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. My name is Tim Wicks, and I've been practicing here at City Center since 2001. I'm the sewing teacher here. I'm going to talk a little bit about sewing. But before I do, I want to thank Anna Thorne, Artanto, for asking me in the name of David, our Abiding Abbot. Thank you very much for letting me take the Dharma seat today. Thank you. Zachary Smith was originally scheduled and is having a medical procedure.

[01:00]

We send him our warm good wishes, and hopefully I'll have a chance to hear from him once he fully recovers. And I also always want to thank my teacher, Rinzo Ed Sattison, who's our central abbot right now, for his mercy upon my soul. and his forgiveness for all of my multitude of unresolved karmic responsibilities that get in the way of my practice as he continues to teach me how to practice in space and time. So the title of my talk is The Dirty Robe. which I'll get to in a minute. This great practice that we have, it's so wonderful to be back here in the Buddha Hall.

[02:05]

I've had a chance to come here a few times for service, to be sitting here during a Dharma talk. It's just wonderful. And this is central to what is one of the main pillars of our practice, which is that it's a dialogue. It's a dialogue that we have with each other. It's a conversation. And it has to be in Sangha that we have that conversation, which is where we practice what Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing, where we are with each other in the way that we are being tonight. And... Speaking, talking words, of course, is part of that conversation, that dialogue. But also being in close proximity to each other, which is something that we're just starting to be able to do more right now, is a very important part of our practice.

[03:08]

A lot is said just by being around each other. This is a central part of our Zazen training, is sitting together. Other Buddhist practices, it's not stressed quite so much to sit in a group. We sit downstairs in the zendo with each other. We face the wall. But there's a lot where our senses are being fine-tuned and trained. You can tell a lot about what's going on with the other people that we're sitting with. This is a dialogue. We read, of course. Not always. There's some times where reading is not allowed during seshin. But in this way, reading, we converse with our ancestors, the people to whom we're so grateful to for having brought this practice to not just us, but to Japan and to China and other parts of the world.

[04:17]

We also write as a part of this dialogue. I don't write, except I write my Dharma talks. But I've noticed we're a little in our Zen practice, the people who do write. Norman Fisher comes to mind. We're a little embarrassed about writing because what we're writing about is basically unspeakable. It's beyond words. And in fact, our first transmission story we read is when the Buddha held up an Udumbara flower and Mahakasyapa, his disciple, smiled. This silent dialogue that was going in that told the Buddha that here was his first transmittee, here was his first ancestor. So this is a wordless dialogue, a wordless understanding, transmission.

[05:18]

face-to-face of the Dharma. I actually looked up the Udumbara flower. I'm surprised that I hadn't done that before. It's a tiny, tiny little flower. It's actually very small. I thought, oh, Makashapa must have been standing really close to the Buddha when he held it up. I like to Google when talking about our Zen writing, this thing that's sort of done a lot but slightly frowned upon. I Google Zen writing, and there's like 32 million entries for Zen writing. And just for the sake of comparison, I Google Tibetan Buddhist writing. There's 2 million. And Theravadan writing are silent cousins. There's less than a million Theravadan entries, Theravadan Buddhist writings. So this thing that we're not supposed to really be doing, but we really do a lot of.

[06:20]

And this, though, Bodhidharma, our first disciple in China, sat for nine years facing the wall, which is one of the reasons why it is that we sit facing the wall, to connect with him. Our first ancestor in Japan, however, Dogen Zenshi, prolific writer. No shame there. wrote prolifically, and we are very grateful that he did. We have as a way of our conversation, a part of our dialogue, these Dharma talks like I'm doing right now. And recently, Heather Yaruso asked us from the Dharma seat not to be fooled by the constriction of gender identity. What I heard from her Dharma talk, and this is always where some of the problems occur, but also where the creativity occurs. What I heard from her Dharma talk was that gender fluidity is actually a lived example of non-dualism, that it's sort of a doorway to our understanding, to an understanding of emptiness for us.

