This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome to Green Dragon Zen Temple. Wonderful. I feel wonderful. Driving into green gold to the kind of an intimate feeling with a foggy, drippy morning. And a fragrance of the eucalyptus. I've been leading a practice period in San Francisco City Center. And our theme has been on Dharma. companion dharma companionship and as I was driving in this morning I thought I had this lonely old blues song came to mind and so I thought well there's this there's a whole interplay between solitude loneliness and

[01:28]

being alone and working with companions or particular Dharma friends. So, excuse me, but the song goes something like this. Poor boy, poor boy. Poor boy, long way from home Poor boy, poor boy, poor boy Long way from home He would go home But he's too much alone Poor boy, poor boy What you gonna do? Poor boy, poor boy Oh, what, what, what you gonna do?

[02:30]

You know you got that Buddha nature. And you could use a friend or two. You know, I... You can tell I modified it a little there. So going back to the Shakyamuni Buddha and Ananda. Ananda was his companion. So they actually had a working partnership for many years. Ananda was his cousin. And he at some point after After Shakyamuni, we call the historic Buddha Shakyamuni, which is the sage of the Shakyamuni clan.

[03:34]

So Shakyamuni, after he'd been enlightened and was teaching for about 20 years, he said it would be good to have a really good assistant. And various people volunteered. that he said, well, no thank you. And his cousin, Ananda, did not volunteer, but Shakyamuni said, I'd really like Ananda to be my assistant. And Ananda said, well, if... If you can accept my conditions, I will agree. His conditions had to do with being modest.

[04:43]

I think maybe he was sensitive to the view that it may be viewed as nepotism or just a family business. So he said, one of his, I'm going to go over them all, but there were eight conditions. One that really stood out for me was, if the Buddha is invited to a special banquet, that I have permission not to go. He didn't want people to think that he would be, that he was in it for the perks, right? That he was taking this role just for the, kind of the side benefits. So as they were walking, well yesterday we had a speaker in the city, a venerable Dr. Panavati, who's, she has this nice way of expression because she used to be a Pentecostal minister before she became a Buddhist Dharma teacher.

[05:50]

But she said, well, you know, Buddha and Ananda, they were walking along and And Buddha's pointing out various practitioners in the sangha who are really good. You know, this monk over here is really very, very clear about the teaching of the second noble truth. And this one over here is very, very, very profound and deep in various samadhi practices. And then those over there, that's kind of a group of busybodies. She said, not a term I usually use, busybodies. But her point was that people come into the practice of community of practitioners, bringing with them all of their karma, their old habits and tendencies. And so it actually is a discipline.

[06:52]

to take up the question of how can I actually be the kind of friend I want to have? How can I be the kind of person that I would hold in esteem? And it may mean that I have to make some changes in my own habits, my own tendencies. So a lot of this practice of say clarifying the mind and clarifying one's own life from the habits of say blame and judgment habits that we call clinging attachment or habits of anger or ill will towards others Habits of believing one's own story and not recognizing that one believes one's own story, that it blinds one to others.

[08:04]

That these kind of habits are revealed in our interactions with each other as we practice together. And we notice sometimes one may notice one's own irritation or aggravation. And think that someone else is the cause, right? And then to reflect on that and think, how is it that I am really the source of my own frustration? That is, the thoughts that I'm holding onto are the thoughts of my own frustration. So I have a story of my own experience here at Green Gulch that I've told a few times. And so you may have heard me tell it before, but right now I have a little different emphasis.

[09:12]

I'm studying, I'm still studying what I'm learning from planting beans here at Green Gulch. So this is... In the early years of Green Gulch, we didn't really know what would grow well in the gardens. And we had a little experimental plot, and we were planting anything we could think of and try it out. We found many things did not really appreciate fog. And so I think the beans that I was planting turned out to be kind of a failure. But anyway, at that time, I was very enthusiastic And I was, yeah, it was a long time ago. So my memory, of course, is selective and biased, you know. But I was practicing mindfulness. And my view of mindfulness had to do with concentration, that I am concentrated on exactly what I'm doing each moment.

[10:20]

And... I'm firmly going to bring my attention and steadily and firmly bring my attention to exactly what I'm doing each moment. So down in what we now call the second field, we had an experimental plot. And I had made a furrow that kind of came from perpendicular to the road that goes down through the fields. And quite a long row, maybe 100 feet or so. planting white beans every six inches. And I was down on my knees, crawling along the row, and very methodically and carefully planting these beans every six inches apart. And I was... I may have had a little feeling of... I'm kind of proud of myself for being so mindful and attentive. And I was all alone there, and I really appreciated that. And...

