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. Good evening. Thank you to Tantosan Greg Fane for inviting me to offer this Dharma talk tonight. It's a great honor to sit on this cushion in Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is Shin Shi Inryu, Body Wisdom Hidden Dragon.

[01:05]

This Dharma name was given to me by Daryu, Great Dragon Michael Wenger. In this temple, in 2005, 13 years ago. At San Francisco City Center in 2013, I, with five other students, received priest robes from Daryu. And last summer, he gave Bernd Bender and I transmission, full transmission at his temple, Dragon Sleep. This past Monday, eight of us arrived to Tassajara, having traveled from Washington, D.C. and Manhattan, New York. We are Zen practitioners in a Washington, D.C. branching streams group, part of the Suzuki Roshi lineage.

[02:08]

And our Sangha is called All Beings Zen Sangha. I had no firm notion of what being here would be like. Each experience of Tassajara is different because I am different. I'm so delighted to find it as it is, so warm-hearted, calm and engaging. To abide again in the mountains with the Blue Jays, with the butterflies and all of you venerable bodhisattvas. I first breathed the essence of this place 18 years ago, never imagining in a wild dream that I would study and share the Dharma with you from this vantage. Zen Master Kezon

[03:15]

has been a favorite of my Dharma study of late. While Dogen Zenji is considered the father of Soto Zen, Khe San, the second ancestor, is sometimes referred to as the mother of Soto Zen. He lived a long time and he was very influenced, I am aware of through study, by his grandmother and his mother. He says in his points to watch in Zazen, don't do Zazen where it is too light or too dark, too cold or too hot, or too near pleasure seekers or entertainers. You should practice inside the meditation hall. Go to Zen masters.

[04:18]

Or take yourself high in the mountains or into deep valleys where there are green waters and blue mountains. These are good places to wander near streams and under trees. These places calm the mind. Remember that all things are unstable. In this, you may find encouragement in your search for the way. So it would seem that we're all in the right place. This talk is about death, giving yourself a big field, and arriving at something ephemeral.

[05:24]

In recent months, I lost a friend, a student of mine. Her death was by suicide. For the 20 years of most of our friendship, I was her yoga coach. And over that time, I became her confidant. as her illness slowly claimed its grip on her body and her mind. And when her ability to be ambulatory became compromised, my good health and happy life were too much to bear, and her resentment and self-distancing drove us apart. It took two days for her to die after ingesting the overdose of drugs. During those two days, I sat beside her as she lay in the hospital bed.

[06:36]

In the final hours, I sang to her. This means, a translation of it is, O Lord of the three worlds, let me be like the cucumber that when ripe falls from the vine without effort. Shortly thereafter, she stopped breathing. I stayed with her for another four hours, and I left to go home. I wish Kathy were still breathing.

[07:41]

She came here once to Tassajara when Dario and I were offering a yoga and Zen retreat. I believe she would have loved to hear about the painted lady butterflies that are here right now. And how, as our group from the DC started to ride in from Jamesburg toward Tassajara, we encountered an air parade of dancing and fluttering butterflies. Many people in the Zen do tonight have long experience with practice and Zen study, but there may be some of you who don't, who are guests and are dipping your toe into this world. So you may or may not know that

[08:50]

This monastery was founded by a Japanese immigrant named Chandru Suzuki. And before he died, he passed authority to teach the Dharma, the teachings, the truth, to his son Hoitsu, who is Japanese, who resides in Japan most of the time, and to a couple of Americans too. Powitsu transmitted the Dharma to Sojin Mel Weitzman, and Sojin has given transmission to many men and women, among them Daryu, who then transmitted it to me. So Sojin is kind of like a grandfather for me. He's been an abbot at San Francisco Zen Center, and he's the founder of the Center in Berkeley. In the preface to Dario's book, 49 Fingers, which is a collection of modern American koans, Sojon says, a problem can be a treasure if you know how to work with it.

[10:04]

In his 80s now, he has been practicing a long time, even back when Suzuki Roshi was alive. I believe his wisdom He's also been known to say, stay in one place and go deep. Both teachings are koans or statements that elicit inquiry. How can a problem become a treasure? How does one go deep? Do you know about the ox-herding pictures? Maybe a few people do. Some people do. They are a pictorial way of conveying what Zen practice is about. There's a little girl and a great big ox.

[11:09]

I haven't in person spent much time around great big oxes, so I usually imagine a big cow. great big body, big, big brown eyes, and blonde eyelashes. I don't know why the blonde eyelashes. The ox, the cow, in the pictorial teachings represents the mind and the little girl, or if you prefer, a boy. The inquiry. So I've studied... quite a lot with my teacher with calligraphy brush to paint the story, these ten images that go with these different steps in Zen practice. The first one is just to be curious. And the second is in that curiosity to look.