[07:39]

Michael McCord, I think it was a week ago or so, he asked us to integrate fear as a part of our practice. Anna Thorne, our tanto, what I heard from Anna's talk, which, you know, might be totally wrong, but what I heard was to investigate delusion, not as something to be discarded, but as a phenomena that is a part of our practice and to be integrated in our practice. And just this last Saturday, we had Greg Snyder and Laura O'Loughlin, two Dharma siblings of our abiding abbot, whose work at Berkeley's Zen Center has been held up by many sanghas as an example of how to do the difficult work of acknowledging racism and sexism

[08:42]

and how they're barriers to our practice, barriers to our liberation. It talks about how it is that it's important to work with conflict aversion, to be aware of it, to be able to name it when it's coming up, to investigate it, to study it, as Dogen asked us to do, investigate, investigate, investigate. They asked us to be aware of the internal tightening that is based in conversation on our desire for order in our practice when we're practicing in an utterly disordered world. I heard them asking us to be aware of our tendency for exile, both of others who we feel are not... doing things the way it is that they need to be done, but also of ourselves.

[09:45]

We exile ourselves. We exile ourselves through shame. And there's been lots of talk about shame in recent Dharma talks. I've noticed this internal policing mechanism that we have that's not conducive to interbeing because it's really... Shame is really about isolation and separation. Greg and Laura gave the example of the lotus flower. And I'm a little embarrassed that I never even thought of this. But they gave the example of, you know, some of us want to kind of pull the lotus flower up out of the mud that we talk about. the sustenance for the lotus flower, and how it is that, of course, we don't want to do that. We know what will happen if we do that.

[10:46]

The flower will wilt and die. The flower actually needs the mud. It needs this muck and dirt and difficulty. And so that brings me to the title of my talk today, which is The Dirty Road. I washed my ocaso for today. And, you know, before COVID, I was pretty much washing my robe approximately once a year. Not all of you know that we make our robes, we sew them ourselves, the rakasus and these okases, the big robes, we make them ourselves. And we are extremely grateful to Suzuki Roshi, first of all, but also to the abbots, over the years who have continued to support this practice of sewing Buddha's rope.

[11:47]

But this practice of ours, it's actually not a Soto Zen practice. It's kind of looked on with a little bit of just not really disdain, but sort of disdain. By official Soto Shu, the institution in Japan, the Soto School. This practice was recovered by Kodo Sawaki Roshi in the early part of the 20th century. And it was recovered from some nuns who had continued this practice who were Shingon nuns. And they were... Disciples of Jian Onko, who was an 18th century Shingon priest. And that Shingon Buddhism is esoteric Buddhism.

[12:52]

It's tantric Buddhism. And when I found this out, a lot of elements of our rogue practice made sense to me. The robe is made of small and large panels. The large panels are wisdom panels, and the small panels are the ignorance panels, and we sew them together. And Dogen, who wrote two fascicles on the robe, speaks about the practice of wearing the robe like this. that as soon as you shave your head and wear the robe, you are guarded by all Buddhas. With this protection, you fully realize unsurpassable enlightenment. Thus, you are giving offerings by humans and demigods.

[13:54]

And, I would add, you are giving gifts to humans and demigods by wearing this robe, by being connected in this way. To the Sangha. In the morning, we put the ropes on our heads. And we chant the rope chant. And Dogen asks us to, while we're chanting the rope chant, to picture your teacher who gave you the rope. Because all of our ropes are given to us by our teachers. And that's how it's been in an unbroken line, we hope, we think, since the time of the Buddha. to picture your teacher and to picture the Buddha, as you're saying, the rope chan. Blanche Hartman was the first abbess of San Francisco Zen Center, and she was my sewing teacher.

