This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. It's so nice to see you here today. old friends and new ones, and my friends online of the present and future. My name is Jiryu. I'm the abbot here at Green Gulch. And I'm sorry that it's so cold. This morning, I feel inappropriately responsible for everyone's experience of the temple.

[01:07]

We're doing our best, you know. But it's freezing. But it's nice and warm in here together. Side by side, breathing out. And breathing in. Remembering that we're alive and that we don't know what that is and that it's open and bright and together. So I don't know if all of you know the theme already of today's talk. I think that the theme... Part of what the point of me talking on this day is to celebrate this big milestone for San Francisco Zen Center, which is the release of a new book by our founder, Shinryu Suzuki Roshi.

[02:21]

So it's been over 20 years since there was a new book by our late founder. You might say, how can a deceased priest write a new book? But he is a powerful, powerful teacher. You know, while Suzuki Roshi was here in the San Francisco Bay Area teaching from, I guess, 1959 to 1971, he taught many things, you know, he was constantly teaching and talking formally and informally and Some of what he said was recorded in part because of the foresight and wisdom of one of his early students, Marion Derby, who said, could we record these things that you're saying? And that created the basis for this archive of his teaching, which then over the years has blossomed in a couple of books. And this is the latest one.

[03:24]

There's still a mountain of archive there that's... ready to be mined for more of these jewels to be brought forth. So, hooray. This book has been very close to my heart, which those of you who know me know very well, because I mostly talk about nothing else for the last seven years or so. I started this project in 2018 at the invitation of our late teacher Sojin Mel Weitzman, who was himself a disciple of Suzuki Roshi and had sort of squirreled away various bits and pieces of Suzuki Roshi's teaching that had spoken to him and that he hoped one day could make a new book. So I was invited at some point to help organize and support him in that project. And then when he died in 2021, I sort of carried the torch to this project.

[04:28]

to this moment. It's a beautiful... This calligraphy here is by our good friend Kaz Tanahashi, also a friend of Suzuki Roshi and great artist. It's the character for Enjoy, or Becoming Yourself. Just to sit. What's our zazen instruction? How do we do this meditation practice? Suzuki Roshi says, well... You sit down, care for your posture and your breathing, and then you are just yourself. And that includes everything and is beyond anything that you know. What a relief, what joy. So we enjoy just being ourself. So this really is a tremendous book. And the... You know, like all of Suzuki Roshi's teaching, each line is like bottomlessly deep.

[05:29]

So Norman Fisher was kind enough to join me on Tuesday for an event along with Ruth Ozeki. We did an online event celebrating the book. And he said this wonderful thing to someone who expressed... that as much as they needed and longed for the kind of ground and clarity that meditation could maybe offer in this world of confusion and suffering, they weren't really able to settle in meditation. And so they couldn't really find that center that they knew they needed. And Norman said, oh, well, when you feel that way, you just read one line from becoming yourself and And that's going to do as much for you as an hour of Zazen meditation. I thought, wow, Norman. What a salesman.

[06:31]

This book, I mean, think of how many hours of meditation credit then you get. Just if each line is worth an hour and then you can endlessly renew it, you know, because that's what people say also about Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. We read it, you know, throughout. our lifetime of practice, and every time there's something new, there's some depth in these simple, straightforward teachings. So anyway, I've been sort of busy this week celebrating the book with people, and it's nice to come home to Green Gulch. where we've had really a tremendous week.

[07:34]

Our water pipes burst yesterday. It's not so unusual, but it's also kind of tremendous. So on Tuesday, I'd say, you know, this book came out and this is like a big milestone for Zen Center the last 20 years. But then on Wednesday, I was sharing with some Dharma friends that I think maybe what happened on Wednesday is maybe one of the milestone events in the 50 years plus that Green Gulch has been here. So early on Wednesday morning in the fog, the residents here gathered in this hall for a private ceremony of farewell. to our beloved elder teachers. Attention, Brad Anderson Roshi and Agent Linda Ruth Cutts and Steve Weintraub and Rusa Chu.

[08:41]

We said goodbye to them in this hall. And then a little while later, a few hours later, they had driven away following their moving truck to Enso Village, the San Francisco Zen Center Senior Living facility where they've relocated. Each of them has many decades of residential practice here at Green Gulch, like more than 50, a lifetime of supporting this temple, these great kind of pillars of the temple. Linda, in fact, some of you maybe heard her Dharma talk reflecting, kind of looking to this moment. She came, I think, in 1972 with the first five people from Zen Center to kind of like try to make a temple here. I think they did okay. So tremendous debt of gratitude to them. And Reb, of course, you know, has been a real...

