This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Young people, this is our first Sunday of the month, and we get to have young people join us for the first part of the talk, and then... they go off and have a program down in the garden or in the fields. So for the young people and for the old people too, can you feel your quiet body? What would that be, to sit there and just feel your quiet body, your quiet body mind? You can feel it from the inside out.

[01:04]

And it's always helpful to have a quiet body and a quiet body mind when you're going to be listening to something. That's helpful. So today in the garden, I heard, and in the fields, I heard you were going to do two projects. One is working in the children's garden and probably taking care of the plants and the soil and maybe digging around. I'm not exactly sure what you'll be doing. And the other half are going to be doing gleaning. Do you know what gleaning is? Okay. Well, gleaning is an ancient, ancient practice, gleaning. And what people used to do long, long ago when they harvested their fields was to leave the corners unharvested. They just left the corners. And then people who didn't have enough to eat and were hungry and poor were welcome to go to the corners of the fields and take whatever they needed for their own families.

[02:20]

And nowadays, it's a little bit different than that. What happens is sometimes when we're harvesting, some of the plants don't get taken to market, and they're left there. And unless we gather them up, they would be turned into the soil, put into the soil again. So you're going to go out and find those plants. It's like a treasure hunt almost. And those will be gathered up. And then they'll be given as a kind of secret gift because you don't know who will receive them this gift, but the food will go to feed hungry people. Hungry people right in our own backyards, really, people who are our neighbors and who we may not even know that they're hungry. And this food will go to the food bank, and then people can come and get that food.

[03:23]

So all over the world there are hungry people, and in certain countries right now many, many people are hungry. There is what's called a famine going on, a famine in a country called Somalia, and many, many millions of people don't have enough to eat. So today you're going to help people who are closer than that faraway country by gathering up food and bringing it to the food bank. Okay? So that's what gleaning is, kind of gathering up what's been left behind. So before you go off to do that, I wanted to tell you a story about another kind of, this is one of my favorite, favorite stories from when I was young, about a gift, kind of a secret gift, where something was done for another person and they didn't know who it was who was helping them. And you probably know this story. But hopefully you'll love to hear it again because stories get better every time you hear them, okay?

[04:32]

So this story, this is one of my absolute favorite stories, is called The Shoemaker and the Elves. Do you know that story, some of you? It's a good one, isn't it? So let's settle into our quiet body. You can grab that. And listen to the story, okay? Once upon a time, there was an old shoemaker. And this shoemaker had a wife. And they were very poor. And they didn't really have enough to eat or enough wood for their fire. And it was wintertime and cold. And they were hungry. And all the shoemaker had left was leather for one pair of shoes. That was all he had left. And he cut out the shoes. But he was so tired and so cold and so hungry, he decided, I'll just leave out the leather on my workbench and go to sleep.

[05:33]

And he and his wife had a piece of kind of old crusty dry bread and climbed under the covers because they didn't even have wood for their fire. Well, they woke up in the morning, and the shoemaker went to his workbench, And lo and behold, there wasn't just the leather laid out to be made into shoes, but a finished pair of shoes, and beautifully made. The stitches on that pair of shoes were just, they were so tiny, the teeniest, tiniest little stitches, just beautiful shoes. And the leather looked so, had been worked beautifully, so he immediately took the shoes, put them right in the shop window, And not too long after that, a noble lady who lived near the village was coming to town to do her shopping. She looked in the window and saw these beautiful shoes. She thought, oh, my goodness, those are lovely.

[06:36]

I'm going to go in and try them on. And she came into the shop, and they fit just perfectly. And she said, shoemaker, these are such beautiful shoes. I would like to buy them. how much they cost, and she said, oh, but they're worth far more than that, and she gave him double. So with that money, the shoemaker and his wife bought some food, some cheese and bread and potatoes and other good things and wood and more leather to make two pairs of shoes. And by the end of the day, he was so tired from shopping and making the fire and... taking care of things, he just laid out the leather again on his workbench, and he and his wife had a lovely little supper, climbed into bed, and went fast asleep, warm and toasty that night. Well, he came back to his workbench in the morning, and what do you think? There were two finished pairs of shoes, beautifully done.