[14:56]

And she taught me, somewhat reluctantly, to be a sewing teacher. She would have... preferred she wasn't my root teacher and she would have preferred one of her root students to have been you know the sewing teacher that she ended up training the most but they were busy doing other things and so reluctantly she taught me for over a decade and she never said Tim I'm really reluctant to teach you about sewing so That wasn't her way, but because I got to be in close proximity for over a decade with her, it was pretty clear to me that that was the case. It's not that she didn't like me. Most of her students were people of color and LGBTQI people and women, and I was a straight white dude coming there. But she came to like me a great deal, and she loved me.

[16:00]

And at some point early on, It was a couple of years into her training me. It became clear we were in the dining room. We were talking, me and one of her root students. And it became clear that her robe needed to be repaired. And so as Blanche had taught us, this other student and myself agreed to repair Blanche's robe. And we were going to have to wash it. And at some point, the root student... was busy and couldn't do it. So I ended up doing the whole thing, washing it and repairing it. And when I brought it to Blanche a few days later, she did this typical Blanche thing. When I said to her, oh, here's your robe. I washed it and mended it for you. She did this typical Blanche thing. She put her hands on her head. She was very embarrassed that I, as not her root student, had washed, had done this intimate thing and washed her robe. She was horrified, you know.

[17:05]

Even though after washing my rope, after it not being washed for a couple of years, my rope was much dirtier than her rope was. So this process that she was at first embarrassed about, her dirty rope and her neglected rope, but she thought it was neglected. It had a couple of open seams on it. ended up bringing us together in a small way, both as individuals, but also in this practice, this practice of making Buddha's robe as a part of Sangha, as a part of joining together in the community of practitioners. So my robe was, as I said, much dirtier than Blanche's was. It was probably, you know, three, maybe four.

[18:06]

Well, let's be honest, it could be five years since I washed my robe. But it's definitely a lot longer than five, okay? I want to be clear on that. And in those five years, that soiledness, the dirt, what I'm referring to as dirt, the soiled part of the robe is basically Tassajara, our monastery in the Ventana wilderness, city center, wearing my robe at home on Zoom. It's a mark of my training over the last five years, during which I've been chuseau for student. I've been in residence for here at City Center and at Tassahara. This soil-ness that I was washing out is a part of my being in conversation with this practice.

[19:17]

I need to give a demonstration of rope washing too once I can come to the dining room with everyone. It doesn't take very long, but... I've noticed that some of you might benefit from that. Only takes about 10 minutes, but it's a ceremonial way of washing Buddha's rope that Blanche taught me. So Greg and Laura on Saturday, they spoke very importantly about the word justice, and I was surprised to hear that mentioned. because we don't really talk about justice very much in our Zen practice. It's not really in the canon, justice. Ethical behavior, compassion, even fairness is brought up, especially in the Vinaya, which are monastic rules.

[20:21]

Shingi deals with that for us, our version of it. justice is not really brought up that much. And they spoke about the word justice meaning coming into alignment with the cosmos. The ordering of things. Justice as a way of harmonizing with all things. And all three of those things right there that are justice are the central intentions of our practice. coming into alignment with the cosmos, ordering of all things, and to harmonize with all things. That is justice. That is also our Zen practice. They spoke about karma, and it's Latin, it's not really root, but Latin parallel crime.

[21:23]

They connected the Latin word creme, with karma. And they spoke about how crime, the Latin root means actions and future and the connection between the two. And now that's true for how it is that we understand karma. I heard them talking about how it is that we live in conflict. Right now we have What they said was a warlike stance. We live in a warlike stance. And of course, in this conflict, we can't run away from it. The conflict just continues. Every morning in this room, we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. As we do with each stitch, it's a part of our sewing teaching we're taught.

[22:26]

by me or one of my fellow sewing teachers, to take refuge with each stitch. In Japanese, it is Namukie Utsu. And the kie part, the middle part, means to plunge into refuge without any resistance. But there's an element also in taking refuge of returning home. And that's what many of us want, is we want it to be in a safe place. But taking refuge and returning home means coming back to home as it is, with everything that is there. It's not just the wisdom. It's not without the ignorance and the delusion. It means coming home also to that. It means coming home to this firm place, this cushion, this ground, with all of the karmic responsibilities that are sitting here with us.