[09:53]

center of gravity for the teaching for this community for a very long time. And even though many of you may not know Steve and Ruth so well, for those of us close in, they've been an incredible resource of wisdom and love and teaching. So, you know, I'm pretty sure that they'll have a good time at Enso Village. You can wake up whenever you want. And... do whatever you want. I'm actually kind of like, it's not a bad thing. And talking with some of the other elders who have located there, it really is a wonderful place and they're enjoying their life, they're flourishing in this chapter of their life. So I wish that for our elders and trust that that will be so. And that they'll continue to come by whenever we can get them to give teachings and lead sishins and things.

[11:07]

So we will see them around. And still, it's a kind of earthquake for us at Gringo. Enough to break the pipes anyway. I had the feeling like, you know, we were all sobbing on Wednesday morning, and I think the water pipes were like, oh, this is what we don't need to contain. I just joined the waterworks. So this grief and gratitude, you know, so intimately entwined. And then the maintenance... crew is there right away with their walkie-talkies and their shovels, taking good care of what's broken. This is our Zen practice. The pipes break. We drop what we're doing and take good care. The water pipes, our hearts break.

[12:09]

We drop what we're doing and take good care of our hearts, our breath, each other, moment after moment. There's never anything else to do. And we always have what we need to do it. No gap in our practice, just this welcoming and taking care. Now it's a pipe, now it's a heart. So I came across these words from our Soto Zen founder in Japan, Dogen Zenji, and I shared them in the hall on Wednesday. He was reflecting in 12-something on comings and goings and said, yesterday there was a leaving and entering of inhale and exhale.

[13:14]

This morning there is this leaving and entering. touched me the way that this breath right now flowing out as a kind of goodbye and flowing in as a kind of hello, welcome. Was it one breath? Was it 50 years? Breathing out, saying goodbye, letting go of anything and everything, and breathing in, welcoming, saying hello to what's here, ungraspable, bright,

[14:19]

So we take care of all of this in the same way. You know, we're sort of one trick ponies in Zen practice. Breathing out and breathing in. Letting go and welcoming. There's a new book you may have heard of called Becoming Yourself. And in it, many amazing things happen. including an instruction on breath that I'd like to share. So how do we take care of the goings and comings? So our posture, Suzuki Roshi says, if your back is not straight, it is impossible to have good, deep breathing.

[15:36]

Good breathing means smooth, deep breathing. It should be calm and it should be strong. When you have good posture, Your breath can be very smooth and deep. It should reach the bottom of your belly. Breathing does not actually reach the bottom of your belly. It comes to the bottom of your lungs and not any lower. But the feeling should be of it reaching the bottom of your belly. Breathing all the way out in this way. Supporting with this upright spine and open, open body. This capacity, this structure to hold whatever comes and whatever goes.

[16:41]

Breathing all the way out, all the way in. In the first chapter of Becoming Yourself, there's this wonderful... teaching which some of you have heard about sharing the feeling, sharing the feeling that our Zen practice is about sharing the feeling that we have of being alive, sharing in the feeling that life is offering to us every moment with whatever situation that we're in, with people and trees and malls. So he says, you know, when we're in the woods and we really share in that feeling, we appreciate the feeling of being in the woods, then that's our meditation practice. And so the same here, you know, when we, how do we feel, share in the feeling of being in this room? Now, what is that to share my life feeling with the room and each other and then share in the feeling?

[17:52]

that everything is offering to us, this profound intimacy. Becoming one, you know, sounds dramatic, but it's just this intimacy. We're sharing the feeling of where we are. And he says, if we haven't said goodbye to whatever was here a minute ago, it's going to be really hard to share the feeling of what's here now. So, you know, we talk about clearing our mind. We talk about letting go The only reason we do that is because we want to connect with what's here now. It's not that we renounce because renouncing is good or we let go because thoughts are bad. We just want to know what's here and be intimate with it. So we're always saying goodbye, not saying goodbye for any other reason than so that we can say hello totally fully to what's right here. So you, you know, you park in the parking lot.

[19:02]

I don't know how you say goodbye to your car. You can bow, you know, some Zen students, it's like a hazard, I guess, of taking up Zen practice. Some people report a side effect of like uncontained bowing, you know, inappropriate bowing. So we have to, we have to like mature that. But here it's okay, you know, kind of safe spaces and center. You can just bow to everything. Leave yourself lots of time, you know, to get from the parking lot to the zendo. Just bowing each tree. There's another tree right next to the tree you just bowed to. So I think there's people still trying to make it, you know. So we say goodbye to the car, you know. How amazing to be alive. And when we're in the car, there's just being in the car. We don't know what that is. We can't get a hold of it. It's not separate from anything.

