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. Morning. I already miss you up here sitting next to me. Thank you for your talking. Lay it on us, baby. Okay, here it comes. A poem called A Cedary Fragrance by Tassajar alumni Jane Hirshfield. Even now, decades after, I wash my face with cold water. Not for discipline, nor memory, nor the icy awakening slap. but to practice choosing to make the unwanted wanted.

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Even now, decades after, I wash my face with cold water, not for discipline, nor memory, nor the icy awakening slap, but to practice choosing to make the unwanted wanted. So this question comes up for me all the time, you know, what is it that we want? What do I want? And then when we figure that out, how are we going to get it? I remember going to practice discussion with Ed Brown years ago when he was out at Green Galgen. I asked him my most serious question. I said, what about this longing? He looked at me for a while and then he started to laugh. And he kept laughing. And then I laughed, and that was the end of my practice discussion. What about this longing? So I think we know that the young prince who became the Buddha wanted to find relief from his suffering, that unshakable suffering that had come upon him when he discovered that even he, this handsome young man, was going to sicken and die, just like all of us.

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And that the story of his home leaving, the initial search that he made for immortality, the deathless nirvana, became the basic model for the elements of our tradition. And just like him, we all left home. And we came here to be together and to find a way in this world before our one precious life comes to an end. Gotta go. So I think maybe what we're doing is taking our lives seriously rather than simply taking them for granted, even though that's exactly what they are. We have been granted a life, albeit temporary, selfless, and fraught with discontent. Still, somehow I, and maybe some of you too, would like to get some answers to some questions before Time, so to speak, is up.

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So I think of those as big questions, like the kind that brought me here to Tassajara almost 40 years ago, to the long hours of sitting in the cold and in the heat with the bugs and with the guests and this strange vegetarian diet. And even here, those questions seem to have followed. Where am I? What am I? And what am I supposed to do now that I'm here? As for where am I, I really enjoy looking up at the star-filled sky every morning, asking that question. Where am I? Knowing that the answer to that one has gone far beyond anyone's comprehension. You know, as Carl Sagan called it, the pale blue dot floating in a trackless void. Our nearest neighbors, apparently uninhabitable, unless we force them into being so.

[04:38]

The Martian colony. And the same goes for this question, what am I? As Alice said of Wonderland, curiouser and curiouser. Which leaves just this one last question, what am I supposed to do now that I'm here? And this is the question that the Buddha took great pains to answer. He was even kind enough to answer the one about what are we? From those famous lines in the Dhammapada, what we are, he said, comes from our thoughts of yesterday. And our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. Well, I found that to be a big surprise. I would never have figured that out on my own. I still find it rather hard to believe. My life is a creation of my mind.

[05:41]

And then he said, purify your mind since that's all you've got and it's all you'll ever have. How? By avoiding evil and doing good. The three purifying precepts. And even though that's a simple instruction, I think we all know that it's not easy. And there have been many elaborate methods for doing so proposed throughout the centuries for purifying the mind, which may be part of the problem. There's so many choices. Do I do this one or that one? All of them? I think one of the most appealing things about Zen is the notion that there's something one can actually do called just sit. And so we do. We just sit. Although I have wondered on occasion, what's the difference between a Zen student and a couch potato? Just sitting.

[06:48]

And I'm sure there is a difference, and just like Muhammad's question about the difference between the Platform Sutra and a comic book. But I think it takes some careful consideration to figure it out. Are they different? What's the difference? You know, maybe only a child can understand for sure. There's a saying that when practice is simple, explanations are difficult. When explanations are difficult, practice is easy. And I think I know this from trying to talk about both the practices and explanations about the practices during this practice period. Not so easy. There was the first turning approach that I talked about in October having to do with sorting the tiny elements of existence into wholesome and unwholesome piles of dharmas, an activity in itself that was considered to be wholesome. and also kept the monks quite busy.

[07:50]

As Okamara Roshi said, Soto Zen is about keeping us busy doing good things so that we don't have any time for doing anything bad, and therefore the relentlessness of the schedule. The next strategy, the second turning approach, reinterpreted purifying the mind in the light of a messianic vow to save all beings. a vow which was further developed right here at Tassajara by our very own Leslie James. I vow to save all beings from what I think of them. I really like that. And I like it because it starts here with me, with how I think about others, how I think about you. Mind only. And now that this practice period is small enough, it seems like there's a real possibility of there being something else that we can do together, and in fact that we are doing together, freeing ourselves from one another, from one another's opinions, hostilities, and lustful attentions, what are called the klesha avaranas, the afflictive obstructions to awakening.

