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. first Japanese ancestor, Ehe Dogen Daosho, was approaching his death. He called his beloved disciple Tetsu Gikai to come and talk with him.

[01:04]

And he delivered some difficult feedback. He said to Tetsu Gikai, your understanding of the Dharma is deep and wide. Tetsu Gikai had come to study with Dogen when he was about 22. And at that Young age, he had already practiced in the Tendai tradition and the Rinzai tradition. And then he came and sort of fell in to Dogen Zen. And it said that at one point he was a very hardworking young monk. And at one point he was appointed to be both the director director equivalent, and the Tenzo.

[02:10]

So Hero's job and May's job, one job. It's a lot. So Dogen loved this guy, but he said, even though Your understanding of the Dharma is deep and wide, even though you have devoted yourself in this way for many years. You must still cultivate. You haven't yet fully cultivated. Ro Bai Shin, which is grandmotherly mind, the mind of great compassion. One description that I read of this encounter between these two venerable monks is that when Tetsu Gikai received this information, he didn't really understand.

[03:25]

He didn't quite know what it was that Dogen was pointing to, but he was so sincere and he took up this instruction, this teaching as a kind of koan for many years. But the description is that in this encounter after Dogen delivers this information to Tetsu Gikai, that both men just wept. Their bond was that deep. And it seems to me really important demonstration of of how important it is to have someone who loves you enough to tell you when your robe is falling off, right? To tell you when you're missing something. Tetsugikai went on to become very important.

[04:28]

He became the third abbot of Eheiji Monastery. And this was really Dogen's vision, was to plant the seeds of Chang Buddhism, of what became Zen in Japan, that he had learned from his teacher, Ru Jing, in China. And if you listen to the Daisho names, you'll see that Koan Ejo, who became Tetsugikai's teacher after Dogen died, was the second abbot. Koan Eijo, again, because Tetsugikai was such a devoted student, he sent him off to China, which was at the time a pretty perilous trip. And he sent him back to Rujing's temple because they hadn't yet completed the building of Eheiji in Japan, which stands today. And they wanted to make sure to get the structure of the buildings just right.

[05:33]

And so he sent Tetsugikai back to China to draw pictures of the layout and the architecture of the buildings, which he then brought back to Heiji and allowed them to complete the monastery. So this this mind of great compassion, this grand motherly mind. Dogen refers to in the Tenzo Kyokan as the parental mind. Later in his life, he moves from parent to grandparent. And in the instructions to the head cook, he describes this Roshin, this parental mind, as the mind in which you treat every ingredient as if it were your own child. One description says that you treat every leaf of lettuce as if it were your own eyeballs. This is the mind, the heart of great compassion, which is one of the qualities of the mind of great faith.

[06:50]

When I was growing up, I had two very different grandmothers. My father's mother, Grandma Ellie, Eleanor, she was a woman before her time. She was kind of an artist and bohemian before there really were such things, especially for women. And she left her family and ran off to Mexico to, as far as the family lore goes, drink tequila and paint on the beach. And our house was filled with her paintings. She was quite an extraordinary woman. And she wasn't a very nice person. I found her, as a little girl, very frightening. As I was reflecting this morning, the memory I have that stands out the most is going to visit her in Los Angeles.

[08:07]

She'd come back from Mexico. And her whole apartment in L.A. was everything was sharp. It was a lot of glass and steel. It was very hard edged, which was true of her. So I remember sitting at this glass breakfast table and Grandma Ellie had this. about half this size, this little porcelain teacup with black coffee. And on the table, in the center, there was a little container of saccharin. Remember when we used to eat saccharin? It's little white pills. And each morning when she would have her coffee, she would remove the lid and she had these long red fingernails. And she would turn over her hand and use the fingernail as a scoop. And she would scoop up two little saccharines and drop them in her coffee. So you can understand why I found her just a tiny bit frightening.

[09:13]

I remember she and her then husband took me to Disneyland as a little girl. And we went on one of those rides where you go down something very fast. And they were both very insistent. I was sitting between them. They kept saying, we're having fun. We're having fun, right? And they were like, come on, yell. We're having fun. And I was like, huh. That was about as much as I could get. So I have another grandmother, my beloved Grandma Helen, my mother's mother, who... was a short, feisty, old Jewish grandma from Chicago. And she carried with her this sort of feeling of the old country. She spoke Yiddish part of the time. She would come to our house in California from Chicago, fully dressed.

