Good evening. Good evening. A unique gathering. For some years, I've been doing a practice of waking up with gratitude. First thing. sitting up at the edge of the bed and putting my hands together and just saying the word gratitude and then it's an open question for what and whatever comes up in my experience is that for which I am

[01:01]

I'd say grateful to have this meeting. Whatever it is, is who I am, you know? And whatever it is, is supporting me. And this life, it's completely beyond judgment or preference. So lately I've been grateful to have that practice. And right now I'm grateful for this moment and everyone here, each person. And so I want to begin with that and not lose not lose track of that. I sent out an email a couple of days ago, and toward the end of it, I quoted Dogen, a little poem, saying, to what shall I liken this

[02:29]

Moon light reflected in dew drops shaken from a cranes beak. And that's beautiful and it also has a kind of ethereal remoteness. And so, I followed that with another verse from Blind Lemon Jefferson. I've got trouble in mind, Lord. I feel like I'm fixing to die. I've got trouble in my mind, Lord. I'm fixing to die oh well I don't mind dying but I hate to hear my children crying hate to leave my children crying so that brings it more into the realm of what I'm feeling

[04:00]

It's literally the case, actually. I don't mind dying, and I do hate to leave everything, everyone. And I also must confess, I really hate the pain in the body. There is that that comes up. I say, oh yeah, this is hard to bear. So I have been taking some drugs. I don't think I'd be able to sit up here actually without having some support, some pharmacological support. So that's also a part of the support network. I'm really glad that people came and I have a chance to say something.

[05:12]

So I thought I'd say if you talk a little bit and then invite if there are comments or any questions, anything that isn't clear. Of course, facing the unknown, which is what we're doing every day. And still, that we do that every day is really intensified with the lens of having a terminal illness diagnosis. So I want to talk about just a little bit about my experience with that in the past few weeks. Some of you know. a lot about that already and for others, maybe it's new.

[06:13]

But just to give the elements, I'd say if I just go back three weeks, approximately three weeks, there was a board meeting, San Francisco Zen Center board meeting. I gave Abbott's report. We passed a resolution to invite Ed Satizan to become city center abbot. People are looking around here. There's Ed right there next to Susan. And thank you, Ed. Thank you. And also then it was clarified that I had agreed to extend the term of being an abbot for another three years. So this is my seventh year. And so to go to 10 years. And that all seemed quite doable.

[07:23]

We had a branching streams conference. Many people came from different sanghas around the country, city center, several days of meetings. During the course of that, I was feeling, there was one night I woke up in the middle of the night and said, oh, I have to, I'm getting a little tired. I feel like I should just shift my energy and pay a little more attention to the body, ease back a little bit. And so that was fine, and that went through Sunday. And then Monday, I was back up in Rohnert Park, and I felt maybe I'm getting the flu or something. I just kind of have achiness in the body. And then next day, usually I'm getting little flu symptoms, and I take wellness formula and drink tea and And it passes in a day or sometimes less.

[08:32]

The next day it was about the same. And then the third day I felt like this isn't exactly the usual flu. Then I started feeling more intense pain in the lower back. And I thought, well, I should see a doctor. By the time I saw the doctor, I was really having intense pain in the lower back and kind of on the right side in this abdominal area. And the doctor prescribed the blood tests and urine tests and thought it might be something with the kidneys. Nothing showed up though with those tests. With the blood test, there were just a couple areas that were just slightly elevated that were not too unusual. But he prescribed a CAT scan. And so it was just last Friday that I had a CAT scan.

[09:34]

First time in my life. Beautiful technology. Except for the barium banana smoothie, which my body really wanted to reject. But... The CAT scan itself only takes a few minutes. But then I didn't get the results. Later that day, it turned out my doctor had called and wanted to talk to me, but somehow I didn't either have the phone on or something at the time. I didn't notice that until Saturday. And part of his message was he wanted to talk to me right away. So I thought, well, there's something up. But then he was going on vacation. So he said, well, I'll be back in another week. But the next day was a painful day, and it's Sunday morning. Delaney and I talked about, well, I know something's up, so I should get some more information.

