This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So nice to see very familiar faces and very new faces. I'm very happy to be here with everyone and happy that you are here. I was listening to a talk that was recorded from July with Abbott Mako, and she was at one point talking about, my little wire's set up here, talking about home, a sense of home, and that sometimes when people come here or to a Zen practice place, there's a feeling of, oh, home.

[01:02]

maybe in a new way, a different way, but yet a very familiar way. And it made me remember a similar feeling that I had when I first encountered Zen practice when I was living in Berkeley. And I was going through some personal loss of relationship and suffering and had a very clear thought, like, I need a church. And I had grown away from the Methodist church that I had grown up in. But being in Berkeley, I had a lot of choices. And I went to see the Unitarians and the Quakers and a Korean Zen Center. And then somebody said, oh, yeah, there's this place called the Berkeley Zen Center. You might check it out. So I remember going and, you know, looks a lot similar to this. And someone showed me how to sit.

[02:05]

It's like 40 minutes facing the wall. Like, okay, go. And then we got up and survived that somehow and got up and there was a service. And it was probably Sojun Mel Weitzman Roshi was probably the doshi. And I remember thinking. this is really strange. Like, this is really foreign. But when we did the full prostrations, just as I did here, and I remembered it when I was just doing that, touching the head to the forehead, which I had never thought of doing in my life. As soon as that touch happened and lifting the hands, I had this profound sense of homecoming and kind of relief. And I thought, I don't know what this is, but I want to find out. So I think of that as kind of a window opening and some feeling of, oh, but I'd like to go through the door.

[03:15]

And that took a little time. I think that was in 1991. I was in my mid-20s. And... Various things happened, touching in and out of practice in different parts of the world. And then three years later is when I ended up dropping into a practice period at Green Gulch and then going to Tassajara. And then things kind of rolled, rolled from there. But that touch, when something opens, when you go, ooh, what's that? the possibility of actually turning towards that, of exploring. What is this? And so if you turn towards that, if you find your way to a door or the door opens, what does that, what does a life of walking through the door

[04:23]

look like, feel like. And it's not just, I think, one walking through the door and like, oop, through the door, done. No, they say Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. So we're continually walking through that door. The advantage of... living in a practice place like this, or repeating chants over and over, over years, is when you start thinking about things, certain quotations or teachings kind of bubble up by themselves to the surface. And what bubbled to the surface was Dogen, when Dharma does not fill your body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. just going about your life, all is fine. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.

[05:29]

When Dharma fills your mind, your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. I think something like that happened to me in that bow. Like I knew I needed something, but in the bow, something opened that I wasn't expecting. It's like, oh, this is in the world. This is an experience. And from there, there's this metaphor of being like a boat in an ocean. He says, for example, when you sail out in a boat in the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look in any other way. So imagine that, okay? So you're in a boat.

[06:32]

You're in the middle of the ocean. You look around. Someone says, what's reality? It's like one big flat circle. That's obvious, right? He says, but the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. If you imagine being in that boat and looking around and seeing the horizon and the water and your boat and that's your life and that's reality and it's obvious, But then suddenly someone gives you scuba diving equipment and you go in and you're like, oh my God, look at those fish. Look at that coral. And then if someone gives you a microscope, you're like, oh my God, what are these? And you realize you will never comprehend the complexity and the interrelatedness and the livingness like a palace, like a jewel all around you.

[07:47]

And he says, all things are like this, even in a drop of water, even beneath your feet. So our human brains can't really comprehend all this. I think it's very, very important to be humble about human, being human, and the limitations, and great potential, but also limitations of our human processing. So there is wild complexity going on all the time that we can just barely touch. What is it to, you know, and even if you could try to grasp the particular complexities of things, even like in that one atom, there's not a there there to touch and hold on to.

[08:54]

So what is it to have some calling or intention to open to a more everyday awareness of this reality? And what does it matter? And it's not academic. We can think about it intellectually and talk about it. But what does it mean to open to living into that? And of course, it's not only the things or environments around us, it's us too. We're intimately part of this vast living complexity. And there seems to be something about Zen practice and sitting down that creates a portal for this opening. I was recently at Tassajara for Zen Mountain Center for Sangha Week, which was really great.

