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. Oh, you're so close. You can keep track of me. So I understand Jiryu's camping, which is an excellent thing. Jiryu is the Tonto, and he invited me to speak today, so I'm very appreciative for that invitation. My name is Mary, and I live and work at City Center. I've lived at all three temples, and I have lived at two different times at Green Gulch.

[01:01]

The first time was in the fall of 2000. when I did my first practice period. And the second time was in 2009, when I came back to live here before going to Tassajara for a number of years. And now I'm at City Center. And there are some familiar faces. It's very nice to see you. You have more hair. I have less hair, maybe. I always appreciate when... People coming to City Center now say something about a memory that they have of City Center if they haven't lived there for a while. So I thought before I start in with my talk, I'd say a little tiny thing about my memory of the sendo. During my first practice period, on a Thursday morning in the middle of the day,

[02:02]

There was a line of us sitting on that ton and a line sitting on that ton of practice participants. And there wasn't a shuso that practice period. It seemed like there were a lot of very junior people that didn't... We didn't settle so well, let's say. So one day... one of the participants' grandmothers came to visit. And she sat in a chair right there. And during one of the sitting periods, she fell asleep. And then she started to snore. And it wasn't one of those subtle little snores that people have sometimes when they're sitting upright in the zendo. It was a pretty boisterous... chainsaw-like thing that was going on up here. And at first, we were able to maintain composure.

[03:07]

And this continued, and the snoring got louder, and we all completely lost it. To the point that all of us that were sitting on that side were laughing so hard that the tawn started bouncing, which got the people on that side laughing. And everybody in the Zendo couldn't, we just couldn't help ourselves. And bless this woman, sleeping, kept sleeping, and kept snoring. So we were very loud. She was having good restorative sleep. And I remember at that time, Reb was in his Dokusan room. And he... he heard this noise coming out of the zendo, which involved the tans bouncing and everybody laughing and then the snoring. So he, I guess he asked somebody to come in and check on us.

[04:12]

And that person might have said something like, you might want to quiet down or something, I don't remember. Anyway, it kept, and I think it got worse. It just kept getting... more and more boisterous. And as I said, I think that, you know that moment you have where you really want to stop laughing, but something just triggers you, and the other person beside you does, and it went on. So at a certain point, Reb walked in, and he came along behind us and touched our back. Just a very light touch as he walked around his endo. And he moved through the zendo. He didn't say anything. And as he walked by and touched each of our backs, everybody stopped laughing, one at a time. And then after that happened, he approached this woman and he put his hand on her back and woke her up and asked her if it might be time to have a cup of tea or something.

[05:25]

And he helped You know, they walked out together. And we continued the mourning. And I mean, I remember the power of his hand on my back. I remember that moment of going from this uncontrollable, gleeful, yet slightly horrifying laughter, because we were in the sendo, trying to do this thing called sitting. And then the quietness that was provided by this hand on my back. And as far as I know, nobody ever said anything. I don't know if it was one of those things that got to senior staff, like, oh, you won't believe what happened in this end of today. And for all of us, it was, I think, a very powerful experience because we were, it was a very joyful event. And then it became settled.

[06:28]

And the power of that switch from something that's so... like all emotions bubbling out and then the ability to just turn that inward was very powerful. So I cherish that memory of this sendo and of that mourning and that activity. And... this notion that although we stopped laughing, it wasn't a you-have-to-stop-laughing moment. You have to control yourself. That wasn't the message. The message was that's something that's happening, and now you can move to something else. And that seemed to be a very powerful moment for me anyway. I remember it. So now, as I said, I live at city center and my partner and I were walking in the garden and farm this morning and I was appreciating the birds and the trees and the greenery.

[07:48]

There are those things in the city. We do have the occasional swallow that comes around or Pigeons, we don't have so many songbirds. There are trees and greenery, and it's a very different environment. So it was lovely to come here today and walk in the garden before coming here. So I would say that I am a student of kindness. That's the practice that I've engaged in for 20 years. And I've realized over time that being a student of kindness isn't the same thing as wanting to be kind. Although I do want to be kind. Being a student of kindness has a lot to do with effort and intentionality.

