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. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Linda Cutts, and I'm the central abbess at San Francisco Zen Center. I wanted to bring up this morning the teachings and practices around faith. Faith, trust, confidence. And this is to continue the discussion that the practice period that's happening now here at the City Center is engaged in as they study a particular poem about called Faith in Mind or Trust in Mind or Believing in Mind, Inscription.

[01:06]

There's a lot of different ways to translate the title of this wonderful poem. So what I'm going to try and do is put together faith and what we're talking about when we're talking about faith. the Lotus Sutra, what the Lotus Sutra says about faith, case 32, a koan in the Book of Serenity and our practice here at Zen Center. So we'll see if this is possible. But that's how I envision this talk today. So for some of you, the word faith, there may be a negative quality to it because you had to take on faith certain principles or creeds or teachings or beliefs that perhaps you weren't ready to or felt you didn't have the... It felt more like force or coercion or to have faith in a particular thing that you couldn't verify yourself and that was...

[02:26]

These tenants were asked to be part of a spiritual group or religion. So that kind of faith we're not talking about. At the beginning of our ordination ceremonies, both the priest ordination and the lay ordination, we start out with an invocation. Invocation is a, you know, voicing and calling, and it begins invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors. In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. That's the opening. And that phrase, we call on the Buddhas and ancestors and our teachers in faith that we are Buddha. In faith that we are Buddha, we are the awakened one. We enter the awakened one's path or teaching.

[03:28]

So this is a core teaching that our true nature is non-dual or not different from the awakened ones. It is an awakened nature. So this invocation begins these rather important ceremonies in a person's life. We start out with, you already are, Buddha, you already are awakened. And it but you may not have verified that. So in faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. So that's one place where we see the word faith coming up in our liturgy and our ceremonies. Another place it comes up is in a writing by a Zen master who was the founder of this way of teaching and practicing in Japan. And our lineage flows through him, Dogen Zenji, 1200s.

[04:31]

And in his piece that he wrote, his vows, the vows of the high priest Dogen, at the end of that long piece where he makes vows, at the end he says, and this is something we chant regularly, By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddhas, we melt away the root of transgression by the power of our confession and repentance. This is the pure and simple practice of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith. That's the closing few lines of this. these vows that this teacher made.

[05:33]

And the piece starts out with, I vow to see the true Dharma. This is a vow one can make. And then it acknowledges that we have a lack of faith. We don't see, and we get distracted, and we get pulled off and forget. We don't remember our practice. So by revealing, and disclosing our lack of faith, we melt away the root of transgression. And we melt that away by the power of this confession and repentance. It's kind of a phrase that means admitting, acknowledging, owning up to our difficulties, that we're human, that we make mistakes, that we don't see the whole picture, that we have a partial view, rather than, you know, pretending it's otherwise or acting as if it's otherwise, we acknowledge this, admit it.

[06:47]

So that's this confession and repentance. The repentance part is, I'm sorry that I keep looking and seeing these things in this way, so I acknowledge this. That very... of revealing and disclosing our lack of faith before the Buddhas, before our teachers, before our Dharma friend, that in itself is our practice, is the body and mind of faith, melts away this root of, in this piece it's called the root of transgression, meaning the way we get off and lost and far away from home. We melt that away. How do we melt that away? By just admitting who we are. And that in itself is practice, is enlightenment. And it's the body and mind of faith. The true, this is the pure and simple color of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith.

[07:53]

So this is in our liturgy. It's something we chant before lectures of Teshar during practice period and practice period. So faith, in hearing these words, we see that faith plays a big, it has an important role, important spot in our practice life. And it's about our practice. It's not just a blind faith, faith in someone, faith in something else, just accepting things on faith. So in the Xin Xin Ming, that's this poem that the practice period's been studying, this belief or trust in or faith in mind inscription, the character... which in all these things I've mentioned, this character, the body and mind of Shin, of this character, the character, the Japanese kanji, the character is made up of two parts.