[10:01]

And so, you know, small groups have been invited to go down during the summer to participate in the... residential schedule of sitting and working and eating and doing some Dharma study together. And, you know, especially for people who are not living at a residential center, I know the people in my Sangha were so appreciative, one, the practice and the practice field, but also how people could relate to each other. It's like, oh, we're so much closer as a Sangha now, having a chance to live in a practice field like that. But I was wondering, you know, okay, we had a few meetings in the afternoons and we were going to study something. And I thought, what should we study? And I went to the library at Tassajara, which is very small and truly is one of my favorite places in the entire world. It really is. And there's a loft. I recommend you go up in the loft. And I've spent many, many hours there over many years. And I was looking through the shelf.

[11:03]

I'm like, okay, what do I study? What do I offer? And... I had an idea, but I went to the shelf with Suzuki Roshi's books, and one in particular just sort of stood out to me. So I took it out, which is not always so. So Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was the, as you probably know, the first one and probably most widely known. But I realized I had never really spent time with this book. But it kind of called me, and I looked, and I said, well, when did this come out? It's been out for a long time. It came out in 2002. I thought, well, how did I miss that? And then I knew how I missed that. Because in 2002, someone might remember in this room, my daughter was one years old, one year old, and we lived here. And I have a few very distinct memories from that time.

[12:06]

teaching a class on the Dogen. I'm not sure what exactly, but I really wanted to go to this. And I was holding my daughter in a sling kind of thing, and we were in the Buddha Hall trying to listen to this, and she kept crying. And so I found myself like, everybody was in here listening to the Dharma, and I was like wandering the halls with this crying baby. And it was so frustrating. I remember that. Like, oh, right. But then there were other really wonderful Memories, too, where the bells right over there, when she was a baby, she would crawl around on the tatami when it was all empty and ring the bells. I really wish I had a video of that. I would give a lot for a video of that. So life is complex, a complexity. And I'm sure there was a Dharma teaching, too, in walking the halls with the crying baby. And where is the Dharma? Is the Dharma in the Buddha hall? Is the Dharma caring for the child? But back to this book.

[13:12]

So it kind of brought itself out to say, here, take me. And then there were several other Sangha groups there. And Steve Weintraub, who has a group from San Francisco, gave a Dharma talk. And he pulled out this book. And he said, oh, we've been, I think he said, if I got it right, I think he said, our group has been studying this for 12 years. I thought, wow. Catherine Stark, who has a group in Sonoma, also gave a talk. And she said, oh, I was really worried when Steve brought this book out because that's the book that I want to talk about. And then yesterday I went to visit someone, a Zen friend, and I mentioned this. And he said, oh, I've been reading this every night. It's so great. So I don't know what's in the air, but this seems to be coming up. And there's one essay in particular that was standing out. to me, which is letters from the world of emptiness.

[14:16]

Letters from the world of emptiness. He says, although we have no actual written communication from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness. I'm curious if you've had any letters from the world of emptiness. Maybe it was a plum blossom. Maybe it was a stone heating bamboo, but you kind of have to have a whole setup for that of sweeping and bamboo.

[15:19]

But maybe it was something else. Maybe it was something in nature. Driving here, I looked over and I was passing by a field and there was a great blue heron. just right there, and I was driving past, and it's gone. And I thought, oh, is that a letter from the world of emptiness? But maybe it's something you read, or maybe it's something, the way someone looked at you. The moment that just made you stop and ask, huh, there's more than this just circular horizon I've been seeing. What is it? And given that this is called, you know, the essay is called The Letter from Emptiness, The World of Emptiness, I know people here with a wide range of familiarity of Buddhist terms and such.

[16:33]

But this word emptiness shows up a lot. And it's kind of a tricky word. And they're sort of acknowledged like, this is a problematic translation, but other translations don't seem to quite get it either. And it doesn't quite mean what it sounds like. You can think emptiness can start to sound like a void or something over there, the void, a thing. a nothingness. And that doesn't sound terribly appealing. At least in my understanding, the sense of emptiness, and again, words are limited, but empty meaning a description of how things are. And that any particular thing... The classic example usually is a cup, probably because people are sitting in places like I'm sitting and they look around for something to talk about and they go like, oh, a cup, right?

