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. Nice to see you all. Thank you very much for coming on this dark, cold night in mid-December with only 11 days left for shopping. Christmas shopping. Anybody still do that? Anyway, my name is Joan, and I live here at Zen Center. And I want to say right away, can everybody hear me okay? This is the first talk coming out of a seven-day sesheen that we just finished. Here I am giving the first talk since the sesheen. And I'm very excruciatingly aware of something Suzuki Roshi said, which was apparently to the students, I think you're already enlightened, and then you open your mouth.

[01:09]

So here I go, with full awareness, plunging into delusion. The other thing I really want to say is... We were in Japan a few months ago, and there was a Dharma talk during the ceremonies we were attending at Rinso Inn, Suzuki Roshi's temple, big ceremonies. And it was very interesting, because at the Dharma talk, all the priests just disappeared. There was... It was the lay people. It was just the lay people. And it seems that we do it different here. I wouldn't say that we separate so much priest and lay, actually. It seems to me in this temple that there's something more about the residents, people who live here, and people who don't live here and who come here.

[02:17]

Many of you don't live here and come here, and it's so great that you're here. And the residents who live here, it's so great you're here too. And it presents a little bit of a question in my mind of who am I talking to and what's relevant. But I do want to say, I want to thank the residents for being here to witness me and this, because I feel like it's an expression of our intimate living practice together. We live and we practice together here, and it's deeply meaningful. for me, that you're here. And for the so-called non-resident or community practitioners or wider sangha or explorers or innocent passers-by, whatever you want to call yourselves, I'm also really grateful you're here because I feel like what happens here on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings is we kind of, like...

[03:18]

open up our practice, you know? People who are practicing day in and day out here, we sort of lay it bare so that you can see our process. And I think that there's something really precious about that too. What I've heard and what I feel is studying the Buddha Dharma is nothing other than reaching through to grab an ordinary person's life. This is what's happening. So for instance, Reaching through to grab an ordinary person's life, a monk asked Yun-men, how is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall? And Yun-men answered, body exposed in the golden wind. So this is a case from the Blue Cliff Record. And I mentioned this to someone a while back. And as soon as I said the Blue Cliff Record, he went, oh, no, oh, no. There's something about the koans, the ancient stories, that can be a little intimidating maybe for some people.

[04:26]

But I really want to say this is nothing other than an ordinary person asking an ordinary question. How is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall? Maybe another way of saying that is, what do I do when I get scared? One of the deep teachings in Buddhism is the teaching of impermanence. This is what I want to talk about tonight, is the Dharma of coming and going, or our old friend, impermanence. How do we move with that, particularly when we start to wake up to the fact of our not being in control at all? the fact of impermanence, the fact that things change. So in this world of change, what is my practice? What is your practice? How do you meet conditions when they're clearly showing that we're not at all in control?

[05:30]

What's the nature of transitions? How do we navigate uncertainty without being blown off course? So in Zen we say not knowing is most intimate, but how do you move? How do you move within not knowing? How do you stay engaged in your life, especially when you begin to see into the fact of impermanence? Or do you become paralyzed into some kind of inertia out of fear because you begin to see how we are not in control? These are personal questions that I have. So backing up, just to explore a little bit, the ordinary person that Yunmen was. He was also extraordinary. But he, let's see, maybe I could start with his awakening story. This is from Andy Ferguson's wonderful book, which many of you may know.

[06:33]

Zen's Chinese Heritage. I really recommend it. It's one of those books to actually... by and have, because it's a wonderful reference. I've referred to it over many years for inspiration and for comfort. So Yunman's teacher, one of his teachers, and Lucy's not here. Is there anyone here who speaks Chinese? Yes. Okay. So the teacher's name was something like Mu Zhou. Okay. When Mu Zhou heard Yunman coming, He closed the door to his room. Yunmin knocked on the door. Mu Zhou said, who is it? Yunmin said, it's me. Mu Zhou said, what do you want? Yunmin said, I'm not clear about my life. I'd like the master to give me some instruction. Mu Zhou then opened the door and taking a look at Yunmin, closed it again.

[07:40]

Welcome to Zen. And also welcome to Zen, Yunmin knocked on the door in this manner three days in a row. On the third day when Muzhou opened the door, Yunmin stuck his foot in the doorway. Muzhou grabbed Yunmin and yelled, speak, speak. When Yunmin began to speak, Muzhou gave him a shove and said, too late. And then guess what? He slammed the door, catching and breaking Yunmin's foot. And then what happened? At that moment, Yunmin experienced enlightenment. So I really like Yunmin a lot. He's not in our particular tradition. He goes back to Shirtu, who is one of our direct ancestors, but Yunman started his own school.

