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. To our chilly barn on a beautiful spring day. Thanks especially to the Coming of Age group for braving this lecture. So thank you very much. And there's a group, another group of students here, I think, too, from USF. Thank you for coming. And Fu, leading the practice period. And Abbot Steve Mjogan, thank you for coming. Wonderful surprise. So many people in this room that are much better suited to be in this seat than I, but Such is life.

[01:01]

Here I am. It's too late now for me. So my name is Jiryu. I'm also known as Mark. And I live here at Green Gulch with my wife, Sarah, who is now the director here at Green Gulch. And my little boy, I think he's a little boy. He may claim to be a puppy or a foal or a fawn or a bunny, but he He is actually a little human boy. And as I say, I've lived here a long time, but there's a number of people who don't know me, even residents who maybe have been here for a while now, because recently I've made the transition from being on staff here and working, doing things like chopping vegetables and fixing water pipes, to I'm doing some study.

[02:03]

So I'm now involved in some graduate Buddhist studies over at Berkeley. So instead of making food for the three treasures, I'm asking, working on these very important questions, like how many Buddhas exactly were there before the Buddha? We say there were seven, but we only chant six. these kind of vital questions of our day, joining the many academics, devoting their lives to solving these great problems. And it's easy to make light of, but it's actually been a wonderful opportunity, and I feel very grateful to have the support of so many people to take care of that aspect of my training as a priest. And I'm a priest, and I'm aware of that, too. One of the interesting things about being out of the temple more is this opportunity to wonder, think about how to express myself in the world as a religious person.

[03:07]

You know, I come from a religious family, so I'm used to religious people being around. And I'm familiar with some of the problems that religious people have. My grandparents were missionaries, were Mennonite missionaries in Latin America. And there's something my grandfather, Frank, once said that I've never forgotten of his life in the mission field, and that was, it's hard to be right. So a lot of religious people have this problem. I think a lot of non-religious people have this problem, too. But it seems particularly a problem that religious people have, this problem of being right. It's a burden. It's a weight. And it turns out to be the same problem that a lot of other people have with religious people. They're being right. If you've been around people who are right, you may be familiar with the unpleasantness of it.

[04:16]

Usually the right that we are is a wrong that someone else is. It's rare to be a right that doesn't have a wrong behind it. And the missionaries were really stuck here because that really was their cross to bear. One way I think of this is having an angle. People are kind of suspicious of people who, I think especially in this time, what you could call... postmodern age, we're kind of suspicious of people who have an angle. And has it worked out? It's just, it's fishy. You have it worked out? Because it seems to a lot of us, I think, like we just kind of ended up in this very strange place with a body and some people around and the sun and ground and colors.

[05:22]

And it's not clear what to make of it, or even that we could make something of it. This feeling of being immersed in this kind of inconceivable mystery of human life, the vastness of it, and the depth of the mystery of what it is to be here. So for someone to say, oh, I know it. I have it figured out. As though almost, I think, they could stand, that somebody could stand outside of this situation that we're all against our will, thrown into. That someone could stand outside of this and look and tell us how it is. When I think our intuition, especially nowadays, is that we're kind of all in this in this boat together, and none of us really has an angle on the thing.

[06:23]

A classic story that's often told in Buddhism, an old Indian story is of the blind men, many of you are familiar with this, the blind men feeling the elephant, you know, so, you know, what is this thing? Everybody wants to know what it is, but they're each... only touching one part. So one says, you know, it's a brush feeling the fuzzy end of the tail. Oh, it's a spear, you know, feeling the tusk. Or it's a wall. And then fighting about it is the usual story. It's none of those things. It's so much bigger than any angle or perspective we could have on it. Person with an angle.

[07:34]

And being a priest, you know, a lot of people think that I think I have an angle. Priests must think that they have an angle. I recently heard this radio program that was entirely devoted to how terrible priests were. It was kind of a drag for me. Because there's just sort of sitting ducks, you know. There's... the feeling is spiritual people are bad enough, you know, spiritual people coming and telling us how, you know, how we really should be and moralizing and having the angle on our own inconceivable life. And then it's like priests are saying that they even have the angle on spiritual people. So it sort of, it makes me want to kind of just go under the covers. But what I realized is then I go, you know, I could go under the covers, but I would still have my angle. So then I'm under the covers with my angle. So, you know, I think Buddhism is really committed to working on our angles and smoothing out our angles.

