This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'm Mary Mosin. I'm the abbess of the Vallejo Zen Center. I lived here for four years, 90 to 94. I was Sheikah. and Tenzo and sort of acting, we know sort of something. Had to go on at any rate. And then I went to Green Gulch, and then I went to City Center, and then I was Chousseau down here in the winter of 98 with Norman Fisher. And my Chousseau dinner was the first dinner in here when it was redone. It was thrilling. So Greg asked me to talk about something or another, and he just said, you know, whatever, but that it should be very informal, almost like a stone office talk, if you know what those are, where a senior student goes to the stone office and basically just answers questions.

[01:22]

But I do have something I want to start with. I've been working in the kitchen, which is... my idea of a practice place. I walk in that door and I want to bow because it is a zendo. It's a great pressure cooker of learning. So for service, the kitchen crew reads a section of a wonderful, I guess it's an essay, by Dogen, the Japanese founder of our school who lived in the early 1200s. It's called the Tenzo Kyokun, the instructions to the Tenzo. But of course, it's not just for the Tenzo. It's about your life, how to practice. And that particular version is taken from this book, which is a translation of the Dogen and a commentary

[02:30]

both of which were translated into English. But the commentary is by Uchiyama Roshi, who was a wonderful, wonderful teacher. He was Shohaku Okamura's teacher, if you know Shohaku. At any rate, we read part of it every day. And the last couple of days, we've been reading about when Dogen first went to China. He left Japan in 1223 because he felt like he wasn't finding authentic Zen, so he went off to China. And because he didn't have quite the right kind of papers and training and yada, yada, yada, he wound up having to stay on the ship for a while. And he met a man who was a tenzo from Mount Iowong Monastery, and he says that he felt like whatever he's learned, a lot of it's because of that tenzo. And that's what I want to talk about, the exchanges that really brought Dogen up short and really helped him on his way.

[03:36]

One way of understanding Dogen, one of many, is that practice is enlightenment. Practice is key. And I think that some of that comes from this man. So he met this Tenzo who came to buy mushrooms, and they chatted and had tea, and then Dogen said, well, couldn't you stay overnight? Because I'd really like to talk to you more. And the Tenzo said, no, I can't. I can't give my work to other people, and if I'm not there, it might not be done. Well, and I didn't ask to be out overnight, so no, I cannot stay. And Dogen says, this is from, Dogen's, the practice in Japan was very class-bound. The nobility were monks studied and actually caroused a lot.

[04:42]

And then the servant class monks did the work of the monastery. And that's something Dogen really disapproved of. but he didn't understand it that well yet. That's what he came out of. And so this guy says, no, I can't stay. And Dogen says, but why, when you're so old, do you do the hard work of a tenzo? Why don't you spend your time practicing zazen or working on the koans of former teachers? Is there something special to be gained from working particularly as a tenzo? He burst out laughing and remarked, My good friend from abroad, you do not yet understand what practice is all about, nor do you know the meaning of characters. Characters here is a term of art. Of course, you know, that's the way that Chinese and Japanese writing is. It's in characters and ideographs, right? So in some sense, he means that. But characters here means everything.

[05:48]

It means a phenomenal world. It's like you just, you don't get what's important. Okay, so you don't, nor do you know, you don't know what practice is all about, nor do you know the meaning of your characters. I was taken aback and felt greatly ashamed. So I asked him, what are characters and what is practice? He replied, I'd like the footnote better. Uchiyama translated Dogen into modern Japanese, by the way, because Dogen wrote in medieval Japanese. It's like Beowulf or something. So Uchiyama translated into modern Japanese. Okay, so Uchiyama translates this passage. If you understand precisely what you're asking to be, what you're asking, what is the meaning of characters and what is practice, right? If you understand that,

[06:50]

precisely what you're asking to be the most vital problem concerning the Buddha Dharma, then that in itself is understanding characters. That is practice. At the time, I was unable to grasp the meaning of his words. So... In July, when Dogen was at the monastery with Ru Jing, his teacher, at Mount Tiantung, one day that Tenzo came to see him and said that he was soon to be returning home, and so he wanted to check on Dogen and see how he was doing, and they chatted, and then at some point it came up concerning the practice and study of characters. And the Tenzo said... A person who studies characters must know just what characters are, and one intending to practice the way must understand what practice is.

[07:56]

I asked him once again, what are characters? One, two, three, four, five, he said. What is practice? There is nothing in the world that is hidden. Nothing in the world that is hidden. That's what really struck me. This is the most important question. What is reality? What is this right in front of me? And nothing is hidden. So what's the problem? What's the problem? Why do we, how do we make, why do we make it so hard? We make it so hard. I don't think it is hard. But we make it hard. We suffer. And... I can talk about it.