[07:41]

teeny tiny stitches, little bows and buttons on the shoes, and in a style he had never seen before, quite creative, and just lovely. So he took those shoes, put them right in the shop window, and before he knew it, the bell was ringing on his shop, and other customers came in, and they bought those shoes right away. And he bought more leather, and the same thing happened. Night after night, he would put out the leather, And the shoes would be all finished in the morning. Well, he and his wife became very prosperous. They were very comfortable. They had enough food. They had enough money to save. And one morning after this had happened, the shoe maker and his wife were talking over breakfast. And they thought, this is so wonderful, this secret gift that somebody is giving us. Who could it possibly be who's helping us? And has helped us so much. It really saved our lives.

[08:41]

Let's wait up tonight and hide in the closet and wait to see if we can find out who it is. So the shoemaker and his wife did just that. They laid out the leather. And this time there was many pairs of shoes that they would lay out the leather for. And they hid inside this kind of big closet and they opened the door a little bit. And right about midnight, in the middle of the night, They heard a noise, and in through the door came a group of little elves. And they went right to work. They went scurrying over to the workbench, and two of them worked the scissors, and a couple of them threaded the needle, and they worked and worked, and they seemed very cheerful and enjoying their work, and they worked and worked for hours and finished up the shoes. But what they noticed, what the shoemaker and his wife noticed, was that they didn't have shoes on.

[09:43]

They were barefoot. It was cold in the workshop in the nighttime. And they didn't have warm clothes. They just wore kind of little shirts and little shorts. But they were cheerful. And they left when dawn came. All the elves ran out of the shop and left all the shoes sitting there beautifully. Well, that day, the shoemaker and his wife decided, let's do something to help these elves who have been helping us for so many months in such a wonderful way, secretly, not asking anything in return. And so that day, the elves were so little that the shoemaker's wife was able to knit little hats, little teeny tiny scarves, little mittens, and the shoemaker made all sorts of shoes, little tiny shoes and boots for the elves, and little pants and little jackets, because they were so tiny, they could make them really fast. And that night, they decided to hide again and see what was going to happen.

[10:51]

They didn't put out any leather. They didn't put any work out for the elves. They laid out the little outfits, each one, the shoes, the little pants and jackets and hats and sweaters and scarves and mittens. They laid them all out in a row. Well, at about midnight, the shoemaker and his wife heard something, and they could see out the crack of their closet. And in came the elves, dancing and pushing each other and laughing and very cheerful, even though they were shivering. And they got to the workbench. They couldn't believe their eyes. There were all these outfits for them. They started trying things on. They put hats on each other and they put on the mittens and they got their boots on and they danced and sang and did little jigs and laughed and went dancing out of the workshop, all warm and toasty. And they were never seen again.

[11:54]

They never came back to the shoemaker and his wife. But it didn't matter because the shoemaker and his wife were just fine. They had been taken care of so well that they were happy and protected and filled with well-being and loving kindness till the end of their days. And the two of them died the exact same day in their beds, quietly, many, many years after that. What? What? So that's the story of the shoemaker and the elves. And I wanted to ask you if any of you have ever received a present, a kind of secret present. Maybe you can't remember right now, but think about, did you ever receive something and you had no idea who gave it to you? Somebody or something that helped you and you didn't even know who to thank. Think about that. Okay, well, it's time for our little elves to go off to the garden.

[13:03]

Okay? Thank you very much for listening. So this practice of gleaning, we do have Marin Organics comes and does a gleaning here regularly. Other groups have done gleaning. We do gleaning. So if that's something you might want to participate in at Green Gulch, maybe let the office know and someone can let you know of the way to participate in that. I think one thing about gleaning nowadays is the corners of the fields are not left. In fact, it's private property and you're not... poor, and so forth are not allowed to come onto these fields. Big agriculture, big agribusiness fields you're not allowed to.

[14:06]

So there's a number of groups who do gleaning in the Salinas Valley and up here probably all over California there's groups that have taken up the practice of gleaning. So I wanted to talk today with you about faith, wholeheartedness, and faith in our practice. And as I was bowing just now, I realized that the story I was about to tell of the shoemaker and the elves, and a story about Suzuki Roshi, I realized, I don't know why I'm surprised, but that it's a very similar story. And it just encouraged me as I came in to the Zendo how similar they are.

