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. So... Spiritual friendship... interesting topic and certainly it sounds weird. Is it okay? Does it sound okay? A little scratchy. So I'm going to approach it. First I'll bring forth a few comments that Buddha had to say about spiritual friendship and then maybe share a Zen story about spiritual friendship and we'll sort of see where it goes. As

[01:02]

David mentioned yesterday one of the most famous sayings from Buddha was when Ananda said to the Blessed One, this is the half of the holy life, Lord, admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie. And Buddha said, don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie. is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk is admirable people as friends, companions, and comrades, he can be expected to develop and pursue the noble eightfold path. So Buddha's sitting there saying that spiritual friends are the whole of the holy life. And then there's another sutta that I like a lot from the Udana. And this will be another example of Buddha commenting on spiritual friendship.

[02:06]

Once when the Buddha was living in Kalaka Mountain, Meghaya was his attendant. Meghaya came to the Buddha and said, I want to go to the town to beg for food. Yes, replied the Buddha, this is time. And after... Meggaya returned from the town. He was strolling along the river and saw a lovely mango grove, and he thought, this is such a pleasant grove, it would be a perfect place to sit and meditate if the Buddha would agree. So Meggaya went back to the Buddha and told him that he had done his begging, and he asked, Buddha, would you allow me to go to the mango grove and strive for liberation? And the Buddha replied, you should wait, please wait until another monk has arrived, because Meggaya was his only attendant.

[03:09]

And he said, please don't leave me alone to go off and meditate in the beautiful grove. And Meggaya asked, but then again Meggaya asked, there is nothing for you to do... And nothing needs to be done. But for me, there is much still to be done. Please allow me to go to the mango grove. Meaning, you've already got your enlightenment. You sat under the Bodhi tree. You're happy here. You don't really need me. I've got to go get my enlightenment. And I've got this perfect tree over there to do it. And again, the Buddha asked him to wait. Please, stay. Wait until someone else comes along to be with me. But Megaya again insisted. Finally, the Buddha said, what can I say? Do what you want, Megaya. Megaya got up, honored the Buddha, and went to the mango grove to sit and meditate at the root of a tree. But immediately his mind was overwhelmed by thoughts of sense, pleasure, anger, and violence.

[04:14]

This is ridiculous, thought Meggiyah. I've left home to follow the spiritual life, and yet I'm still plagued by thoughts of sense pleasure, anger, and violence. After a day of fruitless meditation, Meggiyah returned to the Buddha, honored him, and told him about his day. The Buddha said, Meggiyah, for those whose mind is not yet liberated, there are five things that lead to liberation. One, having a good friend in the Dharma. That's number one. Living according to the precepts, that's number two. Frequent conversation that inspires and encourages practice, number three. Diligence, energy, and enthusiasm for the good, number four. And number five, insight into impermanence. I think these are very useful things. But then the Buddha goes on again and says, but let me repeat again. Having a good friend in the Dharma allows... One with a good friend in the Dharma will find it easier to live in accordance to the precepts.

[05:30]

One who has a good friend in the Dharma will have frequent conversations that inspire and encourage practice. One who is a good friend in the Dharma will have diligence, energy, and enthusiasm for the good. One who has a good friend in the Dharma will have insight into impermanence. He repeated, one having a good friend in the Dharma led to all the other four of the five. So in other words, friendship is the most important element in the spiritual path. Everything else naturally flows from it. So what is spiritual friendship? You all have your own experience of it, and you can sort of think about it. I would say part of the defining characteristics is it's a dedication to a common goal, dedication to the practice of the same path based on similar ideals and aspirations.

[06:36]

To unite with others in a common dedication to the spiritual practice has a strengthening and uplifting effect on our own practice. We don't choose the people we practice with. In our ordinary friendships, either from college or business or other groups I've been involved in, partly you choose your own friendships. But in this practice, whoever shows up is your spiritual friend. And quite often there's quite a variety of people that show up. And this can become quite challenging. As our good friend Allison mentioned in her beautiful talk last Wednesday when she was saying a particular person was sitting next to her, a person that she didn't get along with, and how difficult that was.

