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 evening, everybody. Welcome to Beginner's Minds Temple. Welcome to those in the Zoom room. I trust that Zoom is working now. I was... doing an online meditation at noon and could not get online because Zoom was down unusually. So it's something you don't have to worry about when you're in person. So thank you to Tanto Tim, where's he going over there, for inviting me to give the talk. My name is Shundo, for those who don't know me. I was thinking about the time of year that we're in, it's kind of a changing of the calendar time at Zen Center in April.

[01:01]

The practice period or the intensive as was here is over. A couple of weeks ago I was down at Tassajara where their winter training periods are finished. And there was a wonderful feeling at Tassajara, which we're not getting here today in San Francisco, of spring arriving. I know we've had some nice weather, but not today. And if you've spent any time at Tassajara, which is our training monastery deep in the mountains south of here, I've never felt so in tune with the seasons as when I was down there. The summer is very hot and the winter is kind of cold. But the fall, the autumn, is a wonderful time to be there. The trees, the leaves turn gold from near the trees and then eventually fall off. So if you're there for the full training period you watch this process from turning from summer the heat of summer to the cold of winter and if you go in January you have the bare trees and the bitter cold of the morning and then by the end of the training period by March

[02:11]

You know, it may be up to 80 degrees and the trees are budding and this sense of the trees budding and these kind of fresh green coming out all over the valley. I was very noticeable when we were down there a couple of weeks ago. And I was reminded of a line by Hongzhi, who's one of the Chinese teachers from many centuries ago, where he says, like spring arising in everything. And we have that sense of the life force returning after the darkness of winter. And so, you know, at this particular point of the year, you know, we're past the clocks going forward. We're past the spring equinox. We're even past tax day, and I'm still waiting for my bank account to be drained by the government. But we have this kind of transition. And it's also in the Zen Center calendar. April is a time for ceremonies, very traditionally. And as we will do this weekend, there's a...

[03:12]

precept ceremony. This is a lay ordination ceremony in this case. And one of the students that I've been working with for a number of the years is receiving the precepts, not from me because I still only have a brown robe and I'm not authorized to do that, but from my teacher Zachary Smith. So it's been very sweet to be involved in that. And coincidentally, down at Tassara a couple of weeks ago, I was there with Siobhan, another English person, some of you may know, but also Galen Godwin, the abbot of Houston Zen Center, and also the international director for the North America branch of the Soto Shoe. She's a very important person in Soto Zen in America. And that was interesting because Siobhan and I did our lay ordination with Galen 21 years ago in April, and I had to pull out my old blue rakasu to look at the date. It was the 17th of April.

[04:13]

So tomorrow would be my 21st late ordination birthday. So you may say I've come of age, or you may not. Subsequently, five years after that, and again, I pulled out my priest rakasu. On the 18th of April 2009, I was ordained as a priest. Paul Haller was doing the honors on that occasion. Both of those ceremonies were here in this room. I've been to many other beautiful ceremonies here in this room as well over the years. But it is my first time giving a talk here for about 18 months. And so one of the joys of somebody receiving the precepts is that they're given a new dharma name. And I got to choose the dharma name for my student in collaboration with Zachary, but he liked my suggestions. That's what we're getting. And, you know, for those who aren't familiar with the concept, you know, the Dharma name is generally given in Japanese in this lineage. I mean, there's two parts to it.

[05:15]

And the first part is how your teacher sees you as you are right now. And the second part is how your teacher thinks you're going to grow or what you're going to grow into. And so I was choosing the name for this student, you know, with those thoughts in mind, like how I see him. operating in the world, manifesting in the world, and also what I glimpse, you know, that is being uncovered through his practice. And this is kind of a wonderful statement of faith, I guess, that, you know, we transform through the practice. I'm a firm believer in the transformation of practice, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to ordain as a priest, to help other people feel the same transformation I had been feeling in my years of practice at Tassahara and here in this temple. And for my name, Galen Godwin chose Shundo, which I still use. I started using it because my other name is David, and there were always too many Davids at Zen Center, including the current central abbot who was around at the time, but other Davids.

