This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. My heart is so full right now that I'm with love and gratitude. I'm hoping that I am not too overcome by that. It doesn't distract me because it's quite full right now. So I wanted to start tonight with a bit of celebration, as it were. This is the first full work period we've had in two and a half years. It feels like much longer than that. And yet, timeless. And there's just so much positive energy and joy in this valley right now. And this is where the sense of gratitude is coming from, and love.

[01:06]

Just seeing all of you, old friends, new friends. There was the anticipation of work period during the end of the practice period, knowing that this is all coming and kind of having a sense of what that wave of energy coming into the valley is like. and then the reality of it even more beautiful than I had anticipated the sort of a reunion people, place, practice and just feeling so many of your sense of joy at being back coming back, reconnecting and that's been It's been so encouraging. I feel it encouraging for me and I feel it encouraging for all of us who continued from the last practice period and have just been kind of renewed and nourished by all this energy coming in and all the wonderful work.

[02:16]

So deep gratitude for all the work period volunteers. You really are such a huge part of making Tassajara continue to be here. and deep gratitude for the new students who come in with so much energy and beginner's mind, and deep gratitude for the continuing monks and the returning monks for holding Tassajara in your bodies, minds, and hearts for however many months or years you've spent at Tassajara. It's precious. all of you, all of us, make tasahara what it is and make it possible to continue. It's really, it's the people, it's the place, it's the practice. But tonight I want to celebrate the people. So thank you all. So, you know, as wonderful as all this energy is, it can also be just a little bit

[03:24]

much, maybe, sometimes, especially for the monks continuing from the practice period. So please be gentle with yourselves. Take some space, take some time. And please know that in another week, a week from today, actually will open for guest season. Seems unimaginable, and it will happen. Whether we imagine it or not, the gates will open a week from today. And things will settle into a more regular sort of rhythm. And there'll be a little more silence and a little less coming and going for the people that were around more. So enjoy work period while it's here. It's a special time. So maybe unsurprisingly, some of us have had a little bit of a question or a concern about...

[04:25]

how it's going to be for Tassajara to come back. Like, can Tassajara really come back after being closed for so long? And, you know, at different points during the pandemic, a number of students left to be in the families or, you know, go take care of their lives and families in various ways. There's been some deferred maintenance. I think some of you have discovered that. Thank you. And some concerns about will people come? Is this still a place that people want to come to? And will we be able to have people back with all the restrictions and all the processes? And knowing that it's not going to be exactly like it was before. And will that be okay for everybody? And we're experimenting this year. This summer, there's a number of experiments. I mean, we always do. There's always things that are changing, always things that are different.

[05:28]

But this summer, we're going to be making more changes than we usually do, like serving three meals instead of six, and all eating at the same time instead of serving separately, and buffet meals instead of four-person serve-ups. So in some ways, a lot like work period. and the schedule will change and how's that going to work and we've actually spent a lot of time working out all the details and it really looks good we're really feeling good about it and at the same time probably some things will not work out quite the way we anticipated so there may be some adjustments and I think we're all relaxing with that just knowing we're going to find our way together I'm going to hear how it is from people and see how it all works out. So at this point in time, a couple of weeks into guest season, I'm sorry, a couple of weeks into work period, and with a week more to go before guest season, I just feel a lot of confidence and trust about how this is all going to go forward.

[06:46]

It's all happening. You know, it really is. And I feel a lightness that I hadn't been feeling so much before when I see what's happening here now and feeling that that energy can continue into the summer. Not only are we going to do it, we're doing it now. We're actually doing it, and it's way more than okay. It's beautiful. and it's amazing and it's kind of a miracle I was reflecting that just the fact that guest season has happened almost every year, minus two I guess for over 50 years I think it always feels like a miracle.

