This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. You're Sangha. Nice to see you all here today. Thank you very much for coming. You can hear me okay? So as I wrote a moment ago in the chat, for those of you who were here waiting a moment ago, I know that many of you here this morning

[01:01]

came with the idea that our friend, Reverend Duncan Liu Ken Williams of USC and Zenshuji Soto Mission in L.A. would be speaking with us again today. And he was very sorry to say that he could not make it. And we're working on a time when he can be back, hopefully within the next month or two. So in his place this morning, I'll be offering the Dharma Talk. Thank you for your patience. And of course, if you came to see Duncan, you're very welcome to stay and very welcome to go. Please keep an eye on the website and we'll post the new day once we're able to reschedule. So I wanted today... to share something that's alive for me and hopefully is not too disorganized.

[02:02]

Some reflections on a topic that is coming into my view and feels really central for me now in my life and practice. I see in this area great potential for understanding myself and others for some awakening and maybe even transformation. And I suspect that something about this might also resonate with some of you, so I thought I'd share. To name this topic, I'll call it fixing things. Fixing versus letting things be broken. Or fixing versus, in Suzuki Roshi's words, seeing things as it is. accepting things as it is, and nourishing them as they grow. So on one hand, fixing, and on the other hand, seeing, accepting, and nourishing things as they grow.

[03:13]

So I'll start with a story that maybe many of you have heard. I heard it first long ago, and it planted a seed that I think had been germinating for a long time now. It's from David Chadwick's wonderful book, To Shine One Corner, a book of stories about our Zen Center founder, Shun Liu Suzuki Ocean. And also the same story is in David Chadwick's newer book, which I think is the same book, called Zen is Right Here. So the story is from 1963. at Sokoji Temple in San Francisco before the founding of Sun Center, but a little while after Suzuki Roshi had arrived in the United States. And the student involved is Richard Baker, who, as many of you know, would become eventually Suzuki Roshi's Dharma heir. So here's David's telling of the story.

[04:20]

During a break in one of the early sessions at Sokoji, A student returning to his seat early straightened a picture on the wall before he sat down on his cushion. Only he and Suzuki Roshi were in the zendo at the time. After a moment, Suzuki got up to leave the room. He walked down the aisle, stopped at the picture, returned it to its crooked position, and continued out the door. So there's three acts in this little play. First, you know, the picture was crooked, and so the student fixed it. This, you know, in a way, this is the most natural and wonderful thing, really. This is what we train, and then this is what we're doing, is caring for attending, intuitively, spontaneously responding.

[05:24]

So natural and wonderful. according with the circumstances and responding appropriately, taking care of things. We say, you know, the flavor, the wind, the character of the school of Soto Zen, menmitsu no kapu, this tender care, thorough, tender, wholehearted care of each and every detail. So it matters to us, you know, it matters to us in Soto Zen how the picture is arranged. It's worth attending to. It's worth it, you know, to take the time for the picture to be oriented just so. Our practice is to attend to these things. And so in this story, the student does so. How wonderful. Yesterday, we were sitting here today at Greenville, just many of you also were sitting at City Center and the online temple. And I had the story in mind, and I noticed as we were exiting Visendo into Cloud Hall, our common space outside Visendo, a student here paused on their way back to their room to attempt to rearrange this table in the common area.

[06:42]

Maybe many of you are familiar with this low table in Cloud Hall. There's a flower vase there, and right now, two giant bottles of hand sanitizer. And in a very simple and appropriate and natural way, this person tended to the table. They took care of the table, brought the different pieces into alignment. I felt in that simple act of caretaking that this person had awareness for himself and for the situation. I felt cared for and felt that our space was being cared for. So how wonderful to take care of things. tidy up. But somehow, in the case of this old story, it was different. There was something about, this is my reading, my imagination of this story, there was something about Richard Baker's straightening that picture that led Suzuki Roshi to offer this teaching

[07:57]

This silent reprimand, is that too strong? This great gift, you know, of the simple gesture. Putting the, making the picture crooked again. The simple gesture that echoes all of these decades later. So straightening a picture on the wall can be tender care of details. But it also can show a mind. Manifest mind, the heart, body, that's basically out of harmony with what is. A mind that's convinced of its own perspective. The mind that's leaning towards or bent on fixing. Fixing, which is to say bringing the world, you know, detail by detail, large or small. Fixing, bringing the world into accord. my mental picture of the world, bringing the world into accord with how that mind thinks the world should be.

