This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, good evening, everyone. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. On this day that many feel everything has changed in a big way. Apparently 59 million people think it changed in a very positive way and 59 million people think it changed in a not so positive way. And

[01:01]

Of course, Zen Center doesn't take a position on political things or elections, so all are welcome here tonight, whether you thought it changed in a positive way or a negative way. But given who I run into all day long, most of the people I've been running into thought it changed in a negative way, and so that may be partly the direction I'm talking about how to practice with tonight. So are there any people here for the first time this evening? Welcome. Special welcome to you. So this morning a group of us got together and thought about this event and thought we should make some kind of official statement. So the Abbots and Paul Haller got together and produced a...

[02:04]

called a post-election statement from the Abacial leadership of Zen Center. I'm going to read it to you. We're going to post this on our website tomorrow morning in Sangha News, but you get the first draft unless it changes overnight. So this is a quote from Suzuki Hiroshi. Even if the sun rises in the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way. This is actually sort of the title of one of the chapters in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Even if the sun rises in the west, the bodhisattva has only one way. Of course, normally the sun rises in the east, not in the west, so it would be quite an unusual thing if it rose in the west. But even still, something quite that unusual, the bodhisattva has only one way. And that will be part of what I talk about tonight, what is the bodhisattva way. but it is a way that happens no matter what the circumstances are.

[03:06]

That's the import of that statement. So here's our statement. There was a wonderful moment near the conclusion of one of the presidential debates when, after countless harsh criticisms and accusations, the candidates were asked to say something complimentary about each other. They paused. The world of political rivalry stopped spinning, and then they both expressed words of praise for their fellow presidential candidate. Then the politics whirled back into action, bitter and acrimonious. Today our country feels divided into red and blue, success and failure, and we wait with hope and dread for what will unfold. Yet in the midst of division, we can pause and realize the undivided us and let it instruct us on how to move forward together. How often powerful moments are a mix of opportunity and danger. May this election and all that it might bring be an opportunity for each of us to rediscover our all-inclusive vow of practice that isn't swayed by the winds of change.

[04:19]

May our perspective and actions not be defined by the fearful dictates of animosity and division. May all beings be free from suffering and realize the liberation of awakening. So that is our hope on this evening, post-election evening. The sentence, even if the sun rises in the west, The Bodhisattva has only one way comes from a talk in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind called Single-Minded Way. And I just sort of like the first paragraph of that talk. So here it is. This is a talk given by Suzuki Roshi in probably 1960. I didn't really look it up. The purpose of my talk is not to give you some intellectual understanding, but just to express my appreciation of our Zen practice.

[05:26]

To be able to sit with you in zazen is very, very unusual. Of course, whatever we do is unusual because our life itself is so unusual. Buddha said to appreciate your human life is as rare as soil on your fingernail. You know dirt hardly sticks on your fingernail. Our human life is rare and wonderful. So the purpose of my talk is to express our appreciation. That is all. And it's nice to remember how wonderful it is to sit zazen together. I got up this morning. I didn't sleep an awful lot last night for various reasons. And I got up at 4.30 and I went down to the zendo and I sat together with many people from the residence and people from the outside. It was very nice to do that. And then, of course, we followed with our day of activity here together.

[06:32]

You know, I'm old enough to have come of age in what is referred to as the counterculture, the late 60s, 70s, when this country was also very divided. over the Vietnam War, civil rights, women's rights, nuclear proliferation, the environment. The Vietnam War was such a powerful motivator of that time. Huge demonstrations, which most of you are probably too young to know much about, but you could read about in history. And I was teaching calculus at the University of New Mexico at that time, and that's how I got my deferment. But I had many students that had come back from Vietnam and told me the horrific stories about what was going on over there, which just added to the news coverage which was now happening. And of course there were the ones that didn't come back.