[07:38]

Well, all of us have had that experience with some particular person that just pushes our buttons, triggers us, just the kind of person that you just don't get along with. That's always going to be the case in Sangha. In fact, inevitably, at some point in time, one of those people will be sat next to you during a three-month practice period, and you cannot believe. In the old days, you didn't get a chance to If you didn't like somebody, nowadays we're sort of like, I just don't get along with this person, can you rearrange my seat? And sometimes a tanto will do that. In the old days, somehow, that wasn't done so much. So it was like you'd look at the board, Tassar, oh, I can't believe I'm sitting next to so-and-so for three months. They're so noisy when they eat with their oryoki. They never sit still, it's on and on. So what's interesting about spiritual friendship or spiritual practice is over time, and usually a three-month practice period sitting next to somebody, is enough time for you to eventually not only like that person, but develop a fond feeling for them.

[08:57]

So that's kind of the beauty of this particular practice, that you are obliged to, encouraged to, make friends with a wide variety of people. And you just keep rubbing up against them. And this is both a challenge and a wonderful opportunity. Another characteristic of our friendships in this community is a lot of times we don't know anything about each other's stories. We just work with them in the kitchen, sit zazen with them. And we know them in a particular kind of way that's not related to the stories they tell. Many times in the outside world you'd meet somebody in a business meeting and you'd go out for lunch and tell a bunch of stories and you'd feel kind of close to them through the stories. This kind of getting to know each other takes a long time.

[09:59]

But it's a deeper kind of knowing each other. And there's also a difference in business. I was in a company that most of the top executives stayed together for seven years, and we did a lot of interesting things. And I was friends with them. We were friends with each other. We spent a lot of time together, traveled a lot together. But it was all sort of built around a common idea of making the company successful. And then somehow, if things didn't work out right around that goal, which was a particular kind of goal, you could build up a lot of resentment and friendship could go away pretty quickly. You might have somebody who sort of quietly stabbed you in the back to steal a couple of your accounts in order to make more money for himself. Various things happen. But in this community, our basic goal, or the way we think about relating to each other, is to see the Buddha in each of us.

[11:03]

When we're relating to somebody, our goal is to practice with that person as if they're Buddha. And that's a wider thing. It's a bigger thing, and it allows us to see past the sort of idiosyncratic personality issues that come up all the time. It's not so much about satisfying my personal needs or satisfying your personal needs. It's about each of us contributing as best we can to uplift each other and to bring each other closer to the ideals of this practice. In spiritual friendship, we are concerned with the other person not because of the ways that person satisfies us, but because we want to see the other person grow and develop in the direction of greater wisdom, greater virtue, greater understanding. We want the other person's wholesome qualities to attain maturity and bring forth fruits for the benefit of others.

[12:05]

This is the essence of spiritual friendship. I wanted to mention a couple of things Suzuki Roshi said about group practice. Quote, Group practice is the shortcut. I can't believe I skipped a whole section. This is what Sigrisha had to say about group practice. It is possible to practice by yourself, but when we practice in a group, we can help each other. And by practicing with people under the same conditions, we can eliminate self-centered practice. It is possible to practice by yourself, but when we practice in a group, we can help each other by practicing with people under the conditions we can eliminate self-centered practice. This is a thing we talk about a lot in Zen, the tremendous amount of energy we put into self-concern, self-centered practice.

[13:14]

But when we're practicing with other people, we just eventually have to let that go because our desire in practicing with other people is a higher purpose than satisfying our own ego needs. In fact, we might find, in some sense, the hollowness in the concept of our own self-concern. when we're so closely tied to the practice of other people. And Suzuki Roshi also said, group practice is a shortcut to the imperturbable mind, which is beyond concepts of personal or impersonal, formal or informal. Hmm. Hmm. So here's a story from our Chinese heritage.

[14:15]

Tian Wang was one of the disciples of Xir Du. Xir Du, as you recall, wrote the Sando Kai, the Harmony of Difference and Equality, one of the formative teachers in our lineage. And Tian Wang was one of his disciples, and this is the story of how he met his disciple, Long Tang. So Long Tang came from a family of rice makers that had a shop in the alley next to Tianhuang's monastery, and the boy got to know the temple, and the master got to know him through him delivering rice cakes. And at one point in time, they had this interchange. So apparently Tianhuang finally met him and said, why don't you come and practice with me? And he said, be my attendant. From now on, I will teach you the essential Dharma gate. Be my attendant.

[15:19]

From now on, I will teach you the essential Dharma gate. So after a year, Long Tan said, when I arrived, you said you would teach me, but so far nothing has happened. A common complaint in the temple. I've been here a year. I've been following the schedule. Nothing's happened. Tian Wang said, I've been teaching you all along. Wang Tan said, what have you been teaching me? Tian Wang said, when you greet me, I bow. When I sit, you stand beside me. When you bring tea, I receive it from you. When have I not given instruction about mind essence? Long Tang was silent for a while. Then the master said, when seeing, just see. If you try to think about it, you'll miss it. Upon hearing these words, Long Tang had a deep realization.