[09:05]

So this is sometimes subtle, but very powerful, impactful, harmful habit of demeaning the world as it is. You know, it's hard to say Richard Baker in straightening that picture was demeaning the world. And he had, you know, what is this mind? That's wrong, let me fix it. That's wrong, let me fix it. That subtly demeans things as they are, the world as it is, and elevates the world as it should be, according to me. So I think the most straightforward aspect of this story. What I think or imagine Suzuki Roshi felt was off in this simple act of taking care of the painting, the picture, most basically is just that it wasn't Richard Baker's space.

[10:16]

I think when I first heard the story, I had the picture that this was in City Center, which In a way, Richard Baker did have a great amount of responsibility for. But reading it again with this knowledge that this is Sokoji, this is not Richard Baker's temple. He was the guest, not the host. So just most basically, I think that's what Suzuki Roshi is pointing out. It wasn't his place to fix the picture at Sokoji. He was the guest, not a host. So... I hope that if you are kind enough to invite me to your home, I hope that I don't fix your things. And if you have the chance to come to my home, I would respectfully request that you not fix my things. So in that most basic sense, it's bad manners.

[11:20]

It's a confusion about goals and responsibilities. mixing up with guest and host. And I don't think that's all. I think there's this deeper, deeper delusion in this attitude of fixing that I know how things should be. I know what's wrong here, but I'll take care of it. Something about that mind, which may be familiar to you, certainly familiar to me. that's out of touch with reality, it's out of relationship with the totality, and that has some element of disrespect, of dustness, of such things as they are. So if I don't know thoroughly what something is, did he see the picture? You know, do I see the picture before I fix it? If I don't know what something is,

[12:22]

or why it's hanging just out how it is. How can I say that it should be hanging some other way? So there's another picture hanging, unsatisfactorily hanging in the Tonto room, the room where I spend time and have formal meetings. And I often come into the room, Cloud Hall number 10, and I look at this picture and it seems like it's I feel it's a little bit off and so I make some correction to it and then I come back in the next day and I feel again that it's a little bit off and I correct it again and after doing this for some time correcting this and then correcting my correction I've noticed that the issue is that the room isn't quite square the floor and the ceiling aren't exactly parallel and So I am responsible for that space.

[13:26]

And it's great that I'm correcting the painting. But what line am I correcting it to? What line am I orienting the painting to? If I correct it to the top line, then it goes out of alignment with the bottom line. You all know the principle. And if I correct it with the bottom line, then it's out of alignment with the top. So every day I come in, and it's a little off. And I say, no, that's not right. but I can't solve the problem. I can just move the problem. I don't know. Suzuki Roshi would do in Cloud Hall 10. Maybe that will be my koan.

[14:28]

So apart from this simple teaching Suzuki Roshi's offering on manners, or this straightforward teaching on arrogance, really, there's also in his act of making the picture crooked again, the kind of challenge to his student, and I think to me too, and maybe to you, to see if we can find the equanimity, stability, composure, forbearance, to let something be crooked. That's usually how I've thought of this story. It's usually what this story has meant to me. Like Suzuki Roshi saying, I know you can fix things, but can you let them just be crooked? For some of us, and maybe each of us is different, I think for many of us, it's easier to fix something than to just let it be crooked.

[15:36]

Why would I want to just let it be crooked? How is that helpful? How is it helpful to just let something be crooked? Well, first, crooked, as I was hopefully clear from the example of the picture in my own room, crooked is relative to something. Crooked is a comparative value. It's in relationship to something else. And I can't say for sure that the thing I'm measuring against is really the right measure. So it's crooked to the floor, but it's straight to the roof, the ceiling. or it's aligned with the ceiling and it's crooked with the floor. Letting it be there, letting it be crooked either way or both ways, just letting it be there off-center hopefully gives me time to really understand what is happening.

[16:46]

That's maybe the first reason why letting it be crooked is helpful. to give me time to just sit there and let it be crooked until I understand what is actually happening, what it is, how it is, how it is, why it is, how it is, to understand what is happening before rushing into corrected. So this, you know, this disease, this malady, this arrogance, this mal-adjustment, harmful delusion, I believe and see it afflicts white men like myself, maybe most of all in our current place and time, conditioned to come into a room and know what's happening. Here I am. Here's the problem and here's what we're going to do. This is how some of us are raised, the message that our culture reinforces and that we internalize.