[10:18]

You know, those were the days where you dressed up to go on an airplane. And she would arrive and she always had this collection of, brooches these pins and they were all these different insects beetles and ladybugs yes she was a character and she she smelled of lemon drops and baby powder and she would come in her fancy clothes and quickly change into a kind of a frou-frou a house dress with a friend and her slippers and she'd just take over the kitchen And my sister and I, we called her the goodie grandma, because when Helen would arrive, then there was just constant stream of goodies coming out of the kitchen. She made chopped liver and kugel, coffee cake, toffee squares. This was before I was diabetic, so I could eat those things.

[11:20]

It was quite a delight. And I would sit on the kitchen counter, and watch her, her mastery with her hands, chopping and dicing and flowering. She was, for me, sort of the embodiment of this robe I should, this great heart of compassion. When she would arrive, she would pinch my cheek, a little person, and say, Nububala, which was... Yiddish for, how are you, sweetheart? And then she would look at me with these, she had a very wrinkled face and these twinkly eyes. I remember her, the skin, how the skin on her arms kind of fell away as she got older and her hands were so soft. She would say, noob, noobula.

[12:23]

And she'd look me right in the eye and say, tell me everything. This is zazen instruction. How would it be if we were to sit in the midst of whatever we're sitting in the midst of? Maybe our loneliness. our delight our aching knees or our expanding heart what if we were to sit in the middle with soft hands and twinkling eyes and say tell me everything and to be willing to receive to be willing to listen this is the I think the central quality of

[13:24]

compassionate heart, the willingness to hear the cries, this quality of receptivity, of deep listening. Some of you may know this story, but I haven't told it in a long time. is a way of understanding this. This is a story about George Washington Carver. George Washington Carver, he grew up to become a kind of renowned botanist and social change agent. He was responsible for introducing crop rotation. He's reputed to have discovered 300 uses of the peanut.

[14:25]

He was brilliant and used his brilliance to support poor Black farmers in the South. Because he grew up, he was born in 1864, and he grew up to enslaved parents. And he was a sickly child. I just I have this thing for these characters who are who have sickness because it reminds me that it's OK, you know. So he was too sick to work in the fields, but he had this deep love of plants. And as a little boy, they say they called him the little plant doctor. So while everyone else was out working, he set up a plant hospital behind his his home. And the story goes that all of the women in the community would bring little George their ailing plants, and he would take them to the plant hospital and heal them.

[15:33]

So one day, one of the women comes and says, little George, what is your secret? You know, how do you do it? And with the wisdom of a great Zen master, little George looked at her and said, If you listen to things, if you listen to things and love them, they will reveal themselves to you. So when we sit with this posture of a compassionate heart, of this loving listening, Our life is revealed that things we may not have wanted to see come through. One of the great sadnesses in my life is

[16:55]

that I was never a parent. I was never a parent giving birth to a child in this body. I was diagnosed with illness young enough and at a time when I don't think they knew about positive psychology. So mostly the way that they tried to get me to behave was through fear. And they had categories for young diabetics that was, you were either compliant or non-compliant. I was non-compliant, but they didn't know it because I hid a lot of what I did. And no one ever said, you know, you can't have kids. But there was enough threat about the terrible things that would happen to me when... and the high risk involved to me and to a possible baby, that I just took it and put it aside.

[18:07]

And I remember later someone saying, well, did you want to have kids? And I had no idea. I didn't think about it. It was just something I put over there. Until my sister, my younger sister's daughter was born. Natasha, who's now in graduate school. And all of a sudden, all of that that had been over there, there it was. All that longing that I hadn't given myself room to have. all that wanting that I didn't even know I wanted. And I remember the one thing that helped with that particular ache was holding the baby.