[08:43]

His flavor's a little bit different, maybe. But what's moving to me is to see the trajectory of that first story that's recorded anyway of his enlightenment, all his energy, and I'll give a few more stories in a minute to give you the flavor of his energy and his intensity and his insistence and his falling down and getting back up again, and then how that... evolved over his life into this, what is it, when the tree withers and the leaves fall, no more shoving and it's just body exposed to the golden wind. What was that? What happened in the course of his life, in the course of his practice? So a little bit more of the flavor of this wonderful character, Yunmin, which is also for me in this realm of coming and going, not in control. Where do we find the energy? Nevertheless, not being in control, to keep practicing, to keep making effort, to keep even just getting up in the morning.

[09:48]

What is it that gets us up in the morning? So Yunmin, after he'd become the abbot of his temple, said, and you know, there's all these people of high importance there, the mayor or the governor or someone. And Yunman says, he makes this big entrance into the Buddha Hall, and then he says, there's nothing special to say. It's better if I don't speak and thereby deceive you all. I'm sorry that I've already played the part of a wily old fox for all of you. If a man of clear vision were to suddenly see me now, I'd be the object of laughter. But I can't avoid it. If I can't avoid it, then I'll just ask you all, from the beginning, what's the big deal? What are you lacking? I don't have anything to say. You have to break through to this on your own, and don't ask silly questions. And then it gets worse.

[10:50]

Later on, he says, why are you all aimlessly coming here looking for something? I only know how to eat and shit. What use is there in explaining anything else? And then he says, you say, I understand Zen or I understand Tao. But even if you can recite the whole Buddhist canon, what will you do with it? So this flavor or this intensity or this focus or the energy for me is extremely important. We have to live our own lives. We have to slog through our own delusion. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to take our own risks. It's like we're called on one hand not to be too sure about any particular thing, that it's not about knowing, but it doesn't mean not having some kind of confidence, confidence enough to keep trying.

[12:02]

This week and next week, actually, we here are in a big transition period. There's a lot of coming and going happening right now. The practice period just ended, so after spending 10 weeks of intense, intimate practice time together, we see our friends leave. And then we have new people coming in for short periods as guest students. We have people coming up from Tassajaro when the practice period ends there. There's a lot of coming and going. This is hard. There's a lot of movement. It gets kind of blurry. You get kind of lost. You know, one of the most important ceremonies I think we have here is work circle. We have a work meeting in the morning. It's kind of like, you know... our news. We have announcements on what's happening during the day. But one of the things that happens is the work leader says, any departures? Seems like a simple question, but I think this is a very emotional question.

[13:10]

I mean, people have been practicing for years, maybe about to say goodbye. They've been steeping in stillness for however long, and now they're about to make a move. They're going to Do something. The first bell means sit down. The second bell means stand up and live your life. So this public acknowledgement of a decision to make a move in the midst of this practice of stillness is a big deal. And so I had left Sun Center. I had left residential practice a couple years ago after being around for a while. And we have this thing called the Departing Student Ceremony, another very, very emotional ceremony. We do a Jundo, where we bow to each other. It's very formal, very solemn, early in the morning. And I have to say that my own experience at my Departing Student Ceremony felt like I was at my own funeral. I mean, I'm... Portuguese and very traumatic, very emotional.

[14:12]

I feel things very intensely. But still, there was something in there about an ending. This is over. I definitely got the message. And then I was gone for two years. I left formal residential practice. I left being a Zen center resident, having the identity of a Zen center resident, the status of a Zen center priest. I went out into the marketplace. I didn't have special robes. I didn't have a zagu that I could whip out. I didn't have a shaved head. I was just an ordinary person in the world. So what was that? You know, I look back on that. Was it a vision quest? Was I in exile? Did I waste those two years? What was that? Some people said, well, at least she got out. There wasn't that point of view. There was my own point of view that was, you know, because I had no idea what I was going to do when I left.

[15:17]

I just felt it was time to make a move, but I didn't know where I was going. And to this day, even just a couple days ago, someone said to me, this is very embarrassing, they said... I thought you were in Peru. I was like, what? And what they were talking about, what I had to sort of sheepishly acknowledge was, no, that was supposed to be a salsa club in Panama. It didn't exactly work out. It was an attempt. Something I thought that I was going to do, it just didn't work. So the feeling I've had is, oh, the big teaching there was, apparently I'm not afraid to make a total fool of myself. This was actually important for me to see. Something freed up there. Tree withers. When all sanity drops away. Salsa club in Panama. Maybe, maybe not. I can't explain myself. So the closest, most honest kind of response to all of this, as I was thinking about it,

[16:23]

of this coming and going, and it's not in the realm of reason or the intellect, can't explain it, was at Tassajara a few years ago. Tassajara is the monastery, Zen Center's monastery near Monterey. And it was during the winter practice period, or during a practice period in the formal training time of year. And the abbot was Mel Weitzman, and I was his jisha, his attendant. And inexplicably out of the blue, he just said to me one day, I've got this really bad toothache. I really need to go to the dentist. And I was like, OK. You don't come and go during a Tassajara practice period. You stay put. And I said, OK. Well, when were you thinking about going? And he said, well, I think we should go now. It's not like a small deal to drive in and out of Tassajara. especially in the winter.

