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. It's a beautiful day. I'd like to express gratitude to my teacher, Paul Haller, for continuous guidance. And to the Tonto, Tim Wicks, for inviting me to speak today. And especially to all of you for being here on this beautiful morning. Thank you so much for your presence. This is a gladdening day as there is a group of five ordinands who will be expressing their vows in a precept ceremony this afternoon. This is how we party in Zen.

[01:00]

And they're sitting Zazen today down in the basement, the Zen Do, expressing their nurturing heart, the heart that has brought them to this ceremony. Typically for a Jukai ceremony to occur, there's been a relationship of teacher and student for a number of years. And toward the end of this process, it involves a study of the precepts and the sowing of the rakasu. So it may seem like it's a process that's moving forward towards something, and certainly this event is a celebration. But it has more to do with acknowledging a steadying and a deepening of vow that began before the actual request is made. When someone asks their teacher for jikai, they're already naming for themselves a steadiness in the refuge that they feel and that they've discovered for themselves.

[02:12]

And it's from this refuge that they feel a strong tug or pull to formally establish themselves in the soto tradition that is grounded in sasa. In responding to a request for Jukai, there's an acknowledgement of this process. And if it can't be acknowledged, it can be refused. So there's a feeling of acknowledgement, of seeing someone's practice, that's very real for the student and very real for the teacher. This is how I've experienced and witnessed this. There's a strongly felt understanding of the benefits of zazen practice that takes the lead in this request. And this is important, and it's what I'd like to speak to today. It's not the ten grave precepts as we typically understand them. And I feel it's important to say this, to start from here, the wholehearted activity of zazen and the actual feeling of refuge and vow that arises from zazen.

[03:24]

When I began to sit Sazen, I began to experience my emotions without naming them or controlling them, allowing and accepting them as difficult as they were. And in being able to do this, my own stories of who I was were dropping. There were insights that could lead to true remorse, and I could receive a compassion and forgiveness that flows from beyond my own personal intentions, almost as though I were being bathed in compassion. It's all right to say that an experience like this is holy, but the request for Jakai is not intoxicated by holiness. The request is coming from a different place than that. It's a way of seeing what needs to be deeply cared for. The request is made in the palpable and strong connection of wanting in gratitude to devotionally express these self-discovered fruits of practice in guiding relationship within another and in a deep engagement with one's own self to really taste one's experience.

[04:53]

I treasure this practice. Help me to deepen my understanding of the fruits of Zazen as they are expressed in the Buddhist community so that I may continue to uphold the Buddha's way for all being. My wish is so strong that I deeply know for myself this process of Buddha's guidance and I can't be turned away from it. This process of Buddha's guidance is already happening. Join me. I cannot turn away, and so I raise the strength of this practice, this gift of my life, to the surface of my experience here and in great joy with you. The central ballast here, what provides all measure and direction, is deeply internal and knows for itself the profound interconnectedness of all beings.

[05:57]

And I would say the question for all of us is, having discovered that I am that, what is it to be that? This is a genuine, true question in our years of practice. And it arises again and again with curiosity and acceptance and generosity. and gratitude. Let's meet each other completely in this expression with great care and celebration. In this way, the teacher is modeling this in their own expression as much as the student. Yes, I will. Gratefully, happily, joyfully with you. it's the groundedness of our interbeing that is leading the way.

[07:04]

When I look at the ten grave or prohibitory precepts from their negative side, they're each a profound expression of separation. And if you've discovered the profound connectedness of interbeing, that this separation occurs does need to be studied and examined. It matters that we want to do this, that there's a point in our practice. We want to see and understand how our own separation occurs, what it feels like to recognize it, to be close to it. The killer, the liar, the thief in me knows the othering. the manipulation, the grasping righteousness or hidden conceits that establish a situation of self and other. It's a small world of my own making, and it can strangle everything.

[08:07]

We want to begin to study the self thoroughly. to not hide or push away any part. For myself, I have to be able to see that I, we, are all of these things that are human life. We have been the killer and the thief. As the ballast of my practice is so deeply internal, I need to hone in on myself. The study of the precepts must begin thoroughly for our own practice. We can, in the study of the precepts, become distracted by what we see in others, even find difficulty in relating this precept to ourselves, consumed by the bad behavior of others. A true sign of this is that it can leave a bad taste in the mouth

[09:23]

And we need to recognize this. We need to taste for ourselves what it feels like. The encouragement here and the demand of our practice is that this is a study of all the very personal ways that we can lose our balance and fall out of our connectedness and interbeing. It helps to be able to say it. It helps for someone to be able to receive it. The first message in the Buddhist tradition is that we must study the body-mind, our own body-mind, if we seek the liberation that frees all being. The earnestness which with with which other Buddhist traditions will take this self-analysis is evident in the endless details of practice that are offered in order to deconstruct egoistic views.