[09:02]

It's so simple to say. Everything is your practice. Everything is our practice. Nothing is hidden. One, two, three, four, five. Everything. Just this, something simple. Apples, oranges, and dogs. That's your practice. People. That's what gets complicated. It's your practice. How is it that we, he says nothing is hidden, but we hide it. Maybe we hide from it. All these ideas we have, all these opinions we have, All these fears we have. Yikes. So I just wondered how this struck you. We read it, most of this, this morning in the kitchen, and we all liked it a lot. It was one of those times when you read, some of the sections you read and everybody goes, uh-huh. And sometimes you read it and people are going, yeah, what, whoo, and are very interested.

[10:09]

This was an interesting one. So what are characters and what is practice? What is this world that confronts me? And how do I deal with it? How do I respond to this? So what does it bring up for you? How do you see this? How do you hide? Does it seem so clear to you? How do you think the phrase, nothing is hidden, can be understood in the context of time and space? Like when you think about the future. If I think about the unknowns of the future, that seems hidden to me. It isn't that you know exactly, but you hide it in the sense that you worry about it and you make a thing of it. You see what I'm saying? It isn't...

[11:10]

You do this and you do this and then that happens. But we have so many ideas. Tenzo talked about this this morning in response to this, about how we have so many expectations that this is what's supposed to happen. I'm supposed to, I don't know, go to college and I'm supposed to get married and I'm supposed to have children and I'm supposed to live until I'm 83. Well, maybe, maybe not. Maybe you'll do something completely different. Maybe you'll die when you're 32. And it isn't that, it's the worry about the future that makes it feel so hidden. I mean, of course you don't know what's going to happen, but why do you, I don't know about you, I don't know that you do, but we do. We invest so much in it and we have so many ideas about what it's supposed to be We hide it.

[12:11]

Could we let the future be the future? And just take care of what's right in front of you, which might include going to school and getting a degree so that you could teach law. But that's just doing the next thing that's in front of you. Do you understand what I'm saying? So the hard thing is, this is it. This is the problem, the grasping. opinions. It's a great gift to people if you will ask a question or comment and there aren't any, the only stupid question is one that you don't ask. I think this way works really wonderfully when you're talking about our lives and our daily lives and not worrying.

[13:17]

For example, if we're assigned a meal for a hundred people and to show up, we still have to just do the best while we're planning and preparing. It's the same thing with college and all of that. But where I'm really caught with that is that in a social context, we're maintaining a status quo. And there are a lot of problems in this world, racism, sexism, and poverty, malnutrition. I mean, there are a lot of problems. And if we don't, I do feel like we have to add beyond the present moment and include that as part of our assignment. I like the assignment, yes. Oh, it is part of your assignment to be a functioning human being in the world, I think.

[14:18]

You have to find out your way. Not everybody is going to go marching or join the Peace Corps or I don't know what. And there are people in the world that think that Dick Cheney is wonderful. And I don't want to exclude them from Zazen. And yet... It isn't that we have to become stupid, or that we can't have an analysis of the societal difficulties, you know, political analysis, or however you want to think about it. I mean, I think of that, to me, politics as a very broad word. It includes all those things you talked about, and global warming, and ecological concerns, and you name it. The problem keeps coming back to our grasping and our having such a tight hold on our opinions, being so sure that we're right.

[15:19]

And we don't even know that we feel like we're sure that we're right until it's challenged. And then what happens? Then the aggression starts. The anger starts. For some people, the abdication starts. Rather than just be here. It's fine to have ideas and opinions about things. You can't function in a world without having views. That's just how it is. But you don't need to hold on to them so tight. You don't need to defend themselves. And it's just... It's, as I say, it's the grasping that's the problem. Could the gesture be this? I think that single-payer health care is a good idea. Check it.

[16:22]

So, I think Obamacare is a step in that direction. I'm not thrilled with it, but okay. But I don't have to insist, and I don't have to... I don't have to hate people who don't agree with me. I saw a little sticker on a car the other day, and I actually maneuvered so I got up next to it because I couldn't read it all. It said something about a real president. I thought immediately, uh-huh. And it said a real president would never apologize for their country. And my heart sank. And I've been thinking about how upset I got. And I am concerned about that view that somehow it's a grown-up to not be able to apologize. That's of concern to me. But what was it?