[16:20]

It's always wonderful these stories always end with a person having a deep realization. So what does this story tell us about Zen practice? It's such a simple story. I was thinking about it this morning when I got up. Of course, this morning, the wake-up bell comes running by my room. And the person ringing the wake-up bell says, Good morning, Hojo-san. And I say, Good morning, Beck. And, you know, I can tell who the wake-up bell, I can tell what morning it is by the sound of the person saying, Good morning, Hojo-san. So it was Robin this morning. So, okay, excellent. And then I get up, I get dressed, and I go down to the second floor Han to meet my Jisha, Eli. because my Jishya has to escort me around the temple in the morning. And at the same time, I always end up meeting David and his Jiko, Kaishin's David's Jiko here. That's because David is always there to make sure that if I am sick or not there, he would do the Jundo instead of me.

[17:28]

So all of a sudden, there's the three of us. every morning. And this has been going on for me with those people for three years. I've been meeting Eli every morning. Been meeting David every morning. We don't say much. I then start on my way. I go to the Kaisando and I bow to the ancestors. I bow to Suzuki Roshi three times and basically his teachers are on the wall there and I think about all the ancestors that have brought us this practice because When we're practicing in Sangha, we're not just spiritual friends with each other here, we're also spiritual friends with all the people that have actually practiced this way from Buddhist time. In Zen, we emphasize actual people practicing versus kind of entities up in some heaven, at least that's mostly the Zen way. So we honor the actual individual people that have carried this practice forward. And in some ways, we think of them as our ancestors,

[18:31]

in the same way that we think of our biological parents as our ancestors. Our biological parents actually are part of us. We know that, both from the psychology of having lived so closely with them when we were young and from the DNA and things, but our ancestors in the Buddha lineage are the same way. We, through practicing this way, they become part of us. And then after I make some connection to our ancestral lineage in the kaisando, I go down to the kitchen and I offer incense and bow to the person who's making breakfast. And then I come into the Buddha hall here and I do three bows to Buddha and the person who's the light-up chidin hits the big bell three times and I can tell who the light-up chidin is by the way they hit the three bell. And then I go down to the zendo and I meet all of you. We do it sort of quickly. I walk behind you, but I see you all, and you can hear me and feel me, and then we sit together.

[19:37]

And after we sit a while, this morning, we got up and we chanted the Heart Sutra together. It's a very simple kind of thing, and went up and had breakfast in silence. There was no talking going on during all of this, but the kind of intimacy that comes from this simple being together, call it hanging out Zen. I mean, yes, there's a lot of ritual involved in this, but mostly we're just hanging out together. As he says, when you bow to me, I bow to you. When you need me to be there and help you, I stand next to you. When you need tea, I bring you tea. We're just hanging out, doing the ordinary things of the day together. Most of the reputation of Zen is kind of based on this idea of somebody going to the top of some mountain, sitting Zazen for three years and attaining some altered state of mind or sitting in a cave for nine years as Bodhidharma did.

[20:48]

But almost all the stories, all the old Zen stories are about people meeting each other, walking along and seeing a goose, raising a finger, interaction, meeting. encountering each other. It's a very tender-hearted thing. I mean, we're together so much, and do we actually see each other? To see each other's face, to see each other feel the way they walk. on the floor. You sit sashins with people and you know that. Oh, so-and-so's walking in the hall now. I can tell that by the way they walk. That kind of physical intimacy is a much deeper thing than all the stories we could tell about past occasions. And we all tell many stories to ourselves and to each other people, but isn't this the real you that you meet when you stand and actually

[21:59]

see another person, feel another person, encounter another person. It can happen just in a moment, just a moment in time, and you can see a whole person. So that's true. But it also is true that it takes a long time to slowly open yourself up to many people. Of course, I was fortunate when I was young. I met Suzuki Hiroshi and I had several moments several encounters with him, the kind of encounter that changes your life, sets your life on a different direction.

[23:09]

So in a sense, moments can be momentous, similar words. An encounter with a person can be momentous. But at the same time, in one of the lectures, Suzuki Roshi, I've told this story before, someone was complaining about the fact that Sigurisha is criticizing the staff because they were complaining about what was going on in the summertime with all the strange guest students and guests. I was one of the strange guest students, I'm sure, that was causing trouble. He had been critical of them, and this person said, I've been practicing for five years, why is this still difficult for me? And he said, you don't know how hard it is to love some people. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. So it takes a long time, maybe years, maybe decades, to get to the place where you can open your heart to the wide variety of people that you meet in life.