[09:10]

One part on the left is the character for person. It's character for person. And right next to it is the character for word. So you put... a person who stands by their word, and you get that's the kind of etymology of the character, what it's made up of, the ideograph, and how it's put together. So the different parts are person and word. So putting it together, and visually, because characters, you see them, it's a person standing by their word. And when a person stands by their word, we have Faith in them. We have trust in them. They are trustworthy because why? They stand by their word. So the meaning of shin is, the definition of it is faith, trust, confidence, loyalty.

[10:14]

And the etymology is to be upright, standing by your word, what you say. And that's your karmic action. So in this faith, this kind of faith in mind, faith in, what kind of mind is this? The faith in mind that we're talking about is not the mind that is running all over trying to... grasp at things to make ourselves feel comfortable or better, nor is it the mind that pushes things away because they're uncomfortable or frightening. So it's a mind that neither is pushing or pulling, grabbing. It's an upright mind, and it's a mind that is beyond actually our ability to fully grasp or understand.

[11:19]

And one image for this is the great ocean that we can never fully... We have a concept of the great ocean, but when we, and this is Dogen's image, when we go out in the middle of the ocean in a boat and look around, what we see is a circle of water. This is because of our... how we are made, you know, our... the way we see our optic nerve and our, we can't see anything else but a circle of water. But as Dogen says, the ocean is not a circle. It's neither round nor square. It's infinite in variety. And that's also this mind that we're talking about, this awakened mind that we're being asked in this poem to have trust in faith in it's a mind that we can never know fully but what we can know is that we see a circle of water we see the partial and yet that circle that partialness who we are as an individual unique person is not separate from the fullness of

[12:46]

our interconnected life, and the reality of how we really exist. But we can't grasp that with our consciousness. So there's an element of faith that's being sung about, actually, in this poem. To have faith in this reality that we can't grasp in our usual way, but may want to, because we're used to that, getting it, getting something. How can we instead... hear the teachings, and also admit that we have a lack of faith in these teachings, but we admit it. Hear them and not take it on blind faith. That goes too far in another direction. But to be willing to be open to hearing the teachings without pushing them away or grasping.

[13:48]

listening and being open, practicing with, finding our stabilized, calm mind in our Zazen practice, in our practice of ethics and generosity, and finding and verifying for ourselves what the teachings are. So I... I wanted to connect this with the Lotus Sutra if I can. The Lotus Sutra, for those of you who haven't studied it, is not like a lot of the sutras that we're used to or the koans or Zen stories. It has a different flavor. It's... It brings the teachings forth with stories and parables and images.

[14:52]

I think Suzuki Roshi, when he was teaching, it said it's like an opera. It has, like, you can imagine costumes and a full orchestra and images and things floating down from the ceiling and like that. The Lotus Sutra has these elements and it's beloved. But someone may be a little... especially if you're used to kind of chop wood, carry water kinds of stories that are part of our Zen tradition, you might feel, I don't know if the Lotus Sutra is for me. And in fact, when Suzuki Roshi was teaching it, someone said, Suzuki Roshi, I don't know if I like studying this so much, it's so fancy. And Suzuki Roshi said, it's not fancy enough. Meaning, what it's trying to convey is the Lotus Sutra and all of its wildness, really, of color and story and image.

[15:54]

The reality of our existence is beyond. The Lotus Sutra is not fancy enough. So this is just a little snippet about Lotus Sutra. So in one chapter, one chapter is called Faith and Understanding. And one of the main teachings in the Lotus Sutra is that you may have some understanding of who you are and your existence and what you're capable of, what your potential is. And the early teachings in Buddhism may have been understood in this way. But now I'm teaching the Lotus Sutra. And what I'm going to tell you is that you, too, not only have the potential, but are in faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. The Lotus Sutra comes to us to say, you too are Buddha.

