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 morning. Hello, everybody. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center on this lovely day. The sun is, I'm certain... shining bright behind the overcast, and maybe later today we'll see it. My name is Jordan Thorne. I'm a priest and a member of the Zen Center. And I'm grateful for this opportunity to try and share my understanding of what it means to practice Buddhism and Zen. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I look around the room and I see familiar faces.

[01:03]

And I look around and I'm happy about that. It's good that people come here and then come back. I also look around the room and I see some new faces. And I'm happy about that as well because it's good that people come and discover if Zen Center might be useful to them. I want to especially express my appreciation to those of you who are new to Zen Center, who are here for the first or third time, checking things out, wondering if this place makes sense. I hope you come back again and again. I hope you make good Dharma friends somehow in this process of coming here. So to new friends and old friends, I offer all of you a good morning. It's a busy weekend in various ways.

[02:10]

Today is a full moon. There was a full moon ceremony in this room this morning. Tonight, this evening, this afternoon at 3 p.m., there's a priest ordination ceremony, which is a very significant event in the lives of the individuals who are being ordained, but also in the lives of this sangha. And I'm going to say a little bit more about that priest ordination ceremony. It's also Easter weekend and Passover, and tomorrow's April Fool's Day. So, a lot going on. The priest's ordination ceremony that will happen later is an emotional, physical, practical gateway to connection with the tradition of Zen, the ancient, long history of Zen.

[03:20]

And as I said, I'll say more. But first I want to share something personal with all of you. So excuse me, because it's kind of personal. The last time I sat in this seat and gave a Dharma talk was August 5th. Saturday, August 5th. Maybe eight months ago. So And that Dharma talk was made especially complicated, extraordinarily complicated in my heart, because just a few days before I gave the talk, I found out that I had advanced esophageal and gastric stomach cancer. And the talk was scheduled.

[04:29]

I'd already, even before my diagnosis, kind of had come to some ideas about what I was going to say. And then when I came time to give the talk, I didn't say a word about that. Because it was too fresh. It was undigested, if such a thing could be said about gastric cancer. Okay? And even more, I kind of also thought just to sort of like blurt this thing out, which I didn't even understand where it was going and what was going to come from it, would have been almost like emotionally manipulative, personally. I just wasn't ready to say anything about it, so I didn't. But in some way I did, because I think I gave a talk about the precious opportunity of our human life. But that's always apropos. dire prognosis is or not. You know, for much of my life, I've had intermittent episodes of heartburn.

[05:41]

That may be true for some of you in the room, too. And, you know, I was, Rolietz was my friend. And at one point I thought I had an ulcer when I was in my 20s. It's too early and I didn't have an ulcer. I just had heartburn. And then I figured out ways to kind of contain it. It's a beautiful thing like Prilosec. And careful, not eating hot chili. I contained it and lived with it and it wasn't such a bad thing except last summer I had a couple of episodes where it was like, oh my God, this is really, this heartburn thing has just not gone away. And so I called the doctor and made an appointment and I went to see her at Kaiser and she scheduled an endoscopic exam of my throat.

[06:47]

And it turns out scheduling endoscopies is very effective because immediately all my distress went away. My heartburn stopped. And I thought, I don't need to do this. This is a really intrusive exam. Everything's fine. But actually, I went ahead and did it. I went ahead and had this. And it's a procedure that's done under mild anesthesia. not really that mild. And when it was concluded that in the what they call recovery room, which is a room that had like maybe 10 different people in it recovering from who knows what different things happening in the hospital, the doctor who did the endoscopy, who I had actually never met before the procedure, she came over to me and she said, well, I'm sorry to tell you, but actually, I discovered that you have esophageal cancer.

[07:51]

And I've informed the oncology unit, and they'll get in touch with you pretty soon. You know, good luck. And then she walked away to take care of another person. Which, I did what any sensible person would do. I reached into my pocket and pulled my phone out and Googled esophageal cancer. Okay. I mean, she was like five feet away from my bed, and I'm going, E-S-O, how do you spell esophageal? And the thing I read, the first thing that came up was like three-year survival rate, 15%. And I was like, oh, my God. No, what are you kidding me? And then I looked a little more closely at it, and this was like a 10-year-old study, and I realized on the same page there were like three years ago, and I clicked on that, and it was a little bit better. It wasn't that encouraging, but I realized, well, there had been some progress in treatment, and then I turned my phone off, and I thought, I'm not going to do this ever again.

