Good evening. Good evening. So are there folks here for the first time this evening? Okay, a few, welcome. So we're currently here in the temple in the midst of a period of kind of more intensive practice called a practice period. And during this particular period of time, about two and a half months,

[01:05]

I have been asked to fill a role called Chuso or head monk. And I won't go into all the details of what that involves. But one difference or one change that's stood out to me recently is that when we eat meals formally in the meditation hall, in a ceremony called Oriyoki, this beautiful and kind of elaborate ceremony of eating and serving and receiving that's somewhat similar to Japanese tea ceremony. In the midst of this, there's various chants. As the servers with the pots of food walk into the meditation hall, there's a certain chant. And there's one particular kind of solo chant that the Shuso does.

[02:11]

And at breakfast time, that solo piece is, so the Shuso says, this morning meal of 10 benefits nourishes us in our practice. Its rewards are boundless. filling us with ease and joy. So sometimes I feel like the tone of a lot of the chants in Zen are quite sincere, but also maybe a little somber or like serious. And so this one line about being nourished and the benefits of practice and experiencing how that can fill us with ease and joy kind of stands out to me.

[03:24]

And especially when I chant it. When it's coming out of my own body and mouth to hear those words. And it kind of brings up a question, you know, what is it in our lives maybe generally that fills us with ease and joy? What does that feel like? I think for a lot of us who find practice, you know, who decide to dedicate themselves to sitting and living in a community and practicing together, what one thing that might bring this sense of ease or joy is kind of moments of awakening, moments of opening to

[04:32]

a wider perspective than we've known or felt in our lives maybe previously. And yet it's been in my experience in Zen and reading teachings that nobody can quite explain to us how this happens or what this is, what this awakening what this opening is. And yet there's a lot of kind of emphasis on it, especially in Zen. So there's one chant that we often chant here by the founder of this school of Zen. and the chant is called the Fukan Zazengi.

[05:33]

And there's a particular few lines of the chant. He says, in addition, the bringing about of enlightenment by the opportunity provided by a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, And the effecting of realization with the aid of a Hosu, a fist, a staff, or a shout cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. So this list of things that Dogen mentions are all allusions to various stories of in this tradition of awakening. And the stories in Zen, you know, koans, if people have heard of koans.

[06:42]

There's a book that's translated into English as transmission of light, or the transmission of the lamp, which is a collection of, you know, progressive teacher to student turning or awakening moment. And so we study these in Zen and we're familiar with them. And in this passage of this chant, Dogen's sort of just kind of dropping a symbol of a variety of different stories in which, the kind of the lineage, the transmission of understanding or opening has been passed down. And yet he notes that this cannot be understood by discriminative thinking.

[07:49]

So our normal kind of logical thinking our kind of gauging mind somehow can't quite fully grasp it or make sense of it. And one thing I've been struck by recently is that You know, you can see in this list that there's sort of various objects that are mentioned or a shout or the raising of a finger is that each awakening, each opening to sort of a depth of experience is unique.

[08:51]

And that's kind of maybe why it's difficult to grasp it or make sense of it. There's no kind of standard to hang our hat on. So maybe just to give an example, I'll sort of, go a little bit into a particular story of how this awakening or happens or a particular moment of it. And it's, um, it's a story from maybe the eight hundreds, late eight hundreds, um, China and it happens between, um, maybe what you would call like Dharma siblings or Dharma brothers or friends in the Dharma.

[09:57]

I think coming into practice, there was an assumption that this understanding or this transformation of our life was something that a teacher would give to a student. And sometimes it happens that way. And even to say that gives to a student, it's maybe wanting to make clear something that's not so clear, wanting to define it. But there's one ancestor in this sort of tradition of Zen that after many years of practice, that just happen to be sweeping in the courtyard, you know, kind of as we do here, you know, simple kind of work activities that are done in the spirit of practice, in the spirit of being attentive and awake and, you know, just in this moment, just doing this one thing.