[15:14]

So I'll get to the Suzuki Roshi story a little later. So there's... So much loss people that are near and dear to me have been experiencing, and also loss in these other 29,000 children the age of 0 to 5 in Somalia that have died in this famine so far. And the dire situation of... That country and other countries who do not have food security, and right in our own country, there are, as we know, families who do not have food security go to bed hungry. People, not just families, individuals. So we forget this. We often forget this as we go about our daily lives.

[16:19]

or avert from this. It's hard to see this. It's hard to allow this to come in, this information, these images. So there's this, you know, global calamities and then individual tragedies in our own homes, our own families, our own closer circle of friends and great loss. And we are the bereaved. All of us are bereaved. Bereaved is, the meaning of it is to be deprived of someone, to be deprived of those we love. To be bereaved. So yesterday was the day that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Hiroshima, Hiroshima.

[17:21]

And in years gone by, we've had a memorial service on that day. We didn't have it this year. But in thinking about that war and the wars that are going on now, what is it to be, as we often hear, a person of faith, a person who lives in faith, And the faith in Buddhism is different than faith in other religions, or as far as I know. I feel like I haven't deepened my understanding of many other religions, but the difference that I do know of is that in some religions it's faith in God, faith in something, the divine, faith in providence, faith in something that's working kind of outside that we can look to, even though we don't understand, we can have faith that someone understands, some feeling like that.

[18:42]

And I think in Buddha's teaching, the faith is not faith in something outside. It's in faith in our nature. So there's a verse that's at the beginning of ceremonies, many different ceremonies, which goes like this, invoking the presence of and compassion of our ancestors. In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. So it's this faith. In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. In faith that we are awakened. And some of you might say, well, wait a minute, I'm not awakened. I'm not Buddha. I'm just struggling along with my life and my difficulties and my delusions and confusion.

[19:48]

I don't understand what that's talking about. In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. So faith, the Sanskrit for the word faith is the word shraddha, shraddha. And the two part, the last part, the shraddha, the da part, means to support or to hold. And the shrad part means to be trustful, to have conviction, to have confidence, to be steadfast. So nothing in that, in those, is about something outside of or putting our faith in something. It's... this practice of steadfastness, this practice of trust, this practice of being, abiding in this moment with confidence.

[21:04]

And it also means, this shraddha means to put one's heart into something. It's connected with heart, wholeheartedness. So faith in this teaching is to put your whole heart into your life, or this moment. And etymologically, it's connected, this shraddha is connected with the word in the Romance languages of heart and creed, cuore, corazon. heart and shraddha are connected. So this faith as heart, having the heart for this life, and being wholehearted in each action, this is what we're talking about when we say faith, invoking the presence and compassion.

[22:15]

of our ancestors in faith that we are Buddha, in a wholehearted heart, putting our heart into it, that we are Buddha or awakened or partake of or are awakened nature, that our nature is not separate from awakened nature. Even with our confusion, and our aversion and our delusions and strange ideas about the way things are. So shraddha is an act of, you can think of it as an act of sustaining confidence and remaining steadfast. And supporting trust, being trustworthy and supporting trust, living like that is this shraddha or this faith.

[23:29]

And wholeheartedly taking up our life. So this story that I wanted to tell... About Suzuki Roshi, you know, thinking of the dropping of the atomic bomb yesterday, 60-some years ago, right? 66 years ago. 66 years ago. And Nagasaki, I guess, on the 8th. So this is a story about Suzuki Roshi during the war. So there's a teaching that we should, or that we are, not that we should, but that we are sustained from within, that we are supported to practice our way, to practice Buddha's way.

[24:33]

And this Suzuki Roshi, during the war, noticed that many of the priests, there are many priests in Japan, There wasn't enough to eat. He was also very hungry during the war. And many priests got jobs doing other kinds of things, then taking care of their temples in order to supplement their families and help their families. And Suzuki Roshi felt, if this is true, if the teaching is true, then I will completely live out this life of the Dharma and continue teaching, taking care of the temple, and we'll see. Like a kind of mountain-abiding, sustaining, confident that if he was practicing the Dharma, if the wheel of Dharma was turning, then the material wheel or the wheel of nutrition or nourishment or sustenance

[25:41]

will turn as well. The two wheels are with cogs. They turn each other. And if his Dharma, if his teaching was not true, then the other wheel would not turn as well. So that's what he did during the war. And he made a garden and turned some of the... temple grounds into a garden and he tilled the soil and he brought in manure and he planted and some of his members of the temple helped him and he planted sweet potatoes and daikon and other crops and one day one of his the members of his temple came and was going to help him cook a meal help the family and and she opened the rice box, which was a rather big rice box, and there was like a handful of rice at the bottom of the box.