[08:56]

I'm sure many of you have wanted or thought that you would sit where the first time you sat. And when somebody suggested it to you before you did it the first time, you might have thought something like, well, that sounds pretty easy. I'll just sit down and meditate. And then it starts bubbling out that this thing called sitting is... not as straightforward as the language leads it to believe. And sitting this posture is a practice that we start and opens up over time. And we use the stability of this posture, the grounding of this posture, to open up what's happening in sitting.

[09:58]

And I would say that this practice of kindness is the same thing for me. There's this word called kindness. And the first time I heard it in a Buddhist context, it was very surprising to me. I was at a retreat led by a Tibetan teacher named... Chandra Rinpoche, and she practices in the Nigma School, and her teaching is very direct and forceful. And one of the things she said that surprised me was that there are 84,000 tenant teachings of Buddhism, and they all boil down to one thing, And that one thing is kindness. And she said, if you, me, would learn to be kind to myself and other people, she wouldn't have had to learn all 84,000 tenet teachings.

[11:09]

But that it just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work because each of us listens in a different way, each of us receives in a different way. And so we have all of these teachings that that the point is that one arrow of that will penetrate you. And so she spoke of kindness that way. That, for her practice, was the point. And I remember seeing her a number of times in the early 2000s, and this this conversation around kindness often comes up, or came up at that time with her. And the other thing she said to me, which has made an lasting impression, and she has articulated it in different contexts, is it was at the beginning of the first retreat I did with her.

[12:15]

And there were a number of people who she knew who came to see her every year. And they would ask her for teachings. And at one point, she was sitting at the front of a very large room of people, and she said, you Westerners are so funny. She said, you ask for teachings, and I give them to you. And then the next year you come, and you ask for more teachings. And I say, did you do the teachings you did last year? And they say, well, no, I didn't do the teachings you gave me last year. I want other teachings. And she said, so we give you practices, we give you teachings, and the sadness in that is that all these teachings actually are pointing to the same thing, but you have to do them. So then, how does one do kindness? How does one do this practice? One of the ways that I've found to do kindness

[13:19]

is to take up a practice, again, that I was exposed to 20 years ago, and with effort, just like sitting, to expand my understanding of what kindness is. We live in a do-it-yourself society. We live in a very individualistic I'm finding this more and more as a result of the conversations around diversity, that my background is one of valuing the individual as opposed to valuing the group. And so this plays right into this do-it-yourself society. I was also a carpenter for many years, and I... I learned the skills.

[14:22]

And at the same time, there was this promotion from all of the big box stores, Home Depot and those stores. And the promotion was, you can do it yourself. You can do your own plumbing. You can build your own house. You can fix your own electricity. You can do all these things. And as a tradesperson, when... when we would get the call saying, well, I built the deck, or I wired my house, and then the inspector came, and I almost electrocuted my wife. So this is the conversation that was coming up around being in the trades at that time anyway. And the meaning of that is that if you're If you're good enough, I think it is if you're good enough.

[15:24]

If you're good enough, you can figure out how to build your own house. If you work hard enough, you can really figure out how to wire your own basement, wire your own house. And I think for a few people that might be true. But how it relates to this is, as a result of that experience and other experiences, I decided to follow a model on becoming kind. And I've been working on that model now for just about 20 years. And I wanted to share a little bit about that model today. There's a practice called lojong, which is called — the translation of lojong, which is a Tibetan word, is mind training. And this First, the formant, which I understand it, was taught to us by a fellow named Atisha Deepankhara Srijana, and he lived from 982 to 1054.