[09:11]

What I think of you is not you, it's me. I may have mentioned before to you this one time that I went to see my teacher following some particular horrid news event. And I pulled on my okesa and demanded, how is this going to save anybody? And he replied, I think it was with a grimace, Well, perhaps it will save them from you. It's a good place to start. Right here. That's just what we old hippies used to say. Think globally about saving all beings and caring for the world, but act locally toward the beings that are right here in front of you at this very moment. If we can do that one, then maybe there is hope for the rest of the world as well. So today I'm going to propose that this project of saving all beings that was given to us by our founder, Shakyamuni Buddha, begins with saving ourselves and others through right effort.

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Right effort. Continuous effort. Meaning all day, every day, which is all we ever truly have. Just this one day. Today. Right now. I wake up, I get dressed, I put my feet inside my shoes, and there it is again, the big question, what do I do now? Effort by itself is not particularly useful, just like me standing there by myself is not particularly useful. However, me together with all of you, the big me, has a much better chance of benefiting beings than I have all by myself. And I also have a much better chance of finding something useful to do if I join you when I leave my room. So perhaps rather than how should I live, the real question needs to be how should we live together?

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And the search for that answer is what brought me to this valley. and to this room in the first place, and it's what's going to take me back to Green Gulch once again, in time to greet the new applicants for the Farm Apprenticeship Program, just as many of you once were. New applicants, new growth, Shin-me in Japanese, becoming us, big me, in an ever-widening circle of relationships and good Dharma friendships. Is it fast enough to save the world? I don't know. And if any of you have a better idea, let's try that too. Reb once asked Suzuki Roshi who his students were, and after a pause, the teacher replied, the ones who are here to benefit others. So even though today is bringing us ever nearer to the end of our life together,

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at Tassajara, we could still commit ourselves wholeheartedly and for as long as we live to continuing the effort that we've been making here to be open and honest and curious and friendly and willing to learn from each other and from everyone. And from the point of view of the teaching, what's most important, to recognize the impact that our thoughts and our feelings and our actions have on those around us, you know, our karma. Whether it's here in this valley or while we're waiting in line at Whole Foods or at Rite Aid. What are you here to do? It's through such careful considerations that we may come to realize, as the Buddha said, how deeply and truly we together are making the world for better and for worse. inside out each and every day I hate you I love you and I don't even know who you are so Zen in my view is a commitment to learning all that we can about the world and about ourselves our role models are the Buddhas and ancestors who are said to have had a knowledge of all modes in other words a knowledge of how the mind makes our life and how our life is

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makes the world. And then with the freedom that such knowledge brings to be truly wise, deeply compassionate, and skillful in benefiting others. Training in these qualities is what we call our practice. This is the path of preparation. We practice by developing skills, by studying ourselves, and by an ever-growing intimacy with each other in every step along the way. face to face, side by side, alone, together, just like now. And I am sorry to say that it includes a lot of talking. A lot of talking. In fact, talking is pretty much all we've got when we're not being quiet. If the Buddha hadn't done a lot of talking, there might be nothing in this valley today but a few hunters looking for the deer.

[15:12]

And although we call Zen Center a training temple, and we assume that each of us has come here voluntarily for training, the question is, training in what? And it's a good question, and I think it's one we should ask ourselves over and over again. What did I come here to do? What is it that I'm wanting from this life of practice? This is a question I began with this morning. If you don't know what you want, how will you know if you get it? And if you do know what you want, how are you going to get it? I think the simplest and yet most difficult answer is that we came here for the sake of enlightenment. as we say in the meal chant. We came here to wake up. But maybe what we didn't know, because it's not so obvious, is that we aren't going to wake up by ourselves, because there isn't one.

[16:18]

A self, as in a separate self, or a by myself, in fact, it's a total waste of time to think that way. As Dogen said, Why be taking wasteful delight in the spark from a flintstone with an entire sky full of stars overhead? And yet, according to the Buddha, there is a doer of deeds and a recipient of the karmic consequences. There is dependent core rising. There is the non-separation of the small me and the big me that incorporates us all. And there is no possibility of freedom for anyone until everyone is free. So in my opinion, we are first and foremost Sanghanistas, called on by the ancestors to carry on the Buddha's teaching. We are on a mission, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, if that is our deepest wish.

[17:23]

And if so, then we, the big we, must help each other to understand what it means to be awake and how to do that. What is the Buddha way? What is the pathway to enlightenment? Well, I don't know. However, I am still eager to find out without skipping any of the steps along the way, such as this one right now that we're having here together. Is this the golden age of Zen? Wouldn't that be funny if it was? Well, we'll never know. That's a job for the historians and for the writers of Apocrypha. Our job is to meet whatever comes our way. Is this the Buddha way? The Buddha way, as our founder, Dogen, famously said, and you have heard often repeated,

[18:29]

is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self, to get over yourself. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things all around you, that are you, the big you. And once that happens, your separate body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of what you think are others, drop away without a sound, just as fantasies always do. No more walls, no more barriers, no more separate self. As with our dreams, once we awaken, all is forgotten, including the pathway by which we came. So we could say that the core curriculum of the Soto Zen tradition is to study the self and forget the self, just like breathing in and breathing out, and then breathe in again, and then breathe out again, over and over and over. in a non-repeating universe.

