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. Welcome to Green Dragon Temple. How many people are here for the first time? Okay, welcome to you. I'm going to try something and put these glasses on. These glasses, I got them a long time ago. And when I first got them, when I put them on, I could see the people in the back of the room more clearly. And then after a while, they didn't make any difference.

[01:00]

So I stopped using them. So I thought I'd try them again today. That was like quite a few years ago. Now I try them again today and they make a difference. I can see the people in the back quite a bit clearer and also the people in the front. So I'm going to wear them. Just, you know, so I can see you better. I also brought some hearing aids. So later in the question and answer, I will be able to hear you better. And that's pretty much it. I don't yet have new teeth. So in this temple, we're starting a training period. or also called a practice period, about two months long.

[02:08]

And so about 30 people are coming to train, to train in the bodhisattva way, in the path, the path of the bodhisattva vows to make an unceasing effort to free all beings from suffering so they may dwell in peace. That's expression, unceasing effort to free all beings from suffering so they may live in peace. That expression could be, have an introduction, which would be to realize, unceasing effort to realize great compassion. in order to free all beings. So, one of the themes of this training period is great compassion.

[03:17]

Which is kind of synonymous with the theme of great wisdom. Great wisdom goes with great compassion. And it's kind of synonymous with great awakening. So those are kind of big, those are three greats, excuse me. So the awakened ones, a Buddha literally can be translated as awakened one, one who is awakened. The Buddha's wisdom is called great wisdom. The Buddha's enlightenment, great enlightenment. And the Buddha's compassion, great compassion. So that's one of the themes of this practice period. Another theme which I offer is silent sitting and social action.

[04:28]

There are some meditation centers, and in particular there's some Buddhist meditation centers where people go on retreat and they sit in silence. They sit in silent meditation, either alone in their own meditation room or in a group. And also, here we do that too. This room is for sitting in silence with others. But Zen practice is not just sitting in silence. It is also social action. It is also social interaction. This temple is, in some sense, architecturally reflects that.

[05:52]

We have this room for sitting in silence and stillness, which we practice. And during this training period, people will be sitting in here, sitting many hours for two months in stillness and silence. But the architecture of this temple also has a garden and a farm and a kitchen and so on. So the practice is not just sitting in this room. It is extending and integrating sitting in stillness and silence, integrating that with social interaction, and environmental interaction. So again, I could say Zen is sitting in silence and stillness and environmental interaction with humans and non-humans.

[07:05]

Zen monasteries in Asia are often called Zen gardens. Or... Zen forests. They practiced Zen in a garden. And they had gardens. Zen temples. Many Zen temples have really beautiful gardens, like we do. And we have a farm, too. And I was just recently in Taiwan, and I was invited to give a talk at a monastery. And the monastery... is called Nung Chan Si, which means, could be translated as Farm Zen Monastery. Because the original monastery was a farmhouse in the middle of rice fields. I said, oh, you have a Farm Zen Center?

[08:14]

We have a Zen Farm Center. So the practice is to integrate sitting in silence and stillness, and in silence and stillness, enlightenment lives there. Enlightenment lives in silence and stillness. That's where it lives. But it also lives by being expressed in social interaction. And which means also environmental interaction to express the enlightenment that lives in stillness in social interaction. And as I just said before, many or

[09:17]

Anyway, many different schools of Buddhism practice sitting in silence. Not all do. Some practice, their main practice is sitting and playing a drum and chanting. Like one of the great schools sits on the floor or stands, but usually sits and plays a drum and says... That's another practice, which is similar to, it's a way of settling into stillness. But the classical Zen image, the classical Zen is an image. And it's not so much just an image of somebody sitting, it's an image of people interacting.

[10:18]

And in particular, it's the image of certain masters and students interacting in Tang Dynasty China. There's many stories of the students and the teachers socially interacting to express and receive and realize enlightenment together, to realize great compassion through social interaction. So I would say the Buddha way or Zen is not just social interaction, and it's not just sitting in silence. It's integrating the two. the Zen style anyway. Right now, I would suggest that I am socially interacting with you.