[16:57]

And in the earlier teachings, this wasn't said so directly. So in the Lotus, those disciples from the earlier old wisdom school, when they hear this, they're like, well, what happens is they're just excited It says they dance for joy. They twirl around. They just, if you could picture it on stage in an opera, it's some aria that just, they sing and dance for joy because they're being told by the Buddha in the Lotus Sutra that they too are awakened, have awakened, are awakened nature, not have, are. And this potential is theirs to unfold and discover and live out. So in the chapter 4, Faith and Understanding, some of these disciples from the old wisdom school have been told that they too are, they've been predicted, they've been given, it's called a prediction, that they too will become Buddhists, you know.

[18:06]

And they're ecstatic. And then they tell a parable to the Buddha. They say, it's like... And then they tell this wonderful story. I don't know if I have time to tell the whole thing. I'll tell it in a shorter version. But it comes in this chapter of faith and understanding. So they tell the story. They say, it's like as if there was a son. It could be a daughter. who was living at the parents' home and left home, left home and wandered off, and didn't really do so well, actually got pretty lost, got pretty sad, got pretty confused, got pretty mixed up, and became kind of destitute, couldn't find a job, couldn't really make a go of it, and wandered like this for a long time, away from home, And in the commentaries, this home, this home is this mind, this Buddha mind that we're being asked to have faith in and believe in or trust in this mind.

[19:22]

This is our true home. But we get lost. We get what feels like we leave home and forget about home, get so mixed up. Yeah, so with this child, who's now actually been wandering around for a long time, he's about 50. But, you know, nowadays 50 is olden days 20, right? Anyway, in the story, he's older and he's destitute, kind of, and he's in rags, and he wanders by what he doesn't even recognize as his home. And he doesn't say anything about his mother and the lotus, right? But you can substitute mother if you want. But his father has done very well and is sitting on a lion's throne, some jeweled pedestal with fine clothing, which is alluded to in other poems and liturgy, this jeweled pedestal. And the son, this kind of destitute person...

[20:28]

is kind of like, I don't know if I'm in the right place, maybe I'm not going to be welcome here, I don't know. And the father sees this person and immediately recognizes, this is my child, this is my long-lost son who I've been trying to find for years, immediately recognizes, but the son doesn't. So the father sends his manager, worker, Go get that guy. Have him come. And so this fellow is working for the owner of the estate, the father, goes after this son, and he gets very frightened. He thinks they're going to arrest him or do something, and he actually faints, which is a wonderful detail of this story. He, like, goes unconscious. He really... loses his ability to hold. He cannot understand what's happening. And the father realizes, that's too much.

[21:30]

I can't, I've got to go at it a different way, skillfully. It's the other main teaching of the Lotus, skillful means. So he ends up sending someone wearing a dirty outfit and kind of roughed up, and he throws water on them and says, you know, wake up. You're okay. Nobody's going to hurt you. You need a job. We've got a job for you. We've got a job. mucking out the stalls. And this destitute son says, that sounds like the right job for me, I can do that. So he brings them in, they give him a place, and he does that kind of work. This is in the chapter of faith and understanding. So kind of, he just does his work. He just follows the schedule. He just stays with the community, goes to Dharma Talks. This is, I'm extrapolating from this. He just mucks out the stalls, you know, and does his work, does his whatever it is, his soji job.

[22:37]

And he does a good job. He takes pride in his cleaning. And then pretty soon he's given a little more responsibility, a little more responsibility. And this goes on for years. And the father... ends up inviting him to be the manager, head of a crew, and imparts to him everything about the estate, their business, how to do things. He gives them leadership training. And over the years, pretty soon, there's trust that builds up, and the son makes diligent effort, and there's a kind of faith and loyalty in their working together. Slowly, slowly, he entrusts him with more and more responsibility. And right before he's about to die, he actually then reveals to this trusted worker who he's given the keys to the treasury and everything. I need to tell you something. And he does it formally and publicly.