[24:16]

But that is what... our spiritual friendship effort is, is to make that effort to open our heart to as many people as we can. We have no idea what's going on. I'm sure during the day we all have stories about our interactions with each other and how so-and-so treated each other, what's going on. But now we have lots of brain studies going on saying 95% of what's going on with you you're not conscious of in your brain. We've got mirroring things going on. We've got all kinds of stuff going on. It's all happening at some level below our consciousness. It's a mystery. What happens when you live this intimately together from the moment you get up till the moment you go to bed? It's just a complete mystery.

[25:19]

And yet the Buddha says this is the heart of the way. This is what Tsukiroshi says. This is the shortcut to awakening. This mysterious hanging out together in the sangha and all the... complexities and problems and difficulties that's involved in it. And yet it's kind of so simple, just bowing together, standing together, chanting together, serving each other tea. And over time, you intensify your concern and commitment to one another. You know, there's no greater feeling than knowing another person is really on your side, really for you. It goes beyond what they'll do for you.

[26:24]

It's like a feeling of knowing deep down that they're here for you. You know, friends that will put your... They'll take care of you better than you know how to take care of yourself. they'll take care of you better than they're taking care of themselves. This feeling of knowing that we're all on the same side together, it's a beautiful human feeling, and it comes through this kind of spiritual intimacy. I don't even think it's a condition of spirituality, it's just human when we can feel our deep concern and care for each other and everyone else's care for us. That human feeling, someone might call it love.

[27:26]

I think it is commonly love. This is the human place and this develops out of this spiritual friendship practice. And it doesn't only happen in spiritual communities. It can happen anywhere because it's just a human thing. It would be problematic if we just thought it was only in this special place that this kind of sense of human connection and human caring for each other can happen in many other circumstances. But certainly it is happening here. The friends you make here, many of them will be the friends that last your whole life, so you should treasure them, even if you don't yet know that they're going to be the friends for your whole life. I certainly didn't know it, whatever it was, 45 years ago when I was practicing with people at Tassara, who are my dearest and closest friends now.

[28:40]

So I'm just going to tell one more story, just to sort of play off that. So it says, when you greet me, I bow. When you greet me, I bow. That's what the teacher said. It's kind of interesting when we bow to each other. It's a little different than we, you know, in American culture, your handshake or something like that. A bow is kind of both an intimate connection and some sort of separation. And it reminded me... kind of a metaphor for close and apart. Tozan, a famous Zen master, said, The blue mountain is the father of the white cloud. The white cloud is the son of the blue mountain. All day long they depend on each other without being dependent on each other. The white cloud is always the white cloud. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain. And Suzuki Rishi says, This is a pure, clear interpretation of life. There may be many things like the blue mountain and the white cloud, man and woman, teacher and disciple, they depend on each other, but the white cloud should not be bothered by the blue mountain and the blue mountain should not be bothered by the white cloud.

[29:54]

They are quite independent, but yet dependent. This is how we live and how we practice. It is true, you know, on the weekends I'm at my home in Mill Valley and I watch the clouds over Mount Tam and, you know, the mountain would not exist without the clouds. I mean, the mountain, the sense of... Mountains that have trees and vegetation and streams and things because the mountain creates. The clouds come and bring the rain from the ocean and produces that. But the clouds can't exist without the mountains because the mountains are what creates the atmospheric conditions that clouds are formed. So they're totally dependent on each other in both directions, and yet somehow they're independent. The cloud shows up, heat goes up a little bit, disappears. The mountain's perfectly happy sitting there. Clouds go away. And so there's something in that story about us, too. We're totally dependent on each other. You cannot imagine, you can imagine, if you think about it just a little bit, how intimately dependent we are on each other in so many ways.

[31:00]

And yet, we're totally alone. Each one a totally individual person. And that dynamic is part of the... foundation on which spiritual friendship exists, the connection, the intimate deep connection, and the independent giving of space. Anyway, I thought I would just sort of say a few words here this morning, and then since we have maybe 10 minutes, open the floor to anybody that would like to make a comment, because you are all experts in spiritual friendship, and I would love to hear anything you have to say on the subject. or comments about anything I brought forward. Yes, Edward.

