinds of problems. But it's very easy for us to think our problems, whatever they are, are more important than the fact that we're alive. We forget that. But if we pay attention to our breathing, we tend to remember, oh, I'm actually here. If I'm standing in line at the grocery store and someone is fiddling with their checkbook because they haven't got the special wave their iPhone in front of the cash register and leave, technology, you have a moment to pay attention to your breathing while you stand there.

[22:31]

Look around the store. Ooh, who's that interesting person standing behind me? Smile at them. Say hi in a kind way. Maybe it turns out that person's very interesting and you have a little conversation. Then, oh, before you know it, you're the one that's holding up the line. Breathing reminds us that we have the gift of life, that we're actually alive. And that's not always going to be so. And we should value it. So I would recommend, and I got it from Suzuki Hiroshi, so I'm pretty sure it's true, paying attention to your breathing. And when you're sitting zazen, which is the other thing I would recommend that I learned from Suzuki Hiroshi. Sit zazen. If you can a little bit every day, and if you're paying attention to your breathing when you're sitting zazen, which is what you should be doing, you will have a warm, refreshed feeling.

[23:42]

He used to say a warm feeling in your zazen. What a nice thing to just sit and have a warm, refreshed feeling. then you'll be taking care of your practice and will be fully satisfied. At Tassar, I was talking to a student and he said, I just wish I could just be, you know, just walk on the path and feel the sun on my shoulders and that's enough. Just being alive is enough. Wouldn't it be Wonderful to just feel like being alive is enough. It should be enough. It's a lot. Being alive is a lot. So anyway, that was Tsukiroshi's comments on being kind with your breathing. And so Blanche goes on and says, Tsukiroshi's talking about taking good care of ourselves and being very kind with ourselves.

[24:49]

This is Blanche. And I find a lot of times in my practice, I am not really being very kind to myself. I speak very harshly to myself in my head. I do not, I'm not doing some, quote, I'm not doing something right. I'm not doing enough of it. I'm not dot, dot, dot. Does this remind you of anybody? You know? Oh. the ways we criticize ourselves. I was commenting to the people on Wednesday night that I don't think we would never put up with anybody criticizing us as much as we criticize ourselves. I mean, that would just be ridiculous. But we just go on, carry on. Well, so I think it's a very good practice to pay close attention to your mind and what your mind is saying to you. And, you know, for some reason, we seem to think that what we're saying to ourselves is very important.

[25:58]

But I wonder. I wonder sometimes about all these important things we say to ourselves. First of all, where do all these words come from? It's very odd. You know, what kinds of words come to us from how they come. This is one of those little stories from Tasara. In the morning at Tasara, I would get up a little earlier and go and have tea with my Anja. It's a person who sort of takes care of me. And my Jishu, who carries the incense when I walk around. We'd have tea together, and this morning, this is very nice Japanese tea, you know, because we're sort of in the Japanese tradition, so naturally... We'd have some nice Japanese green tea. And the water was kind of cold. Well, not cold, but it wasn't as warm as it usually was. And I asked the Anjo, water seems a little cold this morning. He said, yeah, I got it out of the samovar, and somebody must have taken some water out of the samovar. And, you know, when water comes out of the samovar, new water comes in, and it sort of dilutes it.

[27:05]

He said, maybe the cook was running late and took some water out of the samovar. They're not supposed to do that. he says to me. See, I don't really know how it works. You learn all these things from other people. So, okay, fine. Then I do something called a jindo, which is I walk around to all the different altars at Tassara and offer incense and do some boughs, and one of those altars is the kitchen. So I arrive at the kitchen, and in the kitchen you offer, for instance, at the altar, and then you turn to the cook who's there cooking breakfast, and you bow. And I always have this wonderful, warm feeling when I bow to the cook because there's somebody who got up even earlier than I did and is in there cooking breakfast, which is a wonderful thing to have. But I noticed that the person that I was bowing to, and this happens so fast in your mind, in a previous... three or four days earlier, I'd been talking to the Tenzo, and the Tenzo said, you know, so-and-so's been coming late to the kitchen recently, you know, talking to me, how should I deal with that and stuff like that, you know, and it's just a conversation that passed.

[28:14]

And then all of a sudden, as I was bowing to this person, and I was coming up, I noticed, instead of that really warm, wonderful feeling, these ideas went through my head, oh, she was late, and that's why, you know, and I was just... This little kind of not so perfectly warm feeling emerged in me. It wasn't bad, but a little something. So these thoughts are just big. Now, first of all, she probably wasn't late. She probably didn't take hot water out of the sand. Who knows, right? I never bothered to follow up. I just noticed. Of course, that's what happens if you're sitting nine periods of zazen a day and you notice everything that goes on in your mind. It's really... kind of disturbing at first. The standard strategy at Tassar, this is 60 people that come to Tassar for three months and are isolated there, far from everywhere, and get up at four o'clock in the morning and sit all these periods of zazen all day long and have almost no breaks and go to bed at nine o'clock at night.

[29:20]

The first thing you do with all this stuff that's going on in your head is you get irritated and blame it on everybody else. You know, we had one of these incredibly powerful winters all along the California coast, as you know, and it was particularly powerful down. The Tassar is outside of the Big Sur. I know you probably heard that the Big Sur road was washed out, still washed out, I believe. It's still closed. Well, our road, our 15-mile dirt road was, you know, landslides, slipouts, blocked for periods of time. We'd had the Sabrinas fire the previous summer. for the entire watershed, so when it rained, the Tassar Creek rose. Incredible, wow. We had a bridge that went over from the flats over to another area, completely washed away. We had nice hot water systems that we had built over the years that pump hot water from the hot springs up through the Zendo and into the dorms and the dining room. I wouldn't say it keeps you really warm, but it keeps you about 20 degrees warmer than it is outside, so if it's like 28 outside,

[30:24]

48 in the Zendo, which is nice when it's 28 outside. But if the stream rises so much and washes out the hot springs and destroys the pumps, then it's 28 in the Zendo. So we can complain about that. Why isn't the shop fixing the hot water system? So this goes on, especially when it's raining and muddy and dark. This goes on for a while until you start to realize, oh, All of this stuff is just a mirror on my mind. It's my mind that's making a decision to get irritated by the server who didn't quite move in the way I wanted them to move or my new roommate who seems to not smile at me exactly the way I want her to smile me or the person who's sitting next to me in the Zendo and sort of coughs too much. Your problems are not out there. We all know this, right?