[11:18]

So after many years of practice, he was sweeping and I think just swept a little pebble and it hit a rod of bamboo and just that sound kind of, that sound met a mind and body that was open to that sound in such a complete way that that was this particular person's moment of transformation. So just a pebble, you know, hitting a bamboo. In this particular story, so these two friends and companions our traveling which was kind of common in China between monastic periods between practice periods like we're doing now there was a tradition of sort of walking to other mountains and other temples and exploring what various teachers had to teach and bringing your own kind of understanding and your own questions to those teachers and seeing

[12:45]

It was a very alive tradition of kind of experimentation in a way. And so these two characters, Shui Feng and Yan To, were on Pilgrim bench. They were kind of traveling together and they were caught in a sudden snowstorm and they were on a mountain pass. And so they stopped at this inn, which in this retelling of it was actually probably just a hut. It was called an inn. And they were kind of snowed in for a few days together. And... Shui Feng, during the few days that they were stuck there, very kind of sincerely and ardently took this time to practice Zazen or meditation.

[14:01]

So all day in the hut, he was sitting upright, practicing being with his body and his breath and what he was experiencing in a very deliberate way. And his Dharma brother or friend, Yanto, just napped. So he just staked out the corner of the hut where the bed was and slept. And... On the third day, finally, Shui Feng decided he'd had enough of his friend's kind of nonchalance or something.

[15:05]

And he said, he said, elder brother, elder brother, get up. And Yanto said, what is it? Hui Feng said, don't be idle. Monks on pilgrimage have profound knowledge as their companions, as their companion. This companion must accompany us at all times. But here today, all you are doing is sleeping. Yanto yelled back, Just eat your fill and sleep. Sitting there in meditation all the time is like being some clay figure in a villager's hut. In the future, you'll just spook the men and women of the village. So Yanto kind of...

[16:12]

points out the other side of the coin. So Shui Feng is upset that his Dharma brother is lazy and Shui Feng is maybe sort of gently saying, don't be so serious. Somebody might mistake you for a statue. Shui Feng, in response, pointed to his own chest and said, I feel unease here. I don't dare cheat myself by not practicing diligently. Yanto said, I always say that someday you'll build a cottage on a lonely mountain and expound a great teaching, yet you still talk like this.

[17:35]

Shui Feng said, I'm truly anxious. Yanto said, if that's really so, then reveal your understanding and where it is correct, I'll confirm it for you. Where it's incorrect, I'll root it out. So I think one thing I've been noticing in this, kind of realizing that each awakening is unique. Each of us has our own predispositions. own conditioning and it takes a certain kind of perfectly suited moment and action to kind of unlock all of that and open us up

[18:47]

And so in a way, these two are kind of coming from their own perspective in a very sincere way and kind of working it out. So I think that part of the lesson of seeing how each opening is unique is at least to me, like taking to heart that I need to trust my own experience in some way. Because there's no other person kind of living this particular body and mind that only I can sense or feel how

[19:56]

I'm unlocked and how I'm kind of closed down. And yet at the same time, there's a way in which we do, you know, delude ourselves. We do kind of mislead ourselves. So it's kind of, perhaps it's wider than just trusting our own experience even though that's necessary. And so that's when we need a friend. That's when we need a teacher to help us kind of, to reflect back to us what what we're making sense of, you know, what's, what's working, what's not working.

[21:06]

So Shui Feng, you know, kind of sticks to his guns. He says, I'm truly anxious. And Yan Toh says, okay, if that's true, maybe I can help. Why don't you let me know what you've understood to this point and maybe I can help you kind of unlock it. And Shui Feng said, when I first went to Yang Guan's place, I heard him expound on emptiness and form. At that time I found an entrance. So an entrance, kind of like a foot in the door to something larger than what he was experiencing. And Yanto says in response, for the next 30 years,

[22:26]

Don't speak of this matter again. Don't speak of this matter again. So there's a quote from Suzuki Roshi that I'm sure I'm going to misquote as I did last time. But it was something like, treat practice as a secret in your own heart. So... When you feel these moments of awakening, of... maybe just a foot in the door or a taste of something more spacious than, than before.

[23:33]

There's a wisdom in just staying with that, you know, of kind of keeping it a secret in a way of allowing it to Unravel in your own experience to I guess be kind of digested So I first started Zen practice when I was living in North Carolina and I was about 25 and it's a small kind of lay sangha, there's no residents living there.