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Each breath is fresh, giving us life, new life. Shinme. Based on Dogen's instructions, whatever we do, think, or feel is the subject matter that we in this school have signed on to study. So cooking and gardening and bed-making and racism, sexism, homophobia, and idle chatter, to name a few. Self-study brings up in us as a natural consequence one of three things. Either a stiff-necked resistance, an eagerness to please, or indifference. No, I won't. Yes, I will. Or could you please give me a minute? I'm not quite ready to serve. Greed, hate, and delusion in its many guises over and over again. Without a doubt, feelings will arise as we continue living with each other.

[20:33]

And fortunately, that's the very place that awakening is most likely to occur. Just like the Buddha and Mara, swords crossed with focused awareness, Samyak Samadhi, through which he began to see how his thoughts and feelings, his emotionalized conceptualizations, were continuously arising and passing away. like snowflakes into a pit of fire. Who are we fighting with anyway? And for what? Studying ourselves is actually not even possible without the mirroring of the so-called other, shadow boxing. In fact, the only thing we ever see reflected is the other, as in the objects of our awareness. Awareness by itself without an object is inconceivable, incomprehensible, and beyond measure, like the stars in the sky, inaccessible, silent, and still, blinking back at us in disbelief.

[21:45]

In the eighth of the ten ox-herding pictures, such a state is illustrated by a perfectly round, empty circle. It's called ox and boy, both gone. Over the centuries, various Zen monks have jokingly inquired about this illustration. Is that a drawing of a rice cake? Or maybe a dumpling? Or a barrel hoop, they laugh. Well, let's eat it and have a cup of tea. So here are the verses making the matter a bit more serious than the playful monks know better than to allow. Shedding worldly feeling, erasing holy thoughts. You do not linger where the Buddha is. You dash right past where the Buddha is not. Don't cling to duality or the thousand-eyed one will soon find you, Kuan Yin. If birds were to bring you flowers, what a disgraceful scene. Whip and line and you and the ox all gone to emptiness into a blue sky far too vast for words.

[22:56]

Can a snowflake survive the fire of a flaming pit? Attain this and truly be one with the masters of the past. No clouds or moon or cassia tree, swept clean, lost in the sky. Although a remarkable state and one half of the Buddha's knowledge, still it's not so useful for the human side of our being. In fact, if you imagine that you've known such a state, I have pure mind, I am enlightened, then as Master Muman says, you have just muddied it all up again. And since mud is the very thing that we are stuck in, we just start over again and again, right from here. The so-called world of right here. Here is the place. Here the way unfolds over and over, throwing mud at the stars.

[23:58]

Can't miss. And here, right here, is where we need that reflected image of the other in the mirror, not only for studying the self, but also to provide a window, as if through the looking glass, into the impact that we are having on each other that arises from our unconscious conditioning. If only they will be kind enough to tell us about it. And of course, each of us is a mirror for them as well. Our unconscious mind has been conditioned by our families and by society since we first learned to see, to walk, and to speak. But not by some inherent truths about anything at all. There are no inherent truths like that. We are conditioned by stories, constructed and transmitted for the benefit of a privileged few, like most of us here in this room.

[25:02]

The real truth, the ultimate truth, is what saves all beings from what we think of them. From the wisdom beyond wisdom of the Diamond Sutra, beings, beings as no beings, therefore we vow to save all beings. Subhuti asks the Lord, How then, O Lord, should a son or daughter of good family who have set out in the Bodhisattva vehicle stand, how progress, how control their thoughts? The Lord replies, Well said, Subhuti. Listen well and attentively, and I will teach you how to stand, progress, and control your thoughts. Someone who has set out in the Bodhisattva vehicle should produce a thought in this manner. That's our vow. And yet,

[26:19]

Although innumerable beings have thus been led to nirvana, no being at all has been led to nirvana. And why? If in a bodhisattva the notion of a being should take place, they could not be called a bodhi-being, a bodhisattva. And why? They are not to be called a bodhisattva in whom the notion of a self or of a being should take place, or the notion of a living soul or of a person. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no path, no attainment beyond measure like the universe that we are. And therefore the Buddha says that bodhisattvas save all beings by being unsupported by notions of any kind. You just do it. You just offer a hand. You know? Today. Today. These empty teachings are for the purpose of deconditioning us from our habitual ways of thinking, from our addictions to notions, ideas, and opinions of every kind.