[07:49]

Every work period that I've attended, I think this is the 10th, 11th, something like that. It just always feels like a miracle that it always comes together. There's so much in transition and so much changing from practice period into the summer. And we've done so much. It's just amazing to see the grounds and the projects and how it's cleaned up and it's beautiful. And it feels so loved and cared for. You can feel the care that's being poured everywhere in the Tassajara. And it might still feel like, how are we going to get all this done in the next week? When I was director here a few years ago, somebody came up to me maybe three days before guest season was going to open and said, it's chaos.

[08:51]

It's just all chaos. How are we going to do this? And I looked around. It happened to be like right down in the central area so I could see a wide area. And I looked around and I said, I think this is about the usual amount of chaos for this time of the season. And we did, in fact, open just fine. We always open on time, always. People arrive, and we meet them wherever we are. Some years, more the way we had intended, with more things done and really tightened up, and sometimes a little less so here and there. I think one year when we had the coffee tea area project, the new counter, It wasn't quite done when we opened and we had a kind of a temporary stand for the coffee tea area with elephants full of hot water and it was okay.

[10:01]

We worried and people were like, oh, this is interesting. Everybody managed. People are just so happy to be here. Our joy and our practice is contagious and it's such a big part of why people feel such a connection here and why we all feel this connection to one another. I mean everyone has their own experience but I feel the general energy of connection and openness. There's so much changing in the world, obviously not just here. Tassar is probably more stable than many places in the world. A lot is changing. And I think many of us are getting more familiar in various ways with dealing with uncertainty and not knowing.

[11:10]

And I was Zen Center president at the start of the pandemic. So I was on the health and safety committee. And that was such an amazing experience of not knowing, like trying to get information, you know, and like all three temples are congregate housing. We're just all right on top of each other. There were no masks available. There was no vaccine that, you know, it was like, so we were really trying hard not to have people get sick, which we did. And we had a wonderful group of doctors working with us and consulting, providing consultation to us, and that was amazing. And because I was communicating a lot, I actually got much more comfortable with not knowing and being able to communicate that it was, you know, that this is how we're moving forward. This is what we're doing.

[12:14]

We don't have answers because there aren't answers right now. But this is what we can do. This is how we can do this moment. And it was okay. Not easy, but okay. It wasn't to freak out. So I've reflected also that just the existence of Tassajara much less Gesne Center, anything else in particular, is kind of a miracle In the mid-1960s, Suzuki Roshi had a vision of having a monastery outside the city and he found this place and he decided this was it

[13:20]

He said, it reminds me of being in China, a monastery in China. And at the time, there wasn't much, the Zen Center existed, but it was just using space at Sukhoji Temple, didn't have our own place, didn't have much money. I think this cost $300,000, something like that. An impossibly huge sum of money in 1966. And we raised it, and then a couple of years later we bought Page Street, and a couple of years later we bought Green Gulch. All of this was impossible. And it happened. We did it. Somehow. So I feel encouraged by the whole history of doing the impossible together. Together, out of community practice, connection, goodwill. So I've been thinking in this connection about a chapter from Suzuki Roshi's book, Not Always So, and it's called Jumping Off the Hundred Foot Pole.

[14:36]

So I'm just going to read a few excerpts from it. Oh, and the koan, Jumping Off the Hundred Foot Pole, Climbing the 100-foot pole, achieving the top of the 100-foot pole is a metaphor for awakening, practice and then awakening, and not to stick to that, not to stick to some experience of awakening. He says, how we understand this koan is how we understand our practice. The reason we believe that evil desires or selfish desires should be thrown out is because we stay at the top of the pole. The pole continues forever, so you cannot stop there. It goes on to say, forget about stopping at the top of the pole. To forget about the top of the pole is to be where you are right now. Not to be this way or that way.

[15:45]

Not to be in the past or in the future, but to be right here. Do you understand? This is shikantaza. This is just sitting. Choiceless awareness, if you will. Just to be right here. Forget this moment and grow into the next. That is the only way. For instance, when breakfast is ready, my wife hits some wooden clappers. If I don't answer, she may continue to hit them. until I feel rather angry. The problem is quite simple. It is because I don't answer. If I say, hi, yes, there is no problem. Because I don't say yes, she continues to call me because she doesn't know whether I heard her. Sometimes she may say, he knows, but he doesn't answer.