[07:43]

So I feel particularly sympathetic to the young people because I was very young and it was difficult for me. I'd been raised, you know, as a... very patriotic American, Eagle Scout, straight-A student, building nuclear rocket engines to go to Mars. And noticing the issues facing America and the need to do something about them and the frustration that the government didn't seem to be responsive was a very big challenge for me. And that challenge led me to Zen Center. And it was true... of a lot of the students that came to Zen Center in the late 60s and early 70s, as they were refugees from the Civil Rights Movement or the anti-nuclear movement or the anti-war movement, and they had made the decision that when they were confronted with the police people or various people that were in opposition to them, that they noticed how angry and how out of control we noticed, how out of control we were.

[08:54]

And so we came to Zen Center to get a better understanding of what was going on in our mind and what was going on in our actions. And, of course, Blanche Hartman has told wonderful stories about that moment when she decided to make that change. So it was a very active discussion in Zen Center at that time, what was going on in the war in 1968 before a big... peace march, a woman asked Suzuki Roshi, what is war? And Suzuki Roshi pointed to the goza mats. You know, these are sort of the same size as tatami mats, but they were just sort of rolled out there because we didn't have tatami mats. And two people would sit on the goza mats, and because they were kind of just, they would wrinkle up a little bit, and so people would try to push the wrinkles out. And if they were on the sides of the goza mat, the wrinkles got pushed out okay, but if there was wrinkles between the two people, one would push it one way and then the other person would push it the other way.

[10:02]

Without noticing, people pushed back and forth the ripples. And Suki Roshi said, this is the cause of war. Karma starts with small things, then it accelerates. You should know how to deal with these small difficulties. You know, one of the things about coming and practicing here besides the tremendous insight you get to the craziness of your mind by sitting zazen is, you know, you interact with people all the time. So, you know, you're sitting a sushin and you get placed next to somebody that you kind of don't like so much because they... they move too much or they make too many noises or something, and you have a little war with them during your one day sitting. You should know how to deal with these small difficulties, because this is where it all starts. You work in the kitchen and somebody's just, they don't follow instructions, you're on the serving crew.

[11:15]

It's amazing how, you know, at Tassajara, which we're sitting eight hours a day, everybody's so mellow and, you know, practice pervades everywhere. You know, people come in and have doks on or practice instruction with me, just complaining like crazy about their serving crew. You know, this person on the serving crew doesn't do what I say, they don't, you know. These are the wars we have and somehow in the midst of our practice, we're able to see the start of this, you know. Sugarshi used to say a lion attacks its prey no matter how small it is, or a tiger does, with all of his energy. So we should pay attention to these issues in our mind with all our energy. So, what is the way of the Bodhisattva? And further on in that talk, Sugarshi says, the Bodhisattva's way is in each moment to express his nature, with sincerity.

[12:17]

In each moment we should express our nature with each moment, every moment of our life. This is our practice. And what is our nature? I mean, we're both a totally, completely unique person. There is no one like you anywhere. And yet, we're intimately connected to everything. That is our nature. And how do we express both that uniqueness and that interconnection with sincerity? And because of the interconnected nature of it, we express it with great heart and compassion and love. This is our Bodhisattva request. you know, obviously a lifetime of practice to get even close to that.

[13:20]

In the Vimalakirti Sutra, which we've been studying this practice period, last night we did chapter 8, which has this enormous story of the Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva's way is... Manjushri, who's the Bodhisattva wisdom, was asking Vimalakirti, how does the Bodhisattva follow the way to attain the qualities of the Buddha? Same question, what is the Bodhisattva's way? And Vimalakirti replied, Manjushri, when the Bodhisattva follows the wrong way, he follows the way to attain the qualities of the Buddha. A real mind twister there, the wrong way. But what he means is, and then he goes on, for pages and pages of how the bodhisattva goes into the hell realms and the animal realms and goes into the deepest parts of desire and anger and all of these places he finds his liberation.