[08:39]

And it's acknowledged that just not saying your angle isn't having an angle. Being under the covers with your angle is no less humble, really, than shouting your angle at others. So how do we really extract How do we really de-angle ourselves, disentangle ourselves? A beautiful expression that Soto Zen, the school of Zen, one of the founders, Dogen Zenji, uses this image of even the most lofty, holy, wonderful views about the world, the wisest views are like looking... through a bamboo tube at a corner of the sky. A beautiful image. So, you know, how do we live a grounded and mature and ethical life without, not on the basis of having it all worked out, not on the basis of an angle.

[09:56]

And how do I have integrity in knowing what I know and seeing things how I see them without turning that into an angle that I use to hit people over the head with? So how do we get out of this angle problem? So I'm looking for an angle. Fortunately, many of the Zen teachers in this room are sitting far enough away to not be able to twist my nose at this point. A lot of what Zen, kind of Zen drama involves somebody being asked to figure it out, and then right when they're about starting to figure it out, getting shouted at or ear pulled or something, Because my wanting to get out of this angle, I'm just now crafting, I'm about to craft a new angle.

[11:05]

So how are we going to get out of this mess? I think of it as kind of a hopeless and beautiful task to really look at the world freshly, to experience the world and be in the world, share the world with each other without an angle. So there's a lot of talk in Zen about how we do this. A lot of it is about not knowing this kind of practice or cultivating the spirit. Not of knowing, but of not knowing. Not of having the right views about how things work, but of not having views, of releasing views, letting go of views. But there's another school of Buddhism, Buddhist... teachings that I've come across lately that also really speak to this. And I wanted to share their angle with you all today.

[12:13]

And the lengths, really, that they went to, that this old Chinese sect of Buddhism went to, to achieve a kind of total inclusivity, to find some way of being in a world that totally included everything. a way of being a live human being without having an angle. And this school is related to Zen and I think has a lot in common with Zen, but goes about it a little bit of a different way and expresses it a little bit differently. So this school is called the Sanjie Jiao, or the three levels teaching, or the sect of the three stages. And it... came to be in seventh century or so China. And it didn't last very long, maybe 100 years or 200 years. It was repeatedly suppressed and repressed by the angled people.

[13:17]

There's a lot of theories about why this school kind of vanished from history, but it did. It basically vanished from history for a thousand years or so. And then... was rediscovered in a cave. Some texts that illuminated the school were discovered in a cave at the turn of the 20th century. So it's a great story, and I think it's a very kind of romantic and dramatic story of the life of a religious movement. But I think it also has really interesting things to show us and teach us about how we might be in the world. So basically, their attitude was that human beings nowadays, in this late and decadent time of 600 AD, people nowadays can't understand the world.

[14:26]

They can't have a correct view of the world. You know, pretty much a lot of people at the time in China were thinking this, that people, maybe the old people, like Buddha-time people, were really, had the angle, you know, had this sorted out. But people today, looking around, you know, no one I've met can do this. So, the feeling is, it must be that they really, you know, human beings were better back then. In the past, they knew how to understand the world, and now... we've kind of fallen and we're not able to understand the world. So, two kind of characteristics of people nowadays is that anything that people nowadays think, they hold on to. People nowadays have a thought and then they hold on to it and they think it's true about the world.

[15:31]

They think, oh no, this is a brush. at the elephant's tail it really is a brush why? because I thought so and I'm holding on to that view so related to this because of this holding on to views it's true that everything we think nowadays is false it's an interesting thing to consider I find I really like that thought. Everything, I think, is false. You could say partial. You could say partial or misses it or incomplete. But false is pretty good. It's good medicine because I don't kind of walk around and drive around and talk around the world relating to the falsity of my own thoughts.

[16:33]

And really mostly my basis is that things I think are right and true and good. And in a way, just that I think it's true makes it false. So one of the ways that this old Chinese sect talked about people nowadays is that we're blind from birth. blind from birth. And then says, do not give weapons to the blind. So we're the kind of people who are going to hold on to some view of the world and even though it's without really being able to stand anywhere to say this is a right view of the world or a wrong view of the world, we're going to get some view of the world and we're going to hold on to it and we're going to start hitting people with it, even though we don't know if it was a right view or a wrong view because we're blind from birth.