[16:48]

When I don't answer, I am on top of the pole. I don't jump off. I believe I have something important to do at the top of the pole. You shouldn't call me. You should wait. Or I may think, this is very important. I am here on the top of the pole. Don't you know that? Then she will keep hitting the clappers. That is how we create problems. So the secret is just to say yes and jump off from here. then there is no problem. It means to be yourself in the present moment, always yourself, without sticking to an old self. You forget all about yourself and are refreshed. You are a new self. And before that self becomes an old self, you say yes, and you walk to the kitchen for breakfast. So the point on each moment is to forget the point. and extend your practice.

[17:51]

So saying hi, saying yes. You could also say it's a way of not arguing with reality. It's not arguing with what's happening. It's not refusing to answer the present moment, the clappers, the bell, the railroad bell saying, the town trip's here. I know you just started dinner. Please come help unload. All of these things. And sometimes what is happening is, oh, I'm trying to have an argument with reality here. I'm trying to have an argument with what's happening. So there's space to include that too. And according with what's happening does not mean not asking questions. It doesn't mean blindly going forward, and it doesn't mean taking care of ourselves.

[19:00]

But it means there is the intention and the extension of trust to engage fully, to be wholehearted, not hanging back, not pushing, just engaging moment by moment. Being in dynamic, alive, living relationship with others, with ourselves, with our experience, with all of life. And often we talk about, in practice we talk about letting go or dropping off. But I really like the image of jumping. Because it can be scary to jump. especially off a 100-foot pole, but even maybe small jumps. But it also has a quality or maybe the potential for joy, joyfully leaping into the next moment.

[20:05]

And Tassajara creates such a supportive container for practice, letting go, jumping off from this moment. And we meet it, meet this request with whatever attitude we bring, whatever our mind is. So if it's an attitude of yes, a beginner's mind, when we come or we come back, then this repeated practice, this repeated training, the heart-mind, allows us some openness to create space to relax our fixed ideas and open it to the next moment the next possibility allowing the space to be surprised to not know, to not have some idea about how it's going to be then we can meet things when I was first Eno here and

[21:20]

The practice period was being led by Abbas Linda Ruth Cutts. And there were many Tangariya students that were, I think, over 20. And she had the idea that she wanted all of them to come in. So they were all in. They all entered the Zen Do. This is for the opening, the entering ceremony. Everybody comes in. They're all waiting outside in a line, more than 20 people. And they come in three at a time and do bows, and then they line up. And she said, I'd like them all to be in first before starting the jendo, before starting this form of going all the way around the zendo with everyone bowing to them as they pass. And I was standing at the head of, she was sitting here, I was standing at the head of the line. And after maybe half of them got in, she could see that it wasn't really going to work. There was going to be a traffic jam. And she indicated to me that I should have them start. And I'm like, you can't do that. We can't change the ceremony in the middle.

[22:24]

And of course I didn't say that. I just said, okay. And then I had to figure out how to make that happen silently. And it went. It went just fine. And I just, that moment of, this is like my... Sixth day as Eno. We had Tongaria, you know, when you come and sit for five days, and life goes on around you, and then there was the entrance ceremony the next morning. It was like, boom! And then just being able to let go into the next moment. So in a way, I think... this is what we keep doing day by day when we can, when we have the awareness to do that, to notice that that's what's happening.

[23:27]

And the world reveals itself bit by bit as safe enough to keep going. Oh, I see. I see how this can be okay. And part of it is that we see others doing it and then We get some confidence that we can do it too. And at the same time, we're encouraging others constantly in large and small ways. We may be aware of it, and probably we're not. Because a lot of the time it's in very small things. I know that some of the times I've been most encouraged by other people, I'm sure they had no idea how encouraging it was. One summer I worked in the stone office. And something happened with one of the stages. I think either it broke down or it had a flat or something. It was a hot day. I think they were stuck up on the ridge.