[16:33]

Atisha was of royal birth. He was born in East Bengal. He was a very, very bright, prince. His story actually is a lot like Shakyamuni Buddha. So he was raised in luxury. He was raised to be a prince. And he also had an extraordinarily interesting relationship with Tara. And it is said universally in all the reading I've done around Atisha that he visions of Tara appeared throughout his life of direction, what to do, how to proceed. So he was in the middle of — his parents were arranging a marriage for him, and at that point he decided that he wasn't going to get married because he wanted to study Buddhism.

[17:35]

And he, again, was this very bright individual who had a voracious ability to study. and he also had the means to travel through India, and he studied with apparently 150 teachers, and for many years would absorb these teachings and then be able to remember them. And in amongst this time, he heard this very small kernel of an idea that there was somebody in Sumatra that had these compassion teachings. And so again, because he had means, he continued to study. At 29 he ordained, and then he decided to go find this teacher. He took a voyage from India to

[18:39]

Sumatra, now present-day Indonesia, that voyage took 13 months. I think they were shipwrecked a couple of times. And then he landed on that island, and he didn't exactly know where this person was, so he started asking questions and finding out. Then he found out where this individual teacher lives, and he requested teachings. And the teacher said, I will give you these teachings. if you promise to stay and study with me for 12 years. And on the basis of that conversation and the information that he brought with him about these teachings, Atisha stayed. So he stayed for 12 years. And he absorbed these teachings on compassion and when he returned to India after those 12 years, his ability to talk about these teachings was so powerful that he became, shortly after that, the abbot of Nalanda University in India, which was the most established, well-known, powerful monastery in India at that time.

[20:03]

So somebody... Somebody saw something in this fellow, saw that these teachings, this time, all the learning that he had done up to that point was evident. He taught at Nalanda for a few years, and then news of his teaching ability, the brightness of his teaching, reached Tibet. And at that point, Buddhism in Tibet had become... It had gone through a period of great birth and stabilization, and then there was a Tibetan king who persecuted all people that followed Buddhist teachings. So one of the kings invited... Atisha to come to Tibet to teach.

[21:06]

And Atisha is now, in the literature that I've read, thought to be the reviver of Buddhism in Tibet. He lived there for 17 years, and he taught in many different areas of Tibet. And one of his most profound teachings was around this idea of the Lojong teachings. And they were secret. So he had three Dharma heirs, he passed these teachings on to those three Dharma heirs, and they passed the teachings on to their Dharma heirs. And because they thought these teachings were so powerful, they kept them very guarded. The next century, there was another Dharma teacher named Geshe Chikawa who learned of these teachings, secret teachings, and he systematized them and decided that he would start teaching them.

[22:22]

And what he did first was he started working with a community of lepers. And he... he introduced them to these compassionate teachings. And they helped that group of people so much with their own suffering that the message got out that these were powerful teachings that helped end suffering for people. And so from that point on, they started being spread more widely. So I tell that story Because I think we hear, those of us that live in this world, that dharma is precious. I hear that often. But how precious is it? Is it worth 12 years of my life? Is it worth a journey to a very scary place where I don't really know what I'm seeking because of an idea that something there might be helpful?

[23:31]

I think if a teacher would have gone there and said, well, I'd really like these teachings, but I think I'll stay for a year, what would the teacher have said? Would he have said, well, okay, we'll see what we can do in a year. I think that's sort of how we are now, with education a little bit, with Dharma. It's like, well, this is how much time I have, instead of this is the importance and this is what I'm willing to do. And I find myself thinking that way often. When I first

[24:35]

asked to be a priest, what I said to all the people that I was in conversation with, because when you ask to be a priest, you talk to all of the current abbots and former abbots. I remember saying to each one of those people, I don't know if you remember, or Linda Ruth, I said, I have three years. I have three years. I'll stay at Zen Center for three years. So I was that person. I was that person that said, this is how much time I have. I'm on a clock here. And so that was ten years ago. And I'm still a student of kindness. And I don't actually know how long it takes anymore. So number... The structure of the Lojang practice is that there are 59 slogans.

