This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I know that a number of you know about Catherine Thannis' health, but maybe some of you don't. Maybe some of you know Catherine Thaniss and don't know about this, so it may be a little surprising. Catherine was a tanto here, actually, in the 80s, and has since been the teacher at the Santa Cruz Zen Center and also the Monterey Bay Zen Center in Carmel, and has actually retired most recently from most teaching, was still... doing some individual work with students and things, but is not really teaching so formally, was not teaching so formally.

[01:03]

And on Monday, a student of hers found her in her house face down. She had fallen. It's unclear what happened. She has not been conscious since then. was breathing on her own at the time. She was actually bleeding in her brain. She may have had a stroke before she fell, or she may have fell and hit her head. It's unclear. She was at Dominican Hospital. I went to see her on Tuesday morning, and she was very calm. She was still breathing on her own, actually. So last night, Tuesday night, they took her off of life support. She's very clear in her directives that she did not want to be kept alive if there wasn't going to be pretty good quality of life. And it's pretty clear that there would not be, with the bleeding on the brain.

[02:09]

Anyway, she hasn't come to consciousness at all. She's now at home with hospice care, and her students are around her, and she's off of life support, so it's unclear how long she'll live. probably not very long, but Patrice Mansoor sent an e-mail to me at Jamesburg, which Keith read to me, which said that she was very calm and it was very nice to be out of the hospital, to be back at her house. So I'm sorry if that's a shock to some of you. I think it is, looking around. I think as many of us, her friends and students, have said, Although it's a big surprise, she was just this weekend, she had a very busy weekend. Busy and happy weekend. She went to the Japanese festival, which was in Santa Cruz, and also to the Monterey Bay Zen Centers.

[03:13]

Every year they do an event at Earthbound Farms. a meal and a walk through the gardens. And she was at that and seemed to be having a great time. So she really lived her life to the fullest up to the last minute, which I think all of us, those of us who have been talking about it, her friends and students, are saying this is really what she would have wanted. She wouldn't have wanted to linger around not being able to live her life fully, which she really did. One of my... favorite memories of Catherine is how enthralled she was with Joe Montana. She had big pictures of Joe Montana. I don't think they're probably gone by now. That was some years ago, but he was quite a bit younger than she was even then. And another favorite story about her is Keith and I went to see her once in Santa Cruz and We knocked on our door, and she came to the door, and she said, I am so excited. I just found out that I'm a number something on the Enneagram.

[04:17]

I'd always thought I was something else, but now I know I'm a tragic romantic. I'm so relieved. And when we left, she said, remember, I'm a tragic romantic. If you really want to make me happy, send me flowers without any name. Besides these quirky things, Catherine was one of the most ardent studiers that I've ever met. She just studied and studied and studied Buddhism mostly, but also many other things and would, at the drop of the hat, send you articles on... anything you might bring up with her. And I just really appreciated her searching mind. So this has to do with what I want to talk about tonight, but I want to start at a different place, which is, maybe you haven't noticed, but in each lecture that I've given this summer, I've been using the Harmony of Difference and Equality, just something from it.

[05:30]

So I've been reading it over and over, as we all have in service. And one thing strikes me every time I read it, which is the amount of mundane kind of things that are mentioned in this very important in Soto Zen. It's recited in every Soto Zen monastery pretty much every day. When I first came to Zen Center, to Tassajara, Here at Tassahara, every day we did the Heart Sutra in Japanese, the Shosai Mio, the Sandokai, which is the merging, the harmony of difference and equality in Japanese, and the ancestors up to Kezon and the Daihi Shindirani. Every day. We only did that. Every day, every day, every day. That's why I really know the Sandokai in Japanese. So that's a very...

[06:31]

And now, of course, we added many other chants in English and translated them into English and all. But this one, translated in English, is very interesting. And as I say, it's very important. It's in the Soto Zen. It's kind of like the Soto Zen poem. So it must be saying something basic about our practice, right? And in it, a good portion of it is things like, sights vary in quality and form. Sounds differ as pleasing or harsh. Fire heats wind moves, water wets, earth is solid, eye and sights, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste. What is it about? I mean, I'm just taken by every time I hear it, oh, this is our practice. It's so basic. It's so mundane in a way. It's just... eye and sight, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste, fire heats, wind moves, water wets, earth is solid, nothing you could argue with, really, and just kind of plodding along.

[07:42]

Once Kategori Roshi said, many of you have heard me say this before, but once he said, really, our life is pretty much just like a deer grazing on the hillside. We're just walking along, eating here, eating there, and that's really what our life is like. Of course, we add a whole lot of things. This doesn't say mind and thoughts, but that's really a big part of our life, mind and thoughts, mind and feelings, mind and stories, body and pain. So I think... Really, this is true. Zazen is very basic. It's kind of just sit down and be with all of that, all of this. Be with what's happening.