[11:23]

Until I noticed that there was some movement in my peripheral vision. And I saw there were several people coming down the road. And I immediately became kind of annoyed that they were there because I'm practicing mindfulness. And even just noticing them, I was beginning to experience some distraction, right? So I wish they weren't there. And then they came closer. And I began to have these thoughts that were pulling me away from my intention of mindful practice. My thoughts were like, oh no, they're coming closer. Oh, I bet they're going to come and they're going to say something stupid. They're going to come here. And... At that time, of course, I had a wide range of opinions about what would be stupid.

[12:27]

I confess now. And yeah, I felt more and more tension as they were coming closer and closer. And sure enough, when they came to the place on the road that was kind of at the end of the road, and I was moving toward them slowly, They stood there, and they stopped, and they looked at me. And I thought, oh, I bet they're going to ask what I'm doing. So maybe we had a kind of telepathy, right? Sure enough, one of them said, what are you doing? And I felt I was really irritated. It's hard for me right now to imagine How I could have been so irritated. But I was really irritated. I felt like, just, can't you see what I'm doing, you know? But I was quite civil and courteous.

[13:36]

And I said, I'm planting beans. So they watched me. Okay, all right. I didn't, I wasn't planting beans as a performance, right? I was, this was not what some are, I wasn't thinking of myself as being, wanting to be on stage, but there they were watching me, I'm planting, so. And then, okay, they didn't say much more. Anyway, what kind of beans? Okay. Kentucky Wonder Beans. You'd think that would be great, right? Wow. They don't do so well here. But then the next question was, can you tell us how to get to the beach? And again, stupid question. So, well, you just go downhill, right?

[14:39]

You follow the road. You follow the road down. And yes, you'll come to the beach. Okay. And then they went off. And at that time, I felt my own kind of a realization that I had made up the whole problem. There was no problem. I had made up the whole problem. For me, it was a big problem. That they were existing in my universe. And as I considered and reviewed that, I had the realization that everyone is already present. Everything is already present in this universe. Things show up at different times. But why would I ever be surprised at whatever shows up?

[15:46]

That they were always there. They had the feeling that they were always at this moment actually included them. From the beginning of time, this timeless moment included them. Dogen Zenji says that Buddha's practice is the practice of fully participating with the entire earth and all beings in it. A Buddhist practice is a practice of fully participating with the entire earth and all beings in it. And if your understanding of practice does not include the entire earth and all beings in it, it's not Buddhist practice. So when poor boy, long way from home, feeling so lonely, does not realize true nature, does not realize his true nature, his Buddha nature, we say.

[17:05]

He does not feel like he's at home. So maybe we all need a friend or two to remind us. So these people now, when I think about this experience of planting beans, I think of them as old friends. They were old friends. Arriving on the scene to remind me that the universe is vast. Arriving on the scene to clear out my own mind of the narrow preconceptions that I was so proudly engaged in. So we have this interplay of being solitary, independent individuals and being completely interwoven and interconnected with each other in all things.

[18:18]

One of the ancestors in our school here, this lineage, Dengshan, Dengshan was working with this sense of how to actually recognize both independence and interdependence. It's said that he was walking along and he saw his reflection in the water and recognized But then did he recognize that everything, every reflection is himself. He composed a poem which goes something like, when you seek outside yourself, you will always be estranged from it. Now I go on meeting it everywhere.

[19:29]

So what is this it that he's meeting? He says, now it is just what I am. It is what I am. But then he says, I now am not it. You must see it like this. You must perceive it like this to understand thusness. To understand that things are exactly the way they are. So this is waking up with things or waking up with another. And Dengshan also had a companion. Seng Mi of Seng Mi of Shaoshan and Seng Mi later on he's known as Uncle Mi because he's to Deng Shon's disciples Deng Shon's students his buddy is called they refer to him as Uncle Mi it's like

[20:56]

like our teacher's good friend. So they would do, I'd say, there are a number of stories about them walking along together and conversing in various ways. And so Uncle Mi, or Seng Mi, he's kind of like the straight man to Dongshan's vibrant teaching. So as they're on pilgrimage and they stop and they're staying someplace for the night and Mi takes out his sewing, little sewing kit and starts mending his robes and Dongshan says, what are you doing? Of course, that's the same kind of question, right? Planting beans? And Mi says,

[21:59]

Mending. And Dengshan says, well, what's it like for you? Or what is your practice? What is your practice of mending? And Mei says, one stitch just like the next. And there's this pause. And then he asks Dengshan, so what's your practice? Mending. Dengshan says, like the entire earth is engulfed in flame. We have some sewing teachers here. And we say, actually, we have the practice of sewing these robes. And that's been handed down now from, actually, generations of people passing down the practice. We say, various things, we have a little...