[23:38]

You are my son. I am your father. And there's this moment of great joy and recognition. And I leave this all to you. You inherit all this. So this is a parable. And the parable is with our own life of being separated from our true home, from our true body of faith and mind of faith. In faith that we are Buddha, we get very separated from this teaching of our own healing. essence of awakeness and we suffer terribly and we lose confidence and we lose hope and through but our true nature it cannot be taken away from us you know cannot be destroyed and it will resonate our true way seeking true nature resonates

[24:43]

with awakened mind, resonates with teachings, resonates with seeing someone acting in a certain way that inspires me. I don't know what they're doing. When I saw someone chopping onions, students who had been at Tassajara in 1968 when I first came as a guest student on Bush Street, I saw people chopping onions and I thought, what are they doing? What is it? And they were just mindfully practicing, stably chopping onions with full awareness. They probably didn't even know I was watching them. But that was like, I remember thinking, I want to be like that. I want to live like that, whatever it is that they're doing there. And they were just upright, practicing, diligently aware and mindful of their activity. So something in me... resonated with that activity enough that I thought, I have to come back.

[25:47]

And it took me a while, but I got back to stay. So because we have this potential and capacity, we will resonate with teachings that come from the most diverse places. I don't even know who those people were. Actually, those, maybe I could name one person, but I haven't seen them since 1968. And they taught me, they were teaching Dharma, and they didn't even know it. Which leads me to this other chapter in the Lotus Sutra, chapter 10, which is called Teachers of the Dharma. And in this chapter, it basically, and this is Lotus Sutra, it basically says, everybody... can be a teacher for you. And not only everybody, but everything. And, you know, human, non-human, sentient and insentient can teach us, can be a teacher for us when we're open and ready to receive that teaching.

[26:57]

And there's many stories, you know, the poet, whose name is Libo, you know, was walking in the mountains and heard the sounds of the valley streams and saw the color of the mountains and was, you know, had an awakening experience and wrote about it in his poem. The sounds of the valley stream is the awakened once broad tongue and the colors of the mountains is the form of the Buddha's body. He saw, not in an intellectual, conceptual way, but he felt that sound itself was the scriptures. That's what he said over and over. Hundreds of thousands of scriptures being taught by what? By the valley stream. And he was open enough, ready enough, not holding to his fixed views to be able to hear the sounds of our

[28:05]

our awakened world, which we're not separate from, resonating with that as teaching. And he was inscribed upon, you know, this is this faith inscription, you know, faith in mind inscription is the title of this poem that the practice period has been studying, and it's, you know, scripture and inscription, but... we are inscribed upon, we are scripted, we become inscriptions when we're open enough, listening, present, that anything can teach. And all of you can be teachers, whether you know it or not, for each other. And it doesn't have to be the ordained clergy or the ordained lay or lots and lots of experience or... It can be chopping onions, mindfully, can be a teaching for someone.

[29:07]

You can be a Dharma teacher. The diversity of the Dharma, and it depends, everything can be a teaching for us. And that particular chapter, Teachers of the Dharma, breaks it wide open, which the Lotus Sutra does. Nobody's exempt. You can be a teacher for someone and not even know it. and everybody and everything can be a teacher for you. So we're treading, we're walking within the Buddha world, this land of teaching that's going on, if we're open to it, ready for it. And in this same chapter, Teachers of the Dharma, it says, those who wish to teach the Dharma have to... wrap themselves in the robe of the Thus Come One, the Tathagata. Step into the room of the Tathagata.

[30:10]

That's an epithet, meaning the Buddha, meaning the Thus Come One. So you wrap yourself in the robe, you step into the room, and you sit on the seat of the Tathagata. And then the commentary is, wrapping yourself in the robe is wrapping yourself in patience, and gentleness, that's the robe of the Buddha. You may not receive this robe or wear a robe, but to wrap yourself in patience and gentleness, that's the robe of the Buddha. And to step into the room, the room of the Tathagata, the room of the Buddha, the Awakened One, is the room of great compassion. That's called the room. And sitting on the seat, The seat of the Tathagata is the seat of emptiness or the understanding the insubstantiality or the interconnectedness of all things.

[31:13]

That's the seat of emptiness. So you take your seat and wear the robe and step into the room. So that image is teachers, those are teachers of the law and that's wide open. Everyone can practice gentleness, compassion, patience, and study what it means to be empty of separateness and fully connected with everything. That's the seat. So this... that I had wanted to bring up. I don't want to give it too little time. But I'll just recite it for you.