[17:39]

So their idea wasn't to have the best and biggest weapons, not to win in this battle of the blind about truth and ideas, but actual... So one of the people who's thought about this sect a lot has the following to say about their attitude. He says, given the total, this is how they saw it, given the total degeneration of the Dharma, the total absence of awakened discernment, in this late and decadent age? How could any of us know the true from the false, the enlightened from the deluded, the truth from heresy, Buddhas from ordinary beings? Since this is so, that in this final age we are truly in no position to judge, then the safest and most sound bet is to take everything as true and everyone as Buddha.

[18:52]

It follows, too, that we should literally say nothing and take no views except this view that all views are false. So, you know, you might say, I feel it already as I talk. You know, everything we say is false, blind from birth, we can't possibly know in this inconceivable, mysterious world. So then where I go is, so everybody's wrong. You know, everything is not true. And the remarkable and I think delightful teaching of this school is the opposite. Everything is true. Take everything as true and everyone as Buddha. So they expressed this teaching in a lot of ways. I think the most clear way they expressed it was through the way that they understood the Buddhist refuges. So the three refuges. Now there's a number of people here who may not know so much about Buddhism.

[19:59]

So I'll just say a little bit about what the three refuges are, generally. Three refuges, I'd say taking the three, doing a ritual or announcing, taking of the three refuges, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, is the act or the idea that makes a person a Buddhist. I think you could say that. that it's really the thing that all the Buddhists across the cultures and times and sects share, and that is that they take refuge in Buddha and Dharma and Sangha. So what is it to take refuge? So refuge is something we rely on What is it in this world that we rely on? Where do we go for support and safety and strength and sanity and protection in this difficult world?

[21:08]

I think we all we all do this act of taking refuge. generally not to Buddha Dharma and Sangha, however, we take refuge, we rely on for strength and protection and sanity, stability, clarity. We rely on all kinds of things. And I think it's interesting to look into yourself and ask, what do I take refuge in, really? What's my bottom line? Where do I go for strength and support? the internet, my family, ice cream, meditation. A lot of us take refuge in meditation in the sense of

[22:21]

Excuse me, I need to go meditate right now. Please go away now so I can meditate. We maybe take refuge in our savings, in our savings accounts. Or refuge in shopping. Or refuge in righteousness, in self-righteousness, in righteous indignation. It's always there for us. We need it. Or refuge in complaining and blaming. Or... course work take refuge and work so this you know Buddhism it really is not about moralizing and it's not a question of what what really is the true and right way to be what really should you take refuge in the question is what works actually what really works to take refuge and what's a reliable refuge what's a reliable source of safety and strength and protection and sanity.

[23:28]

So maybe if we think about what it is that we actually take refuge in, I think it's helpful to ask that question too. And how's that going? These things that I think of as refuge, these things that I think will hold me, do they hold me? Are they reliable? Will they be there? when it all falls apart. So, you know, the story of the Buddha is that he was raised in a palace where I imagine the people around him taking refuge in their power and in their wealth and in the luxury of their life. And he noticed that these things weren't actually reliable. They weren't permanent. They would protect him for a while. They would protect him sometimes. But he longed for a deeper refuge than the palace walls could offer.

[24:36]

So as Buddhism developed, it developed some ideas about what a truer, kind of more effective refuge is. and the proposed Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as refuge. So that means the Buddha is the teacher, the historical Buddha who had this wonderful angle on human life. And the Dharma is the teaching of the Buddha. So we can rely on the wisdom of the teachings of the Buddha. And then the Sangha, or the community of followers of the Buddha, of practitioners of the good. So this is traditionally what the three refuges are. And then in Zen, and some other kinds of Buddhism related to Zen, they tried to broaden that a little bit, to open that up a little further.

[25:49]

And started to understand Buddha, taking refuge in Buddha, more like taking refuge in enlightenment or taking refuge in the awakened mind itself. And that the Dharma was really any teachings about reality, any path to reality. And that the Sangha, the real Sangha to take refuge in is the community of all, not just Buddhists, but of all. So this sect, though, the three-stages sect, took these refuges even farther. So where should we go? What can we rely on in this world? Where can we go for strength and protection and safety and clarity? So they say, well, refuge in Buddha.