[06:26]

I was just giving a talk to a group in Ann Arbor that is led by Martha Darbes, who some of you may know. She lived here for some time, about a dozen years ago. And in a small sangha of twelve, I think there were two or three Gregs. And it's like, oh yes, I know that feeling. I know that feeling. So Shundo, when Galen gave me the name, she translated it as the way of the fleet steed. And if you have the same kind of unpacking process that I went through in the ceremony. It's like fleet, steed, boat? What's going on? Fleet as in fleet of foot, fast, and steed as in horse. So the way of the fast horse. And I think, she never really confirmed this, but I think she gave me that name because when I first met her, she was a director at Asahara. And she was a big fan of running in the mountains and so was I. So it may have been that kind of quality that she felt that I was manifesting Or she may have noticed that I was always in a hurry. I'm a very impatient kind of guy.

[07:29]

I don't like hanging around. And so that was what she maybe thought was my characteristics. For the second part of the name, she gave me Kenin. But the characters, and this is how Japanese works in mysterious ways, the characters were actually the same characters for the second part of her name, although that was pronounced Kon-jin. So I don't know how canine and konjin get to be pronounced the same way. But that was offered to me as building human heartedness. And she explained human heartedness as benevolence or the highest virtue. And so from being the fleet steed, I could see that what was not expected of me, but what she hoped I would become was someone who would be building human heartedness. And Siobhan, who did the lay ordination at the same time as me, also had a version of that name, which I think became weaving human-heartedness. And now, in my priest ordination, I think Paul was under a certain amount of pressure not to change shundo, because I was already going by that, but he did make a little twist from kenin to genin.

[08:38]

And genin, the gen is like the genjo koan, manifesting human-heartedness. So that's perhaps the path that I've been on in the last 21 years, perhaps. But part of the precepts, sorry, the main part of the ceremony, the Jukai ceremony, the lay ordination, is the taking of the precepts. And so we have these 16, we call them grave precepts or great precepts, sometimes we call them prohibitory precepts, along with the refuges and the pure precepts, sorry, ten grave precepts, three refuges, three pure precepts. And as we study those, you know, we first come to them, and I remember studying them in a practice period here, you know, when I first came, you know, and they feel like guardrails. They feel like ways to remind us, you know, how it is that we can traditionally trip up through our actions of body, speech, and mind.

[09:44]

and how instead we could start to orient ourselves. So these precepts, this morality, is one of the essential parts of our practice. And in one of the lists that we do get in Buddhism, Shila, the ethical part, to use the Sanskrit word, goes along with Samadhi, the concentration, and Prajna, the wisdom, as the building blocks, or the three legs of our practice. So we can't have a practice without this ethical component any more than we can have it without developing the wisdom and the concentration that comes through meditation. And so, first of all, they might seem as things that are being imposed from the outside, like, oh, don't steal, don't kill, do not intoxicate, don't slander, all these things which superficially sound like the Ten Commandments. But then as we continue to practice, we start to internalize them.

[10:50]

And there's a line in the ceremony where the preceptor says, the meaning is in the living of them. So you can take the precepts on a day and say, I vow not to do this. But it doesn't mean anything if we're not living them. And again, we find out through our own particular form of karma how we get tripped up by these things. And traditionally, and I know this happened last Saturday, every full moon, the community comes together and does a confession and repentance ceremony and repeats their renewal and commitment to these precepts and to taking refuge. And part of the practice is this continually being willing to show up when we don't get it right. and to say, OK, I got it wrong, and I'm going to try and do better. None of us are perfect. We are all humans, and we do get things wrong.

[11:54]

But we keep going, and we keep trying to get it right. The meaning is in the living of them. And at a certain point, they're internalized to the extent where I think it's often said we go beyond them. And when you say going beyond, it doesn't mean that you neglect them or let them go. It just means that you're not maybe consciously being guided by them in the same way. But they're there. They're your internal compass. And one of my favorite talks that Suzuki Roshi gave is actually the oldest piece of audio that we have of Suzuki Roshi from 1965. The talk is called Wisdom Seeks for Wisdom. I encourage you to find it if you can. It's readily available online, probably even on YouTube. And he talks about the self-use of inmost nature while we're sitting.