[17:25]

So I was, you want to go now? And he said, yeah, I really think I need to go now. So I was like, okay. We got in the car, and I drove him the two hours into the nearest village to see the dentist. And we were there for about an hour. He went in to see the dentist, brought him in, and then he came back out. And I said, so what happened? And he said, oh, no, nothing. They couldn't find anything. Do you want to go have lunch? And I was like, okay. So we went. To this park, we were sitting there eating our sandwiches. As we're just eating our sandwiches, he says, you know, I think I just had to get out. This is the abbot. There's a deep teaching in here, you know. This has stayed with me. This has stayed with me. So the decision to move, the decision to go, to make a move, what is that? How does that happen? Dogen says in the Genjo Koan, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion.

[18:32]

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. So in thinking about this... I was thinking about letting go, you know, and holding on. And it feels like, you know, it's not turning away, it's not touching, it's not passive, it's not exactly active. There's something about letting go and holding gently are the same thing. Letting go and holding gently are the same thing. It's like the Macuvio. Could you give that a whack, Marta? The makugyo is this drum over here. Yeah, we keep the pace when we're chanting. And the training in the makugyo when you're playing the makugyo is you neither lead nor you follow. So what are you supposed to do?

[19:33]

If you're not going to lead or follow, what do you do when you're playing the makugyo? Or it's like the admonition when we're chanting to chant with your ears. Normally we think about chanting with our mouth, but to chant with your ears. What is that? What does that mean? The kokyo is the person who leads the chant, who introduces the chant. So people who've been to a full moon ceremony here, maybe some of you have been to a full moon ceremony. We had one just last week. Very formal, very intense, especially if you're the kokyo. If you're leading the chanting, it's very intense. And there is nothing like, you know, walking into this Buddha hall. Everybody's standing in robes, very intense. It's silent. You know, the procession comes in with a bell. The kokyo takes her place, very quiet.

[20:35]

And in the midst of that quiet and that stillness, all by herself, her voice, all my ancient twisted karma. Just like that, there's the moment of, and then the response, the call and the response. There's something deeply comforting, primal, primally comforting about that. Putting yourself out there and being fully met. Putting your intention clearly and fully out into the universe, and the universe will meet you. It's not about knowing. It's definitely a risk. There is no guarantee. But there's something about the joy. You do it for yourself, not for the outcome. So Dogen also in the Genjo Koan. And I'm saying all these things because if you don't know the Genjo Koan, it's in our chant book.

[21:37]

And you can get one in the bookstore for, I think, $7 still. There's a lot of wonderful... teachings and sutras and texts in there. And when we chant them in the Buddha, we go really fast and you can't stop and hang out with them. If you take it home, you can savor them in a different way. But this is also from the Genjo Koan, which is a koan teaching for everyday life, is how you might translate Genjo Koan. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself, because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you'll understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. So this teaching of Shikantaza

[22:40]

just sitting, or things as they are, everything's fine. There's really no problem here. Just sitting, witnessing. It doesn't mean passivity. Your participation is required. This Jijuyu Zanmai, the self-fulfilling samadhi, sometimes referred to as the cosmic dance. Are you going to dance? Are you going to join in? Are you going to watch? There's joy there. Body exposed to the golden wind. So neither active, not passive, engaging with, meeting, enjoying. It said, one who does not step forward cannot accept the Buddha's teaching. So when you're sitting like this, does it look like you're stepping forward? Maybe not, but does it feel like you're stepping forward? Yunman said to the assembly, every day you come and go asking endless questions If you were crossing a river, how would you do so?

[23:42]

A longtime resident of the monastery said, step. Yunmin was highly pleased with this answer. So on the Han downstairs, the wooden block that calls us to the Zendo with that urgent woodpecker sound, the insistent whack, whack, what it says on it is... Great is the matter of birth and death. Life is fleeting, gone, gone. Awake, awake, each one. Do not waste this life. So as I'm feeling coming and going, which for me is an emotional teaching, the emotional teaching of impermanence, this is the one-year mark as of two days ago of... a series of deaths we experienced here. Those of us living in the building, three people we knew, very dear to us, died in a short span of time.

