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 morning. Thank you so much for sharing your Saturday morning. Those of you in the room. those of you outside of the community. If you're here today for the first time online or in the room, a special welcome to you here at some event center to welcome you here to be part of that welcoming team. I've brought some people with me to present shortly.

[01:04]

But before I do that, I want to make some thank yous. I want to first thank my teachers, Ed Setzen and Linda Ruth Kutz, who have kept me as a companion and as a student for, I'm not sure how many years now, but quite a few. I wouldn't be at an establishment without them. And even though they're not here in the room, I know they're present. One of the things you know, taking such good care of me, as you have before, and you will after, I know. Keeping me good company and allowing me to practice my very realistic and remandering each other and feeling good at yourself. thank the head of Sheehan.

[02:06]

Are you? You're in the room. Oh, yeah. We're so carefully arranging everything this morning and he and I share a secret already about this morning's talk. Thank you so much. And of course, I want to thank you. My darling sister. who has made several evites to me, of course, my practice, for some of which I was good at and other than my pleasure. But thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. It really is such an amazing opportunity to be able to sit up here and think about what one might have taught. I'm not sure it's really important to say who I am. I'm a practitioner here at San Francisco Zen Center.

[03:12]

And along with living here, I lived at Tassara and also at Green Gulch. Today, I'd like to talk about embarking on a voyage. So next week, we begin the practice period. I see the captain right there. And I've been thinking a lot about this practice period and about this voyage and about what might be needed to traverse this course. And so I'd like to talk today, because this is the last Dharma talk before the practice period begins, about what I suggest might be needed for this time ahead of us. Now, some of you may be saying, well, I'm not in the practice period. I'm not doing that. Well, that's fine. I want this talk today to help us find our way in the weeks ahead.

[04:28]

I see it as an adventure. So there's three things I'd like to talk about in relationship to the adventure. How to behave, what to wear, and how to travel. And so I brought with me three friends to help me with my talk today. And I'd like to introduce them. You can come out, it's okay. First is Suzuki Roshi. And today he's a wombat. Why is Suzuki Roshi a wombat?

[05:32]

So a wombat is an animal that is built for digging. And when a group of wombats get together, they're called a wisdom. Their teeth do not stop growing, and they're usually solitary in habit. I also brought with me Dogen as a donkey. Why a donkey? So donkeys are known for their humility and peace, for suffering and offering service. They have incredible memories. They are not easily startled. Some people call them stubborn, but others call that really a sense of self-preservation. They have limited fear to new situations, and they're social.

[06:39]

And the last guest today is Utpalavana, who you may not know about, and she comes today as a kangaroo. I'll speak more about Utpalavana this morning, but kangaroos in general are known for their courage and their stamina, They don't move backwards. They can only leap forwards. They can pause their pregnancy if needed. And they have exceptional balance. So welcome. Often, Paul Haller has used poetry in this room, and I remember it fondly.

[07:42]

So I bring a poem. Perhaps you know this poet, William Stafford. But of course. So I just recently discovered William Stafford. He wrote poems of release. He was a lifelong pacifist and a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was born in Kansas in 1914 and died in Oregon in 1993. In speeches, he was described as gentle, mystical, half-mocking, and highly personal daydreaming. Why did I pick Stafford? So, recently, at the end of his life, two forest rangers in the northwest of the United States, asked him if he would create poems for road signs on the Cascade Highway.

[08:42]

And being who he was, he said yes. And he submitted 20 poems to these forest rangers. Seven were chosen, and if you drive on the North Cascade Highway in Washington, you will see these signs, and you'll be able to read them and continue your adventure. They were meant to accompany the traveler in the landscape. The poems have never been published in book form until this book came out. And so in the spirit of adventure and making our way and having road signs, I'll start with this poem called Reading This Stop. You reading this, stop. Don't just stay tangled up in your life, out there in some river or cave where you could have been, some absolute lonely dawn may arrive and begin the story that means what everything is about.