[08:43]

And then there's another side to Zen practice. Today I received a book from an old friend of mine, Taigen Dan Layton. who's written several wonderful books about Buddhist scholarship and Zen, most of which I don't remember the name of. There's one about the Lotus Sutra, and there's one about bodhisattvas. This one is called Zen Questions. And he says in the introduction, the questions in the title is at least as much a verb as it is a noun. So... Zen asks questions. That is the essence of Zen. So besides being very basic, very simple, very just life is happening, can we stand it? Can we be there with it as it happens? There also is this questioning part.

[09:45]

And as he says, it's not about the answer. It's not about getting the answer. It's more about having a questioning attitude, having a questioning meeting with the world, with our life. He quotes this song by Bob Dylan. A question in your nerves is lit. A question in your nerves is lit. Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy. Ensure you not to quit, to keep it in your mind and not forget that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to. Somebody could sing that. A question in your nerves is lit, yet you know that there is no answer fit to satisfy.

[10:50]

Ensure you not to quit. to keep it in your mind and not forget that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to. Dan says, this is a description of the kind of question there is in Zen. It's not one that we find an answer to. It's not a simple question, although it may have words to it. And sometimes our life situation, something like Catherine... suddenly being found face down in her kitchen brings up questions. Like, what happened? What is it? Why now? What about the woman who was going to study with her? What about the study session I was going to have with her? When will that happen to me? What will happen to me? Will it be like that or will it be different? Those kind of questions...

[11:51]

come up with words in them, and they are part of this, a question in our nerves is lit. Sometimes an event lights that question particularly brightly. But even when it isn't right in front of us like that, there still is, especially if you do something like Sitzazen, or something like live a human life and notice, there is this question always of how much we don't know. How much we think we know something and then it turns out to be something different than we thought. Or we know that we don't know and we're searching for the answer. Is this the right practice? Should I really be at Tassajara? How long should I stay? Should I go back to school?

[12:54]

Is this the right person for me to be involved with? All of those questions, when we start looking into them, are very often what becomes apparent is that we don't know. That we have some question there, but we don't know. Sometimes we do know. We think we know, at least. Like, yes, I should stay at Tassajara. Or, no, I should go. Anyway, all the possible answers to those questions that we might think that we know for the time being, but a good percentage of the time we actually know that we don't know. And to live with that not knowing is in a way I think the essence of Zen. It's why there's a place like Tassajara. It's to give us support in living with not knowing so that we can live that way in the rest of the world, too. It's not just so we can come here and live without knowing. It's so that we can go back to the rest of the world where not knowing is at least as great as it is at Tassajara and live there with the same kind of stability and rhythm and openness, openness in spite of not knowing.

[14:15]

poem that I wanted to bring up, which many of you have heard before. It's called, well, it doesn't have a title. It's a Zen poem. It doesn't have a title. Let's see if I can remember it. I've only said it about 100 times today to get here. Let's see. The Unique Breeze of Reality. You know that one, right? The unique breeze of reality, can you see it? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring, or today, the forms of summer. As the woof goes through the warp, the weave is dense and fine. One continuous thread comes from the shuttle, making each design. How can this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause or no cause?

[15:21]

Let me say that again. The unique breeze of reality, can you see it? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of summer. As the wolf goes through the warp, the weave is dense and fine, One continuous thread comes from the shuttle, making each design. How could this even be spoken of on the same day as false cause or no cause? So this poem is talking about how our lives, how the universe really functions, how each thing is embedded in this very dense weave of where everything touches everything else, where everything has an impact on everything else, and yet there's only one thread. There's this moment, and then there's the next moment, and then there's the next moment.

[16:26]

And it's a continuous, there's no break in the thread. It's not like, and like it says, it's not related to false cause or no cause, which we so often feel when something goes wrong in our life, like, wait a minute, how did I get here? How did this happen? Well, how this happened is, you know, you can trace it back. Of course, we won't know everything that caused it, but we can see, oh, this is how I got here. And we can also see that there is so much that we don't know about how we got here and, in particular, where we're going. You know, there's one thread. And it's going just to this next moment, just this next moment, just this next moment. And at any point, that one thread might include, you know, having a stroke and ending up on the floor with blood on your brain and unconscious.

[17:29]

For any one of us, that might happen at any moment. And it's right there in our, it's woven into our life. It's not like it's I mean, it is predisposed in some ways, you know, like, how's my heart doing right now? You know, feels like it's fine, but really, do I know? No, how's your heart? What's going on in there? You know, there's a whole lot of us that's hidden. And yet, here we are, this moment, and then the next moment. So everything that happens has its causes, its myriad causes. And we don't know them. We have to live fully, completely in this life with a questioning mind and yet with an open heart, courageously, in our own particular unique ancient brocade, our spot in this ancient brocade that we're all in.