[14:25]

And as Dan Layton says it, this entire chapter is about the bodhisattva can only awaken in the context of intimate contact and involvement with the follies and passions of the world and its beings. A bodhisattva can only awaken in the context and intimate contact and involvement with the follies and passions of the world and its beings. And we have just the most tremendous opportunity to be in intimate contact with the follies and passions of this world and its beings. And it's always been this way, mostly, since I've been around. And, of course, these follies and passions of the living beings are not just all floating out there. They're running around in here, in our head.

[15:29]

And I've been, you know, having a lot of conversations with people today And it's so easy to just take this effect and project out, you know, all kinds of horrible results or unhappy things. And, you know, I just, you know, would fall back on one of the kind of common Zen ideas is I don't know, you know. We don't know what's going to happen. I mean, we get pretty convinced that what we think is going to happen is going to happen, but we don't know what's going to happen. And just even thinking about imagining all the things that are going to happen causes us a lot of suffering. Even before they happen, we're busy causing ourselves great misery.

[16:34]

And even if we're on the celebration side of this election, we're going to cause ourselves a lot of misery because what we're celebrating about is probably not going to actually happen like we imagined it's going to happen, and then we're going to be unhappy about that. So, I don't know. There's a lot of famous Zen stories about not knowing. So this is one of those stories. Feiyan was a monk who was on a Chinese pilgrimage going to visiting famous end masters around China. That's what they did on pilgrimages. And... He got, he was probably going to some famous temple like Jiao Joe's temple where there were thousands of monks and he was going to meet a really famous, but anyway, he got caught in a snowstorm and he had to retreat into a nearby temple and he, this temple was, the master was Dijan.

[17:44]

So Dijan asked Feiyan when he was, where are you going? Feiyan said, around on pilgrimage. Dijan said, what is the purpose of your pilgrimage? Fayan, well, first of all, where are you going? This is a classic question. What are you up to? What's your practice? What's your life about? Not just where are you going on this trip? Are you going to go to that famous tea house? No, what's your life about? What's your way? What's your practice? And so I think Fayan said for some reason maybe he was just Maybe it was the moment or maybe it was the way the guy asked the question or something. He said, you know, instead of saying, oh, I'm off to find enlightenment with the famous Joujo master, he said, I don't know. And he probably said, I don't know in an actual way, which is if somebody asks you, what's your life about? What's the meaning of your life?

[18:46]

You're a young man, you might say, you know, I don't know. And Dijon said, not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is nearest. Supposedly he was enlightened at that point in time. So this obviously has some meaning, not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is nearest. These Zen stories, these are... They're kind of like phrases that you get caught in your head. You wander around for days going, not knowing is nearest. What is that? So, you know, to know something, you know, gives us a fixed view of what's going on outside. You know, we, and that limits our vision. When we know something, we sort of like, okay, I've got a picture of what's going on.

[19:48]

I know this thing and what's going on. That limits our vision. I mean, you know, It isn't that there isn't lots of times when you have to know something and you need skills to do things, and so this not knowing that we're talking about here is not being stupid, but it's just how do you have a really open mind, a ready mind, a beginner's mind, as Suzuki Roshi would say. It's by not being open, not knowing. And then... The way is nearest, because the way is you. The way is right there, right now. As soon as you know something, you're aiming for something outside yourself. You can't find where you are. But if you drop all that knowing, you can find your bodhisattva way.

[20:52]

right there, in that moment, in your open mind. I'm sort of riffing on this, not knowing a little bit. There's another famous story that has the same kind of quality to it. It's... Zhao Zhou was studying with Nan Quan, and he was a very young, 25-year-old monk, very dedicated, doing all the business of the temple. And he said to his teacher, what is the way? What is the Bodhisattva way? It's a really good question. What is the way? And Nan Chuan said, ordinary mind is the way. Your ordinary mind. Your, well, that's reassuring in some sense because that means I don't have to go searching for it often. I don't have to

[21:53]

theoretically go sit on a high mountain peak for 30 years to achieve some very rarefied state of mind to find the way. I can find the way right here, right now, at any moment in my life. So then it gets tricky. So Jiaojou says, well, that's good. Should I try to direct myself towards it, towards my ordinary mind? Nanshwan said, if you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice. It's not so simple. Because as soon as you aim for it, of course, you're aiming away from your mind. You're aiming at something out there. So you betray your practice. Well, how can I know the way if I don't direct myself? If I don't move towards it, how do I find the way? And this is a very famous answer that Nanquan said. The way is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. not knowing is blankness.