[17:38]

A cup, you know, the sense that the cup is empty of inherent and changing existence. So it's functioning as a cup right now. But if it broke into 15 pieces, would that be a cup? Where did the cup go? You know, if you think of a car, the car out there, you know, you put a down payment on a car. It's a thing. It's real. Of course, I have a car. But if someone took that car apart and laid everything out, it's like, where's the car? It's functioning as a car in our mind, in our day-to-day. We have to do this to get through the world, to make the world. But there's also remembering, like, oh, but things aren't really settled and unchanging and solid. Not really. And we get into trouble when we forget that and start acting like they are. What? That disappeared? But it wasn't really there in a permanent way to start with.

[18:39]

And then, of course, that extends to us as a human being. Me. Yeah, I'm me. And you are you. But you're also not you. You are an arising of many, many factors. changing, growing, different. My daughter's quite different now at 22 from when she was crawling around here. Same? Yes. Different? Yes. And I think the proposition here is the more we can harmonize with this, the more we can open to and not just intellectually understand it, but in our bones, in our body, in our knowing, in our not knowing, the more we can harmonize with this, The better things go. The more openness, the more care, the less suffering. Because we're harmonizing with how things actually are versus fighting them. And again, in this particular talk, he says, shikantaza, just sitting, is to practice or actualize emptiness.

[19:52]

Shikantaza is to practice or actualize emptiness. He says, although you can have a tentative understanding of it through your thinking, you should understand emptiness through your experience. You should understand emptiness, or another side of it is this vast interconnectedness, interco-arisingness. through your experience. You think that emptiness and being are opposites. So we think emptiness, void, nothingness, and then being. And he says, but in Buddhism, both of these are ideas of being. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It's just, what's your angle? How are you looking? What's your view? But it's the same arising. And this phrase is like, you know, the harmony of difference and unity.

[21:01]

Not two, not one. Where it says leaping clear of the many and the one. So you may go to a practice place and encounter practice, chanting, bowing, etc., and think, oh, the practice is over there, and regular life is over here. But the deeper you go into practice, the more you realize, oh, yeah, that starts to pervade, realizing that the daily life is not different from the practice center life. This just helps highlight it. It's like putting a big highlight to create all this and bow and everything creates a big highlighter. Hey, pay attention. But then you realize that's just expedient means. It's everything. He says, besides the world which we can describe, there is another kind of world.

[22:05]

All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. This is a mistake, because what is described is not the actual reality. And when you think it is reality, your own idea is involved. That is an idea of self. I think there's a phrase from Katagiri Roshi, maybe in a book, that says, you have to say something. Right? And at the same time, you have to remember it's not going to reach it. It's not actually reality. It's not a full description. But it's the best we can do. And our bodhisattva vows also compel us to like, okay, we're going to use words and concepts and ideas. But remember, we're always pulling the rug out from them a little bit too. He says, even the words of the Buddha are just a letter from the world of emptiness.

[23:08]

Just a suggestion. or some help from Buddha. Not to attach to those either. You know, so again, is there some opening, some letter winging its way to you? I had a... I mentioned in starting to think about this, that Dharma things kind of bubble up if you expose yourself to them enough, but cultural things do too. And what came to mind was Harry Potter getting his letter of acceptance, letters of acceptance from Hogwarts, and them all pouring in, you know, quite unexpected. And I think we've all been accepted, even though we didn't know we applied. And we're all receiving our acceptance letters all the time. But are they reaching us? And at some point, maybe you start noticing, oh, is that a letter for me?

[24:21]

Maybe I need to go to the Zen Center and somebody needs to show me how to sit down or to bow. how does this actually show up in this question of being human, you know, and living a true human life? I was reading a wonderful book about the life of Deepa Ma, so a woman living a very ordinary life in India. She had a Burmese background, Theravadan tradition, and She had experienced great loss and suffering in her life, losing parents, husband, children. And it's said she was mentally and physically very disabled from that. But she encountered practice and really turned towards it and seemed to have an affinity for it.