[19:22]

Because when I held the baby, it's kind of like we sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. When I held the baby, me and she, all of my self-concern fell away. And it was just this. And I don't know exactly what it is yet, but there's some important lesson there. about staying very close to the ache. Not staying close to being harmed or hurt, but staying close to those places in us that we may not have wanted to hear or see or feel. I am very fortunate Though I didn't have my own children, I married in to a family with a 10-year-old daughter.

[20:34]

So I have had the wonderful experience of being a stepmother, not always wonderful, but often, to a now beautiful, creative, sensitive, thoughtful adult. But I remember sometime after this event with baby Natasha, I had a dream. It's the same story I'm going to tell you, but it's just saying it with different words. Sometimes we need to hear the same thing more than once. So in this dream, I am walking through the countryside. Beautiful green. rolling hills, white picket fences, an occasional house, and bright blue sky, not too hot.

[21:41]

And I'm relaxed and at ease, and I see up ahead on the porch of one of the houses, there's a woman, and she's signaling to me to come. So I go to the house. And I get to the porch and she continues. It's all in silence. She walks inside and indicates that I should follow her. And I follow her into this old farmhouse kitchen. And in the middle of the kitchen on the floor is this giant basket of puppies. And it's very clear, though she never says anything, that my task is to pick a puppy out of this like whole basket of cuteness. I'm supposed to find the one, you know, my one puppy. And so I look at them all and eventually I find the puppy.

[22:43]

And in the dream, little guy, I pick him up. And the puppy and I are just. gazing at one another. I'm holding the puppy in the air and taking each other in. And all of a sudden, the puppy springs fangs. And I almost drop it. Right? And then I hear this voice in the dream or in my mind in the dream. And it says, oh, the puppy, the puppy is scared. The puppy is scared. Oh, and I understand. My job, my task, hold the puppy, hold the puppy, hold the puppy.

[23:45]

This too is meditation instruction. When we find those places in ourselves that are angry, that are scared, that are frightening, that we stay close. And in this dream, as I do this holding, I'm not trying to fix it. I'm not throwing it away. The puppy begins, the fangs recede, and the puppy begins to transform and becomes a baby. And at the end of the dream, I'm holding this little baby to my chest. So as I said, I didn't ever have a baby, but I did get a puppy. And. I don't know, maybe six or seven years ago, we traveled also to L.A.

[24:53]

to visit our daughter, my stepdaughter, and she had just gotten a puppy. And that was it. Once I was staying in a house with this dog, I was sold. And literally we came home from the trip and I signed up online for this rescue organization. And pretty soon every day I was getting photographs of little puppies. And it took some months. But when my puppy showed up on the computer screen, I knew immediately that one, that's my dog. And so I drove six hours down to the Central Valley to a mall where they had the giveaway puppy event. And it was kind of a disaster. I was with my sister, and she has had many dogs.

[25:54]

This, for me, was a new experience. And the dog, whose name was and still is Grover, like the Muppet, just sent me a Grover stuffed animal when I got Grover, who's sitting on my desk still. So Grover threw up in the car all the way home. And he had had a pretty rough start. It was clear very quickly. Someone or several someones had not been kind to this little dog. And he was a handful. And at some point, there was a turn. You know, I wondered many times, can I do this? Can I keep this dog who, you know, howls at night and poops in my husband's office almost daily?

[27:04]

And is kind of freaked out. Anyway, one day I live in an apartment that has a long hallway. And one day he got underfoot and I stepped on him. By accident, you know, and he squealed. And he backed up down the hallway and I crouched down. So I was down as close to his level as I could get. And he ran toward me down the hallway. He like charged me and he headbutted me. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. And they backed up. down the hallway and he did it again. He did this three times. He ran down the hallway and then bang, he was showing me that he was not happy, but it could have been worse, right? And the third time he ran down the hall and hit me with his head. I took him in my arms and said, I'm so sorry.

[28:08]

I'm so sorry. I'm not going to, I'm not going to send you away. You know, I'm here. I'm staying with you. And it was somehow, mysteriously, something began to turn at that point. So I do want to say a thank you to the camera because my dear friend and teacher Tia is at my house right now taking care of Grover. Because my husband left this morning and he doesn't like to be alone. Eugene, my husband, told me either last night or the night before that in my absence that Grover had woken him up howling in the night.