[23:01]

mantra that we say or verse with each stitch. When I learned it, it was Namu Kie Butsu. And Blanche Hartman, who's one of the sewing teachers, said that Kie means to dive into or plunge into. So this is venerating and plunging into Buddha with each stitch. So I think that's also what Dengshan meant, to say that his mending is like the entire world engulfed in flame. Or what Dogen is meaning when he says the Buddha's practice is to fully participate with everything. To fully participate with the entire earth and all beings in it. So fully participate, I'd like to talk a little bit about the two sides of full participation.

[24:18]

One side is to cultivate an intention, say, of benevolence. We say that our practice is to wake up with all beings, but it's based on the thought of non-harming. The first intention underlying foundation of this practice is to not cause harm. So not causing harm is then a wonderful intention. Or we could say a vow. So to turn one's life from Maybe a cynical view that it doesn't matter. Well, it doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter how other people feel about it. It doesn't matter. To turn that from, oh, it actually does matter.

[25:23]

That each thing that I do, the behaviors of this life, the activities of this life, have sometimes I see, I confess, you know, have sometimes caused suffering, have sometimes contributed to suffering, contributed to suffering for myself, to begin with, that may be a very important recognition to come to, that some of the activities that I'm taking up, or that I tend to do, or some of the habits that I have, actually contribute to creating more suffering for myself, So to begin with oneself is, of course, the place to begin. It can begin right here. And then to realize that intention is not the whole picture.

[26:26]

We say, we have the proverb, right? The path or the road to hell. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So that can have a couple of meanings. One meaning is that you're not actually acting on your good intentions. You're just sitting there with good intentions. Kind of wishful thinking. But another way is to understand that your intentions are only part of the picture. The other part of the picture is listening for the impact. listening for the consequences of the well-intentioned actions that you take. And this applies to all of your relationships, each of our relationships. So we don't necessarily know.

[27:29]

When we intend to create something that's comfortable or more convenient for ourselves... that there may be unintended consequences. So a lot of our practice is attending to and including. So this is partly the whole matter of fully participating with others. The entire earth is to notice the consequences. So we might think, oh, it's a good intention to have the convenience of A spray can. Oh, what a great idea. How to distribute the liquid nicely to have a spray can. You push the little button and it took years before we realized that the spray cans was related to a growing hole in the ozone layer.

[28:33]

We didn't really realize that for years. Now... I think we've changed, right, what's in the spray cans. Meanwhile, quite a lot of damage, we could say. And we're not sure really what are all the consequences of a hole in an ozone layer. What does that actually do? We don't actually necessarily know. Now in the matter of working together with our close friends we can ask my intention to be helpful one person may feel oh I just wanted to help and the other person is feeling get out of here I don't need your help one person may be saying I'm giving you good advice and now I'm getting angry at you for not taking it

[29:35]

And the other person is saying, I don't need your advice. I don't want for it. I never asked for it. So sometimes it's helpful to ask and see how your intention, your good intention is received. How is it received by the other? So when the Buddha is saying, oh, here's a group of busybodies. And it may take them a while to learn that all their busyness is actually creating a disturbance in the sangha. They may think their busyness is actually telling people what to do so that everyone will shape up and create harmony. So if you go around telling people to be harmonious, then you just have to remind them more and more to be harmonious. And sometimes it's better to put the emphasis on listening, listening to the impact.

[30:48]

And sometimes a good part of that is to ask. Now that I've told you what you should do, how do you feel about it? So it doesn't mean that you should refrain all the time from telling people. Just recently I had a Doka-san with someone who was complaining about his girlfriend's lack of trust in him. Why didn't she trust me more, you know? We started to look at this. I said, well, give me an example or two. Well, after a little bit, it turned out that his behavior is not so good after he's had a few beers.