[10:36]

So I was able to get another doctor at Kaiser who was on call, who looked at it and said, well, it looks like you've got a tumor in the pancreas. And he didn't say much more than that, but I had those two words. Later that day, I went online and looked up pancreatic tumor, and it turns out that 95% of tumors in the pancreas turn out to be cancerous. So I thought, well, that's the most likely scenario. He also made an appointment with me to see an oncologist the next day. So Monday, that's just this, is that this week? So much has happened in the last few days. But by Sunday night, I thought, okay, this could be, because I went online and started reading about pancreatic cancer.

[11:47]

And so I thought, well, I have to accept This is the thing to be grateful for now. And I think the Monday morning, I think I woke up, said to Lane, I think, okay, I'm settled. I'm settled with this. And I had an appointment with an oncologist that morning, and he was very good. Went through the beautiful, Beautiful imagery from the CAT scan. But he started pointing out little lesions in my lungs, in my liver, in the spleen, in the pancreas, and there's a whole mass on the pancreas. He said, since the mass is on the lower end of the pancreas, you're lucky because if it was on the top end, it would interfere directly with your digestive juices You wouldn't be able to digest food, but now you can still digest food, so that makes it easier.

[12:53]

But he was very straightforward and knowledgeable, and he said without treatment, you can expect to live three to six months. And with treatment, depending on how the treatment goes, and the treatment would be chemotherapy, surgeries, not possible with this distribution of the cancer cells. With chemotherapy, you don't know how the cancer will respond to the chemo, but maybe double. So that was Monday morning, life-changing news. for me and for everyone around me. And I'm grateful that Lane was there with me through that whole appointment, and that was not easy to hear and to feel the import.

[14:08]

pancreatic cancer typically isn't discovered until it's pretty far along because it's embedded in the body and the kind of symptoms that come up usually don't come up until it's pretty far along. And I wasn't aware that there's anyone in my family that there are any particular reasons that I should be particularly vigilant about pancreatic cancer. There are some studies I know going on now in Johns Hopkins for people who do have some genetic markers to see if there are even things that what to watch, you know, that might be possible to pick it up earlier. But it's usually pretty far along. And in this case, he said, it's stage four. And Lane said, well, what's stage five like? And he said, there's no stage five. So that's the diagnosis, pancreatic cancer stage four.

[15:32]

And so I began telling a few people, because since I'm involved in relationships with people in a whole community and actually several particular communities of people it's something to at least to let people know because it affects affects everyone but first I'd let my daughters and my siblings know and then started informing other people leaders leadership of San Francisco Zen Center and Dharma eyes and Sangha back porch, zendo, various, and then sent out an email to the abbot's council, extended and added on people, and it's kind of like, oh, I keep adding on names, and I think, oh, okay.

[16:35]

As it turned out, on Monday, Monday morning before I went to the doctor, I got a phone call from Zen Tatsu Richard Baker from Germany. He wanted to talk to me about Dan Welch coming to visit the Bay Area in a few weeks. So I had a chance to tell him what was going on. Last night I got a call from Reb who said he was going to Texas and couldn't be here today. He thought it was a good idea that I keep this date of giving a talk this evening. And he was actually really, really affected by the news. We have a long, deep relationship. So this is a time of just taking it in and realizing that everything on my fully scheduled calendar for the next year and beyond.

[18:00]

I had one teacher's conference scheduled in 2015. It's all big, you know, a series of question marks, you know. And the immediate things in the short term, I said, well, everything has to give way to doing the best I can to take care of this new relationship that I'm aware of, new relationship with cancer. And so taking care of it, I think of it as a little bit like the Tassajara fire, you know, that it's, it's an engagement and there's certain things that, that I can do to take care of this side and the fire, the cancer can, will do what it does.