[11:58]

And you are socially interacting with me, even though you're kind of quiet. But there you made some sound. Later, we'll have a question and answer session where we will interact socially. So, again, a key ingredient in this image of Zen is that we don't practice sitting in silence alone. We practice it with others. I came here today because you're here. You came here to be here with this group. It's a quiet social interaction. And later there'll be tea. And you can... move around and talk to each other. The Buddha, the first Buddha in this historical period, who we call Shakyamuni Buddha, we have an image of that person sitting under a

[13:22]

what we call the Bodhi tree, the tree of enlightenment. He sat there and had a great awakening. Looked like he was practicing by himself. But in another version of the story, he was sitting there by himself, but then he woke up from the dream. The dream. What was the dream? The dream is... was, and all of us sometimes have the dream, he woke up from the dream that he was sitting under the tree by himself. He woke up. That's a dream. It's a dream to think that you live by yourself. We don't live by ourself. We live socially we live environmentally the whole environment is living with us and supporting us and we are supporting it but we sometimes dream that we're all alone and that's a perfectly nice dream it's like it's similar to dreaming that you're not alone those are dreams but in reality aside from my dream that i'm with a lot of people or including my dream that i'm with a lot of people

[14:50]

And including my dream that I'm all alone, actually, everybody is giving me life and I'm giving everybody life. But I can't see that with my eyes. It's imperceptible. We have the expression, it's imperceptible mutual assistance or mutual support. Our life in reality is imperceptible. mutual support. And this imperceptible mutual support could also be called great compassion. It could also be called great wisdom and great enlightenment and great Buddha. And each of these things I just mentioned, for example, Buddha, because it's actually an inconceivable, imperceptible, mutual assistance, it's nothing in and of itself.

[16:05]

Buddha is nothing in and of itself. Great compassion is nothing in and of itself. Great wisdom is nothing in and of itself. All these things are just a great inconceivable process of reality. And even though they're nothing in and of themselves, by training, we can realize that. We can realize that I'm nothing in and of myself, and you're nothing in and of yourself. And in that way, we are Buddha. We are Buddha together, supporting each other. And that way of being together realizes the truth. People in the training period here, they can come into the room.

[17:14]

repeatedly and sit, just like you came in here and sat. Almost everybody's sitting here. And when you come in, you might think, I'm coming in and I'm doing, I'm the one who's coming in here and I'm doing it by myself. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons why we think that way. We often say to little children when they learn something, you did it. You did it. You did it. It's so wonderful to say that to them and they love, they often appreciate that. We don't usually say, we did it. And even if you say we did it, if they're not too young, they might say, no, I did it. And I'm not saying we should stop saying you did it to children, but because they did do it, but maybe we could say you did it with the support of of your parents and siblings and all beings supported you.

[18:16]

And you did it with all our support. Maybe we could add that part. And then they could say, perhaps they could say, that's totally inconceivable. It is. It really is inconceivable how it is. Everything I do is through the support of all of you. But the way everything I do is done with your support, and how everything I do is supporting you, that is great compassion. And it's social. Speaking of children, about seven years ago, yeah, I think just about seven years ago, my daughter bought her son a new bicycle.

[19:36]

He lived in LA and the bicycle was bought in San Francisco. So I transported the bicycle down to Santa Barbara. And they came up to meet me and I gave him the bicycle. And he got on it and rode it around the parking lot. And I said to him, how's your new bike? And he said, it's good. And at that time, his mother was about to give birth to a little girl. And he said, but she can't ride it. And I said, but by the time she's able to ride it, you'll be long gone to college and won't be using it anymore. And he said, she still can't use it. And I said, but at that time, you'll be a totally new person.

[20:52]

You don't know how you're going to feel. And he said, that's totally incomprehensible. But we had that interaction. And we had some other ones, too, that were... They were social interactions and they were great compassion. And it wasn't my great compassion to him, and it wasn't his great compassion to me. Our relationship, the relationship we have, is great compassion. That's what it is, actually. It's an amazing great compassion relationship. During the... I guess it might not even have been the Tang Dynasty, but anyway, a long time ago in China, there was a teacher who was one of our ancestors in this particular lineage.

[22:02]

His name is Seigen Gyoshi, or Qingyuran Xingza. Xingza... could be translated as walking and thinking. That's a nice name. Walking and thinking. Walking and thinking. Of what? Of silent sitting and social action. His name was his job description. Just like my name is my job description. And we give names to people when they receive the precepts, which kind of turn into job descriptions of them. Like we name them great compassion and great wisdom and great vow and great kindness. We almost never say a little bit of compassion or below average wisdom or average kindness.