[12:56]

And this is maybe a little dense of a phrase. But while we're sitting, he's saying we're getting in touch with our inmost nature. And sinless nature is manifesting itself through us in our sitting. And this is very much how Dogon, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, explained it. And the Japanese phrase that he used for the same notion is Jijiu Samai, the self-receiving and employing samadhi, this concentration of the self that is expressing the function of the self as the self. And if that sounds dense, still it's really the self, the small self getting out of the way of the big self. The big self is inmost nature that we all possess, we all have inside us. We all have motivating us to do particular things, to come here on a Wednesday evening to sit Zazen. So when this nature gets to express itself fully, this is Zazen in full effect.

[14:04]

And in that talk, Suzuki Roshi also says that when we move out from zazen into the world and we make decisions, those decisions are always guided by the precepts if they're coming from this inmost nature. That is the precepts, he said. And so this is how we practice with the precepts. Bring them into ourselves as much as possible so that we're not even thinking about them as we practice, as we go out through the day. And we learn to trust that internal compass, that inmost nature, that we start to uncover. And I've been talking with different groups. I have a group in England, and one of them is about to do an online retreat, and we're talking about what is authentic practice in the context of staying at home and doing an online retreat. And it's something I can't speak to directly because I haven't done a full online retreat.

[15:10]

I've done many online meditation sessions. And I've done many multi-day retreats in person. But I've never done an online multi-day retreat. And I know, even as an experienced practitioner, that my tendency would want to be to, you know, maybe get to the end of a period of Zaza and I'll get to the end of the day and think, I'll just check my email. And the request in retreat is really to separate yourself from the everyday. And the admonitions in my day were don't read, don't write, don't make telephone calls because in those days going on the internet was not such a common thing. But now that would be number one, don't go on the internet. And the value of this and the value of sitting together in person is that it takes you so much out of your regular mundane preoccupations and brings you into a different space where you start to experience that in most nature in a very different way and it may be a kind of a painful uncovering at the time if you're sitting a lot of zazen or it may be a joyful one I've had joyful sessions and I've had painful sessions but something about being in that container where you're separated from the mundane and how can we do that authentically in an online practice you know I know I would find that very difficult

[16:30]

But that's part of the challenge that we have to deal with these days. How can we make the practice meaningful with this online dimension? But really, it's up to the people who are online. It's up to the online participants to, it's interesting the word came up with, police themselves. But maybe just watch themselves. Watch how easy it is to be distracted. Watch how easy it is to pick up the phone or to reach for the ice cream. So when there are distractions close at hand, how is it that we conduct ourselves? And when nobody's watching, how is it we conduct ourselves? And this is how I was thinking that doing an online retreat is somewhat like following the precepts. Nobody's watching us all the time, but we're watching ourselves all the time. Our inmost nature is watching us. And it might wag a finger at us. Or maybe, if you've got a well-trained critical mind,

[17:34]

It might be nagging us to do better. Or it might be saying, yeah, forget it. You can just go and do this thing. It's fine. Nobody knows. But the value that we get from this continued practice is the value of knowing when we're giving ourselves an easy time and actually we could do better. Suzuki Roshi called it goofing off. Are you goofing off or are you paying attention? Are you being serious with your practice at the moment? And only you know that. You know, I can look around the room and see people are paying attention and, you know, it looks like they're following along. Maybe somebody's thinking about tomorrow already. Maybe somebody's thinking about something else. Only you know. When you're on the cushion, only you know how well you're concentrating. And so this unfolding of practice where you're getting in touch with your inmost nature. and maybe getting in touch if you have received the precepts and have a second part to your name, getting in touch with that part of your name.

[18:43]

And when we were at Tassajara for what's called the Shuso Ceremony for the head monk for the practice period was answering questions from everybody as a demonstration of the strength and I think authenticity would be a good word for that, of their practice, because you don't know what question is coming at you, but you have to be ready to respond. And Kristin Shuso did a wonderful job of responding to each person who came at towards her. Whatever the question was, she met it very warmly, very thoughtfully. But there was a story that was referred to a couple of times, which must have been mentioned during the practice period. And it's one of my favorite stories. It's a long story. So when I gave the talk to the Ann Arbor group, I actually read the whole story, but the payoff between these two monks, one of whom has been seemingly goofing off while they're stuck in the snow, just eating and sleeping, and the other of whom has been sitting zazen diligently.