[18:37]

I think this poem really expresses the two parts of Zen practice of life that I'm talking about tonight. The mundaneness, the naturalness, the everydayness, the universalness, and the unknownness, the questioning, the you know, Zen questions. Why does Zen question? Because there are questions there. Because to sit down and open ourselves to the mundaneness of right now means there are questions. What's really going on? Questions that we can't answer and that it's not really our goal to answer, but it is our vow to be open to. vow to let the question in our nerves be lit.

[19:53]

So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or questions now. of not being able to know the answers of those questions then in theory isn't any response to us almost like any response can be doubted but at the same time never questioned for the idea that you can just like you can never know so anytime we do any action can it truly be called into question because that has us implying that there is a right way to do things well it's not that there aren't effects and So when we do things, there are effects. And in some ways, those effects are the answers. So if something that we do causes more suffering, we can't deny that.

[21:03]

We can't just say, oh, well, it might have caused more suffering then, but maybe if I'd done something else, it would have caused even more suffering. Even though that might be true, but still, our vow, anyway, is to live for the benefit of all beings. And even though you're right, we don't always know what that benefit is, or maybe in some ways we never know what it is, still we can see and often can actually pretty much know ahead of time, like Kategori Roshi once said, he said, if you walk into a store, a jewelry store, and steal a diamond ring, there will be effects of that. And you can't pretend, you know, like, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know that was going to cause some trouble in my life. So even though the exact answer of things is complex, still we have complete responsibility for living our life in a beneficial way.

[22:04]

If I may ask another. Sure. Take for instance something like imperialism or something like that, where someone may argue that suffering may in turn cause... more benefit to that by helping people build roads or streets like that, but it does involve causing a certain amount of suffering. So can we even say that suffering, a mass amount, can be used to justify a good farther down the line so that even the idea of causing suffering cannot be an end-all to an action because it may lead to more good? Yeah, we could say that. And, you know, in certain cases that might be true, but in our own lives, when we are making our next move, just the next step on the thread, we need to be watching for when we're making excuses. So we can say logical things and, in fact, true things, and if something is happening out there and we want to describe it, that might be an all right description. But in our own...

[23:10]

not so much, let's say, decisions, you know, if we're, or whether we're thinking them or whether we're just doing them, if our vow is toward benefiting beings, that becomes part of our thread. And then, because still, we might even need to make difficult choices like that, like what is going to cause, as far as I can tell, the most good and the least suffering. which doesn't mean that it won't cause some suffering. Yes. standing up for a cause that's worth standing up for?

[24:20]

Yes. And that at the same time, there's the controversy in oneself that you can also be detached from having to have things change. How do you know when What type of circumstance would you let me know when it's appropriate to stand up and try to affect change in mind? One should have a sense of... Right. Right. Well, I think one thing that it's important to know is that there isn't any way to be passive. There's no choice of I won't do anything because we are active participants all the time. So if we don't do anything, that's active.

[25:23]

If we do do something, that's active. So we're always active. So thinking that I can decide not to do anything and that would be not doing anything is not accurate. On the other hand, to think that... I am going to do something and make it happen is also not accurate. So, like you said, we have a feeling about something and about the benefit or the harm of something, and when we do something about it, how we do that is also very important. And if we do it with hate, if we see some harm happening and we hate the perpetrator, that sends more hate out into the world. It makes hate more a part of that situation. It's hard to do something to stop harm from happening without hating the, quote, perpetrator.

[26:25]

But on the other hand, if we look deeply into the situation and deeply into ourself, we see that most harm doing comes from suffering. It comes from fear and suffering. If we can be deeply settled in that knowledge, even though we don't know exactly what it is, we can act sometimes quite decisively, but without hate. We can't necessarily sit around and wait until we're perfect to act. Like I say, we're always acting. Whether we're doing something or not doing something, it's an action. We have to go on living. We have to go on living right now as we are. And we can apologize and we can repent when we see, oh, I did that and that caused some harm. I was trying to help, but I see it caused harm. Because most things are not simple. Most things are complex, actually.

[27:29]

Very alive, complex things. Still, we try to be... That's one good reason for doing something like sitting zazen, so that we can act more from a settled place than from just reacting to something. Thank you. Yeah, Yasi. Yes. Yes? Plan all the way.

[28:30]

Just don't believe that your plans are necessarily going to happen. I mean, sometimes we don't have time to plan all the way. We have to plan the next meal, right? That's all we have time for. But we don't know how far to plan. We have no idea how far to plan. But sometimes for... you know, for the sake of other people or, I don't know, just because this is the way humans live, we make some plans. But we shouldn't be surprised if they don't happen. Because really, we make a plan. It takes the whole universe to support it. Any little thing going wrong, I mean, you know, something can happen, and we can still do our plan. You know, like all the vehicles broke down, but they still went to the Four Winds meeting. And they came back, too. That's good, some of them. You know, so we can continue our plans with some things changing, but a lot has to be in place for it to happen.

