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. Good evening. My name... My name is Greg Fane and... I'm the Tanto, or Head of Practice, here at Tassahara Zen Mountain Center. And my practice is gratitude. I'd like to begin by thanking and acknowledging my teacher, Sojin Malweitzman Roshi, the old Buddha of the East Bay. He just turned 89. Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center.

[01:01]

And to say that my talk is just to encourage you in your practice. I have an agenda, that's it. So tonight, tonight I would like to bring up some words of one of our venerable teachers. One of those old venerables from back in Tang Dynasty China that you read about in the koans. His name was Zhao Zhou. Zhao Zhou Zongshen. Some words of his that I found inspiring. Talk about those words a little bit. And see can I... relate them to practice Zen I'm experiencing right now in this valley.

[02:09]

Wish me luck. And yeah, my own experience. So the source for this is from a wonderful book called The Roaring Stream, which is kind of a Zen primer. a whole bunch of teachings from a whole bunch of different teachers put together by Nelson Foster and Jack Shoemaker. And they didn't obviously write any of these teachings. They just collected it. And it's a pretty hefty tome. It's wonderful to just like peruse. And so I've been doing some of that. And Nelson and Jack, they said, you know, we're just editing this. And then they admit freely that they've taken liberties with translations here and there. But they didn't like stuff. They didn't feel like, well, it feels a little better. So they're very upfront about that.

[03:13]

And I was inspired by that. So I've taken some liberties of my own. For example, reading it, the word master kept coming up. Master, master, master, master. So over that word. Yeah, I think, you know, I think I'm ready to move beyond that word. This was first brought to my attention in this Zendo, I think it was two years ago, in a Dharma talk that Laurie Sanaki gave. I thought, yeah, that makes sense. And I don't have to use that word. And I'm not going to. In fact, we could easily go through our entire liturgy and just substitute the word teacher every time and boom, easy, easy. But I'm not necessarily pushing for that as just my own practice.

[04:17]

I'm over that word. So teacher, yeah. Zhaozhou. Great teacher. I think he shows up in more koans in different koan collections than any other Zen teacher. He lived from 778 to 897 of the common era, which means he lived to be 119 years old if you're doing the math. He's sometimes known as the Zen Methuselah. I believe that it's accurate that the Chinese at that time were very accurate record keepers. So if they say that's when he was born and when he died, I believe it. It's not that unusual. I mean, it's pretty unusual to live that long, but it has happened. It has happened. And they say that he didn't even start preaching the Dharma until he was 80. And then he had an illustrious career.

[05:24]

They also said that when he spoke, light played around his lips. Wow. So, I don't know. Maybe I was thinking about Sojourner Roshi's 89th birthday. Yeah. A lot of affection there. So, what I want to share with you is an excerpt from a sermon that is recorded in the record of Zhaozhou, the collected teachings that his students wrote down. This is just a short excerpt from a sermon of his. After such a lengthy introduction, such a short passage, Zhaozhou said, I hold up a blade of grass to make use of the golden-bodied Buddha, 16 feet high.

[06:30]

And I hold up a golden-bodied Buddha, 16 feet high, to make use of the blade of grass. The Buddha is distress, and distress is the Buddha. There was a monk present who said, I wonder whose distress is the Buddha? The teacher replied, The Buddha distresses herself for the sake of all other people. The monk asked, How can she get rid of it? The teacher said, Why should she get rid of it? So, I hold up a single blade of grass to make use of the 16-foot golden-bodied Buddha.

[07:39]

And I hold up the 16-foot golden-bodied Buddha to make use of the single blade of grass. What is the single blade of grass? In... Zen poetry in imagery, the grass, weeds, it represents, you know, kind of undesirable stuff that you got to get through, you know? Distractions, problems. Yeah, so grass is like weeds, like stuff that pops up and like, where did that come from? Oh, no. And then the 16-foot golden body Buddha is... Right? A 16-foot golden body Buddha. That's it, right? That's what we're going for. I want to be that. Do that, you know? Well, how do I make use of the 16-foot golden body Buddha?

[08:43]

I hold up a single blade of grass. And how do I make use of the single blade of grass? I hold up the 16-foot golden-bodied Buddha. In other words, he's talking about the sacred and the mundane, the extraordinary and the ordinary. You might think that in religion we should be like shooting for the 16-foot golden-bodied Buddha, right? That's where it's at. We should be working on becoming maybe not 16 foot, maybe not golden body, but surely, you know, Buddha, right? And kind of perfect and like get rid of all those weeds, those problems, right? I like the way the translation says, make use of, because Zen is a religion of action.

[09:50]

How do we enact the 16-foot golden body Buddha? Why? Right here. With my everyday problems. With the weeds. Distress is the Buddha and Buddha is the distress. I was cooking in the early 90s in a very hip bistro in Portland, Oregon. For a while there, it was the happening place to be is downtown Portland and there were people lined out the door night after night. I worked for this chef. I was a line cook. My chef, I loved him. I loved that guy. He was so great. He was so intense. He made such good food. And the people are, you know, they're lining up.