[09:01]

I'm just going to go to the doctor and follow. And I didn't. I just made a resolve when I saw what went through my heart, when I read those words that I didn't have any way of filtering, that that wasn't the way for me, and I... Anyway, began a process. And I've been through eight chemotherapies, and I went through longer than seven-hour surgery that had, I think, like eight or nine surgeons surrounding me over in Oakland at Kaiser there. And just since Christmas, I've been to the emergency room in San Francisco like six times. And admitted to the hospital maybe half of those times. And last Tuesday, when I finished my chemotherapy on Tuesday, which was the last chemotherapy scheduled, I was given a graduation certificate.

[10:06]

Certificate of completion. And all the oncology nurses in the infusion center came over and they... congratulated me, and they said they hoped they would never see me again. You know, because actually I went through the protocol, I completed it, and there, I don't have any more treatments scheduled. And that's a miracle for me. You know, I didn't know where it would be when it began. I'm very pleased to share that all with you. And of course, It's not just that I'm finished. Because next week I have a CAT scan to establish a baseline of, you know, like my healthy, healthy baseline. And next week I've got something else I'm doing. And my, more than half of my stomach and more than half of my esophagus has been removed.

[11:15]

And for the rest of my life I'll have to understand how to eat properly in this new circumstance. Anyway, it's not just like I'm done. In some ways, I'm just starting. But it's starting that I think I have some confidence in. But there's been a lot. There's been an odyssey of health And also understanding what it means for me to be alive. There's a lot I could say. There are many moments along the way that are peak moments or special moments. Things that I remember. And I'm just going to share one of them with you.

[12:16]

on February 13, which was a month and a half ago. On that Tuesday, I had chemotherapy. This is what my life has been like. This is sharing. And I came home, and with my partner Julia, I had dinner, which meant that I just wasn't feeling that good. I had like two tablespoons of food And it felt like three tablespoons too many. And I said to Julia, I said, you know, I don't feel good. And she said, oh, you know, what does that mean? How? And I said, I don't know. I just don't feel good. I just don't feel right. And I got up and I went into my bedroom and I sat on the edge of the bed. And she followed and came along with me. And sat beside me. And the next thing I remember was her kind of shaking me and saying, Jordan, are you okay?

[13:24]

Jordan, Jordan. Because I'd fainted and fallen back. And I sat up, I perched myself kind of up, and I said, I don't feel good. That was kind of like my mantra. And then, I hit the holy trifecta. I fainted, fell backwards. I started vomiting, my bladder released, and I had a grand mal seizure. And in that process, I lost consciousness. Except, down a long, long hallway, distantly, I heard, Jordan, are you okay?

[14:30]

And I thought to myself, because I couldn't, I had no muscular, and I thought, am I dying? Is this what dying is like? As I thought that, I felt completely at ease with it. It wasn't scary. And then I thought, well, this is really interesting. And then, down that distant, distant, across the valley sound, I heard a fire engine, a fire truck, pull up in front of 340 Page, where I live. And I heard the thump, thump, thump of the EMT guys as they rushed up the stairs and they burst into the bedroom. And I was unconscious, but except somehow anyway. And they attached an IV to me and they put me on a gurney and they carried me downstairs.

[15:38]

And I kind of remember being driven slowly up Page Street to Kaiser. And there was one more of those visits to the emergency room. I had another visit to the emergency room. This is sort of like a snapshot of what I've been going through. And I've had a feeling, in fact, that actually the cancer wasn't killing me, the treatment was. The chemotherapies and various things. So it's such a joy, a really relief, to be finished with treatment. and to be able to turn towards recovering strength. When I was in that particular evening, when I was at the hospital, still in the emergency room before I'd been admitted to the hospital, after about an hour, I still was kind of spaced out.

[16:45]

I was kind of laying in the bed. And I felt and heard the presence of large bodies entering into the small emergency room. And the fire department EMT team that had dropped me off walked in to say they had dropped somebody else off and they wanted to come and visit me and see how I was. And I said, I think I'm okay. And they said, well, that's great. And then one of them told me, you know, I'm thinking of doing a retreat at Spirit Rock. And he named the particular teacher, you know, and he says, is he a good guy? What do you think? I said, yeah, that's a good guy. You know, you should do it. He said, okay, thank you. There are many things I remember in my life.

[17:56]

I guess that's what it means to be alive. You remember things. You create a story, a thread of continuity. I remember in 1977 that I was ordained in this room in a priest ordination ceremony, officiated by Richard Baker, And perhaps with Ed Satterson in attendance, 19, you know, I would have imagined you were at everything back in those days, and other folks. I remember that. I remember a very, I don't know if he's here, a very kind man called Jim Schalcom, who helps with the Zen Center Library, and practices at Hartford Street. I remember the gym, maybe 10 years ago, invited me over to the Gay Men's Buddhist Sangha in the Castro District to give a talk.