[17:27]

Why did it bother me so much? I think it was because I was scared and I felt helpless. Because I think I couldn't fix that person. And I probably couldn't. But I don't have to hate them. And it's so easy to go to hating. And it's one of the things we do when we're scared and when we feel thwarted and threatened. We hate. So that's part of my reality right here, right now, is part of my practice. I mean, practice isn't all just sort of la-la. It's hard... nitty-gritty work some of the time. I'm sorry to say. It's, you know, if you're impatient, it's dealing with your impatience. Like, I gave myself a blood blister today because of my impatience dealing with the pot. So, oh well. Anyway, that's, for me, that sort of political question is a big question.

[18:30]

But for me, my practice is with the self-righteousness. I thought when I came, I was a left political activist in Oakland and I had a labor union side labor law firm and blah, blah, blah. And I gave that up and I came here and I thought that I would get fixed and that then I would not be self-righteous and I could be involved in politics and I wouldn't get so upset and strident and you name it. Well, it'd get better. But it did, no way. You know, I recognize it sooner. I deal with it faster. I apologize when I do. It's not as bad as it was. But it's not like I became some other person. I was a little disappointed. I want to. So when you were saying about characters, What was the other?

[19:32]

Practice. Characters in practice. And you said that characters are just things as they are. Yeah, well, Uchiyama says it's like, it is everything, or just phenomena. And then you commented, or this is what I heard you say, that it's easy if it's a cat, dog, an orange, whatever. but that people are different. Why are people different? No, I think I mumbled something about it. It's more complicated. More complicated. I can relate to an orange more easily. I can deal with an orange. I can cut up an orange. We were cutting fancy segments of oranges today. I can do that more easily sometimes than I can deal with people. I'm much more likely to get triggered by people. Maybe I want more connected with people. But I didn't mean that there was some... I didn't mean something big about that.

[20:32]

I just meant we're more complicated than oranges. I think. For me. It's easy to say if you're not an orange. Well, they're in there. So Dogen's Tenzo... a very firm position when he knew what it was that he had to do. Maybe, I mean, he could see the way in front of him. He knew he had to do this. How do we distinguish between that and holding on and clinging to an opinion? How do you think? How do you do it? Well, I guess I stopped using my head. That's a good start. What else do you do?

[21:33]

Now I stopped using my head again. It seems to me it is a lot about your gut. And that's we develop the habit. We sit zazen and we develop the habit of paying attention to the body. the body and the breath. My teacher says you should always know where your breath is, which is a tall order. What? It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your breath is? That's right. But that's a really good practice to always know where your breath is. And you'll fail, but you could know it a lot, and it tells you a lot. If it's up here, then that's probably there's some holding going on. and what's going on in your body. So if you're, like Alan Sinaki says that when he feels himself leaning in, he knows that he should pull back a little, or maybe a lot.

[22:39]

And I say give it some breath then. Okay, so it's that kind of thing. You can feel it in your body, you can feel it in your gut, you can feel it in your jaw. You can hear it in your words. For me, if I start exaggerating, that's a hint that I have some attachment, maybe some fear, something like that. And sometimes you have to sit with something. If it's a decision about something, you have to sit with it and ask your gut. And you may not get an answer. You sure cannot demand an answer. You can demand it, but it won't work. So you just have to be quiet for a while and try to let it reveal itself to you, which is hard sometimes. I think that one way that nothing is hidden is that I'm trying to hide and I'm trying to be secretive about what's inside of me.

[23:43]

I think that's very obvious to other people, and in that way it's not hidden. That's true. Blanche Hartman says that when she first came to... Does everybody know who she is? She's a former abbess. She's a senior Dharma teacher at the San Francisco Zen Center. And Blanche says that when she came down here, she was here for a while and she was trying to sort of be the good Zen student and so on. And it finally dawned on her that everybody else could see her shadow. So she might as well take a look. It's true. We think that we're... hiding, but we're not. Yeah. What questions do you still have about Buddhism? I'm not exactly about Buddhism because they're not a catechism, you know. And so I have ideas, I suppose. I'm not a big believer in reincarnation in a way that you think of Tibetans talking about it.

[24:45]

I could certainly be wrong about that, but that's... I don't think of it that way. But I worry, I wonder how much of the forms we need. I'm a form queen. But we have a very small temple in a working class town. So people that practice there may think that there's a lot of forms, but then they come here and they find out that it's simpler. And sometimes I've been known to, you know, you offer incense, it's up here, and then you go, you put it in, so your eye goes down. And so I'm offering incense, and my eye goes down, and I see all these robes, and I think, what the hell is that? I'm not Japanese, this isn't Japan. But it's how I know to do it, and I find the forms actually really useful. And I've learned a tremendous amount from being the person that rings the bells and doing all those things when you miss one. or you clang one, or you do it really well, or whatever it is.