[23:14]

It's kind of outrageous, but we do that. We give them great job descriptions for a great job, a job of realizing great compassion in order to liberate beings from suffering so they may live in peace. We give names like that. And then we try to make each one unique. And basically say the same thing. Anyway, this ancient teacher, Ching Yiran Singsha, was approached by a monk who said, what is the essential, great meaning of the Buddha's teaching? And Singsha said, what's the price of rice in Luling? which could be translated, what's the price of rice in Mill Valley?

[24:21]

Which could be translated as, great meaning is social interaction. The great meaning of the Buddha way is interacting, is having dramatic, intimate interactions with each other. In reality, we are having intimate interactions, but they're imperceptible. In the world where we can see and hear, where we have bodies and voices, we can use these body voices to interact socially in a way that can realize the inconceivable great compassion of our lives. So now we have a practice period praying at interacting, entering the room together, leaving the room together, sitting together, taking care and being mindful of our posture and our movements and what we say to each other, helping each other remember to practice compassion, asking each other questions.

[25:43]

You know, it's kind of what I call it. We don't usually say that in this place. We don't usually say to each other, what's the essential great meaning of the Buddhist teaching? We don't usually say that like a tea. Maybe nobody will say that. Maybe today you will be saying that to each other. Why don't you give it a try and see what people say? Maybe they'll say, what's the price of tea in Mill Valley? But it's usually considered that's a little too intense to ask that question in our daily interactions. But in a way, that's what we're concerned about. That's the topic. The topic is great compassion. We're wondering about what it is. We're trying to practice and enter it, even though it's inconceivable. And the way we do it is by our daily life together.

[26:49]

We get up kind of, in this training period, we get up early. Some people get up at 4. Some people get up at 4.15. And some people, even though they don't want to, get up before 4. We have meditation starts at 5. You don't have to really get up at 3.30 to make it. But some people, unfortunately, in a way, they're awake at 3.30 and think, I don't have to be up this early. Anyway, it's a little bit hard. Part of the training is training at how to function together, getting up really early in the morning and going to meditation. It's kind of hard to learn how to do it. And then we practice together through the day. It's allowed to take some rest. I rest during the day. Rest is part... of the practice of the social interaction.

[27:57]

It's part of being enthusiastic is resting. And the other part of being enthusiastic is that sometimes you do hard things. So this training period for many of us is going to be kind of hard. Already I hear people saying, it's hard. It's only like three or four days old. But even though it's hard, Maybe awestruck is too strong for me to say. Maybe just say I'm deeply touched when I come in here and sit at my seat and I see both of these rows of people. Everybody's there. Everybody's at their seat, sitting upright and quiet and still. And across the back of the room, everybody's there. And along here, everybody's there. And along here, everybody's there. The room is full. of the trainees, of the people who are training. It's very touching and beautiful to see that.

[29:04]

And I get to see it, but the people in the practice period see it too, and they say, oh, these people are great, they're sitting with me. They're supporting me. They might not think, I'm here sitting, I'm great, I'm supporting them, but you are. You're all supporting each other. And you're all supported by each other. It's amazing. Anyway, we've been able to do a few days. I don't know if we'll be able to continue, but we're done. We came on, like, Tuesday, right? Is that right? So if Tuesday is Sunday, we've made it, and very well. And we may collapse tomorrow. But if we do... Maybe we'll get up and keep going. I'm going to try to keep going for the rest of this practice period.

[30:14]

It's already hard for me, but I'm... going to try. Yesterday, I got up early, and then I went and did a one-day sitting at another temple, and then I came back. And during the one-day sitting at the other temple, called No Abode, I didn't tell people, but I was really tired. And I was talking to people all day. I was so tired. And I didn't fall asleep because, you know, I didn't. For whatever reason, I did not fall asleep all day long. But I did have the thought, I'm so tired. And when I got back to Green Gulch, I was so tired. And then I washed dishes. And then there was

[31:22]

Evening meditation. So I went to that, and I was so tired. And I was wearing this blue robe, this one here underneath. I have a blue one here, and a gray one, and there's a blue one. Can you see this one? Under one. And it was very itchy. Itching my thighs. I hadn't noticed that before. Anyway, it was hard. But I practiced compassion with it. And here I am today. And it's not always hard, but yesterday I was tired. But Everybody supported me. So I was able to practice.

[32:24]

I would not have been able to without everybody's support. But I did receive all the support and yeah. It was a great day. Thank you for supporting me to give this talk. 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 sfcc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:24]

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