[19:07]

And it's a matter of paying close attention and keeping keeping attentive and responsive with the thought of being the most helpful to taking care of what's most immediate. And so I'm learning fast, learning a lot. Some of you, there may be people in the room who know someone who's who has died of this cancer or who has it and who may have more experience than I do. There are lots of resources. I have received many messages from people saying anything I can do to help. And I really appreciate the feeling of that.

[20:09]

And mostly that's already helpful. It's already helpful just to confirm the relationship. There is a relationship that's important and valuable and to acknowledge that I think itself is helpful. People are more freely telling me they love me. I'm more freely telling people I love you. And so that's so good to acknowledge. And at the same time, it's so poignant because it means there's also, it's kind of like signing up for grief, you know. signing up for loss.

[21:14]

And that's part of what we need to do as human beings is actually sign up for being a human being. And signing up for being a human being means the relationships that we have that we know on one side are fabricated, right? And there's... delusion and self-clinging involved. And at the same time, it's how we manifest our connectedness that goes beyond any kind of dualistic sense of me and you. I've been working with the phrase that comes from Dogen's teaching on the Buddha, Yubutsu, Yobutsu, a Buddha together with a Buddha.

[22:26]

And he quotes another ancient, he always says an ancient Buddha when he's quoting ancestors. One who says the entire earth is the true human body. The entire earth is the true human body. So each human body is also independent and simultaneously the entire earth. And sometimes you may know this or really see that when you let go of your particular attachment to some small identity and realize that the tree is as much a part of me as my shoulder.

[23:30]

The sky is as much a part of me as my eyelashes. the sound of the ocean as much a part of me as my own, the sound of my own breathing. To actually experience it that way is something that shows up in our practice. And I think it's not that, it's not so unusual, particularly for people who are doing this, this practice of sitting. I'm very grateful to have this practice It sustains me and will continue to sustain me to the last moment of consciousness. So there's something so precious about it and I feel partly as Abbot, I feel

[24:41]

There is a thought, okay, I have to accept the limitation. I have to let everyone down. I actually don't know if I'll be able to do the next three years. It seems kind of unlikely, but I don't know. I know there's a lot of support. And I received an email today from Maya in Japan saying, Shi and Fu are going to a Shingon ceremony, fire ceremony, and they're going to put my name on a piece of wood and burn it in support of my own health. So it raises an interesting question. What is health? That health is, I think, health is being complete. And that includes whatever it is. And not trying to cut off some of it, but include whatever it is.

[25:48]

And within that to find, okay, how can I be helpful? How can I take care of this moment, this part of it that's actually within the realm of care? but always with the thought that this is an expression of some completeness that is beyond birth and death as separate things. And so I really see that and feel that and it's something I think all of us know in our deepest bones or marrow or beyond the marrow. or beyond may not be right. More intensely within the within-ness of the marrow.

[26:50]

So this is the entire earth as the true human body. I felt, well, right now I just had the thought. I'm grateful that I could go to South Dakota while I was still able to walk and join Shodo Cedar Springs. Some of you know Shodo. And what she's doing called the Compassionate Earth Walk, which is following the approximate path of the keystone. XL pipeline proposed to bring tar sands extracted crude from Canada up in Alberta all the way through the United States down to the Gulf of Mexico. So they started walking up in Alberta in July and they were through Montana and I was able to join them, flew into Rapid City

[28:02]

and was able to join them in the northwest corner of South Dakota and walk for several days. And my feet were sore and I was happy to be able to be there. And the thought is to bring awareness to the earth and the impact of this part of our body. How do we take care of this part of our body? And it's something that's so big that we have to look at it as actually as a whole society. We have to look at it and we haven't actually we don't actually have the I think the organizational certainly not the organizational skill to regulate our own greed. as a civilization and the greediness in our own culture.