[22:54]

So here we're back to that problem of how do we have this open mind that's somewhere between knowing, which is just a deluded idea of what's going on out there, projected from our childhood and all the ways we are raised, and our fears and hopes and stuff, and just being like stupidly blank. Somewhere in between there is the open mind. And Nanshan says, if you truly reach the genuine way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. This mind, this open mind, if you just don't try to do much with it, is there. ready for you to meet every situation with great freedom and boundless, vast openness.

[24:09]

I have a poem that I want to read before I end, but I was just thinking maybe for a few minutes I'd open the floor and see if anybody would like to say anything about how their day is going or anything about they'd like to share. Yes, Chris? It's good to see you tonight. It's good to see you tonight. I'm just enjoying sitting here with you. Thank you for coming here. I think some people decided to go out and protest.

[25:57]

I think there's protests going on all over the country. In relation to what? Delusion. wonderful we had a tea this afternoon when we were talking in our group about how we were experiencing today and of course some people were grieving the loss of a dream a beautiful dream and at the same time one of the students was there with a three month old baby and that is the other side of things you know we have a

[28:00]

Birth and death. We have tremendous joy and difficulties. Siddhartha Krish used to say sometimes when he'd look at us, sometimes I think you think your problems are more important than the fact that you're alive. Sometimes I think you think your problems are more important than the fact that you're alive. That's why I read that first part about Siddhartha Krish just expressing his appreciation to be here. to be able to get up in the morning and sit zaza and to have a human life which is rarer than dirt on your fingernails. It's very rare to have a human life. So yes, we have difficulties. We have problems. Things are not always turning out the way we want them and that means that we have to work harder. We have to practice harder because the world needs our practice. Needs all of our effort to bring as much

[29:02]

wisdom and compassion to it as we can muster. So we have the six paramitas to practice and I think somewhere, I can't remember from where, the wisdom, meditation and energy are the heroic paramitas. So we need to employ our heroic paramitas to bring the effort, wisdom and calmness of prajna and a columnist of our meditation to our practice now. Yeah? I do hope you come and talk to me about that before we say that. is we do have a wealth of knowledge here.

[30:57]

You were saying that you came from the 60s, 70s activism. I would love to hear some wisdom from people that were involved in those movements because you see it out there, people are angry, they're gonna get burned out. I'm angry, I don't wanna get burned out. How can we harvest the lessons from 40 or 50 years ago to help in this time? Well, that's a good question, and that's a larger question than we can address in four or five minutes. There were quite a few people that felt that developing Zen Buddhism in America was a good thing to do, and so we went and helped build Tassara and this building and the practice here in these temples. Other people got very actively involved in the environmental movement, the women's movement. I mean, actually became activists in various things, and there were all kinds of ways in which... I do actually think that the movements that started back there, the civil rights movements, there were great progress that was made.

[32:04]

And there has been great progress that's been made. And unfortunately, it sort of feels like some of that progress is going to be set back a little bit. But on the other hand, this could be a temporary two-year problem that gets solved with the change of the the Senate in two years or in four years it could get completely changed. Things change around quite a bit. It looked very positive for a while. I can just think of all the cycles of presidents that I've seen in various crazy wars we've been in. But somehow still we can talk more about that. So when I sort of mentioned the heroic action of prajna, wisdom, and meditation and energy, you know, sitting zazen is not passive.