[20:05]

And then we park the car, we get out of the car and maybe we should bow to the car and say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye car. And then we come to the zendo. We walk down the path and we can feel the feeling of being in the woods when we're in the woods. And then the other way too, and this is hard for people, on the way back to the car, to bow to the woods, to bow to the zendo, to say goodbye, to breathe out, to let go. This is beginner's mind, Suzuki Roshi's, you can say fundamental teaching, beginner's mind, fresh in every moment. Sounds nice, right? To live fresh, like just born. In every moment, what joy, what a relief. No baggage. The poem says that joy would be like the whinny of a pack horse unloaded of everything.

[21:10]

That sounds nice. All I've known is how to lug a load, you know, but breathing out, saying goodbye, breathing and welcoming what's here. There's no need to carry anything forward. from the past, brand new, fresh, beginner's mind. So we say goodbye to the zendo, goodbye to the woods, and we say hello to the car. I thought you were gone forever. Hello, car. And then we feel the feeling of, appreciate the feeling of being in the car. So letting go and... and welcoming. And so Tenshin Roshi, Adrian Roshi's role in the community and now their stature is part of what is so intense for many of us about their departure.

[22:13]

And also that this was the last wave of this group of founding elders who have left Green Gulch And San Francisco Zen Center, City Center also, Tassajara. But for us at Green Gulch, this is the last wave of departures over the last couple of years of these great deep practitioners who have really held the center for 50 years. This image of these great trees, the great trees have fallen down. The last great tree, you know, fell down. The landscape is like, oh, there's these big gaps in the landscape. Sometime in the 1300s, early in the 1300s, at the Soto Zen Head Temple in Japan, a temple called Eheji, there was an abbot, the fifth abbot there, Giun,

[23:25]

he planted these five great Japanese cedar trees. So 700 years ago, planted these trees and these trees apparently live like more than a thousand years. So in 2010, one of these trees blew down. This great tree, great tree falling. And when I became the abbot here at, Green Gulch, two and a half years ago, Suzuki Roshi's... By whom there's a new book? Suzuki Roshi's son, Suzuki Roshi, Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, as opposed to Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, a dear member of the Sangha, you know, maintaining that connection with the Suzuki family is important for us at Zen Center.

[24:27]

He came to support the ceremony, and he brought me this teaching stick, this kotsu, which comes from that tree at Aheji that fell down after 700 years. Isn't that like a great present? Oh, wow. That's so cool. And, you know, we kind of like our... Little objects in Zen. So forgive me for being precious. But that's so cool, right? It's like, where's the tree? Is it gone? Is it here? What's the next life of it? How does it continue? This is the lineage. It doesn't just fall. It unfolds. So yeah, it'd be better to have the great cedar tree, you know? but the little stick is pretty good. And as many, you know, as many people are telling me, it would be really great to have Tenshin Roshi here, or Agent Roshi here.

[25:34]

You know. Little Jiryu is like, kind of like the little stick version of the great tree, you know. So the consolation. We could say consolation or we could say the unfolding, the continuing, the overlapping, you know, and that's what's so magical to me. We didn't plan this, of course, you know, the book coming out and this departure is all years and years in the making. But to feel that overlapping of lineage, that this new flower of our lineage, of our teaching is blossoming, you know, just as this other flower is transforming. falling away. This is how the lineage continues. This is how the teaching goes for 2,500 years, overlapping blossoms. It's not that the teaching has been held to, it's that the tree keeps blossoming.

[26:39]

So I thought I would read a piece from this book that's I think speaks to that. And it just called to me this morning because it's about big trees and small trees. And also it's about having problems, which I do. And the problem now that we have here of our elders not being here to practice with us every day. So I think I'll just read this whole chapter, and then if you're lucky, I won't try to explain it to you. We call the chapter problems. People create problems they do not actually have. When you are afraid of some problem, or when you are too concerned about yourself, you create a problem that you don't have.