[17:52]

not so much taught to stop and to look, to wonder what's happening here, to sit and listen, really understand what's happening, whether it has anything to do with me, whether I have any place in it at all. you know, I know the harm of this energy, I know the feeling of this energy, and I'm deeply moved by this teaching, this invitation to, you know, tolerate that things are broken in order to take the time to really understand beyond broken or fixed how and why they actually are. So, I think, you know, that an aspect or a seed of this basic human trait of arrogance is in all of us and is diagnosed by the Buddha.

[18:59]

And really we can diagnose it, not like take his word for it. We just look at our mind with any kind of mindfulness or attention. We tend to believe what we think. We tend to believe our interpretation of events. This seems to me to be the default. Believe our minds and our judgment. It's really hard to sit and listen, stop and look, to exist with, but put aside our own views and judgments and evaluations and standards long enough to really see and harmonize with what's happening. And some of it, I think, is because we're in a hurry, because there's stuff to get done. So we maybe don't have the time. to see what's actually happening. It might take a very long time, you know. Maybe that picture is still crooked there in the hall.

[20:03]

It might take a long time before we understand why it is how it is and really understand what our place is in that and then respond, converse, inter-be, share from there. So, of course, our practice is to take care of things and to be of help and to support. So, the first layer, you know, my first plea of defense or resistance in light of this teaching, allow it to be crooked, is this fear that that would be to abandon our responsibility to help to support the world and one another. but to settle and allow the possibility that allow it to be broken, allow it to be crooked, is actually the ground of some deep support, the ground of bodhisattva service.

[21:11]

And Suzuki Roshi said, in a word, Zen is the teaching or practice of seeing things as it is, accepting things as it is, and of nourishing things as they grow. This is the fundamental purpose of our practice and the meaning of Zen. In a word, Zen is the teaching or practice of seeing things as it is, accepting things as it is, and of nourishing things as they grow. This is the fundamental purpose of our practice and the meaning of Zen. Seeing things, accepting things, and nourishing them as they grow. There's no fixing involved here, and there's no broken involved here. Broken and fixed are my ideas, you know. Is it aligned with the ceiling? It's fixed. Is it off the floor? It's broken. Both of these are just my ideas. Nothing to do with nourishing things as they grow.

[22:16]

So there is some activity, some vital activity bodhisattva engagement, and that is nourishing things as they grow. So much better of an image. Forgive the word. Better. So much better. Nourishing things as they grow than fixing broken things. I have vowed to fix broken things. God help us. But nourish things as they grow. Now we have all these wonderful farmers here at Green Gulch. So these images, you know, that teaching of how to nourish things as they grow, it's embodied and resonant on this land. A farmer doesn't fix the plants and fix the soil. A farmer connects with the soil, tries to understand the soil, offers herself to meet and support this life, seeing, accepting, and nourishing.

[23:19]

So I think this is one of the reasons, one of the understandings of this teaching. You know, better to be crooked, actually. Let's put that back how it was until we're ready, you know, to straighten. So can we wait? Can we just let it be broken? Let there be suffering. Let it hurt, you know. before fixing? Maybe we find we never need to fix really at all. What's another ground for engaging, interacting? So fixing things, you know, fixing things without quite

[24:30]

You know, knowing what they are may be familiar. One of my contacts for this is marriage, being married to a person who I live with. And it's probably true of any arrangement in which you're living intimately with people. This, you know, you did that wrong. You did that wrong. You put that in the wrong place. You know, you put the spatula in the wrong place, but don't worry. You know, the spatula was in the wrong place, but don't worry, I put it in the right place. No, you put it in the wrong place, so I put it back in the right place. Who keeps putting the spatula in the wrong place? So, you know, whole days can go by. Our communal life is like this too. Whole days go by where we're just fixing what each other just fixed. So many examples. I'm sure you have some examples of your own. Of my long list of examples, one that really tickled me that I'll share.

[25:40]

Maybe you've heard the story about this sportscaster. The sportscaster who had his T-shirt, you know, he managed, he was a sportscaster for a very long time announcing soccer games. and had a T-shirt signed by Pele, the greatest socket player to ever live. And so he had this T-shirt with Pele's signature on it. And a few, you know, I'm not sure when, a few days later maybe, his helpful roommate washed his shirt, washed out this signature. Hey, you know, I did your laundry for you. You're welcome. helping, you know, fixing without really understanding. There's also maybe a deeper example that I'd like to share closer to home here for us at Green Gulch that Sarah Tashkar brought up a few months ago in her Dharma talk about our farm here.