[19:03]

Especially, I remember, lots of times when you're invited to give a talk, it's like the topic is yours. What do you want to talk about? It's up to you. But in this case, I was informed. that I was going to talk about the benefits of Zen practice. Why Zen? And I thought, well, that's a good question. What are the benefits of practice? Why should we practice Zen? And I think in some ways, the priest ordination ceremony this afternoon raises that for me as well. Why would you want to be ordained as a Buddhist priest? Get up early in the morning. Take classes and learn about teachers who lived centuries or millennia ago. Figure out that you have to hold your hands in a particular way when you walk into a room and bow and turn clockwise or counterclockwise or whatever.

[20:20]

There's right and wrong ways. You step across the threshold depending on what side of the threshold. Why would somebody want to, what's the virtue of this? And in my effort to answer that question to the gay men's Buddhist Sangha and to you all here today, I thought the first thing that has to be said is nobody has to do this. No one has to. And in fact, maybe just sort of simply tolerance and a non-denominational spirit and kind of like a kind heart, maybe that might carry the day beyond like clockwise or counterclockwise bows. Maybe. But then I also thought, and I think it's important to kind of like first say no one has to do this and then say, well,

[21:25]

I do think, I do think, I really do believe that there's a benefit that's found in making an effort to understand how to live our life along with other people. To understand how to be with other people. To know what's useful, what's encouraging, not just to yourself, but to people around you. To live in harmony with others. And I think that there's not just a virtue to that, I believe, as a matter of fact, that that's actually one of our life's... a life goal. We're helped by having a framework to our life. Not just having every day to invent how we're going to approach the day. And Zen practice can be like a lattice in the garden. I mean, there are certain... flowers and plants that we need a lattice is to grow tall.

[22:30]

And I think we want to grow tall and I think by attaching ourselves to the framework of something so tangible it's unpracticed that it can help us to stand tall firmly. You know like for instance paying attention to how we leave our shoes outside the Buddha Hall. That's one of the things we can do. It's one thing, just to kick them off, you know, willy-nilly, and the other thing is to carefully take them off and leave them side by side. Some time ago, I was on 18th Street shopping at the excellent Buy Right Market. And... I was in the checkout line at Pyrite. And sometimes, you know, there was maybe like eight or nine people.

[23:35]

It was a little bit of a line. And I heard a person behind me say, you know that guy in front of us is a Zen priest. And I didn't turn around to see who said it, but I immediately like checked myself. Like, was I slouching? Was I a noble example of a Zen priest? What was in my mind when he said that, you know? What was in my heart? And that brings the question, what does it mean to be a Zen priest? And at Bayrite, in that moment, when someone said, I saw the person said, that guy in front of us is a Zen priest.

[24:36]

I understood that the shape and form and kind of expression of my practice wasn't something limited to when I was at the Zen center. It was all the time being expressed and being witnessed. And that in some way, which... I have to admit, when I was first ordained, I hadn't even understood that the process of kind of raising your hand and joining the Zen team makes you always witnessable, always exposed, always vulnerable. Practicing Zen, living life, maybe. Let's not just say Zen. We learn how to walk in harmony with people.

[25:40]

We learn how to shop with people. And we also learn this effort is not something we can take especially, we can't be especially proud of it. Because at some level it's just shopping and buy right. You know? the heroic activity of shopping at BuyRide. And making an effort in that heroic activity to be upright, to express yourself in a way that other people can see as supportive to themselves, this is how we kind of take our place as grown-ups in the world. This is how we manifest becoming and being mature. And it's not just about being a Zen priest. It's just about being a grown-up.

[26:45]

Not something. Zen has a monopoly on them. And as I said, nobody needs to practice Zen. But it's also true that for some people, some of the time, for me, person, most of the time Zen practice is very useful. Zen is a lineage. It's a very important part of our practice where we don't start from scratch every day and every student doesn't just start from scratch. we join a tradition. We talk about our Dharma brothers and sisters, our Dharma fathers and grandfathers. We tell stories about Suzuki Roshi and Dogen Zenji, and we tell these teaching stories because we want to learn from them, learn from those who came before.

[27:47]

Because there is a family flavor to Zen practice. There's a family flavor to it. That's a very important part of aligning ourself with the sangha, with the community, with the practice group, understanding how we fit into this family lineage, how we fit into the lineage. And the priest ordination ceremony involves, at some point, the delivery to the ordinands, Diego and Julian, a lineage document. It's not just like abstract. It's not just a concept. There's actually a physical list of teachers going back to Buddha and then coming up to us and then actually circling around and going back, circling around and starting back with Buddha and it kind of circled rather than a straight line.