[10:34]

In Soto Zen, the ten grave precepts are, in my view, in my understanding, best understood as giving us a deep taste of ourselves such that we can understand how it is that when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. When the ten prohibitory precepts have a vividness for us in the separated world of me and mine, the separated world in which I steal, lie, or kill, my grasping mind loses out on the gift of suchness that is right there in the presence. Even if I reprimand myself by thinking I will not steal, lie, or kill, as though these are the words to live by, these are the very words, they become objectified.

[11:40]

They're helpful and necessary as reminders. They're also a gift. but they can inform a kind of upside-down thinking that is stuck in the mind of ideas. We can hurt ourselves. The point is not to be mired in bad feelings, but to become close to our true nature, be close to ourselves, invite ourselves to ourself. This morning in chanting the words from the lifespan of the Tathagata, we chanted, Sometimes for this assembly I speak of the Buddha's lifespan as limitless. To those who see the Buddha only after long intervals, I speak of the Buddha as being difficult to meet.

[12:40]

It's in our difficulty to meet the Buddha that we need to study the precepts. In the Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen writes, people who study words and phrases should know the significance of words and phrases. People dedicated to wholehearted practice need to affirm the significance of engaging way. These are both important. We need to thoroughly understand for ourselves the value of the precepts as they are stated to us by our tradition and as we experience them. But it's in the engaging in our practice that we affirm the significance of engaging away. What does this mean with regard to the precepts and our understanding of them and ourselves?

[13:44]

It's the wholeheartedness This affirmation arises from the more positive side of Zazan practice. Because in Zazan, what has been revealed to us is that it's possible for us to experience each moment as indestructible, energetic completeness, a satisfaction and spaciousness that is beyond our self-concerns and conceptual thinking mind. From this side of things, we can ask ourselves dive into the feeling of the entire universe being freely given. What can be stolen in this completeness of what is freely, openly, infinitely given?

[14:49]

can feel this and it becomes a muscle memory in us, in our body, in our mind. It's something that becomes very dear, unspoken, subtle and yet clear. There's no place from which the thieving mind can arise. I've seen a version of the precepts that says, rather than, I vow not to take what is not given, something that holds more closely to this feeling of completeness. I vow to practice contentment and gratitude for what is. This is staying close to that feeling, the positive side of the precepts as they have been awakened in us by zazen and the affirmation of our Buddha nature.

[16:13]

If our effort shifts in this way towards this direction, is informed and guided by our own zazen practice, we can see more clearly how, as Dogen expresses it, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. Again, when we're in the graspiness of our small mind, we unwittingly chase out the moon with our own harsh lighting. Where does it go? This is a real practice question. If you look at the study of the precepts in this way, it is as though you are inviting yourself to yourself. What are the feelings, sensations, memories, behaviors that define for you the separation that this grave precept is an expression of for you

[17:26]

If you can name the separation, you can bring yourself closer to what is separated from what you already are. Bring it close into your heart. Zazan has already brought you to this realization. In this way, studying the precept speaks to what we treasure and wish to protect in our behavior rather than what we wish to avoid. So here is Suzuki Roshi on the basis of our teachings from his first lecture on Genjo Koan. The secret of all the teachings of Buddhism is how to live in each moment, how to obtain absolute freedom moment after moment. Moment after moment we exist in interdependency to past and future and all existence.

[18:30]

In short, if you practice sazan, concentrating on your breathing moment after moment, that is keeping the precepts, helping yourself and helping others, and attaining liberation. We do not aim for or emphasize some particular state of mind or some particular teaching. Even though it is a perfect and profound teaching, we do not emphasize the teaching only. Rather, we emphasize how we understand it and how we bring the truth into practice. We do not aim for or emphasize some particular state of mind or some particular teaching. Even though it is a perfect and profound teaching, we do not emphasize the teaching only. The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.

[19:38]

Zazen is wholeheartedly engaging with what we already are. It is not aiming for or emphasizing anything, but expressing what we are. In studying the precepts, what is actually happening in our understanding of it, and if I might put it another way, What is the truth in light of our practice? The settledness of not aiming for or emphasizing. As human beings, we make ourselves very busy choosing this and that, achieving our goals, raising and degrading. pushing away and hoarding things close. It sounds extreme, and it is.

[20:44]

But here's Suzuki Roshi addressing this differently in a talk published in Becoming Yourself. When I was in school, the head of the Buddhist University, always told us that we should not be concerned about what people do. We should be concerned about what we do. He said that we should be friends to heaven and earth, and that we should first of all be friends to our practice, and that we should not be friends to human beings. I couldn't understand him. You should not be a friend of human beings, he would say. Your friend is heaven and earth. We should first of all be friends to our practice, and we should not be friends to human beings.