[29:32]

Yes? Which kind of practicality? Yes. Yes. Open to the unknown. And how does that tension come up? Can you give an example? best way to do something and then well if you spend a lot of time thinking about is this the most efficient way is this or uh is the world going to end now let's see i wonder if i should really bother to go make that bed you know because maybe but you're that's not what you're talking about right because that would be yeah that would be attention

[30:48]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, certainly we do get caught in the questions a lot, right? And I think that's what I meant by not really grasping for the answers, but more having an openness to the question. of life, like the unknownness of life. You know, one thing that often comes up for some people, there are two kinds of people, those who can make decisions and those who can't. So for those of us who can't, who don't know how to make decisions, you know, this is a big question. How do you make a decision? Given how unknown things are, How do you make a decision? And there are several... I've studied this a lot because I'm one of those people, and there are several things that I discovered.

[32:08]

One is that I usually, at least in the past, I think I'm better at this now, but try to make a decision too soon. It's like, you know, I see a decision out there, and I think, what am I going to do about that? You know, do I want to... I don't know what, you know, anything. Do I want to go to the movies on Saturday night if I wasn't at Tassajara? Oh, well, maybe, maybe not, maybe, maybe not, but it's only Wednesday. So if you just wait, a lot of more information comes in, information that we don't have any access to now. So we are very uncomfortable with just waiting. We're very uncomfortable with not knowing. We think... Well, that's indecisive. That's wishy-washy. Why can't I just decide? Yes, I do want to do that. No, I don't want to do that. But not knowing even what you want is a very legitimate Dharma position.

[33:17]

It needs to be a legitimate Dharma position because for some of us, it's a common state. I don't know whether I want this or whether I want that. Another thing that's going on in that decision-making often is we think there's a right answer. We think, for instance, I used to have a really hard time deciding what kind of ice cream to get in an ice cream shop. It was excruciating. And finally I noticed, I think there's a right answer here. I think there's a right kind of ice cream to get, and then there's a wrong kind of ice cream to get. It's like, wait a minute, that's like so stupid. Just pick a kind of ice cream. The only thing that's right or wrong about it is am I going to be satisfied, right? After I get it, am I going to wish I'd gotten something else? Well, that doesn't really have to do with the kind of ice cream. So fine, I can say, okay, my darn position is I don't know.

[34:20]

And I still don't know, and I still don't know, and I still don't know. Fine. Eventually, out of pity, and compassion for your friends. Or out of fear that they're going to leave you or something, you just choose. And then when you choose something like that, you try to choose the one that you can live with the best. And this has to do with ice cream and also many, many other things. Husbands, you try to choose the one that you can live with the best. And then once you've chosen... You do your best to actually live with that choice. It doesn't mean you never change your mind, you know, but mostly you're just like, okay, now this is life. Now I have a chocolate ice cream cone. Eat it quick before it melts. I asked Mel once in a... We have a ceremony where everybody asks a question, and I asked him, how do you make a decision?

[35:22]

And he said... If you're standing with one foot on the boat and one foot on the shore, on the dock, and the boat starts to move, something will happen. Either you'll jump to the boat or you'll jump to the dock or you'll end up in the water. So don't worry about it so much. And I think that's a big part of those of us who can't make a decision. Of course, we're making decisions all the time. We just spend a whole lot of time thinking about it because we think there's a right answer, because we think it's not okay not to know. So to address both of those, like, okay, there's just the answer I'm going to live with, and there really is not knowing, and then there's a time to take a leap. I think it's a big help in making a decision. Does that address what you were bringing up at all? Thank you.

[36:25]

Is there anything else? Yes. I have a follow-up question to that decision-making. Yes. So I understand that you're supposed to have no attachment to preference or aversion. So how do you make mundane daily choices? Because we're conditioned to choose what we prefer and avoid what we don't like. Yes. And so how do you even make choices on what to eat? dinner, where to go, how to spend time. I think it's really fine to make choices based on what you prefer as long as it isn't causing suffering and as long as if that doesn't happen, if you can't do that, then you don't stay attached to that. No, that's what I wanted. I don't want that other thing. So there's sometimes when we don't have that choice of, oh, I prefer broccoli, well, we happen to be having green beans. okay, can you just eat green beans? But if you have your choice and you want broccoli, there's no problem with that.

[37:29]

Okay? A simple question. I know it's as much deeper. Okay, I think it's time to end. Thank you all very much. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[38:03]

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