[28:50]

So, I remember my ordination. I remember this document is kind of folded in a very complicated way. It's called a Ketchumiyaku. And afterwards I unfolded it. I almost felt like I was, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to, you know, because it was very complicated to be folded. And I looked at the list of the Buddhas and ancestors and I saw my name there and I saw, a line for my name and it went around and it went up and it came down and it connected Shakyamuni Buddha. And I thought, woo! Sort of like when esophageal cancer. Woo! What have I gotten myself into here? You know? And you know, becoming ordained This practice is... Zen is kind of logical in some way.

[30:03]

I mean, you know, the Four Noble Truths are laid out there. And the teachings of the Dharma can actually kind of, not always, be understood. But there's also an aspect of practice and of Zen that's incomprehensible. The non-dual nature of who we really are. What happens when we sit Zazen for a week making the effort not to move. Mysterious. And there's I have a personal experience of this mystery in a different way rather than the non-dual nature of our original mind.

[31:03]

Here's a mysterious thing that happened to me connected to my ordination. I was ordained in 1977 and by 1982 I left Zen Center. You know, I was I was 27 or 28 at that time. I got married, had two kids, investigated the dharma of purchasing a new car. And in much the same way that when I'd come to Zen Center and then decided I needed to leave, that investigation reached a conclusion and I ended up coming back to Zen Center in 1990, after maybe 13 years or 14 years after my ordination. And I came back, I lived at Gringold's firm. I was a guest student at Gringold. And it was a complicated time for me.

[32:11]

I wasn't sure if I'd made the right decision. And I wasn't sure if I'd made the right decision. And on one of the days off I had at Green Gulch, which is in Marin County at Muir Beach, I came to San Francisco and I went on an adventure to Green Apple Books on Clement Street. And on the second floor of Green Apple Books, they have used Buddhist books. I browsed the section. and then reached the point I was about time to leave. And I started to walk downstairs, and I stopped because I realized I just had walked by a bulletin board where there were, you know, apartments for rent and tai chi classes and different, you know, things. We have a bulletin board down that hallway. It was like that.

[33:11]

And I thought, oh, I'll go, let me look at the bulletin board. I didn't say it out loud, I just thought to my... head let me go back I'll take a look at the bulletin board and I took a few steps back and stood in front of the bulletin board and what was there right in front of me but a photo of myself walking into this room in 1977 on my ordination day wearing a kimono and with a shaved head and I thought what Right above that there was a sign that said all postings must be dated and will be removed after one month. And there was a picture of me in 1977 pinned into the middle of the board. I took it off. Yeah, was that me? Yeah, that's me. And then I went down to the checkout register and I showed it almost kind of like

[34:15]

an accusatory tone, you know, like, why do you have this picture? What's this? And of course the person had no, you know, sorry, I don't know, can I ring up a register, your purchase? And I said, can I have it? Would you mind if, he said, you know, it didn't look like, it was, I don't think anybody but myself would have realized that that was me. Yeah. but it was me. And that's the mystery of ordination. And I went back to Green Gulch that afternoon and I still had, I didn't, is it the right decision? Should I have come back? And I thought, well, I'll put that question aside for a while. I think this is the place to be. There's more to say.

[35:20]

I was gonna talk, tell you stories of some of the ancestors because I thought they were, they are inspirational, poetic. But meanwhile I realize it's getting almost to 11. And I would need as much time as I've talked so far to talk again. So I'm going to see if I can land this 747 at the gate. There is a teaching story about a painted rice cake, how a painting of a rice cake cannot feed us.

[36:41]

I want to say that the practice of Zen, of Buddhism, this effort we make, means nothing unless we make it real. Unless we actually let it into our heart. Unless we let it into our vulnerable spaces. And when we make it real, when we don't just repeat the words of the teachings because we're going along with the group, but when we let them into ourselves and say them with intention and sincerity so that they're almost like a hammer striking emptiness, when at that moment, in those moments, we stand on our own two feet, outside the daydream of our life, and at that moment, I think sometimes

[37:56]

it almost makes it a little bit embarrassing to realize that in the end it just comes down to being a little bit kinder, a little bit nicer, a little bit more open, a bit more generous about the limits of who we are in every moment. And everything, and I say this, with real belief that everything we want or might want is deeply insignificant. And the secret is not a secret to whatever peace might be available for us in our life is to want, as little as possible for ourselves and wish for as much as possible for others.

[39:02]

And it's not so easy. We think we put ourselves in front so much, so quickly, so automatically. But to wish for as much as possible for others and then like Not that that needs to be qualified, but especially for others who wish harm to no one else. Who wish no harm to anyone else. And I say this because this very mind is Buddha. And there's no end to the gentle discovery that our life will unfold. 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.

[40:10]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:25]

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