[26:44]

He had no rice. And she was appalled that the Suzuki Roshi didn't have really enough rice to feed the family. So she went back home, and she didn't have that much rice either, but she did have a handful, and she brought and put a handful into his rice box, and she let everybody know all the... members of the temple, all the danka, the lay practitioners who lived and related to that temple, that Suzuki Roshi didn't have enough to eat, didn't have rice, and they brought rice, and everybody put some in, and pretty soon his rice box was filled. And then people who didn't have enough food heard that Suzuki Roshi's rice box was filled. And so they went and asked for food, and he gave away the food. And then people heard he didn't have rice, and they gave rice. So this wonderful story of who's giving and who's receiving and this confidence and faith in our interconnectedness with all beings.

[28:03]

lived out in this way, which is, I said, when I was bowing, I thought, oh, it's the same story. I had this story of the shoemaker and the elves, and then here's Suzuki Roshi, who just doing his work down to the last, you know, crust of bread, down to the last handful of rice, and just continuing his work. And the elves, the nanka, you know, the lay followers and members of... His temple noticed this and brought rice. He maybe knew them or didn't know them, but it's the same feeling. We help one another. It matters to help one another. And then you receive. Somebody receives, but that somebody is you. And someone gives, which is you, and giving and receiving in this dance of interconnected life, which is our life.

[29:10]

This wholehearted dance of giving and receiving that we participate in, can participate in. There's nothing stopping us. We do participate in this, whether we know this or not. So in this chant about the wheel of Dharma and the wheel of nourishment, it says, may the wheel of Dharma and the wheel of nourishment forever turn in this temple. May this temple be protected from, this isn't the exact words, but may this temple be protected from famine and calamity and fire. And, you know, may we be protected. And one might think as we're chanting this, the feeling is we need outside help.

[30:17]

We need somebody to make sure that we're protected. We, you know, are looking for help outside. And in commenting on this, Suzuki Roshi comes back to, it may sound that way. It may sound that way that we're asking for somebody outside to make sure we're all protected from these calamities and so forth. But Suzuki Roshi says this isn't our spirit. The spirit is when we recite this dedication, when we recite the teachings, when we recite the poems of the teachings and the different teachings, we recite it with the spirit of... non-duality, with the spirit of that we are connected, that we aren't over here looking for help from outside. We recite it with this spirit that we're wholeheartedly one heart, that we're a whole heart together.

[31:31]

And if we have this other feeling of grasping, after something or yes we want help and we we receive help but that help is not help for us alone that help is to be able to continue this dance of giving and receiving it's not a scarcity mode it's not okay now we got our help we've got it and it's ours it's to support us for another day to be able to give and receive and give and receive in one wholehearted life. And he goes on, Suzuki Hiroshi goes on to say, if that kind of feeling is always with us, we will be supported. That way of practicing is shraddha, is being grounded with confidence, with wholeheartedness.

[32:47]

Invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors in faith that we are Buddha, We enter Buddha's way. This is how you enter Buddha's way, because we are Buddha. And I want to say a little bit about this we are Buddha, or in faith that we are Buddha, because we can be confused about what that is. And... So there's a teaching in the old wisdom school that says, those who see Dharma, those who see the teaching, see me. This is the Buddha speaking. Those who see the Dharma see me. Those who see the Dharma see dependently co-arisen life. The Dharma, the teaching of all things, are dependent on everything else.

[33:58]

and co-dependently arise interdependentness. So those who see the co-dependent arising of everything see Dharma, see how things work, see how reality is. Those who see Dharma see me, said the Buddha. So those who see interdependent, dependently co-arisen life see me. And then one addition to this kind of circle is that dependently co-arisen, each thing that is dependently co-arisen does not have a separateness or a separate abiding self, is empty. So those who see this dependence, which is empty, see Dharma.

[34:59]

Those who see Dharma see me. says the Buddha, invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors in faith that we are Buddha, in faith that we are dependently co-arising, interdependent life. We enter Buddha's way. More and more having this be in the forefront of our minds, in the forefront of our hearts. And the feeling of being supported from within. But it's really within and without. I mean, when we talk about dependently co-arisen, wholehearted life, where is the within and where is the without? So this feeling of wholeheartedness and doing things with heart, we can find a relaxed calmness in that.