[26:52]

This is the story or moment of George Wheelwright, our great benefactor and friend, arriving so long ago at Green Gulch and seeing the creek meandering through this lovely valley with so much potential for agriculture, for sustaining life, and saying, you know, I don't know what the thought was, but having the sense, well, the creek is in the wrong place. The creek's in the wrong place, but we can fix that. We can fix that. And he did. He fixed it. So he didn't have time, I think, and the pressures of the world he was in didn't give time to deeply see and accept what the creek was and why it was how it was. You know, it's like with my picture, to see, to take the time to see what would become crooked on the bottom if he straightened it on the top.

[27:56]

And this is our mind. You know, this is my mind. And I think maybe if you look closely, this is your mind too. Of course, this is in full respect to George Wheelwright and his vision for this land and our great touch to him. The point is that we are no different from him. As Sarah said, it's not that he was bad and he was good or he had the wrong idea and we have the right idea. On the contrary, the point is that this shared mind, we're caught in our human perspective. And it's just easier to see, you know, 100 years later. Well, that was not quite, that wasn't the whole picture. It was easier to see from a grateful move. Our challenge in this practice is to try to see if it's possible, you know, to open the space to see in real time how we're caught by these views. And so I want to share another aspect and reflect on another aspect that I'm working with of let it be crooked, which is about our basic capacity to live in a world that is full of suffering.

[29:20]

If we can fix it, you know, if we could fix it, why would we keep it crooked if we could fix it? What is this teaching of just let it be crooked, stop trying to fix it? This points, I think, to shantiparamita, forbearance, tolerance, the capacity to be with, to be still with, to be present with crookedness, with brokenness, with suffering, to be with All of that, just as it is before, you know, or without, or apart from any ideas of fixing, or that it's something like something that could be fixed. So here the Pali Buddhist word for suffering comes up for me.

[30:29]

This word for suffering is dukkha, and generally understood dukkha, suffering. to refer to the basic discontent that is so often an aspect of life. Or maybe even more strongly, as some of the teachings seem to say, that this suffering, this discontent, is just inherent. It's just woven in with the very fact of being alive. This basic suffering, this suffering that is always there with life. Discontent. unsatisfactoriness. So it's said that the etymology of this word dukkha is related to the axle or wheel, maybe, of a cart. The dukkha is this wheel that catches and grinds, this wheel that's not quite true. And I've shared with many of you my delight at this, students' delight some years back at hearing this and saying, oh, it's like

[31:36]

It's like the grocery cart. It's like that wheel on the grocery cart that's just always, you know, it's always just going a little bit off. And yes, that is exactly, exactly it. It's just always, you know, a little bit off. Maybe every grocery cart is like this. It just pulls a little bit because one wheel is just not quite right. It just catches, it grinds. You know, sukha, the other side, joy, that's this grocery cart that just glides. The four wheels, you know, perfectly aligned and oiled. But there's no, there is no, there's no cart like this, you know, and if there is, it won't be for long. This dukkha, this catching, pulling wheel, it's always looming. This is the first noble truth that there is suffering. Can we be with it? Can we get used to it, you know?

[32:38]

Are we throwing a fit or, you know, maybe just as bad down on our, you know, on our knees at the wheel of every grocery cart we come across with our screwdriver and fixing mind? Well, of course, you know, the suffering isn't like the whole story of the Buddha Dharma. The Buddha Dharma is the path to the end of suffering. So, The teaching is not just that we're doomed to wallow in the suffering, but it is that this path, you could say out of suffering, is based on a deep acceptance, deep allowing that the suffering is here to stay. The suffering is deep in the character of our life itself, not something to fix. It's not, you know, if only that picture were hanging right. If only such and such were such and such. If only I had that or didn't have this, then the suffering would become all fixed.

[33:48]

If I was here and not there, or there and not here, with them but not them, or with them but not them, of course our life changes, we respond, we act, things happen. We adapt. We try to make life better for ourselves and for each other. And while we're doing that, this teaching is that none of that, you know, manipulation of conditions is really getting to the root of our discontent. None of this fixing gets at the root of our suffering. So I think that's part of Suzuki Roshi's teaching too, or part of what's meaningful about it for me. there be suffering and want to fix it and also let it be there. So refrain from fixing in order to better see what's happening and even more just to grow this capacity to be comfortable with things being off, being painful, being out of whack.