[32:16]

So, so far we have this parable of the son coming home and the home being available to all of us as our true home. than teaching and the diversity of Buddhist teaching, the myriad forms it comes in, and that we're not separate from that. We can both hear it from all over, and anyone and anything, and be a teacher without even knowing it. So this koan, this happens right at the end of a talk where there really isn't enough time to give it its due. But I'll recite it. So the teacher, Yang Shan, speaking to a monk who's an unnamed monk. So Yang Shan asked a monk, this is case 32, Book of Serenity.

[33:17]

Yang Shan asked a monk, where are you from? And the monk said, you province, why you? You province, province in China. And Yang Shan said, do you think of that place? And the monk said, I always think of it. And Yangshan said, the thinker is the mind, and the thuv is the environment. And within the environment, there are mountains, rivers, and the land mass, buildings, towers, halls, chambers, people, animals, and so forth. reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind, is there very much there? And then we don't know if this answer comes, like in this conversation, or maybe it came like eight years later.

[34:24]

Walterson worked on that. Go on, that question. It's not stated, although there's some sense that he took that teaching and that meditation instruction, reverse your thought and think back to the mind that thinks. This is turn the light back and think back to the mind that thinks. We don't know if it happened right then or later, but anyway, the monk finally said or said right then, when I get there, there isn't anything at all. And Yangshan said, that's right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. And the monk said, can you give me any more guidance?

[35:26]

And Yangshan said, Based on your insight, there's only one mystery. You can take your seat and wear the robe. After that, see on your own. So that's the story. And you can tell from what I recited that it has this stage of faith in there, and it also has take your seat and and wear the robe. And Tenchan Roshi, Tenchan Anderson, in a class recently, I told him I would definitely credit him, saw the resonance between this koan and this chapter in the Lotus Sutra of teachers of the law, teachers of the Dharma, wrapping yourself in the robe, sitting on the seat, and stepping into the room. So this monk who remains nameless, meaning he hadn't fully, he wasn't a teacher,

[36:32]

and acknowledged yet. He remains nameless, which is kind of a giveaway when you're reading those stories. If they're not named, then they may not have fully realized their true self. So he gives them this meditation instruction to... He asks them, where are you from? And he says, I'm from you, Provost. I'm from Oakland. Do you think of that place? Do I think of Minnesota? And he says, I always think of it. And then he describes what that place, the koan's called mind and environment. All those places that we think of, all those things in our mind, all the myriad things, the 10,000 things that you can name and [...] never get to the end. That's what we call it. That's what we think of. But what we think of is in our mind.

[37:38]

It's not separate from our own mind. We think of it. Where does that thinking happen? This is this mind, and the great mind knows that what we think of and the thinking mind are not dual. So whatever we see, and this is teaching over and over and over again, whatever we see that looks like outside is in our own mind, is us, is self and other identified. You are not. It actually is you. You are not. I am not. You each are unique. I am not you, but all of us together are one. Myriad objects partake of the Buddha body. So reverse, he gives this fellow unnamed monk a meditation instruction.

[38:43]

Reverse your thought and think back to the mind that's doing the thinking. What do you find? And what he finds, he says, when I get there, I don't find anything at all, which is... Okay, that's okay for the time being, but you can get stuck there, stuck in emptiness, stuck in, I don't see anything. He says that's okay for the stage of faith, but there has to be more, which is the stage of person or fully engaging in this life with things as they are, as it is, knowing they're non-dual, but treating them according to their unique way, returning to the marketplace, not getting stuck in some emptiness or some calm stability, to get into the fray with all beings.

[39:49]

And that is our true home, not separating ourselves in our special practice, As you might imagine, I heard the bell, the beautiful clock in the hallway, and I want to respect our schedule and timing. So hopefully I leave you with being encouraged to take up what is faith, what is faith in our true home, our true mind, and how do we practice faith with the mind and body of faith. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[40:51]

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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:10]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.61