[24:38]

And one of the things that really drew me into Zen practice was which surprised me, was all the formality, all the bowing, knowing how to kind of navigate that, or learning how to navigate that, was this kind of great puzzle, like learning, it felt like learning a new language. So, you know, in the first... you know, a few months, it just felt like total confusion. You know, you would go to the meditation hall and you would see somebody bowing and, you know, as soon as it kind of occurred to you to try and bow, everybody else was sort of doing the next thing.

[25:41]

And you just sort of fumble along. And it can be intimidating. It can be kind of bewildering. But to me, it was a game. It was like, huh, I wonder... Maybe next time I'll remember to bow at that moment. And then what was wonderful about it is like every time you think you kind of figured the game out, something was a little different or you missed a step. And it is this mirror of kind of seeing your own reaction to that. So everybody else is bowing and you think, Is the reaction, oh, I'm the worst sin student ever. I forgot to bow. Is it kind of self-judgment? Or is it kind of, huh, I missed that opportunity. What's the next one?

[26:42]

Maybe I'll be in sync with the next one. So for each of us, sometimes it's both. It's not like... We only have one reaction to our own experience, but somehow the forms and kind of having set ways of doing things gives us this opportunity, a reflection in the ways that we react and kind of teaches us kind of slowly about how our minds work, how do we interact with the world around us. I remember one time I sort of worked up the courage to ask the teacher specifically about one of these forms because I didn't I'd been kind of watching it for a long time and I wanted an answer like I was sort of getting impatient with trying to unravel it myself and so I said you know I understand that

[27:59]

when you enter to the meditation hall, you're supposed to step in with your right foot in this particular meditation hall. Can you tell me why that is? And I kind of expected her to throw back a question in some way. I totally didn't expect a straightforward answer because that's kind of not the Zen way usually. And she surprised me and she said, oh, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what foot you step through the door with as long as you know which foot is going through the door first. And that Somehow that opened me up. I said, okay, so these forms, these ways of moving our bodies and interacting with objects, they're just mindfulness exercises.

[29:13]

It's just ways to remind us, oh, I'm here, I'm actually in this room, or I'm at this threshold, and I'm entering this room, so... just a reminder to be in my body. And yet at the same time, it was not satisfying to have such a clear answer. It kind of took away the fun of the game. So then Shui Feng brings his next statement to Yanto, or his next experience in this sort of offering up to his friend, here are my experiences, what do you make of them?

[30:30]

So he says, and then I saw Dongshun's poem that said, avoid seeking elsewhere, for that's far from the self. Now I travel alone, Everywhere I meet it, now it's exactly me. Now I'm not it. So this is its own kind of poem that was Dongshan, or this particular teacher he's speaking of, was the moment of his own awakening. So Shui Feng is sort of repeating this poem that this teacher used to express his own awakening. And Yanto replies, if that's so, you'll never save yourself.

[31:35]

So again, his friend is a little stern with kind of confirming his his experiences. So if you stick to this poem that you heard from somebody else, you'll never save yourself. And again, this feels like this reminder of we each have to find our own way. We each have to find our own entrance. And there's so many teachings about other people's way and other people's entrance that it can be very easy to say, okay, I think I understand what happened there and that's the way I'm gonna proceed.

[32:35]

So after seven or eight years of practicing with this sangha in Chapel Hill, I decided to move to Tassajara, so to San Francisco Zen Center, to this remote kind of monastery in California here. What surprised me kind of on arriving there was that this sort of passion or curiosity for the puzzle of these forms, like figuring out why do we bow then and what does this chant mean or for whatever reason that fascination or that curiosity evaporated, it was gone.

[33:49]

And I was sort of mildly annoyed with the forms. I didn't find them fun anymore. And I was mildly annoyed at everybody around me who was so sincere about them. And I found myself at a place where the forms are quite important, actually. It's like a big part of the training there. and suddenly I didn't care. It's not that I didn't care. There was some part of me that felt like, well, I've done this already. I've already figured out this puzzle. I don't want to start over again in figuring out a new puzzle. And a lot of the puzzle is the same in Zen, whatever temple you go to. I mean, there's slight differences, but... So on one level, um, kind of who I was or what was interesting to me or what kind of unlocked me had changed.