[32:11]

I think that's a good question, and although I said it, I think it's more important if you have a shared schedule. If you get up in the morning and follow the schedule and sit, a speaker used to say, you think, well, I don't want to go to lecture, I'm not interested in lectures. If you just go to the lecture, because it's on the schedule. I don't want to go sit zazen. Well, just go to sit zazen, because it's on the schedule. he would say that's enlightenment. So I think if you have a shared schedule, if you are chopping vegetables with your friends and doing the best job you can and trying to take care of each other while you're doing that, that's plenty good and you can decide whether you're agreeing on the particular translation of the Heart Sutra or not. When I say values, I mean in the sense of a fundamental commitment to being kind to each other and recognizing that being kind to each other necessitates some level of wisdom and that you're trying to get smarter about what's going on, not believing all your delusive thoughts so that you have a chance of being kinder to each other.

[33:51]

That's enough shared vision. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I would say there's quite a big difference between a prison and... I had friends that lived in cults during the time that the Zen Center was formed. And the difference between a prison and what's happening here is at any given moment, if you're not happy with what's going on, you just walk out the door. And in cults, even though sometimes people felt like they were unhappy... they couldn't walk out the door because there was this sort of thing that happened. And you're free here. You're free to do whatever you want. You follow the schedule because you know that it will encourage other people if you show up in the Zendo in the morning.

[34:57]

It will also help you. But more importantly, you know that it will encourage your friends if you follow the schedule. Yes, Tova? It's just so hard to feel connected to a person if you have misled them by lying or stolen something from them or killed some part of them. These precepts, or you harbor ill will to somebody, these precepts are, I mean, if you can actually encounter a person, like I was talking, actually meet them, then you don't need the precepts because you're in touch with what they are doing and you're treating them well.

[36:07]

But if you're confused about that, I think it's useful to have the precepts both in terms of the literal understanding, don't harm a person, and the sort of compassionate understanding. So I think it's intimately connected to that. The precepts are... When I talk about spiritual friendship, I talk about the way we are treating each other all day long, how we hang out together. And ethical conduct is... the proper way to hang out together. Did you have something else you wanted to sort of expand on? Yeah, I've sort of been talking about residential practice of spiritual friendships, but clearly one can have spiritual friendships that go back to early days of childhood or longer.

[37:27]

Sometimes family relationships can get more complicated for reasons which I don't need to explain for anybody, for all of you who've been raised in a family. You can get in fights with your siblings and have problems with your parents and various different things because it's more complicated. And so in some sense, the friendships you can develop in a spiritual community, actually you end up both working through some of those old relationships with your family because you all of a sudden decide... That guy over there is really your brother and you're tired of him mistreating you and do a lot of transference on him, etc. So you get the chance to sort of work on your child, your family relations in the sangha. But you actually do know that he's not your brother or not your sister and you can. So, yes, of course. I think it's a really good question.

[39:01]

I mean, I think that obviously the ideal friendship would be mutual, but I've known many situations where it's been one-sided, where one person is putting most of the effort in making the friendship work, and the other person is spending a lot of time fighting it. And yet, it's always interesting in those circumstances where they stay connected, and so in some sense it's their way of being a friend, even though they're sort of giving you a hard time. And sometimes that's the way it has to be. It's confusing, I know, what I'm saying here, but sometimes that's the way it is. Some person wants to be your friend but doesn't know how to do it.

[40:04]

So the friendship seems kind of one-sided for a while because you're putting more into it. You have to be careful in those things because you have to have boundaries where you don't give too much and and injure yourself in the process. So that's a more complicated question. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would agree.

[41:14]

I mean, that's why we have this emphasis on difficult conversations and having formats for addressing this, because we feel there's always going to be some rupture in relationships that happen, even intimate relationships. And can you repair those ruptures? And we in this community encourage repairing ruptured relations, because then the relationship is much stronger. And just my own experience in the business world was that, first of all, everything is going so fast. There's so much stuff going on. And, you know, somebody really stabs you in the back, supposedly. And you have a natural resentment against that. Or they think you did the same thing to them and there's a resentment. And most times I found personally that it was very hard to... repair those ruptures and you just sort of figured out how to get along as best you could working at the shallow level you need to to make the company successful.

[42:16]

I heard the 10 o'clock bell ring or 11 o'clock and everybody's left to do lunch. That's usually the indication for it's time for us to return to the quiet of the Zendo. I've appreciated your questions and enjoyed talking about this wonderful subject, and I hope you think about it a little bit as you continue your practice together. It's the heart of our practice, in addition to zazen, the precepts, the schedule, and all the other things. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:19]

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