[24:30]

Somebody walked, probably the driver walked in, you know, to say this, you know. And I found out and Leslie James comes in. I'm like, Leslie, the stage is stuck up on the ridge. It's been a long time. What are we going to do? And I was, like, worried. And she kind of, hmm. And behind her head, I could kind of see this vision of fire, floods, you know, all the real distressing things that can happen at Tassajara. I went, oh, it's not the end of the world. It's actually not the end of the world. I felt like it was the end of my world because I worked in the office and I was supposed to be taking care of guests and I didn't know what to do. So that was my very limited world. And what impressed me about that moment was that Leslie never made out like it was an okay thing to have happened.

[25:39]

The guests were stuck in the heat for, I don't know, an hour or more or that they wouldn't be very happy about that. but that it also wasn't the end of the world, that it was possible to just meet it. So it was all these tiny moments of encouragement that we receive from others and that we give to others just by doing what we do, just by meeting each moment completely. So, you know, I think we do have pretty much a welcoming and inclusive community, and we're always working to make it more so. There's always room to expand, to extend, to grow in that area. And I think one way to do that is to jump off whatever pole we might be sitting on

[26:46]

and be the one to reach out first to be friendly to new people who are coming or sitting by themselves or having the 8th grade school cafeteria experience in the student eating area whatever it is on those days when we have a little bandwidth we can extend we can extend our practice and just meet someone just welcome them again and again All of this helps us create the world that we want to live in I think we all have some sense of that somewhere So we can create it starting now For those of you who are coming and then going soon and not staying on for quite some time with your volunteers and maybe some of the students who are staying for shorter times

[27:50]

And my wish for you is that you take whatever you experience here back out and share it with the world, verbally or just in your being. And when I hear from people that being at Tassajara is nourishing and sustaining for them, I feel like that's what happens. You know, that some of that energy can be taken out into the world and kind of radiate out. I feel like this talk is in no small part kind of a love letter to Tassajara. People, the practice, the place. You know, earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles, pebbles, the natural world, the built environment. I look at the stone walls so often and I think every one of those stones was found

[28:52]

somewhere around here, appreciated, hauled back, and a place found for it, and set into a wall. I've watched a number of walls being built over the years. They keep being built. Sometimes they fall down and we rebuild them again. Buildings, the sendo, just all the buildings here. And I just feel all the love and work that's gone in Tassajara for the past 55 years. So, I'm so grateful that I've gotten to live at Tassajara for a number of years and had this just deep experience of faith and trust building through being in different walls here seeing so many different people, and seeing this... what, a sort of a... It's always a different tasahara, but it's always the same tasahara.

[30:08]

It's always different people. Schedule changes a little. You hear about what it used to be like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It's like, wow, that's really different. But there's something that really endures. through all of that so how do we continue our practice this is what Suzuki Roshi is always talking about is continuing our practice keep coming back don't give up so simple really not easy but when we just keep moving into the next moment it keeps revealing itself and we lay down a path of walking, and in doing so, we discover that it's trustworthy, that we're trustworthy, that practice is trustworthy, and we can extend ourselves with a full and generous heart. So Suzuki Roshi, at the end of jumping off the 100-foot pole, says, continuous practice is necessary.

[31:18]

How to continue is to have generous mind, big mind, and soft mind, to be flexible, not sticking to anything. Practicing in this way, there is no need to be afraid of anything or to ignore anything. That is the strictness of the way. When we are not afraid of anything, we are imperturbable. And until then, we can continue to practice together, to support one another, and to simply extend ourselves into the next moment, moment after moment. Thank you all for making Tassajara what it is. So much gratitude to all of you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[32:22]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[32:27]

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