[10:01]

So don't just look, either. Let your whole self drift like a breath and learn its way down through the trees. Let that fine waterfall smoke filter its gone, magnified presence all through the forest. Stand here till all that you were can wander away and come back slowly, carrying a strange new flavor into your life. Feel it? That's what we mean. So don't just read this. Rub your thought over it. Now you can go on. When I read this poem, I felt like it was an encouragement to untangle, to let go, and with nature as a teacher, to enter and return with a different perspective and feeling. Now you can go on.

[11:03]

Just like the road signs on the highway, a way to move forward like the kangaroo. How to behave? Well, that's easy here. We have the precepts. What a wonderful signage, what wonderful guidance as we take our adventure forward. I'd like to share a couple of different ways in which to consider the precepts. One is with Suzuki Roshi and the other with Upalavana. So in 1970, Suzuki Roshi officiated at a precept ceremony.

[12:07]

And this was the first lay ordination that had occurred since 1962. And he had only one more before he died. Some of you may know the precepts by heart. Some of you may need to read them. Some of you may not know what I'm talking about. It's a broad range. But the precepts basically are like the guides, the reminders, the thoughts. And he said this about the precepts in this ordination. It's a story from a Chinese expression. When want to save fishermen, he took form of fishermen. When people are like snow, we should be like snow. best effort, not easy. Always being with them without any idea of discrimination.

[13:11]

We can then help others in its true sense, without giving anything, any special teaching or material. This is actually the Bodhisattva way. What a beautiful way to describe the precepts and to consider them. whether you know them by heart or have never heard of them until today. Keto, is it hard for you to hear? Why don't you come forward? Okay, I'm sorry. I'll try to speak up a little bit more. When I enter a practice period, I... pick a root word. Maybe some of you do that as well. And this root word that I picked for this practice period goes along with Suzuki Roshi's comments.

[14:15]

And the root word is, be like a white bird in the snow. Be like a white bird in the snow. So that is my intention as I move forward to be a available to be present, but not to call attention, and to try to accommodate and to consider what's around me and match that. And I think that that's what Suzuki Roshi is saying when he says, when you want to save a fisherman, he took the form of a fisherman. Now, Upalavana's story is a little bit different. And if you're curious about who she is and want to hear more stories, in a couple of weeks, Anna and I will be teaching a workshop on our women ancestors, and she'll be one of them that we'll be speaking about.

[15:19]

Utpalavana was described by Dogen in his fascicle on the rope. in terms of what she was wearing and how to enact the precepts. In Japan, everyone gets the precepts right up front. And I'm told that that's because the assumption is that you can follow them. It's not a concern. Here, we have a little different tradition. Usually you study for two to three years, and then you embrace the precepts. and carry them forward. In order to understand Uparlavana's story and her engagement with the precepts, I'd like to pull out this excerpt from The Hidden Lamp, which is a wonderful book of stories about awakened women. So there's a short section here I'd like to share with you.

[16:38]

Oh, good. You got a solution. Thank you, May. That's perfect. That's just such a great example of what we do here. It warms my heart. So Upalavana lived in the 6th century in Japan. Sorry, that's Japan. In India. And this is what is her story. The nun Upalavana was a disciple of the Buddha. She visited the home of some noble young women and encouraged them to become nuns. They responded, We are young and beautiful and full of life. It would be hard for us to keep the precepts. Upalavana replied, If you break the precepts, you break the precepts. First, leave the household and become nuns. The women said to her, But if we break the precepts, we will fall into hell. Why would you have us do that? Upalavana said, Go ahead and fall into hell.

[17:39]

The women all laughed and said, Why would you suggest such a thing? She replied, In a former life I was a prostitute, an entertainer. One day I dressed myself in nun's robes in front of my customers, just as a joke. And because of this, in my next life, I became a nun and took the precepts. But even though I was a nun, I was arrogant and broke the precepts, and as a consequence, I fell into hell and its sufferings. Later, in this current life, I met Shakyamuni Buddha, ordained, developed great meditative powers, and became an arahant. In this way, I learned that you can attain the fruit of the way even if you break a precept and fall into hell. The merit of receiving the precepts makes awakening possible.