[29:08]

So it's actually, I think, hard for most people to imagine having oil in the ground and leaving it there. What an idea. What a practice of restraint to actually accept that it's healthier for the whole body. look at how we balance how we contribute to the imbalance of carbon in the earth and carbon in the atmosphere so in taking care of this body I also don't want to neglect the whole so I was very I felt very fortunate to be able to walk Well, that was an inadvertent.

[30:16]

So that's great. Responsiveness, too. Maybe we don't need to burn the lights so bright. So to actually attend to the impact of our many actions as a As a boy, from the age of eight, some of you know this, from the age of eight on until I was 18, my father, who was a professor for the academic year, but then we were custom wheat harvesters for the summer, right? So because the wheat ripens first in Texas and then as the summer goes along more and farther north, it ripens. So we would start as soon as a school was out in May to start in Texas and then follow the harvest, Kansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and then either North Dakota or Montana.

[31:24]

So every summer I went through the same land. There's another part of it I just want to mention briefly is the suffering of the indigenous people that I became somewhat aware of passing through the Pine Ridge Reservation when I was a boy. After a couple of days of the Compassionate Earth Walk, we were in communication with some of the Lakota people who were activists in opposition to the XL pipeline. Some of them had gone to Washington to protest and they were planning, they were looking at how could they make some statement or blockade when it comes through their sacred land, whether it's

[32:29]

on the designated reservation land or not. They still are, you know, this is, there are parts of that that are sacred land that are not, you know, designated as reservation land. And in the course of the communication with them, we learned they were doing on the Pine Ridge Reservation that Saturday they were doing, the women were doing a walk for peace. from Pine Ridge to White Clay. So this is like about three miles from Pine Ridge, which is right on the southern edge of South Dakota to the Nebraska state line. And on the other side of the Nebraska state line is White Clay, which is a depot for supplying alcohol to the reservation because there's no alcohol sold on the reservation. And so the women, this particular group of women, they've done this several times to make this walk to advocate stopping the flow of alcohol from white clay into Pine Ridge.

[33:49]

So our group, the Compassionate Earth Walk group, which is not a large group, about 10 people, decided that we would go and join that. So we traveled and we arrived in Pine Ridge really late, about close to midnight the night before. Found a place to camp out. Next morning, joined the gathering that was happening. There were speakers. After one of the speakers spoke, I went over and was talking with him just a little bit. He said, well, I'm much more militant. They asked me, this is a peace march, so they asked me to tone it down. And we talked a little bit and he said,

[34:54]

And someone else was saying, now let's have a prayer from one of our women leaders whose name is Doris Respects Nothing. Wonderful name. Doris Respects Nothing. seemed to be maybe 50 years old and had long black hair and just wearing a blue dress and long black hair down to here and she started speaking in Lakota and the person I was talking to next to me said take off your hat and I felt oh somewhat embarrassed I was wearing my Tazahara cap and uh But I was also actually grateful that we had struck up a conversation enough that he could tell me how to behave.

[36:03]

And so I took off my cap and listened to a language I didn't know go on for quite a while. And then there was group of drummers who were on the back of a pickup truck drumming and chanting and we started walking and we walked had they had the highway blocked off and we walked the two-and-a-half miles or whatever it was to to white clay and then and I heard various speeches And on the way back, I was really feeling walking. I was walking back just by myself. And I was feeling this walk for me is walking for the sins of my ancestors. And I can't solve the many, many, many problems on the reservation.