[25:50]

Just a tremendous amount of information there. And so I actually, I love it. I try not to hold on too tight. So it's really helpful. Every so often somebody comes along and says, what is this? Why do we do this? This doesn't make any sense to me. And that's really helpful to me because I have to stop and think about it and not go to, well, that's how we do it. And so... So I just wouldn't think of it as having questions about Buddhism so much. Because I don't have any questions about Zazen. Except how to do it. How do you not have any questions about Zazen? Or in what way do you matter? I just love it. And it isn't easy for me. Especially right now, my knees are not happy campers. so I have to sit in the chair, and I can't. I found that I couldn't sit, say, this morning for service, and I sort of found a way to sit there.

[26:56]

So that's, it's not easy. But I, it just feels so right to me, and I'm drawn to do it. I do it whether I want to or not. I mean, I set myself up that way. I'm the abbess of the temple. We have zazen in them. I'm kind of supposed to be there. So there is that. But I do, it's beyond words. Anyway, we say you don't even know what zazen is. We don't know what zazen is. We just do it. Suzuki Roshi once said to Blanche, Blanche, early on she went to see him and she said something like she says this Zazen I can't do it without laughing I think I'm beginning to understand it and he yelled at her for the only time he ever did he said I'm going to hit something he said don't you ever think you do Zazen don't you ever think you think you understand Zazen Zazen does Zazen she said

[28:12]

That's true. So maybe all you can do is love it. And you don't have to like it. I'm not saying I like it. Like it, don't like it, doesn't matter. Just sit down, shut up, and pay attention. You know, you don't have to eat. Maybe if you have a certain opinion or someone else doesn't share it. And I was kind of wondering maybe what you would do or what you would advise someone to do to kind of find themselves eating a little bit. Oh, I have no idea. I wish I had no idea. No, I don't. I take that back. You have to, I think you have to get to know it. You have to let yourself, let your body experience it.

[29:15]

You have to sit still for it. And then ask yourself, what is this? And what's underneath it? Because hate doesn't come... You know, we don't hate because we want to be bitter at people. We hate out of something else, I think. It's often fear or sadness. As I said, for me, helplessness, I don't like feeling helpless. And then I get mad at the person who made me feel helpless, which is ridiculous because I made me feel helpless. But that's how we are. It's a very common kind of a response. You feel guilty, and then you get mad at the person that made you feel guilty. But they didn't make you feel guilty. But that's just, if we don't stop and think about it, and we don't pay attention, that's the kind of thing we can do. So it's a lot about getting to know it. Take a kindly, friendly interest and watch it.

[30:16]

And watch what it does to your body and how corrosive it is. And then from there, you can be motivated to let it go. And there's a wonderful text on loving kindness. So the four brahma-biharas, the four divine abodes, and then the sujimata. in an ancient text commenting on Buddha's teachings and the loving kindness one is the first of the four and it's the longest and there's say it's that it's not nearly that many pages but say it was that like that well that much is about loving kindness and the rest of it is about dealing with enemies and difficult people and how to do that and there are lots and lots of practices but it has to start with this one or sometimes it's what does that person remind me of in myself that I don't want to look at you know if it's a more personal kind of a thing so it's again it's practice it's paying attention what's going on right here and as you see yourself suffering causing yourself to suffer then maybe you start to loosen your loosen your grip does that make sense

[31:40]

I can't see your face that low. I'm sitting here with a spotlight on my eyes. Yes, it does. So in our practice here, we're kind of encouraged to bring our Zaza in mind to really practice. And all that good stuff. Yeah. I was just reading a book by Seke Harada Noshi and he says, he was speaking to some students and he said, I don't, Zazen is our time to, you know, practice non-duality, practice Zen. And then he said, when you go and practice Zen in an activity in your working life, I don't want you to try to integrate Zen into that.

[32:43]

Not Zen into it or not Zazen into it? He said, I don't want you to try to integrate Zen into it. I want you to completely forget about Zen because I was just putting it on a head. I was wondering, and it really made me a little disoriented because... second daughter Roshi is such a great feature and I really respect him and he's wonderful but it's just two very you know I perceive it as two very conflicting views you know oh maybe maybe not you don't know what he's not here we can't ask him and you know taking a Zazen mind or taking that attitude of mindfulness and practice into your daily life it's not it's not that we're not talking about taking some idea about it, which is probably what he was concerned about. You know, don't go in there with that kind of emptiness attitude.