[25:24]

And she probably wouldn't have used the word shikantaza, a different angle from practice, but she had great insight. And she became an important teacher for several Vipassana teachers who've been very influential in the West. But it said that people would come to her with all their stories. And she continued to live in a very modest apartment with her daughter and other family, and people would find their way to her. And so she listened to all these stories about problems and showed great compassion. But she also saw that there's a lot of unnecessary suffering because of the stories we tell ourselves and attach to. Does that sound familiar? Any stories you tell that you attach to that create suffering? And that we mistake our ideas and our stories for the full reality. And so in this particular incident, someone came to tell her and was telling her everything that was wrong in their life, and she actually laughed, and she said, this problem you are facing is no problem at all.

[26:36]

It is because you think this is mine. It is because you think there is something for me to solve. Don't think in this way, and then there will be no trouble. You think this is mine, my life, my problem. I've got to solve it. What do I do? But what's the alternative? How do we develop a freedom from believing all of the stories that our mind weaves? You have to notice them, learn from them, but not get trapped by them. I get trapped in my stories all the time. And most of the time, if I'm trapped in a story, it's not terribly fun. But sometimes there are other ways of thinking that I can turn to that help. A question I ask a lot is simply, what wants to happen?

[27:40]

What wants to happen in any given situation? And that takes it away from my particular ideas of it should happen this way, or I want it to happen this way, or I'm going to force it to happen this way. And it opens it up to this whole field, this whole field of interbeing, interconnectedness, interdependence. What are the causes and conditions that are arising? And knowing that I or any of us can never really do anything by ourselves. So if I let go just a little bit of my thoughts, my stories, And I open more widely, what's arising in the field? What can I respond to? And maybe it's very active, it's not just passive, but it's a harmonizing again, a listening, a setting aside my ideas. And Suzuki Roshi says, when you are able to sit experiencing Shikantaza,

[28:44]

then the meaning of your life will be completely different. When you are able to sit experiencing Shikantaza, then the meaning of your life will be completely different. You will have freedom from everything. It's a pretty tall climb. You will have freedom from everything. Of course, we sit. And maybe there's a taste of that spaciousness, that freedom. Maybe we're caught in our minds, but maybe we have that taste. And then, of course, we have to get up. Is it different? Can that freedom continue? And so what kind of life practice supports this remembering, living on this edge of knowing and not knowing? Living with questions can be very helpful.

[29:49]

One of my first summers at Tassajara, my root teacher, Tenshin, Reb Anderson, had come down. I was there and leading some retreats. And I, you know, I'd be a new and earnest Zen student. I wanted to know, what is a good Zen student? And so I saw him kind of going down a path, and I sort of caught up with him, and I asked him, you know, teacher, what is a good Zen student? And he turned and he said, yes. He said, what is a good Zen student? Who is a good Zen student? How is a good Zen student? He tended to avoid why, because why often will get us locked in on a story. But to live into these questions of what? What?

[30:54]

What? What? Who? Who? Who? How? How? How? What if that's our life, living into that question? Then everything is fresh because we don't know. And then there's a place like this that arises. And I must say, I mean, just joined a Zen center that went through a major, much extended renovation that took a lot of effort and a lot of dedication that I kind of came in at the end of appreciating, wow, this place exists and has existed for all these decades. What it takes to keep it going so we can come talk like this. It's kind of amazing. Actually very amazing. And I know there's a big renovation coming up here. It takes a lot of physical effort in the world.

[31:56]

A lot of doing. But can we still remember those questions of what? Who? How? And to be able to come to a place where so much is cared for and... It's like a field of practice where everything is going, hello, hello, remember, remember, bow, bells, chants, people making nice meals, sharing them, you know, and engaging in work practice and learning like, oh yeah, work isn't just work. Work is also showing up fully. And so then maybe when you... When you step back into your regular work, whatever that may be, it's like, oh, that's not different either. How is this an expression of my full life, my full calling? How do I really want to show up here? There's working with sangha, you know, sangha being one of the triple treasure along with Buddha and Dharma.

[33:05]

And I love the paradox too. It said, you know, that people in a sangha should be like milk and water, just fully blending and harmonizing. But also it said that monks in a monastery are like rocks in a tumbler. They like keep bumping into each other. So it's also a place where we kind of get to see ourselves and smooth away our rough edges and not run away. Dharma study, working with and being seen by a teacher, ritual, sitting. And if you have a chance to sit sashin, to sit a longer time of practice, sometimes that helps a lot. You know, it's important to have daily practice, but to be able to fully let go and be supported. And the schedule supports that.