[26:52]

And here's what they meant by that. They meant take refuge in the image of the Buddha and really surrender to the image of the Buddha and that will sustain you. And you can also take refuge in the true Buddha. That is the Buddha who's taught all of the wonderful teachings. Take refuge in that Buddha and that Buddha will sustain you. You can also take refuge in the universally true and universally correct Buddha. This vast... vast Buddha nature of the universe. That will sustain you. And then they add, and also you should take refuge in the false Buddhas. Take refuge in the evil Buddhas. All those Buddhas who teach

[27:54]

the wrong kinds of views. All those Buddhas who are confused about how the world works, take refuge in them too. Usually when I think of, I take refuge in Buddha, I have some idea about a bunch of things that Buddha is not, and then some things that Buddha is, and I take refuge in the good parts. I take refuge in the good Buddhas, and I don't take refuge in the bad Buddhas, naturally. This teaching says, take refuge in the evil Buddhas. Take refuge in the bad Buddhas, in the confused Buddhas. It's not that they liked evil Buddhas, or that they were bad people.

[28:57]

On the contrary, these practitioners of this practice actually were a great force for good in their time. Another reason people have theorized as part of their downfall. They really helped people. And they lived by all the rules that Buddhists have always lived by, of how to be most skillful and most kind and most compassionate. But their attitude, their attitude was, I take refuge in evil. Very strange. It didn't make them evil. They were good, but they included, they totally included all of that ugly and bad and evil parts of the world. in what it is that they went to for strength and safety.

[29:57]

I think a way to say it is that what they realized is that the only place to find real, reliable refuge is right here. So if there's an evil Buddha in front of me, that is my here. that is my refuge. Not because that thing is evil, but because that thing is here. And if I'm not finding refuge in what's here, then how can I find refuge anywhere? One of the ways refuge is sometimes talked about is as a shield, a shield to protect us. And I don't love that image, actually. I consider it a false view. But it's helpful, you know, a shield that will protect me from the suffering and confusion of the world.

[31:02]

And what's... I don't so much like the image, but what's helpful about it is that it points out that a shield is something you kind of have to have with you at the time when you need it. You know, I have a shield in the garage... doesn't help so much. But I think the way that a lot of us understand refuge in Buddha as this good, holy, pure Buddha or Zazen Buddha is, I have a shield in the garage. You know, wait a second while I go get it. It's not super useful. You know, and you can take it out and you polish it and you, you know, hold it in your little safe room. You throw things at it. You know, what I need, if I'm really going to make my way through this world, if I'm really going to have a strength and stability and sanity and clarity in this world, is something that's always there.

[32:10]

And this pure, good, lovely, holy thing, ah, isn't always quite there for me. Something is always there for me. Something is always there. What if that something was there? That something is here. What if that's where I planted my roots? What if that were my refuge? I like, you know, I love this, you know, taking refuge in all the true Buddhas and all the evil Buddhas. It's very dramatic. And I like that. But I also, I think, you know, annoying Buddhas would maybe be better or just as good, more relevant maybe. I, you know, I rarely feel that I'm brushing with evil. But I'm often annoyed. And I don't see the source of my annoyance as my refuge.

[33:13]

I don't say, you annoying thing, I take refuge in you. You are my life. And if I'm going to live with my feet placed solidly on the earth, then that earth needs to include you. It needs to include this, the totality of this moment. So they then... have a very similar refuge in Dharma that includes all the true and wonderful teachings of Buddhism and then all of the evil teachings of the world, all of the worldly confused teachings and all of the teachings that subvert the good. All of these teachings we take refuge in. And then they have a wonderful refuge in Sangha, which is quite helpful, which is that taking refuge in Sangha, and I won't detail the list here, but includes...

[34:18]

all of the wonderful people of the Sangha, and all of the really bad people of the Sangha, all of the really wonderful people in the world, and all of the really terrible people in the world. I take refuge in all of us as Sangha. He actually has a wonderful test, the founder of this sect has a wonderful test for kind of assessing how good Sangha is. So maybe you want to give some money to a sangha. Maybe you want to donate to Greenwich Farm, even. So the question you should ask, according to the founder of this sect, the question you should ask is, is there anyone among this assembly who breaks their vows? You know, you've got your cash right here. Is there anyone in this assembly who breaks their vows? No, gentlemen, there is no one in this sangha who breaks their vows. Sorry, you're not getting the money.