[33:49]

You know, like, oh, it's all one, so I don't have to worry about doing the dishes. You know, no. Do the dishes. You don't want to do the dishes? Do them anyway. And do them as wholeheartedly as you can. And just don't break it. But you see what I'm saying is that is the Zazen mind. That is the mind of practice. That is taking care of the characters, one, two, three, four, cup, saucer, hotel pan, so on. Okay, so I don't know exactly what he meant, but I bet he meant don't take all your ideas about Zen into daily life. Live your life, which Dogen would also say, and I would certainly say, and I think every teacher around here that I know would say Okay, so it's that kind, it may be something like that. And against what Darlene Cohen used to call Zen sickness. And I call, I call like falling off into emptiness. The kind of thing where your father just died and some of you say, oh well, living, dying, we're all one.

[34:56]

There's really no difference. No, your father just died. Cry. So... That's, you know, so that kind of attitude of, oh, it's all empty, that's a Zen idea. Don't do that. Because you have to live this life with a mind of emptiness, with some understanding. But you don't put it, don't live in your head, it's not a head event. So I bet you that's what he meant, but I don't know. And, you know, you can't ever say everything at one time. So you say this over here, and then there's that over there. So he may have been talking to some students that had a lot... No, none of the students here. Had a lot of ideas. You know, I wanted somebody to tell them, you know, give them like a little bit of how to live their life and have the right ideas or something like that.

[36:03]

Yeah, well. So I think he meant sit down and shut up and pay attention. Okay, I think this is the last one. Yes, it is the last one. Yes? Yeah, so how do you, you just said that to live your life and not to apply the Zen mindset to your activities outside of Zazen. But then, so what does, what can you bring from the sort of larger teachings of Zen, like, everything is why everything is simply because if it's not... Those are ideas. Just ideas. Bring your body. Integrate the habit of mind into your body so that you know where your breath is. Just know where your breath is. That's easy to say. That's hard. That's a really useful thing to do. Know your body. Know that feeling when your gut tightens and maybe you should be quiet.

[37:04]

My friend Cone, who used to live here many years ago, used to say that she was disqualified because she was aware of her body-mind. And so somebody was talking in the coffee-tea area when they shouldn't have been. If she felt herself getting tight and angry and irritated, she said, I'm disqualified, and she did not talk to them. because she was aware that she had some attachment going on and that it was not a life-threatening event going on, and it didn't need to be she that said to the person, hey, remember, we're there up on the Zendel. You see what I'm saying? So we sit Zazen and we develop the habit of paying attention. We develop the habit of knowing what's going on in our body. And... So we don't have to think about it so much. We practice. Okay? Which is easy to say.

[38:06]

It's hard to do. Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi says that the Suzuki Roshi's son says Sazen is how to do, how to do, how to do. And I think that's our practice. Always. How to do, how to do, how to do. Easy to say. Okay. Yeah, quick. We have a really quick answer, but a long line of, like, the ghost of hate and suffering. And also, like, what do you do if you see that in someone else? And, like, maybe it's, like, hate against something, like, against you or something you stand for. Like, maybe a simpler way of facing that. Is it, like, that person with the bumper sticker was, like, your sibling or, like, someone like that? How would you... try and influence them or can you only leave by example? I think it's too long for right now.

[39:06]

I think you just have to love them as best you can and get beside them as best you can, which you may or may not be able to do. I was so, forgive me, proud of this one time. I was walking in the hills above Vallejo and some people were on little those little scooter all-terrain vehicle things, and they were going up and down the hills, and it was muddy, it was wet, and they were going through puddles. And actually, it looked like a lot of fun. But it was very loud, and I would have rather they weren't there. And I was instantly offended, and I thought, oh, that's not going to be very useful. And they happened to come away. They were close to me. And so I said... The first thing I said was, that looks like a lot of fun, and I meant it. And then I told them that there was a sign very close by in a lot of houses, and the sign said, no motor vehicles.

[40:08]

And they had probably come from a different direction, and they hadn't seen that. And they thanked me, and they went away. And I think it was partly because I didn't scold them. And I, you know, I had a chance, I thought about this. And I just, I mean, I think about it every so often that, oh... You know, that worked because I was sincerely able to get beside them. I was with them, which isn't always possible. Anyway, we could talk about it some other time, but we're supposed to end because we're supposed to book a bit pretty soon. No, I've just got to stop. I'll be around, and so if you want to talk about this more, we can talk about it, but we need to stop. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[41:14]

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