[34:07]

Like I remember going back to Tassajara after being away, and there's a very particular schedule, and it sort of takes away the question of what should I do next. And I knew I wanted to go to Tassahara. I had been to Tassahara before. I wanted to follow the schedule. And I got there and I'm like, ick, I don't want to go to Zazan. Or, you know, do I really have to take a bath at a certain time? I was like, eh, eh, eh. And I was like, this is interesting. But then after some period of time, I just gave up. I just let go. I just surrendered. And within that, there was so much freedom. just to flow for that period of time, to let go of my ideas and preferences and be carried. And something like that happens with Sashin too. It's like the bell rings, you come to the Zendo, it's time to eat, it's time to rest, just to open and relax some of our normal efforting and scheduling. It's a great gift. You know, they say Sashin is a time to diligently care for and collect body and mind in one suchness.

[35:13]

It is an opportunity to discover anew, clarify and actualize our ultimate concern. This balance of daily practice out in the world is really no different. And what happens when you drop in an intensive way? How do those different levels all work together? so that you are more receptive to the letters from emptiness that are coming all the time. I also heard someone refer to Sashin as sacred, and I think that's not a word that we usually use around here so much, sacred. But I looked up sacred, and from Britannica dictionary, it says, the power, being, or realm understood by religious persons... I guess that's us. To be at the core of existence and to have a transformative effect on their lives and destinies. To be at the core of existence and to have a transformative effect on their lives and destinies.

[36:21]

It's no small thing that we're sitting here. It's no small thing that you found your way through this door. is a transformative effect happening right now. I just want to add in another essay or talk, Izuki Roshien's book, is mentioning the importance of Warm-hearted zazen. Warm-hearted zazen. Warm heart, warm zazen. Sometimes it can seem a little austere, a little cool. Do they really smile at the Zen Center? Oh, I saw a smile.

[37:28]

He says, the warm feeling we have in our practice is, in other words, enlightenment. And he said, or Buddha's mercy. Buddha's mind. Again, mercy is not a word that we usually use here. But what is it to have this warm-heartedness in our practice as we're sitting ourselves on the cushion, but also as we interact with each other and the world? I was reading a description of someone who had gone to practice at Genpo Abbey with Pema Chodron some time ago and really taught being struck by the warmth and the care and the concern that that was really part of the field in a very real way. And hearing of a Tibetan teacher who really talked about Buddhist teaching saying the common denominator is love. This is the essence of the Buddhist teaching.

[38:35]

And again, we don't use that word so much, love. But we might want to re-adopt it. And we say compassion. And that's important, wisdom and compassion. Incredibly important. But what about, what do we mean if we bring in the word love? What if we walked around for a while thinking, oh, that's what we're doing here. We're practicing love. Would that change anything? Would it change what we pay attention to? Or if you walk around in your life thinking, I'm practicing love. That's my main practice. But love in the context of emptiness, the kind of love that you realize, oh, even though I love this person, but I can't hold on to this person. This person is way more than I can even comprehend. What does a love like that look like? There's practicing in the practice place, maybe diving in for a while, getting cooked.

[40:00]

I always like that metaphor, too. You get cooked. Cooked in the cauldron of Sashin for a while, but then you come out, and there's this phrase after people have been living in a center for a while, and there's a ceremony to acknowledge, oh, this is a transition. And you say, so-and-so returns to the marketplace, with gift-bestowing hands. I always love that. Gift-bestowing hands, and also, very importantly, gift-receiving hands, realizing this interchange that's the heart of everything. And you are able to sit experiencing Shikantaza, then the meaning of your life will be completely different. You will have freedom from everything. So what shifts, you know, as you go out and about your day in the world?

[41:19]

Maybe you connect with someone. Maybe it's a cashier at the grocery store. You see something in their eyes. They see something in your eyes. There's a moment. What was that? Or you see a great blue heron. Or you turn and ask someone how they are. What helps us remember? just simply remembering that letters from the world of emptiness are coming all the time. And can we receive them? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[42:25]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:27]

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