[10:57]

Everybody wants to be in this place. Everybody wants to be there. It's the place to be right now. You know, and the tickets are getting fired. Boom, boom, boom. He's like, I'm doing my best to support him. I can't keep up with him. The tickets keep coming. And he's like, I'm in the weeds. I'm in the weeds. You know, just, just. You know, another way of saying I'm in the weeds might have been like, I am completely actualized as a chef on the cutting edge of the Northwest culinary scene in the hippest restaurant in Portland right now. Yes. And I'm suffering. I'm in hell. I'm in the weeds. But, you know, this is it.

[11:58]

Boom. There's the 16-foot golden body Buddha. It's right there. So this is a good story for guest season. Thank you. Speaking of cooking, A lot of you are probably already familiar with this image from Ehi Dogen's instructions to the cook, right? If you've been in the kitchen, if you've been doing kitchen practice period, you may recall Dogen says, pick up, he doesn't say a blade of grass because he's talking to the head cook. He's giving instructions to the head cook, the tenzo we call, the tenzo. He says, pick up a single vegetable leaf and make it into a 16-foot goldmari Buddha. And pick up the 16-foot goldmari Buddha and make it into a single vegetable leaf.

[13:02]

Yeah, that's in Tenzo Kyokun. You could look it up. Because he's talking to the cook. I always imagine it as charred. I don't know, I like charred. Yeah, but it's very mundane. Or you could say, pick up a pillowcase and make it into a 16-foot golden body Buddha. Or a flat tire. Or a compass bucket. Or whatever. An argument. Pick up a difficult conversation with somebody on your crew and make it into a 16-foot golden body Buddha. Or, as Chau Chau says, I make use of. I make use of. That's where I enter practice. Distress is the Buddha, and Buddha is distress. Oh.

[14:07]

Then I wanted to share a little bit from a book that's very dear to me, and, well, it's very dear to my teacher, Sojourner Roshi, The Tiger's Cave. This is from 1964. The bulk of the book is these sermons about the Heart Sutra by a 20th century Japanese abbot, Abbot Obora. I can't tell you anything else about him, except he must have been a really sweet guy. I wish I could have met him. And I really love these sermons. I really love Abbot Obora's commentary on the Heart Sutra, their comments. Commentary on the Harsuja, the thing that we chant every day in our Zen liturgy. So, this is in the same vein. Abbot Obora says, passions are the Bodhi. In his discourses at Eihei Temple, Zen Master Dogen says, when the clay is plentiful, the Buddha is big.

[15:15]

By clay, He means the raw passions, the mental operations in the mind within us, which seeth and rage unbridled. These are the clay. And the more abundant it is, the greater the Buddha into which it comes to be molded. The stronger the force of attachment, the greater the Buddha which is made. In the Vimalakirti Sutra is the phrase, In the soil of the high meadows, the lotus never grows. In base slime and mire does the lotus grow. These are the words of Vimalakirti expressing the truth that the passions are the bodhi. He is saying that the passions are the bodhi, that birth and death is nirvana. The lotus, of course, is the sense of having entered into faith, of having realization. On the high ground, we cannot find that lotus-like state of Satori.

[16:21]

The lotus is a beautiful flower and surely should grow in the dry, clean soil. But as a matter of fact, it does not grow dry in the pure soil of the meadow. The lotus grows in the icky, sticky, stinky mud. Isn't that right? So... I said I wanted to talk about how I'm experiencing this teaching. Say something about my own distress. How the Greg that's coming forward, being experienced right now, is like very, very different from the Greg I might have imagined two months ago.

[17:26]

So as many of you know, my best friend died on June 10th. And I left Tassajara after having a phone call with him on June 4th. My friend Jordan said, can you come? I said, yes. And an hour later, I was on the stage. Thank you, Carolyn. Just like that. And then I was with him for six days, and he died on the 10th. And I just came back from San Francisco with Linda yesterday, so I went up there for some meetings. That was the first time I'd been back. And it was really weird. I hadn't really thought about it, but when I go to San Francisco, I always hang out with Jordan. But that's not what's happening.

[18:29]

So, kind of like walking down the stairs and you expect another step and then... Yeah. So... I've been practicing with, you know, unusual states of mind. Depression is unusual for me. It's a novelty. So I really don't know how to, you know, I'm getting some experience in that. I'm learning how to deal with that, how to practice with that. So, yeah, that's what's happening. just doing my best to meet it with a mind of not knowing. Like I'm always telling people to stay present for whatever arises.

[19:34]

I don't think there's any use in trying to avert from what's happening. On the contrary, I think the best use is to turn towards what's actually happening. You know, I could say, well, my summer has been shot to smithereens, which is true. But on the other hand, compared to Jordan, I got it pretty good. He only got to be married to his beautiful bride for three days. And he never got to meet his grandchild. His daughter-in-law is pregnant. at his deathbed. And I know that Jordan would have been a world-class grandpa material. He would have been a world-class grandpa. So that's super sad. It was...