[21:47]

This is quite a statement to make. But let me suggest... that it's not unlike what happens when a student makes a request for Jikai. In requesting that relationship, the student is first of all a friend to practice and not, first of all, a friend to human beings. They can see what this is. The steadfastness and depth of the ballast that has already been discovered knows that there is something there to be close to, to try to remain close to, that is not touched by good deeds, petty affairs, and gross misconduct. The gravity of our situation is quite severe.

[22:56]

As Okamura even says, human beings are a cancer on the earth. We know that when unchecked, the human ego is so driven by self-interest that it is annihilating life. And of course, this is the behavior that the precepts are directly speaking to. We study the precepts because we are friends to Buddha-nature that leaves no gap between heaven and earth and the practice that expresses Buddha-nature completely. On this friendship, Dogen writes in Zazen-Shim that in beyond thinking there is somebody that sustains you. This is what I meant earlier by a ballast.

[23:59]

It is what Dogen means by a friend, this someone who sustains you. And he continues to say that even if it is you who are sitting steadfastly, you not only are thinking, but are upholding steadfast sitting. Even if you are sitting there, being a human being in your thinking mind, At the same time, you are still being a friend to your practice and your dedication to steadfast sitting, and your practice friend is also with you. You are being your own good friend to practice, and in turn this good friend sustains you. Staying close to this has a strengthening effect, a focus and purpose that is beyond good and bad. In studying the precepts, there can be a strong, repentant quality spoken of earlier as remorse.

[25:05]

And equally strong in this feeling can be acceptance and compassion. Studying the precepts is training in compassion for ourselves and for the broader human condition. True compassion is oneness. profound and personal experience for me is that about 15 years ago, I was angry at Zen. I mean really angry at Zen. It seemed that the more I practiced, the more I could not understand how an entire community, importantly not my own, could be complicit in harmless behaviors. This is not, if you've been around for any period of time, an uncommon feeling for people to have.

[26:07]

And I was stuck in it. But at the same time, I also felt for myself. My ballast, my friend, was guiding me. That I needed to be healed from within the conflict that I felt. And so I went to that community to practice, to sit in Sesshin with people I did not know and in a lineage of different ways. It was a strong and unnameable desire that brought me to a lineage that was not my own. to sit Sashin in the community that had been the object of my confusions, confusions that were very painful to me. Just the art of it, the level of detail and care that goes into a community's ceremonial expressions and their effects, can turn the heart around.

[27:17]

When you can see decades of care in that level of detail, there is an art that shines with pure intention. The appreciation of this arises from one's own deepening of understanding that can see the heart of practice in both the small details and a deepening of time that sees the continuity of generations. I was struck by the beauty of this, but this was not the thing Above all else, what I felt was a profound gratitude. I was deeply, personally transformed in that sashin, as I am in every sashin, but here in the specificity of a practice that was close to yet different from my own.

[28:22]

What became very powerful to me was that Zen is for everyone. No one is turned away. And that the same pull that I felt and the same fruits of practice that I experienced had been offered to and felt by people who have caused and may even continue to cause serious harm. I saw in my gratitude, and this is important, that this understanding was within a feeling of overflow, as though what had risen from what I was referring to as the ballast was just pouring out in gratitude. And I could see that I had broken every precept. killing, taking, misusing sexuality, false speech, being intoxicated, slander, self-praise, stinginess, ill will, disparaging the three treasures.

[29:26]

There was no complicity at all. Only being friends with practice. Yes, bad things can happen. But everything is forgiven in light of this. And I was overwhelmed by the intimacy, by the grace, by the vastness. In a whole world of practice, a whole universe filled with connection. Through my own wish for healing, connected to the depth of this offering of friendship and community, profoundly changed my life. And I irretrievably fell head over heels in love with Zen. And Zen became the shape of my desire. The ordinance that have studied the precepts and are here today for ceremony is

[30:36]

to have made something by hand sewing bits of fabric together with very specific and pristine instruction with guidance with generations of teaching handed down warm hand to warm hand with every stitch moment to moment the ancestors offer their support and guidance in self-discovery. Just the art of it, the detail and care, is the invitation and the establishing of this deep connection and practice. When the rakasu is complete, it is given to the teacher, who from the intimacy of this bond and practice gives in return a dharma name to the student. In beyond thinking, as Dogen said, there is somebody that sustains you.

[31:42]

In great gratitude, it's to this somebody that I offer a name. Thank you. 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.

[32:20]

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