[35:11]

Um, and yet there was kind of self judgment about that too. Like I should, I should really be gung ho about these forms because that's where I'm at. I'm in a temple. This is important, you know? Um, It reminds me that kind of our lives are like that, that they're happening at sort of some different levels. There's kind of what I think is happening or what I want to happen. And then just the reality of how I'm reacting to something or appreciating something or not appreciating something. And I think one of the great freedoms of Zen practice is that There's less emphasis on following this path of, this is the way I want it to be, or this is the way I think it should be.

[36:20]

And a lot of encouragement to get on board with, this is just what's happening. This is my response right now. And curiosity, why? What does this mean? Then Shui Feng gives his next experience to Yanto. He says, later I asked Deshan, can a student understand the essence of the ancient teachings? He struck me. The teacher Deshan struck him and said, what did you say? At that moment, This is Shui Feng speaking. At that moment, it was like the bottom falling out of a bucket of water.

[37:25]

So just totally dropping, totally emptying in an instant. So can a student understand the essence of the ancient teachings? That's his question. And there's a lot of hitting in ancient Zen, if you don't know this already. And mostly my sense is that it's not... It's not... It's not violent, it's maybe startling. It's kind of, and also kind in a way.

[38:29]

So the teacher whacked him and then said, what did you say? So this kind of question being met with another question. I think in some way the teacher was saying, how do you doubt yourself? You're already doing it. You're already living the essence of the teaching. So how can you ask me if it's possible to understand the essence? In response to this, his friend Yanto said,

[39:40]

haven't you heard it said that what comes in through the front gate isn't the family jewels? So in sort of Buddhist terminology, the kind of Gates of our experience are sense gates. So what we hear, what we see, what we smell, what we taste. So what comes in through the front gate, so what we directly perceive isn't the family jewels. And this reminds me of a story that I heard of.

[40:53]

There's a kind of modern day Japanese Zen teacher in Yokohama. And he was this eccentric teacher who didn't necessarily like living in temples so eventually after many years of practice moved to a park in Japan and made his practice to sit zazen in the park with anybody who showed up and he particularly liked kids playing with kids and one of his what he was known for was he would take a leaf from a tree and put it between his thumbs and play the leaf in this very kind of, unrefined instrument, you know, make his music.

[41:56]

And there's a story that one time he was sitting in the park and sitting in Zazen and he noticed that there was a pheasant kind of on the ground, and he had this deep, deep feeling that the bird was somehow aware of his meditation, somehow attuned with his meditation and that he was actually kind of sitting zazen with this bird And in his retelling of this story, he mentions something about the angle of his vision. So he was focused on where he was looking on the ground in front of him, and the bird was kind of wandering around off to the side in his sort of peripheral vision.

[43:07]

And he had this strong sense that if he had looked at the bird, their kind of zazen together would end. or the bird would fly away or be scared or something. And I was really touched by this story when I first read it. And it kind of, it made sense to me on some visceral level that it's particularly the things that we're not quite focused on that have, we have a different relationship with that has the ability to kind of come in the side door of our experience. And so when Yanto tells his friend that what comes in through the front gate is not the family jewels, it reminds me that there's a way that what really can kind of deeply land with us

[44:16]

often comes at us from kind of some angle that we don't expect and not the one that we're searching in or looking at. Shui Feng said, then in the future, what should I do? Yanto said, in the future, if you want to expound a great teaching, then it must flow forth from your own breast. In the future, your teaching and mine will cover heaven and earth. When Shui Feng heard this, he experienced unsurpassed enlightenment. He bowed and said, elder brother, at last today on Tortoise Mountain, I've attained the way. So earlier on in the story, Shui Feng, in response to his kind of shiftless, lazy elder brother, napping all the time, telling him he looked like a clay statue, he sort of,

[45:40]

trusted his own experience. And rather than feeling like, oh, you're right, he said, no, I feel uneasy. He pointed to his own chest. He said, I feel unease here. I don't dare cheat myself by not sitting in zazen while we're snowed in here. And it kind of circles back to the end of this story where Yanto confirms that for his friend. He says, If you want to expound a great teaching, then it must flow forth from your own breast. So I feel like there's some way in which our awakening, our opening is kind of dependent on trusting our own experience. We also need these friends and teachers to reflect that, kind of back to us, verify that.

[46:48]

I want to thank you all for being here this evening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.04