[12:19]

And in the looking to see traces, footsteps of the ox, the mind. And then finally to see it. There it is. There's my mind. And then you're trying to catch it. Trying to catch that ox. And then to tame it. and then to play with it. By the time you get to the seventh image, the ox is tied up out back, and the girl's hanging out at Tassajara, looking out at the creek. Forgot all about the ox. In the eighth image, usually it's the picture of an Anso,

[13:21]

where the two have transcended separation, they're together. There's no separation. And then in the ninth, you don't see either of them. All you see is wilderness, is all that is, in all its perfection, in all its unbroken beauty. But it's not over yet. because as the girl becomes wise the boy becomes wise if you favor a boy in this story maybe he becomes a little old maybe he's skilled in some ways and then he takes that back down the hill back out of the mountains into the world to offer helping hands to support others the Bodhisattva way think I have this phrase quite right, but it came to my mind, on every head some rain must fall.

[14:39]

Or is it every life some rain must fall? I don't know. Or as Gary Roshi would remind his students, you're all going to die. So I've had some real difficult periods in my life. We all come to this practice in pain of some sort and I was dealing with a painful problem when I was last here in the fall of 2016 and the abiding teacher Leslie James gave me some turning words she said to me You can give yourself a bigger field. Immediately, I thought of the ox-roding pictures.

[15:43]

So when my problem became too tight, I gave my cow a bigger pasture to roam. I gave my mind that great big powerful ox. a bigger field. And when the problem would resurface, that cow would come right up close, bovine eyeball to human eye, as if to say, you poor girl, conveying the greatest compassion toward me. Remember a little earlier in this talk I said that Sojin often tells people to stay in one place and go deep? That's Sazen.

[16:50]

To stay with it. If you fall down, get up. If you fall off the Zafu, sit back down and find a comfortable position. Keep going. was in the right place for that. Right here. Right over there on that tent. Finally I had an awakening that I could give myself time. I didn't have to untangle the problem right away and be done. And then something amazing happened for me. I found I had this vast field and at its edges, beautiful wildflowers were growing and blooming. My problem had become a treasure.

[17:58]

Over time and with effort and patience, the problem I had has largely untangled. The future will unfold and we will see. No matter how much physical pain or mental or emotional problems, I am firmly in the school of every day above dirt is a good day. Old Zen Master Kazon writes, Buddha is supposed to have said that hearing and thinking about Buddhism is like standing outside the gate, but that Zazen is truly sitting down in comfort. Oman Shakyamuni said to Manjushri, our Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who's there to the left on the altar,

[19:10]

Manjushri, Manjushri, come in the gate. I picture a gate like the gate we have here at Tassajara, that beautiful structure that we passed through coming in. And the door opened. So Manjushri checked it out, and he replied to Shakyamuni, I don't see any inside or outside the gate. Was this a clever reply, Maja Sri offered? As with all koans, most koans, where is our role in this? Will you not accept the invitation from Shakyamuni?

[20:16]

Will you give yourself a bigger field? Will you give yourself more time? What treasure is here to be actualized? This morning during Zazen, the birdsong was so sweet and lovely. I could feel the movement of the air in the zendo. It was a cool breeze coming in from the windows over our heads, and it dropped down slowly across our faces, softly. We've entered the gate.

[21:23]

We're in the right place. I often think of a film that was a rare piece of footage of Suzuki Roshi teaching here and teaching about not feeling separate from the Blue Jays. So I brought a song to share with you, and I could read the lyrics, but it's pretty much impossible to not sing it.

[22:27]

So please forgive me. Birds flying high. You know how I feel. Sun in the sky. You know how I feel. Breeze drifting by. How I feel. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life. Fish in the sea. You know how I feel. River running free.

[23:32]

You know how I feel, blossom on the tree. You know how I feel, it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me. butterflies out in the sun you know what I mean butterflies out having fun you know what I mean to sleep in peace when day is done that's what I mean And this old world is a new world.

[24:39]

It's a bold world for me. Stars, when you shine, you know how I feel. And freedom is mine. And I know how I feel. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life. I don't always awaken and sing this song, but the truth of it goes deep. It's something available to us, always present in us, laying there awaiting our arrival. Some of you new to the practice might be thinking or saying, is this for me?

[25:44]

Suzuki Roshi was known to have said, we don't turn away anybody. So I'll close with this poem by Rumi. Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come. I'll add, enter the gate. Even if you have broken your vow a thousand times, come. Thank you for listening.

[27:05]

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