[27:47]

Originally, you don't have a problem, but you create one for yourself and you suffer from it. Most of the problems we have are homemade problems. You make delicious problems to eat. This is how we fill our life with problems. If you realize this point, you may realize how important it is to practice Zen. When you practice Zen, there is no problem. want to explain it when you practice Zen there is no problem and you will have a bright light within yourself a bright light within and without when the light comes there is no problem in the darkness there is a problem and even if you try you cannot solve it by working on it in the dark when the light comes various problems will be dissolved

[28:51]

Because it is dark, you have a problem. But when it is not dark, there is no problem. Sometimes under big trees, there are small trees. When you see this, you may think that the small ones are suffering under the big trees. It looks like a problem. Even when we look at nature, we think we see many problems. But if you look at the roots of the small trees and big trees, you will understand how the small trees survive under the big trees. If you do not see the roots, it looks like the small trees always have difficulties under the big trees. But if you understand how the roots of the small trees go under the big trees, you will understand how the small trees survive. Under the big trees, there are many leaves and decayed roots. So the small trees take their food under the big trees And the big trees always give them nourishment. When the big trees die, the small trees take their place.

[29:56]

That is how they survive. But before you see that, it looks to you like a problem. It is the same with our practice. When you have wisdom, true wisdom that is not just a limited understanding, you have no problem. You will understand that the problem itself has some meaning for the problem, for yourself, and for others, and you will understand the true meaning of the problem and the true nature of the problem. We say that our practice is a scarecrow practice. If you just sit, there are no crows around you. Even though you do not try to scare them, they are scared of you and will not come to you. So if you practice zazen, There is no problem. Breathing out, saying goodbye.

[31:26]

Breathing in, saying hello. So... You know, over the years I've talked about some of the teachings in this book, and as I said, I really could go on for a long time about many of them, but I thought maybe I could just do a little sprint now and just tell you some about... What's in here? So that you can just sort of feel or taste some of the themes. That'd be OK. I guess you're kind of stuck. It's funny that people ask, right? Like, what are you going to do? But I think I'd like to. So we have maybe five or 10 more minutes. And then there'll be some time for conversation if there's anything to share. The book, you know, so as I said, Mel had these bits and pieces of Suzuki Roshi's teaching that he had always wanted to share and that he himself had often taught from.

[32:40]

And also he felt it was really important for human beings to understand this Zen way of what we call the bodhisattva precepts or how to live in harmony with one another, how to not cause harm, how to extend our sitting practice into our actual living practice by like not killing and not stealing and not lying and not exploiting each other or slandering each other or creating division. So we have these precepts that kind of seem like rules for what you should do to be a good person. But actually, they're just what zazen looks like if you're able to continuously practice it in your everyday life. Does that make sense? If you just keep your meditation practice going, saying goodbye and saying hello, moment after moment, you won't be killing. You won't have time to kill or lying or stealing or separating.

[33:45]

So the precepts for Suzuki Roshi, the way of life, the moral direction of our practice doesn't come from some ideas about who's good and who's bad and who's doing it right and how should I do it. It comes from just continuing our meditation practice through every moment. I hope that makes sense. It's a really important point. And that's what a chunk of the book is about. He says, if you're thinking about the ethical rules of our practice as what I should do, you're kind of sunk. So the point of our practice is to connect with our basic, tender, loving heart and the way that what we are is already intimate with and includes everyone. And then we live from that ground. And that's how we live this compassionate and kind life together. So they didn't let us put bodhisattva precepts in the title because they said, what does that even mean?

[35:01]

Bodhisattva precepts. But that you know that this book is really about Suzuki Roshi's teaching on the precepts. And so in that way, I think really is a deep resource for us in our practice. He says the precepts, you know, this way of living in harmony with others. is it's like the hat that's on our head. He tells the story of this kid who is kind of running around, frazzled, trying to find his hat because it's on his head. We can all relate to this situation. He says that's what spiritual people are like. We're running to Green Gulch to find this thing that is just our own life. If we would just say goodbye with an out-breath, And hello, with an in-breath, we have the compassion we need. You don't have to, where's my compassion, you know? Where's the way? Where's my actual life?

[36:01]

We have what we need. We just forgot because we're looking outside. Closer than your own nose, one of the teachings, the traditional Zen way of saying it. Suzuki Roshi says, it's the hat that you forgot you had on your head. That's our precept. So I mentioned this teaching on sharing the feeling. Wonderful way to talk about our meditation practice. This intimacy. Another strong element is that this just being yourself, sitting just as you yourself. He says, when you're just yourself, that includes everything. And that's a very kind of direct thing that we can taste. Just right now being ourself, there's nothing outside of that really. Just being this life that you are. Is that like... It's not separate from anything. Everything that's here is included in your being alive as yourself. Does that make sense?

[37:04]

So everything is included and is intimate. There's this theme of not trying to figure out who you are. It's also wonderful. As soon as we try to figure out what anything is, we're kind of separating from it. doing something with our mind instead of connecting in this embodied way with what our life is. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:02]

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