[19:57]

The one who appears to have been goofing off says here, haven't you heard it said that what comes in through the front gate isn't the family jewels? And if you want to expound a great teaching, then it must flow forth from your own breast and cover heaven and earth. So we can sit diligently. I certainly sat diligently for many years without having that feeling of it coming forth from our own breast and covering heaven and earth. We take these things in through the front gate. We receive the precepts, we're taking them in, and we're fitting ourselves to them to a certain extent. We're seeing how we do with them. But it's only when we have really digested, really made it a part of us, that we can start bringing it back out into the world. And as I mentioned at the beginning, I thought, well, we were surrounded by these beautiful trees at Ta Sahara of the Line, like spring arising in everything.

[21:10]

And I felt like I should go back and find where that quote came from. So Hongzhi wrote a book called, or there was a compilation, I should say, of Hongzhi's writing called Cultivating the Empty Field. And it's very beautiful and poetic. And this particular passage goes, people of the way, Journey through the world responding to conditions carefree and without restraint. Like clouds finally raining. Like moonlight following the current. Like orchids growing in the shade. Like spring arising in everything. They act without mind. They respond with certainty. So sometime after Hongzhu lived, which is more than a thousand years ago, I think his style and his approach was criticized for what other Zen practitioners called silent illumination, this idea that you just sit quietly and people thought it wasn't active enough, it was too passive and not doing anything.

[22:21]

And perhaps now, if you read the line, You know, people of the way journey through the world, responding to conditions carefree and without restraint. You might think that you're indifferent to the sufferings of the world. How can you be carefree at a time like this? So whenever I read something like this, I always feel we have to tread carefully about what it means to be carefree in a situation. A couple of nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and I had an issue in my own work life that I had to think about. And even though I kind of came up with an idea of like, oh, maybe this will work, I couldn't get back to sleep again. So this was, for me, not being carefree. I had something on my mind, but it stuck there. It stopped me from sleeping again.

[23:24]

I was just awake and turning things over in my mind. So to be carefree would be to like, oh, here's this problem. Oh, actually, maybe I can do this. And then getting back to sleep. So it's responding to conditions. It's not ignoring conditions. It's not pretending that conditions aren't terrible or unprecedentedly awful. But we respond carefree. We meet it, and then we can let it go. And there's something very powerful and skillful about being able to do this, whatever arises. And this is something that Zazen again gives us more practice in doing. If something arises, can we meet it? Can we meet it fully? Can we meet it wholeheartedly? Can we meet it questioning our own motives or our own ideas about what it is without beating ourselves up about that?

[24:24]

There's this line we weave as we do this. But like spring arising in everything means it's personal, but it's not personal. It's more than personal. You know, we might feel the joy of spring. We might feel the joy of the sunshine, the longer hours, the warmer temperatures, the blossoms. But it doesn't depend on us. Even our own energy coming up around that does not depend on us. It's part of the great unfolding of the universe. And when we come into ourselves, when we allow our inmost nature to be the compass for how we move through the world, we take our place within that great unfolding. Whatever karmic obstacles may have, over many years, prevented us from fully meeting the moment or the person in front of us.

[25:40]

We can do it a little more easily. The naturalness of clouds finally raining, moonlight following the current, orchids growing in the shade. acting without mind, so acting without preconditioned idea of what is happening, but responding with certainty, because they trust that inmost compass. And that internal compass, the way it manifests for you, because we all do manifest it in a different way, even though it's not just personal. That's what the teacher sees in you when they give you the second part of the name. That is the authentic self that is not the small self. It's the way that you manifest the great unfolding of the universe. And so in honor of the second part of my name, my effort these days is to manifest human heartedness, benevolence, or the highest virtue.

[26:56]

I don't always get it right, but that is my effort. The way the world is now, I believe, is an effort we all need to make in our own way, with our own judgment, our own internal compass on how to respond with certainty. And I think the main thing that I've been thinking about these last few months in terms of how to deal with it is to lead with the heart. Because that is maybe the seat of our inmost nature. Maybe it's just the flowering of our inmost nature. But in any case, if you're not listening to it, I hope you can learn to listen to it. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[27:59]

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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:22]

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