[31:30]

We all know that our suffering is so much created by our own mind. And, wow, where have I gone? Fortunately, this realization occurs to everybody about four or five weeks into the practice period and everybody starts really liking each other and that's the same time in which the sun starts coming into the valley and it stops raining a little bit and at that time instead of the stark branches of the trees, which of course is quite beautiful because you see the stars at Tassara because there's no ambient light for five miles in any direction. So you really, wow, see the stars. But it's okay when the leaves come out with their beautiful blossoms, maple blossoms, and you feel the entire mountain come alive. It's okay. And then everybody ends the practice period in love with each other.

[32:33]

Where was I? Okay, Blanche continues. I think about being kind with other. The image... from the loving-kindness meditation of suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit, so that one cultivates an infinite goodwill toward the whole world, and I find it such an inspiring aspiration. In the last year of Blanche's life here, she lectured almost exclusively on the loving-kindness meditation. It was her practice and her kindness... filled the hallways of this building. She always sat at a particular place in the dining room, and everybody felt comfortable joining Blanche and sitting with her. But she goes on. But in the beginning, you have to be kind with yourself. It is very hard to be kinder to others than you are to yourself. So take a good look and see if you're appreciating the Buddha in you.

[33:40]

See if you're appreciating the Buddha in you. If you're appreciating your connection with others. If you have some warm-hearted feeling for your life and your practice and your sangha and your family. So, take a good look and see if you can appreciate yourself as Buddha. Sugrush used to say, your perfect just as you are. And you could use a little improvement. But we're heavy on the and we could use a little improvement side of things. We could write a quite long essay on all the areas of improvement. And trust me, you'll spend the rest of your life working on them and you'll never finish. I spent quite a bit of time working on it and it's an unending project. you will pretty much be who you are near the end.

[34:43]

But if you just start to appreciate that you're also something more than that project to fix yourself up, that already, right as you are, you're Buddha. You're wonderful. And to feel that and know that will allow you to be kinder to everybody else. that you meet. It will help you. It's very hard to say anything about what a practice period is. I mean, we're in a practice period here. A practice period is a place where you intentionally set aside some time in your life and some energy and say, I'm going to intensify my practice.

[35:46]

And you can do that here in the city, in this marvelous urban temple. And we run practice periods three times a year here, and you can do it at Green Gulch. But there's something special about Tassara, partly because Sukiroshi founded Tassara so that we would have a 90-day practice period, which is a very... formal thing that started with Buddha in the old days when the wandering monks would gather during the rainy period and then got established in China in the Chinese monastic system and was carried through Japan. And so this form of a 90-day practice period where people gather in a remote place and stick together and practice for 90 days is very special. And so this poem of summarizes parts of it for me. This is by Su Dung Po, probably one of the most famous poets of Chinese from China.

[36:47]

The sounds of the creek are the teachings for in the broad long tongue of the Buddha. The sounds of the creeks are the teachings of the Buddha. The colors of the mountains are nothing but the pure body of Buddha. All night long, I hear 84,000 Gadas. Tomorrow, how can I tell them to others? The sounds of the creek are the teachings of the Buddha. At Tassara, during practice period, it's called the great silence. We sit Sazhan starting at 7.30 at night, and we're silent from then through till after lunch. And you get to listen to the sounds of the mountains. And, of course, because with all the rain, Tassar Creek and Kabarga Creek that runs next to the Zendo were just roaring, you know, like railroad cars or something.

[37:51]

Just incredible sounds of the creek. And the wind in the trees. And the birds started coming and singing to us every morning. The sounds of... And if you're not talking to anybody for... most of the day, you actually start to listen. Listen to. And it's nice that they say, I hear the 84,000 goddesses. These creeks and wind and birds are teaching. They're the teachings of the Buddha. You don't need to read any scriptures. You just need to listen to the sounds of the creek. and look at the beautiful body of the mountains. And maybe if you're lucky, you'll realize that, oh, I'm part of the mountains too. I'm no different than the trees. There's a famous koan that goes, somebody says, what's the meaning of Zen?

[38:55]

What's Zen? And the great answer to Zhajo says, the oak tree in the courtyard. The oak tree in the courtyard is what Jajo said when the monk said, what's the meaning of Zen? Can you actually relate to a tree? Can you know what a tree is doing? Is there any difference between you and a tree? Can you just be and have that be enough and just appreciate the life you've got with gratitude. So I thought I would end with a poem, kind of about trees. This is a Mary Oliver poem, The Plum Trees. It is about trees.

[39:56]

Such richness flowing through the branches of summer and into the body, carried inward on the five rivers. Disorder and astonishment rattle your thoughts and your heart cries for rest. But don't succumb. There is nothing so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy is a taste before it's anything else. and the body can lounge for hours devouring the important moments. Listen. The only way to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it into the body first, like small, wild plums. Ah. if we are able to actually be present with our living, breathing bodily experience of life, that will inform our speech, that will inform our conduct, and we'll be more composed when we face the problems of our life.

[41:40]

Thank you very much for coming this morning. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:15]

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