[33:43]

Practicing this way is not at all passive. It's a very active thing. And, you know, you can do both. You can sit zazen and you can protest or you can be a lawyer with the earth justice and take legal action and you can still practice Zen doing both of them. I don't think it's necessarily one or the other. In fact in kind of some fundamental way that is our practice. We We make an effort to be present and then we let go of that effort and feel, you know, sort of negate ourselves and receive the entire moment into our being.

[34:46]

So we make an effort to be present with another person and then we let go and passively accept whatever they're sending to us. This interchange is happening not just with people but with our environment all the time. This is our sort of human way. Our tendency is to just always be pushing out there and never sort of letting, as someone would say, to negate the self and let the contour of the whole situation be manifest inside you. Newton. find some person over there to help me.

[36:22]

But you know, it's quite early in the morning. And luckily I found a room, a guest room opening. So I get into that. And I think maybe, oh, I can fall asleep here. And later I said, maybe, wait a minute. Maybe I can do something more. Because it's a good opportunity, actually, for me to explore this place. So I got to plan it. and I sit over there on that mattress. Sorry, I think it's for you, right? It's only here. I sit there for maybe two hours, and that felt really good. And I can see it open my heart to welcome that situation. And actually, I enjoyed it a little bit, and made this trip special. because of this nice special night.

[37:34]

And because of that I came from China, when you did the lecture to us, I felt very grateful and touched, because this is something I seldom heard here from masters in China now, and that's what I really wanted to hear. Thank you. Bring your friends next time. You can all sit together. About a month ago we had about a dozen friends from Shanghai come and sit with us. It's very nice. You know, just so we don't take seriously what our new president says, we want to be friends with China. Yes.

[38:37]

about the response that I'm seeing in other people that is curiosity and intention. And it's very important, at least for me, to see the response from Zen Center to be something that's welcoming to all people, regardless of their political views, because the Dharma is Thank you for... So I think it is that time. Maybe one more question, if there's one more question or comment. yes yes with beings other beings you mean well I think it also implies intimacy with yourself nearest

[40:41]

is the sort of classic translation that's in the text, but not knowing is the most intimate has become kind of like an alternate use. And that sounds beautiful, isn't it? Not knowing what's going on gives you the most chance to be intimate with other people. You know, that's that beginner's thing. Or yourself. Not having too much of an assumption You know, like we're having a day like this and some people are grieving and some people are celebrating and some people that are grieving are sometimes celebrating in the midst of their grieving because, you know, and we get this fixed idea. Oh, I was a backer of so-and-so, so I should be celebrating or I was a backer of so-and-so, so I should be grieving. But actually right now I'm not grieving or right now. So to be honest with what we're actually experiencing is very important. very important to actually not pretend how you're supposed to feel, but actually feel and live how you actually are.

[41:51]

That's being nearest. That's being intimate with your life. So our practice is a practice that brings us into deep intimacy with our life, our real life, our actual life, not some idea of a life, not some outside idea of a life. And how do we settle into that intimate life that brings us alive and makes us the unique person that we are and makes us feel connected to everything. This requires a kind of quietness, a settledness, a composure. To be that way doesn't require much else because you are who you are. You just got to quit kind of running away from it. Anyway, this is a complicated poem, but Linda read it at Tassara, so I'm going to read it here and see. There's some beautiful parts to it. This is by William Stafford, A Ritual to Read to Each Other.

[42:54]

If you don't know the kind of person I am, and I don't know the kind of person you are, a pattern that others made may prevail in the world, and following the wrong god home, we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break, sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dyke. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and may be the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote, important region in all who talk.

[43:59]

Though we could fool each other, we should consider lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake. or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep. The signals we give, yes or no, or maybe, should be clear. The darkness around us is deep. Anyway, this will be posted tomorrow on the website and in Sangha News, so you can read it again. Thank you very much for coming this evening, and may things be good with you. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[45:03]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:06]

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