[27:32]

First turning, second turning, and third turning of the wheel. If you're stuck here, then go there. If you're stuck there, go back here. Like sawing through wood, just don't stop or you'll lose the saw. Although our conscious mind is very slow in responding to our habitual conditioning, it is the only place where we can make a change, where we can learn to respond in a new way. And right there is the hope that we have for bringing change to the world, starting with ourselves, with each of us, one by one. Fast enough? We'll never know. So don't imagine that this teaching is trying to somehow do away with our imagination or to deny that things we imagine have no real value. We live through our illusions and we need them in our everyday life in order to cook and sew and garden and eat.

[28:36]

It's when we are unconscious of how illusions are created and the substance of which they're made that the demons come forth. to terrorize us and our children. Within the spirit of our practicing together as one community, we invite ourselves to try it on until we find a way of living and thinking that is closest to our own heart, the heart that we all share. I think we all have some fear about talking, about our conditioning, whether it's about race or whether gender or socialization, whatever it is, that it might cause more suffering if we talk. But in fact, it seems that talking can be a real help and even a great relief. Not talking doesn't seem to do anything at all, although that's okay too, as a place where the mind and object rests in the perfect, round, empty circle.

[29:41]

And yet the Eighth Ox-herding picture, as you may recall, is not the last one. For many centuries, it was the last, and then after some serious consideration, our ancestors added a couple more images. Picture number nine is called Return to the Origin, Back to the Source, in which the perfect round circle is filled to overflowing with spring flowers opening on the branch of an old plum tree. much like the flower that the Buddha twirled in his hand, to which the old ascetic Mahakashapa faintly smiled. Flowers, as just flowers, are in oneness with the thought-free universe and the thought-free self. No bright mirror, no mirror stand, and no place for the dust to alight. True reality lies where it has always been, in the natural world, just as it is. where the river itself is blue and the flowers themselves are red.

[30:43]

This is the reverse side of the empty circle. As light and dark oppose one another, as the front and back foot in walking, now you see it and now you don't. So here's the verse for picture number nine. Originally immaculate without a speck of dust, watching appearances come and go, You reside in the serenity of non-doing. But this is not the same as illusion, so why cling to it? The rivers are blue, the mountains green. Sit and watch them rise and pass away. And Master Mumon says, When you realize that the mind contains no thing, that it is from the beginning immaculate without a speck of dust, then our original mountain home, just as it is, is reality. This self, just as it is, is Buddha. And this place, the lotus land of purity.

[31:45]

But we don't stop there either. There is no place on the green mountain earth for a living being to truly rest. The children and the farmers and the bakers are calling to us to come and to work and to play and to come and be with all that there is. Picture number 10 is called Returning to the Marketplace with Gift-Bestowing Hands. Alone behind a brushwood door not even a thousand sages are aware. Hiding our light you shun the tracks of sages of the past. Dangling your gourd you come into town. Thumping your staff you return to your hut. Visiting bars and fish stalls you turn all into Buddha. With bare chest and feet you come to the market Under dirt and ash, your face breaks into a laugh. With no display of magic powers, you make withered trees burst into flower. So we may even find, as this old man did, that there is real joy in the enlivening connection that clear communication makes possible between us.

[32:59]

Which brings me back to this question of how we are going to live together, supporting one another in our practice, especially around clear communication. Many of us are not fluent in talking about anything, let alone difficult issues. And the reason we aren't fluent is because as children, most of us were raised in a society in which not talking about racism... among many other things that we haven't been talking about, such as homosexuality, heteronormativity, sexism, classism, capitalism, and so on, has been an overt and effective method for keeping such matters hidden and cruelly under the control of a dominant minority. If you notice during the course of our life together that we feel ashamed or guilty or angry about the ways we have been conditioned, please try to remember that we are not here to assign blame to anybody, but to try to understand the underlying causes, reminding ourselves again and again what the Dalai Lama said after 9-11, don't look for blame, look for causes.

[34:15]

What caused this? And there are lots of them. Once we see the mechanism of conditioning, we have a real chance to break it open and to bring ourselves ever closer to the field of liberation that we chant about in morning service. It's simple, but not so easy. The Dharma that I have found is hard to see, hard to understand. It is peaceful, behind the sphere of mere reasoning, subtle to be experienced by the wise. But this generation, meaning all generations, takes delight in attachment, is delighted by attachment, rejoice in attachment. And as such, it is hard for them to see this truth, namely the end of suffering. So for the next four days, I'm going to end our final session talking about the mind-only school in hopes that it might help us to see what is hard to see.

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to understand this subtle world of suffering as a product of our own human imagination, but so too is the world of kindness and beauty and freedom for everybody. We can imagine that. And then maybe we can do that. So here's a poem by Li Po, hopefully to brighten our day. Zazen on Qingting Mountain. The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountains and me, until only the mountain remains. Thank you very much. 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.

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

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