[29:14]

Oh. That got me. So pure, isn't it? Yeah. We all feel like just howling sometimes. But if you're a little dog, you can do it. So the good news is that Grover loves people who he knew from when he was little. So he loves Tia. He loves Jozen also. He's known Josette a long time. But I think he especially loves Tia because Tia plays with him. A lot of adults won't do that. But Grover likes to play. He likes to tug on things and run around. When we listen to things and love them, they can come forward. They can reveal themselves. The pain, the anger.

[30:17]

the sweetness, the howling. So one more story. This isn't my story. This is another story about this parental or grandmotherly heart. And it's the story that some of you may know about Maha Pajapati, our first woman ancestor. She's in the echo that's recited in the service here at the temple. And some of you may know that Mahapajapati's sister, Maya, died during childbirth.

[31:23]

And her son, Siddhartha Gautama, who went on to become the Buddha, was given to her to raise. And she had her own son who was just a small bit older than the soon-to-be Buddha. And she raised them sort of breast by breast, side by side. These two boys. I often just imagine what it must have been like for her, you know, in one fell swoop to lose your beloved sister and then now be responsible for raising her son. She was something, pajapati. But there's another side of her story that many of you may know when she went from pajapati to maha, great pajapati, which is that maha pajapati is known as the one who founds the bhikkhuni order.

[32:41]

She goes three times. In this kind of literature, three means many. She goes three times to the Buddha, to the Buddha's Sangha, and she asks to be allowed to join. And three times the Buddha says, no, this is the history of the story. And the last time she comes, she brings a whole bunch of other women with her. And they travel a long, long way. And they get there. And they're dusty. And their feet are blistered and bleeding. And they're tired. And she goes and asks them. The Buddha says no. And then they're outside the gates. All these women wailing. Because they're so sincere. They're like the dog howling in the night. You know, please let me in. And Ananda. I think it's good to have someone else have this grandmotherly mind as well.

[33:48]

Ananda, who is the Buddha's trustee attendant for a long, long time, he hears their cries, literally, and he goes out and sees them and says, what's happening? What's going on? And they tell him, we want to join the holy life. And then Ananda goes and petitions for them. to his boss. He takes a risk. And the Buddha continues to say, no, I'm not going to do it until he says, didn't Pajapati raise you at her own breast as a little boy? He says, yes. And didn't you say that women could attain awakening just like men? And the Buddha says, yes. So he does some combination of guilt tripping and, you know, kind of cornering the Buddha into finally saying, okay.

[34:52]

So this too is a difficult part of the story. And we don't know why. We don't even know if it's true, but we don't know why the Buddha might have said no initially. What we do know is that Ananda, who also had this grandmotherly mind, was willing to be a voice, willing to be an ally, willing to speak up for those who weren't being heard. And we know that Mahapajapati didn't give up. And so these two become flavors of this Roshin, this Robayshin, this compassionate heart. It's not only the softness of my grandmother's hands. It is also the tenacity, the stick-with-edness, the perseverance of Mahapajapati, not taking no for an answer, but taking a stand for what she wanted.

[36:04]

And it's also Ananda hearing the cries, and being willing to go and give voice to those whose voices weren't being heard. So I'll leave you with Mahapajapati's poem. Mahapajapati, protector of children. I know you all. I have been your mother, your son, your father, your daughter.

[37:11]

You see me now in my final role, kindly grandmother. It's a fine part to go out on. You might have heard how it all began. When my sister died, I took her newborn son to raise as my own. People still ask, did you know then what he would become? What can I say? What mother doesn't see a Buddha in her child? He was such a quiet boy. The first time he reached for me, the first time I held him while he slept, how could I not know?

[38:19]

to care for all children without exception, to care for all children without exception, as though each will someday be the one to show us all the way home. This is the path. So as we enter the second day of our sashim, and of those of you practicing at home, enter the second day of wholehearted engagement in your lives. Let's see if we can bring this quality of grandmotherly mind, of ro-baishin, of listening with love to whoever is here with these

[39:30]

tender hands and tender hearts, but also with perseverance, with steadiness, with courage, with the willingness to sit or stand or speak for what we love, for what we care about, for what's important. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost 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 sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:27]

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