[31:58]

And then as I listened a little more, it seemed like This was a pattern. Has a few beers, gets to dancing with various people. His girlfriend is looking at how he's relating to other women in the room. She's not so happy about what's going on there. She imagines that when she's not there, what's going on. So it's very interesting that this person didn't quite get that there was a contributing factor for his own behavior that was, well, just have a few beers, you know. Since this was a pattern, I suggested to him that he go to an AA meeting and begin to study that pattern, you know. Now, I don't know. I will check, though.

[33:04]

We have a relationship. Well, see, you know, well, what happened with that bit of advice, you know. But I felt that, so part of being this, say, Dharma friend, part of being a Dharma friend is to communicate the perspective of investigating what's wholesome and what's unwholesome behavior. What's wholesome and what's unwholesome activity. And what's unwholesome activity has often to do with the way it It has to do with how it affects oneself, but also how it affects others. So this is a requirement then to be pretty alert and awake, to be paying attention to that. We can help each other a lot.

[34:06]

As we ourselves... take up the vow to be a good Dharma friend. Yesterday I was at, in the afternoon I went down to Palo Alto. I have a niece graduating from high school. My wife's sister's daughter. And I was struck by how This was a privileged group of young women, 17, 18-year-olds, young women, graduating from Castilea High School, some of you may know, in Palo Alto, near Stanford. It was actually started as a prep school, actually, for Stanford over 100 years ago.

[35:11]

And a number of them, a number of them, of the young women, gave little talks. And I was struck by their, say, confidence in the clarity of their thinking. And also that they were having fun. clearly there were a lot of good relationships there, and they'd received a lot of support, and that they had a culture. The motto of the school is women learning, women leading. Women learning, women leading. And so that the leadership qualities are actually coming out of a foundation of training. foundation of study, a foundation of good relationships, clearly good relationships with teachers and with each other.

[36:21]

And then I was thinking that this is it for most of us, the point of graduating from high school is a time of becoming, say, more conscious and cultivating friendships. Often during the first few years of your life, you don't have much choice. You are with people who other people have made decisions about. As you go through adolescence and high school, you begin to make more choices about your friends. And then going beyond that, into the wide range, wide world for these girls it's an opportunity to really be conscious about cultivating friendships cultivating friendships that are conducive to living a life that's awake living a life that is generous that's wholesome that is

[37:35]

beneficial to themselves and to their families and to the whole society and I think this is clearly this is their intention and their training and I felt also I felt some sadness reflecting on how few of the young people in this country get that quality of education that much loving, intelligent support for launching into life. So part of being, say, a Dharma friend for all of us here in the room is to look at how we contribute to creating a whole culture. a whole culture of wisdom and compassion.

[38:37]

That we take the Dharma teaching that we are learning here, and from wherever we find ourselves, how can we contribute to creating a culture of wisdom and compassion? That is a culture of people who are recognizing the value of being awake, recognizing the pitfalls, of self-centeredness and narrow-minded, deluded stories that we might run. I think it's probably about time for me to, it is about time for me to stop. So I wanted to, I guess now it'll be a closing poem. Read the poem of Galway Canells. This is, the poem is called The Bud, as in a flower bud.

[39:46]

And it's, the image in the mind is that St. Francis, St. Francis of Assisi, for whom San Francisco was named, St. Francis was a friend, no? Was a friend to all forms of life, right? All animals, right? And so St. Francis at one point was going around blessing the farm animals, right? The chickens and the cows and the pigs. And so Galway Cannell is thinking about that in this poem. The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower, for everything flowers from within of self blessing.

[40:50]

Though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on the brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within of self blessing as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow and told her in words and in touch blessings of the earth on the sow and the sow began remembering all down her thick length from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and the slops to the spiritual curl of the tail from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milk and dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths

[42:06]

sucking and blowing beneath them the long perfect loveliness of sow so I thought this is blessings on one of our dharma companions and If St. Francis can do that, you know, for the sow, then we can at least do that for each other, right? If not for extending it to all beings. But the place to begin is actually to begin within, to retell yourself your loveliness, all the different parts of yourself that you may, may not necessarily think are so good. And work out from here, extending your own blessings, retelling each being, each friend, even a friend that you've never seen before, about their own true nature.

[43:20]

They themselves have this inherent beauty, just as they are. So thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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