[23:34]

For us here in San Francisco, right here in this building at City Center, it means coming home to the people who were here before we were here. These are the Ramitush. Ohlone people. And what I've just done is called land acknowledgement. And land acknowledgement is frowned upon by some Native Americans because it's criticized as an end in itself. And, you know, it's fine to, our last time to Nancy said, she doesn't care if it's performative. You've got to start somewhere. And it is a good place to start. But it's essential to continue that dialogue, to continue the discussion, to go further, to spend time on a regular basis, to have others to speak to.

[24:40]

And we're set up with those right here, if you're a residential. I don't live here, but I have someone here who I speak with on a regular basis. about my relationship with the Ramatush Ohlone people who were here before and who are still in the world. By having a regular conversation, a regular discussion with other specific people to speak to about this, it helps me to proceed towards right action. And that's different things for different people. It's only in this interaction that I can find a way forward from what sometimes seems like a completely hopeless and immobilizing reality. So this robe, it's a banner, these robes that we wear, the ocasas, the rakasus.

[25:45]

They're originally meant as banners, and they're actually sometimes called a banner. This is the banner of liberation. It's referred to sometimes. It's a whole list of names. It's called the nioho-e, way of sewing, which is how we, our tradition of sewing it, nioho-e means the robe according to the Dharma. It's a flag of the teaching. The original reason why it is that we started wearing robes was decided by the Buddha and Ananda and a follower of the Buddha called King Bimbisara, who one day was, depending on which writing you read, was either on an elephant, a cart or a horse. and off in the distance he saw someone coming towards him who he thought was a disciple of the Buddha. And by the time he, I prefer elephant, by the time he got off his elephant, which I assume, I've never done it, but that takes a little bit of time, this person was a little closer, and he saw that it was not a disciple of the Buddha.

[26:54]

And so he went to the Buddha, who was with Ananda, as usual, and he said, could you please have your disciples wear some kind of acknowledgement of the fact that they're your disciples so that we know who to go to, to go and talk about the Dharma with. The Buddha said, absolutely, we must do that. People need to know who to come and talk about the Dharma with. So the Buddha Ananda, who I like to think of as our first clothing designer, designed the robe, based on the rice paddy, the rice field, the rice which gives us sustenance as human beings so that we in turn can receive the sustenance of the Dharma. We are actually sowing with these small ignorance panels and the large wisdom panels.

[27:59]

We're sowing together our ignorance and our karmic responsibilities to our pursuit and development and training in wisdom. These obstacles to our liberation, our ignorance, our delusion, we sow with this deepening training in wisdom. And in so doing, we're not banishing ignorance. We're not exiling ignorance. We all want to come to Beautiful Buddhism, which is so wise, has got so much wisdom, and we want to get rid of our ignorance. We don't want our ignorance to be here anymore. But that's banishing the soil that provides the nutrient to our wisdom. Because wisdom doesn't actually grow without ignorance. Everything has to be compared to something else, and wisdom has to be in opposition to ignorance.

[29:01]

in order for it to begin the process of being developed and becoming this great practice of ours. Ignorance and delusion actually grow into wisdom. This process, Dogen admonished us to investigate, investigate, investigate. And this is the conversation that we have to have And it's scary. As Laura and Greg said on Saturday, it's messy. It's a messy discussion that we have to have. Messy conversation. But we shouldn't be afraid to be messy. We should support us. We should support each other in our messiness. Because truly integrating ignorance with wisdom. So that wisdom... can broaden our ignorance or our wisdom can only be done in Sangha, in this temple, in this world.

[30:13]

And if we can do that, that's where it is that healing begins to happen. Healing can only happen when I understand your suffering and you understand how it is that I am injured. It has to be both of us together working as wisdom and delusion work together. And it's this healing that Tova in her talk recently spoke about and referred to as being mended. Thank you all very much for your attention and your time. It's wonderful to be with you all. 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.

[31:20]

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

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