[35:21]

You must be excluding from your sangha, from the embrace of your refuge, you must be excluding those who break their vows, which means you must have a very limited view of what the world is and who gets to be in it, who counts. If you say, yes, there are many people in our sangha who break their vows, then the donor has great relief that they have found a sangha worthy of being donated to. Because it's a sangha that includes everybody. It's not a sangha that shuts out the bad people. If it did, it would be a sangha subject to a limited view. holding their view about who's good and who's bad and keeping out the bad people so we can make our little good island. So I think a way to understand how these wonderful, kind, generous, awake, compassionate people are expressing that they take refuge in evil

[36:40]

The way to understand that is to see that they're relating to things not as they appear, but at their essence. They're seeing everything in their essence, and they're taking refuge in that essence. We use a lot of words for that essence, that everything, good and evil, all things are. We talk about Buddha nature or intrinsic enlightenment, or the essence of mind, or consciousness. All these words, though, those words all make me want something. I mean, I hear Buddha nature, and I get kind of excited. Like, yeah, I want that. Or consciousness, too. Like, there's something really intriguing about the word consciousness. But I sort of feel like I missed it.

[37:41]

You know, like there's some kind of grasping there. Like I slept through that class where they explained what consciousness was. But maybe I can catch up, you know, and get this thing consciousness. But the word that I think best and most obviously expresses the essence of all beings is this word life. And now it's just really my word of choice. It's up there with this. This is also an excellent word. This and it. These are the top three spiritual words of 2013. Life, this and it. What is life? This is it. There's something about life that we just know. We know that we already have it. It's not something to get. And we know that it's something everybody and everything has.

[38:43]

We know that there's not more of it some places and less of it some other places. And we know, in a way, I think, you know, we know deeply that it comes and goes. But we also kind of know that it's just there. Permanent. Equally everywhere. Can't be added to or subtracted from. You know, when we talk about these things and call it Buddha nature, it seems so beautiful and distant and mystical. Like, yeah, somebody once touched that. But when we notice life, we can say the same thing about life. It's not that we can grasp it. It's not like you can catch what life is. But you kind of know what I mean. You're alive. Or life is you. So really what these refugees are saying is that they take refuge in life itself.

[39:58]

Where can I get my strength? From life itself. Finding the life... of that is each thing and taking refuge in that. It's just completely what we are. It's not like I have a lot of qualities and one of them is life. Life is the basis. And it's not like you have a lot of qualities and one of them is life. And it's not like evil people have less of it. I think most deeply, too, even anything that appears within our life is this life.

[40:59]

We say rocks and tiles and clear cuts. That's not life. But if it's happening within life, how could it be other than life? Everything that happens in your life is your life. If we start hacking out the stuff that we don't think should be there, we're going to end up with a pretty thin life and a pretty precarious ground to stand on. I want to find the strength of life itself. I want to have the clarity and safety of knowing that I am just the permanence of life itself. And I think I can do that if my feet are totally on the ground of life itself. But if I start cutting that out, hacking at it, hacking out all the pieces, the annoying and evil pieces, I think we lose this ground.

[42:07]

I don't think I can find this ground anymore. if I'm deciding who really should be in it and who really shouldn't be. And I do, all the time. So, you know, I don't know if Refuge in evil is a practice that you want to take up. It's not Zen practice exactly. But I think it is meditation practice. So whatever you think about how important it is to hold on to ideas about what's good and evil and what's right and wrong in our daily life. And I think it is important. And I think Buddhists have always understood that it is important to know good from evil and to support the good from

[43:09]

and to not support the unwholesome. Still, at the very least, in meditation, when you meditate, this is so much the spirit of our meditation. So the Zen instruction is, without thinking good or evil, who are you? Right now, without getting into good and bad, what are you? Who are you? and to really be strict about that, not falling into good and evil in our practice of meditation. This moment was bad, next moment will be better. So embracing everything as our life isn't the basis of a surrendering to evil or not caring, but is actually the basis of a good life.

[44:33]

It's the basis of an ethical and mature life. Totally accepting everything in this environment, totally accepting everything in my situation, from that ground, I can take the step that's mine to take. My true home, is this whole place. And now, I'm working within it. So this is the angle that I wanted to share with you today. There it is, another angle that you can explore and hold lightly and consider. how embracing everything might defame your own angle a little bit. That it might actually accepting evil might support us to really work for the good in the world.

[45:41]

So thank you again all very much for coming. May our having gathered here bring some good to this suffering world. And may we all totally realize and appreciate the beauty and totally fulfilled livingness of everything we encounter. 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.

[46:40]

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