[35:01]

So this capacity is the capacity that will allow us to live and function in this really quite maddening and suffering world. So I'm finding maybe it's clear, but I'd like to just express that I'm finding this intention in myself, this call from the Buddha Dharma to let things be broken, let things be crooked, and let things be unfinished and unresolved. Let it all be a bit of a mess. To be with suffering rather than leap to soothe or solve it.

[36:07]

or even to get to its root. And, you know, as a matter of daily practice of kind of moment-by-moment mind and action, I'm finding an intention to be vigilant about, to label, to notice, to tune myself to notice and label the certain quality of mind, which I'll call fixing. And in light of this suspicion I have about the whole you know, views and delusion behind this fixing energy, just to notice this fixing mind, I think goes a long way towards freeing myself from acting from it. To notice fixing mind and refrain, you know, fixing mind, letting the sound of fixing mind

[37:10]

be a bell that stops me in my tracks. I also have an intention, I have a vow called the Bodhisattva vow, which is to care for all things and to offer my life and activity in support of all suffering beings, to live for the well-being and complete liberation of everyone, to attain the way together with everyone, all beings together with me. And we renewed this vow here at Greenbelt this morning in our full moon ceremony. And I noticed, I listened, I listened to what I was saying and I noticed I did not vow to fix anything. I vowed to help to bring all beings across to liberation. Nothing to do with fixing. In fact, before vowing, you know, to support all beings, in the path of liberation to nourish all things as they grow towards liberation, first I avowed this ancient twisted karma, which is this mind of fixing.

[38:20]

That fixing mind is the mind to put aside in order to nourish things as they grow. So instead of fixing, I want to just genuinely be with, be with all of you, be with things as they are, express myself fully and allow all of you to express yourself fully. And from, as Tenshin Roshi has been saying, from this conversation, or as Thich Nhat Hanh says, from this interbeing, or as Suzuki Roshi says, from this sharing, from this sharing in my feeling, sharing in my feeling, then something will unfold, co-created. Nobody fixing anything, but somehow this, being authentic together, unfolding something new. So to have the patience to be able to bear this, you know, and the kalpas that it takes, I need to be really settled with anything broken and unfixed.

[39:27]

You know, things as they are, it may be a last point I want to make, and we'll see if I can express it. Hopefully, you're still here with me, hard to tell on Zoom. I'll take things as they are over my idea of how things should be. I think this is my commitment. Things as they are has, you know, is real. Things as they are has Buddha nature. Things as they are has reality and relationship. Things as they are accounts for everything. It includes everything. Whereas my, you know, it's in three dimensions. Whereas my idea of how things should be is really quite a shadow. It's, you know, two dimensions, maybe one. It has no Buddha nature. It has no reality. And it doesn't account for things. It's not in relationship. So part of this practice is, you know, I'll take how things are over my idea of how they should be, and then from how things are, allowing this bodhisattva work to unfold.

[40:58]

I want to close with a koan. Our favorite koan of our abbess who, and one that's taken on new meaning for me, You know, like all these koans, you think one thing and then something else opens. So as I reflect on this intention to be comfortable with broken things, I'm naturally remembering this koan. I want to close with it. So one day, Yang Wan called to his attendant, bring me the rhinoceros fan. The attendant said, it is broken. The master, I will note, did not then say, well, fix it. There's no fixing in this corn. I don't think any of our stories, I don't know, it's worth, you know, a database search. I don't think any of our teaching stories have the master suggest fixing.

[42:02]

Why don't you fix it? Bring me the rhinoceros fan. It is broken. Young one said, if the fan is already broken, bring me the rhinoceros itself. The attendant gave no answer. No fixing. Letting it be broken, you know, in this broken cram, the rhino, in this brokenness, the opportunity is so much deeper than any fixing. And so on this full moon day, Hongzhi's verse on this case. Break the fan. That's Suzuki Roshi. Breaking the picture. Turning the picture back and fixed to broken. Break the fan and look for the rhinoceros. The word within the circle has prior significance.

[43:07]

Who knows the thousand years' darkness? of the new moon. It subtly turns into autumn's harvest moon. Thank you for your kind attention this morning. May our practicing and being together be of real benefit somehow to this suffering world. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:08]

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