[37:13]

But I can actually let people know that that they do have some allies. They do have some support. For me, just to say a little bit more, I don't want to get off into this too much, but growing up as a Mennonite kid in Kansas, it's only been, I'd say more and more in the last few years, I've been aware of There's a kind of righteousness that I think Mennonites feel about themselves. And I wanna be careful that the Buddhists don't feel so righteous about ourselves. But that we were good people and did not cause harm. And yet, at the same time that my great-great-grandfather arrived,

[38:16]

and bought land cheaply from the Santa Fe Railroad, which had been granted, you know, a 50-mile-wide right-of-way by the government who had just, was still in the process, really, of basically stealing the land from the Plains tribes. And so my peaceful forebears, without much of a nod of recognition to all that, stepped in and started plowing up the prairie. The buffalo were being shot by the thousands and millions. And that was still going on then farther. And it really, I recommend, I came back and I re-read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which is really difficult reading, to take in the the pain and that this fundamental conflict of say feeling that we are righteous in what we're doing even while we are committing genocide acts of genocide in this case so for

[39:44]

For human beings as a species now, for us to feel right in what we're doing while other species are becoming extinct. I think we really need to inform ourselves about that part of our body. That we also include that. And it's painful. It's painful even to know about it. More painful, I think, than this cancer. I just want to suggest a practice of continually moving between awareness of one's own, say, internal body, taking care of one's own internal body, which I think is something that a lot of our practice is, say, waking us up to, pointing to, taking care, mindfulness, sitting still. deeply investigating what's going on internally.

[40:45]

And it actually helps your whole life if you take care of the signals coming from your own body. And then the body around you, all the relationships, to actually attend to those relationships as your own body, understanding that there are boundaries within that, areas of responsibility within that. But to include, ultimately include everything. And to be able to cultivate this practice of moving one's perspective from here to any other part. And then back to here. In the course of that, everything becomes more and more, say, known and familiar. And it becomes clearer, I think, moment to moment, what to do, how to respond, what to take care of, and how to take care of it.

[41:51]

So that walking is the same earth, you know, where we're walking right here. And I gave Shoto a copy of Harry's book that Tim Buckley did, a little booklet of Harry's teachings called Walking in Beauty. And I was appreciative that this walk was, the intention was to meet people along the way so that various ranchers would pull up and say, you know, what are you doing? And we had encounters with different people and had a chance to talk about, hear about their life and their perspective and accept their hospitality. In some cases, they were very generous. So now, here, San Francisco Zen Center, I feel like...

[43:10]

I have to put the emphasis right now in taking care of this engagement with pancreatic cancer and find out as much as I can, not obsess about it, but as much as I can to actually take good care and then see how it unfolds. There'll be many, say, things on my calendar that I've already committed to that I don't know if I'll be able to do But my thought is to continue as much as I can. But it will be much more limited and I won't know actually until I've had at least a couple rounds of chemo and see how that affects me and affects the cancer and whether it actually is going to... and deactivate it to some extent.

[44:13]

So it's a very interesting time, and I appreciate the time. I appreciate this time. I appreciate this time tonight and the time that we have together. And some of you... I have some ideas about, well, I'd really like to accomplish this and that. Lane and I are saying, well, we have to completely rethink the ideas that we were having three weeks ago about what we were going to be doing after I retire three years from now. And we don't know that that will happen. And I'm astonished at the amount of stuff I've accumulated. So now I have to decide what will happen to this and what will happen to that? Do I give this to so-and-so?

[45:20]

And so there's a lot of those kind of little decisions. But part of the time, having the time that I have, means that I want to devote some of it to taking care of things so things are as much in order as they can be when I can no longer function. there'll be a time when I'll no longer be able to talk for example like this and my feeling is that Zen Center is in you know it's just wonderful wonderful very important expression of people's interest in something that goes beyond our own self-interest.

[46:21]

And it's taken this form of a profound practice, a lineage practice that Suzuki Roshi brought and we actually, each of us have the capacity and in a sense, really each of us has the responsibility whether we know it or not or like it or not. to understand it, study it, practice it, and make it available to others. And in that way, this lineage can continue to be sustained and evolve and develop and be helpful, creatively, you know showing up for the challenges and the difficulties that are right on our you know right on our plate right on our horizon so for me it's been clear for the past 40 some years that this is the most important thing to do this practice and

[47:40]

And so I propose that to each of you. If you can find something better, then do that. But whatever it is, make it the most profound expression of your life. And there are various ways to do it. I think there are many ways to do Zen practice, different ways that it can manifest. So to really rigorously investigate, I think for each of us, investigate for ourselves what's the best way. So for me to take up the robes of being a Soto Zen priest is a form, a kind of a vessel for me to do what's most profound. well, halfway decent person. And so, and it's a good way, you know.