[36:30]

And an acceptance of our life, whatever comes, however bereaved we are, to live within that and find our practice within that with a strong, abiding conviction, this faith, this shraddha. And this helps everybody and everyone helps us in this. There's something that keeps... I actually dreamt about this last night, so I think I have to bring it up, and I'm not sure what it has to do with.

[37:39]

We'll see when I bring it up, if it has to do with what I've been talking about. So we're thick in the baseball season right now, and I happen to be watching the documentary Baseball by Ken Burns, and we got to the place where he... describes the throwing of the World Series game by the White Sox in 1919, I think it was. And I had heard about this, and I had some views about that. But this was a little more background about how that happened. So this particular team was very, very underpaid, really underpaid. And, in fact, the owner was rather parsimonious, it sounded like, and he made them pay for and launder their own uniforms. And they kind of decided they weren't going to, you know, kind of in protest.

[38:43]

They didn't launder them for a long time. And they were then nicknamed the black socks, I guess, because their socks were so dirty in their uniforms. So... So these are the conditions. You know, there are these conditions. It didn't come out of nowhere. And there was a lot of gambling on games at this time. And someone was contacted by a gambler and agreed and got some of his fellow, eight, I guess, fellow baseball players to throw the game. And one of them... Joe Jackson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was one of the greatest hitters ever. And kind of an uneducated person. He was a fantastic baseball player, but farm boy who hadn't had much education. And he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. He really wanted to just play.

[39:44]

And he... he was backing out, and he was visited by these gamblers at his hotel room the night before, I guess, the last game. And they threatened his wife that they would do something bad to her unless he went through with it. So these are all these conditions that I didn't know, you know, before. And so they made... they... out of... perceived injustice, they were going to, you know, get paid big time for doing this and to get back at their own, whatever it was, whatever the conditions were that made it a fertile ground for this to happen, this is something I didn't know about. And, you know, some people understood from the first game that something was amiss.

[40:50]

These players were too good to make these kinds of mistakes and fumbles. And then, you know, it came out at the end. And they were not convicted in a civil court or anything, but they were thrown out of the game never to play again. And these heroes, especially Shoeless Joe Jackson, was, you know, a hero for thousands, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people and children. And there's this story where he was seen, and this crowd followed him, and this little boy said, Tell us it ain't so, Joe. You know that phrase? I had heard that. Tell us it ain't so, Joe. And Joe Jackson just kept walking away and ended up... I think later owning a liquor store someplace and just, you know, never playing again or playing for a little bit kind of on the sly in a minor team. So I had this very strong feeling that how many times do we cut corners not for gleaning but to get something for us, get something...

[42:08]

get back at somebody by doing something and get something for ourself, because we're not treated right, and then we get away with it or we don't get away with it. But the thinking, when you look at it, when you study it, it wasn't all that different from other ways that people, you know, get back at people they're mad at. And they got caught, you know. So just turning in my own mind the actions, you know, born of conditions. Depending on these conditions, these actions come to be.

[43:09]

This is our life. And the nature of that, the nature of whether the actions are perceived as wholesome or unwholesome, if you study how it came to be, you will see Dharma. Not that the action itself is condoned. How it came to be, depending on this, this came to be. You can see. dharma in action. The nature of it is where the dharma is. So, in finishing that story, it seems tangential right now, but I felt this heart connection with these players who knew not what they did, and didn't have, you know, they were that very narrow view of the consequences of their action in their own hearts and for the hearts of so many people.

[44:18]

Say it isn't so. So in our own lives, you know, think about things we've said or done and someone might have said to you, say it isn't so. You know, you didn't really do that, did you? I didn't really say that, did I? I didn't really act that way, did I? Say it isn't so, and that we did. And, you know, the turning of that is putting our heart into Whatever it is that we do, all our actions of body, speech, and mind, study them, see the nature of those actions, and have confidence that we are not apart from the nature of things. So,

[45:34]

I want to end with a poem. This is, I find, a very comforting poem, especially right now when a number of people I know are facing illness and death of loved ones. And this is called The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry. When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water and I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

[46:39]

I'm going to read it one more time. The Peace of Wild Things. When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light for a time. I rest in the grace of the world and am free. Thank you very much.

[47:58]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:07]

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