[24:49]

So we got to study this coming and going pretty intensively in kind of an unmediated, visceral way. So how is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall, when we're not in control? I think of the well-being chanting that Blanche has been doing for a long time and that I've taken up with her and other people have too in the last couple years. There is something about this as a practice of chanting well-being. This is for people who are sick, who are in jail, who are having a rough time and who are dying. This is a practice of meeting the truth of where we're all headed, every single person in this room. I'm very sorry. Old age, sickness, death. This just seems to be part of the deal. But this thing about chanting well-being, you know, I've started, I go into the women's jail, and we've started offering, I don't know how it began,

[26:00]

We've been sitting together, but we started chanting together too, and we started doing well-being chanting, and I really started to feel the power of when you are feeling helpless, not in control of your life, like women in jail, people in jail, especially if they have kids, it's something you can do. So there's a way in which we chant for people who are sick and dying, and having difficulty, but we also chant for ourselves. We chant to be connected with this. So this is pretty moving, pretty empowering, ennobling. It's something we can do. You know, I was also thinking of being at a funeral last summer before. It was a very tragic death of a young woman. Her name was Juna. She was in her early 20s, and she contracted Lyme disease.

[27:05]

And her mother did too, and her sister did, but there was some complication around her response to it and some of the treatment, and she ended up dying just like that. So there's this big funeral for her at Grace Cathedral. And it was part Grace Cathedral did their service. It was a shared memorial, funeral service. And then there was a Zen part too. And Linda Ruth Cutts led the Zen part. And boy, was it amazing. I learned something about what this practice is, what Zen is. There is this beautiful, huge, if you've been to Grace Cathedral, it's huge, it's magnificent. The scale is, you know, Unbelievable. These little humans, here we are. And then up in the altar area, there's this little urn, Juna's ashes. And Linda Ruth was in her robes and standing there before this entire congregation.

[28:12]

And... You know, there's a way of talking about someone who's died talking about someone who's died. Oh, Juna lived this wonderful life. She was an amazing person. That's one way. But there is this other way where Linda Ruth just addressed the urn and said, Juna, you know, I got that... This life was over. As we knew Juna to be, she was done. Finito. That was it. The end of her life, no more. It's over. And at the same time, something that continues, whatever energy, something to be addressed, to be engaged with, still, to take up, that was so powerful, so deeply

[29:13]

I can't even describe. I felt a part of me just rise to that. Mysterious, not knowing what it was, but feeling in some way that there was a part of me that could still meet it. Juna. So body exposed in the golden wind, taking up this burden, with our entire being not knowing exactly what it is that we're taking up. But pursuing this wholeheartedly in the commentary to this koan, there's ride the thief's horse to pursue the thief. How far will you go in turning upside down conventional reality? Are you so sure of this and that and right and wrong and good and bad and practice and non-practice? Can you trust your delusion Can you trust your delusion enough to use it well?

[30:14]

Getting close enough to your confusion and your anger and your grief and your rage to let that motivate you enough, your pettiness, to get sick enough over it to let myself be completely transformed. This is the path of the Bodhisattva. Prodding, like, beaten down by despair, rage, frustration, falling down. getting back up again, falling down, getting back up again. One of the women I work with in the jail said to me the other day, I want so much to be compassionate. I always remember compassion too late. And I said, well, what about compassion for yourself? Can you start with compassion for yourself? Can we start with our lack of compassion, even having the thought of compassion, of asking what is it, where is it? What is the view from down on the floor looking up?

[31:16]

Can I stay with that? Can I be totally willing to feel what's happening down there on the floor? So something about this sublime letting go into what actually is no thrashing, the deliciousness, maybe, of finding the breath again, of returning, rediscovering the breath, the golden wind, maybe. So Bodhidharma, we talk about how he faced the wall for nine years. He faced the wall for nine years, steadfast sitting, just sitting there for nine years. Was that tree withers, leaves fall? Was that body exposed to the golden wind? This steadfast sitting, whatever it is, it takes some courage, I think. There's a description of the courage of a patch-robed monk, which is just really exhaling through the nostrils, radiating light through the eyes, just sitting.

[32:30]

So I don't know how all this is landing for you all, if any of this is making sense, or if you're content to feel it somewhere in your body, somewhere, something engaging with. But I'm interested in what is fortifying for us. If it takes so much courage to sit in the middle of the fire, to sit in the middle of my pettiness, to admit to my pettiness and sit there, what is fortifying? One more mention of Dogen, his Gakudo Yojinshu, Guidelines for Studying the Way. There's one in particular, which is just simply, you should practice the way throughout. Don't stop. What will keep you going? Can you trust the Buddha way, whatever that is? Can you trust that you belong there?

[33:42]

Can you trust that you have a place there, the place where there's no mistake, there's no delusion, it's beyond coming and going? There's this stillness, the dynamic activity at the heart of stillness, of the stillness of your zazen, of shikantaza, of just sitting. That place of Juna or Darlene, Lou, Jerome, David, right there. I think it's an act of courage to take the posture of zazen, which is the posture of letting go. And I think all of you are courageous monks, all of you taking the posture of letting go. And I want to thank you deeply for that. 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.

[34:47]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[34:56]

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