[18:44]

But if you never receive the precepts and do unwholesome things, you will never attain the way. So what a wonderful woman to consider and to think about in terms of our practice. I have a few other adjectives about her I'd like to share with this morning. Some of it is about the way she looked. Her skin was the color of the inside pollen chamber of a blue lotus flower. She was renowned for her beauty. And so her father, concerned about her future, asked her to renounce this world, and she was delighted. While living in the forest, one day walking, she was raped by her cousin, Ananda. Not the Ananda that we think of, but another Ananda.

[19:49]

And from this day forward, Buddhist nuns are not allowed to go into the forest alone, or live as hermits in the woods. This was a great penalty as solitary life was esteemed. Buddha said Utpalavano was a model of what a woman in holy order should be. She attained deeper knowledges, including clairvoyance. I think this story illustrates that one can take the precepts, even knowing... that you might not be capable of keeping them perfectly. Well, it sounds like such a simple thing to say.

[21:03]

What to wear? What do we put on? I want to talk about it in relationship to the robe. So Dogen wrote in Fascicle 13, The Power of the Robe. He notes the story of Upalavana, and he talks about the robe. The robe I'm wearing today is very special to me. And I'm happy to see that the person who gave it to me is here in the room. Many, many years ago, I was in this hallway and said, I'd love to wear a robe, but I didn't think that I was qualified. And that person said, oh, I have one. And she went and got it. And now I've had this robe, I think, at least 20 years. And in addition, I have a rakasu that was also given to me by Huitso Suzuki when I lived at Rinso Inn. I feel very fortunate to have these garments to wear and to wrap around me.

[22:11]

But when I speak about the robe, again, it's like the precepts. It's a metaphor. So if you're wearing a robe or not wearing a robe, or whether you have an okesa or a rakasu, it's really not important. It's about the way in which you prepare yourself, and the way in which you consider how you will sit as you sit zazen, and how you will practice. When Dogen speaks about the robe, He says there are two kinds, the okesa or the rakasu, and he gives brief explanations about them. He says that the robe is a garment of emancipation, that the hindrances of actions and defilements and the effects of unwholesome action are all removed by it.

[23:14]

If a dragon obtains a small piece of a robe, it can be cured, of febrile diseases. If an ox touches a robe with one of its horns, its past wrongdoings disappear. When Buddhas attain the way, they always wear a robe. Know that its power is unsurpassable and know that it is most venerable. So Dogen says that when we put this robe on, we have a lifelong endeavor to maintain the robe with utmost respect throughout a lifetime, vast and boundless. And this is what Upalavarna did as well with her robe, even though she first put it on as a joke, then wore it and became arrogant, and finally in her third life, wore it and became an honorable arhat.

[24:20]

Each day, put on your robe, rather literally or as a metaphor, and enact the precepts. And another side note on the precepts. I was caught by the description that Norman Fisher made about how they come by us. And he said that we don't accept or receive the precepts, but enact and live them. And I would say we wear them as well. So now on this adventure, you know how to behave and you know what to wear. Lastly is how to travel. Travel is something that has come and gone and come again with the pandemic. This last summer, I traveled and traveled and traveled. To see people I hadn't seen for several years. To visit places that I'm fond of.

[25:28]

How do we travel here? Another suggestion by Stafford. Another sign on the road. This poem. entitled Ask Me. Sometime when the river is ice, ask me, mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt. Ask me what difference that strongest love or hate, I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait.

[26:38]

We know the current is there, hidden, and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, This is what I say. I love this poem because one of the things I started doing during the pandemic was fly fishing. And I just came back from the mountains where I stood in the river and I listened. And what I've discovered with fly fishing is that so much of it is about looking and listening. Very little about catching the fish. So my suggestion of how to travel, most important, is listening. Listening while with the Sangha. Listening every moment.

[27:40]

To be like the white bird in the snow. This adventure is to travel and have the possibility of stretching and being challenged. What are your signposts? Are you going slow enough? Do you take time to read and listen each day as you wear your robe? 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. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:36]

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