[20:50]

very much a sangha event and after Jordan died he bathed his body and dressed him in his robes right there in his apartment and people came by and sat with the body for a day and then that was on Sunday and on Monday late morning the people from Pacific Internment came They got the body, and all of City Center was there, the entire sangha. I don't know what they were doing about, it was Monday, I don't know what they were doing about lunch, because everybody, everybody was there on the sidewalk. When we finally came out, and they put the body in the gurney, put it in the hearse, and everyone was chanting the emmejuku kanangyo, So this summer, there's a lot of interest, a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of people taking up really important work studying racial and social justice as Buddhadharma.

[22:22]

There are five groups currently. There's the Cultural Awareness and Inclusivity Group, There is the book club where we are reading Awakening Together by Larry Yang. There's a group that is doing unpacking whiteness work. There is a women's group studying the sacred feminine. And there's a men's group unpacking patriarchy. There's a bunch of other groups too, but those are five, five that I've counted that are directly related to. studying racial and social justice as Buddha Dharma, and studying how we internalize patriarchy, being a Zen person, I think of study as what's going on in the body, what's happening in the body.

[23:24]

So there I was, finally, Julia and I and Paul Howler we were like behind the people with the body everyone else was on the sidewalk we come out, we're chanting right there so happens that was when my body chose to start crying really hard and all of a sudden I was just really crying and my body turned like this It's not like I had the thought, oh, I'm a manly man, I can't let them see me crying. No, I did not have that thought. However, it's so internalized that even I noticed myself doing it. And I just, my whole body turned. I literally, I was standing downhill a little bit on Page Street from the bulk of the people.

[24:27]

And I literally... turned my back on my sangha while I was crying. And I was like, wow. I was aware of it as I was doing it. And then my sister, Lien, a Dharma sister that I've been practicing with for about 20 years, she came up behind me and started comforting me. So that's an example. Yeah, I really want to study that because it's not healthy to not be able to cry. It's not healthy for men to not be able to cry, to somehow be ashamed of it, or even like, you know, I don't think I was ashamed of it, but it's just like, it was so internalized. I watched that, my whole body just turned. So, that's what was happening.

[25:32]

The thing I've been saying in practice discussion for pretty much the whole summer, before any of this happened, I've been saying it all summer long. Plenty of you have heard me say this. In the practice discussion room, on the altar in there, is a beautiful Avalokiteshvara as Kuan Yin, Kanzeon. She is the bodhisattva of infinite mercy. She is the regardor of the cries of the world. There's another one on this altar. Actually, the one in my practice discussion room is very like the one on the altar. It just so happens when they found the nicer one, that one got displaced, so now it's in my practice discussion room. So it looks a lot like it. It's the same standing on this dragon. Oh, what does the dragon represent? The passions. That's right.

[26:33]

All this energy. And Kaseon, the thing I'm always telling people, she says, whatever version of you shows up, I'm good with that. However you show up, I'm cool with that. That's okay. That's okay. So I want to take my own advice. The monk asked, how can she get rid of it? The teacher said, why should she get rid of it? Why should she get rid of it? This is where we wake up. This is where we We meet our life. I'm done. That's all I had to say tonight.

[27:39]

There's time for a couple of questions or so, or it's kind of warm. Just saying. Hot summer night, Tassajara, crickets are chirping. Haven't heard any Western screech owls yet. Heard them last night. Oh, there's a question. Happy birthday. Oh. Gracias. Thank you very much. Yes, it's my birthday. I'm this many. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, I thank you all for your attention. I thank you all for your practice. Wait a minute.

[28:46]

You reminded me of something. This was not rehearsed. Really. You did remind me of something. I wasn't going to talk about my birthday. I think I talked about myself plenty. But I forgot. I was... Okay, I have a couple of birthday wishes. I have two. Okay? The first is, please follow the schedule. Yes, I would say that because I'm the tanto. But when I say follow the schedule, I don't mean like should. I don't mean like make yourself. I don't mean like do it because the tanto said so. I mean take refuge in the schedule. In practice period, we say at the beginning of seshin, the eno reads the seshin admonitions, and he says, harmonize with the schedule and thus drop body and mind. So taking refuge in the schedule, take refuge in each other, support each other.

[29:54]

Okay? Summer practice is hard. It is. It's hard. support each other, encourage each other, rest when you need to, spend a lot of time in the creek, and drink a lot of water. Okay? And my second birthday wish is in honor of great teacher Zenke Blanche Hartman. After I finally shut my mouth, we're going to chant the Bodhisattva vows. And when we chant the Bodhisattva vows, Blanche used to tell us, please put less emphasis on I and more emphasis on vow. So we chant, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Okay, not I vow to save them. I'm saying that the way Blanche used to say it. Okay?

[30:55]

Good night and Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge 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 sfzc.org and click Giving.

[31:28]

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