[48:52]

And it doesn't exclude all other possibilities, but I just wanna verify it's a good way. It has the, within the tradition, it has the elasticity and it has the profound depths that can actually be available for the most profound, deep, and also the most light and ecstatic experience. And provides a real basic form for how we help each other work together as human beings. So there's a lot of resources there. And I think that already I know, just looking around the room, I know that I can die.

[49:57]

And there are people here who will take care of that. Take care of this practice. Isn't that great? So, you know, for me to think that I can do very much is a mistaken idea. At the same time, to think that I can't do anything is a mistaken idea. Each of us can do something, you know, right up to the last moment. That's a lot of talk. It's a big gathering. I don't know if someone feels that you'd like to ask something that needs to be clarified or make some statement.

[51:05]

I think we have a few minutes. We could do that. to sing something. In gratitude you have watered seeds of love in me, in gratitude. In gratitude I will water seeds of love in someone too. You don't necessarily need to raise your hand if you just want to feel something that you want to say. You can just say it. You called James too.

[52:10]

You said you called your daughters, but I wanted to make sure that you acknowledged that you called your son. And he's the one who showed up. There's James. James right there at the door. I also wanted to correct something that you said. Please, yeah. You said that you feel more free to tell people that you love them and you actually have been doing that forever. So the big smile bottomed down, 300 page, you come down for lunch. They're always telling us that you love us. I stand corrected. Well, I'm just so happy to be with you during the time I can be with you.

[53:26]

And you will always, always be with me, Steve, always. Your teaching will always help me find a way in life. I think you watched me go through chemotherapy. want you to remember you're going to probably lose your hair. And I also had an experience that is really relevant to your points about the body. I had the privilege of rescuing a thoroughbred horse that has been

[54:30]

starved almost to death. So he had gone from being at the track and being kind of a world-class athlete, starvation, almost death, over the course of about four months. And when we rescued him, everybody was told, be ready, he may not make it through the night. He was that, emaciated it. And he's now, five years later, a magnificent horse. Where is he? He's in Martinez, actually. But your question about what is health is something I've thought a lot about. As a nurse practitioner, I think about. As a cancer survivor, I've thought about. And it was amazing to watch this horse. somehow we found the right conditions and then health recurred.

[55:36]

It wasn't that anyone healed him, but when put back in the right conditions, health didn't. And so it's been a profound question for me. What are the right conditions? And I think that's similar to what you were pointing to. I'm really interested in what you had to say about that. And I think I was also very moved by your idea that it's a kind of engagement, as with the fire, that there's this uncontrollable part, and then there's this part that you played. And I wish you contact with lots of survivors. Because it's definitely an individual, not one-size-fits-all experience.

[56:40]

And I think it's helpful to be around survivors of cancer as well. And one last thing I wanted to say. I wanted to just share that when I was first diagnosed with cancer, I sat down with Rev. And I had only known people who had died of cancer. And so I assumed that's what I was going to do soon. And I said, okay, I see how I can do it. I thought about it, and I see how to do that. And Reb said to me, yes, but why don't you not? because there's a lot of people who still need your presence and I'd like you to stick around thanks for sticking around don't rush out the door oh I'm not going anywhere

[57:55]

and I would like to thank you for showing me that humility is truly a great strength in the individual and the sangha. Thank you very much. I'm still learning. Well, maybe it's time to close. Gratitude for this occasion and may it the benefit of our gathering here be a boon to the entire earth body.

[58:48]

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