[25:43]

And the point of these slogans, as I understand it, is to remember them. And so they become the part of the chatter that's happening in your mind rather than the regular non-dharmic chatter. So I made a set of cards, this is like super old-fashioned way, flashcards, in the summer that I was the Fugoten at the Tassajara kitchen in 2010. And I made these because I was overwhelmed with the requests that were coming my way and not knowing how to manage in a kind way all the things that were happening to me that summer. And so I started with these cards memorizing these slogans.

[26:48]

So instead of the thought, if you would just do what I say or ask, my life will be better. And probably a lot of us are familiar with that thought. I started thinking things like, Don't ponder others. Number 26. Or always maintain only a joyful mind. Slogan number 21. Or be grateful to everyone. Slogan number 13. So instead of this chatter which was, you're not listening to me, I don't care what's going on for you, I want you to do what I want you to do. I need you to do these things. Why aren't you doing these things? I could then think, before I said, okay, let's figure this out, I would think, be grateful to everyone. And that, for me, started this path of

[27:59]

always coming back to these slogans, memorizing them, working with them, believing that they have the power to change my mind. Slogan number 17 is practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions. And that word heart in there is, I think, a short form for the condensed bodhicitta instructions. Those five strengths are strong determination, familiarization, seed of virtue, reproach, and aspiration. And these five strengths come up over and over and over again in Buddhism. As a practitioner of Zen, The instruction to sit zazen is familiarization.

[29:06]

It's so you, over and over and over again, sit in a certain posture and remember that your mind can settle. Remember that your body can be grounded. Remember that your heart can open. Getting up in the morning to sit takes strong determination. Getting up over and over and over and over and over for years takes strong determination. To understand that there's an actual point to that takes strong determination. This isn't something that people, I think, are born with. They're not born with strong determination. It's a cultivation practice. It's believing that there is something that can be a support to us in our lives, rather than just what we already have.

[30:09]

I believe that we're a society that really likes child prodigies. We like the idea of that. We like the idea that people can be born a certain way. And we are waiting, maybe some of us, to find the one thing that we're brilliant at. Because then our lives will be better. And this cultivation practice that I'm talking about allows me to relax and think that I'm already my best self. I have to find out what that is. But it's already there. And to settle and to train and to be determined to work with these feelings that I have and to remember that there is kindness for myself, to remember that I can be kind to other people, and that when I'm doing those things, I'm acknowledging that

[31:24]

we're interrelated and that makes the world an easier place for us all to live. So I believe that my effort around the slogans, around this particular training, is not wasted. It is interesting when you get on the computer and type in Lojong or Atisha or Mind Training or even, like, slogan number 17. There's a lot of information out there. So each person in this room, if you were curious, could read about those things. And...

[32:24]

this reading about dharma and this experiencing dharma are very different things. So this belief that we can be changed, that our minds can not be — that we are not driven by our minds, that we can actually change the shape of our minds is a really great place to start, I think. So I'm fascinated by this journey that's happened over centuries around these slogans and how at once these secret teachings thought to be so powerful are now available to all of us. And that it's

[33:28]

The power comes from working with them. The power of zazen comes from doing zazen. The power of living in community comes from years of living in community, I think. I think it's one of the reasons why these three temples at San Francisco Zen Center exist, because as people live here, as they experience zazen and dharma and community, there is a brightness that develops, an uncovering of our true nature, a willingness for us to look at ourselves and see that brilliance. I remember reading one time about how mostly we're afraid of our own brilliance.

[34:39]

And I think that that is an exploration of a lifetime. What does that mean? What does it mean for us to be able to look at this one and accept it, accept her, And I think for me, these lojang slogans have helped me do that, or are helping me do that. For me, this will be an effort of a lifetime. And often when I talk, I talk about these. I gave a workshop at Tassahara about the lojang slogans with my partner Aaron this summer. And... I think there's a voice inside me that says, wow, maybe you should move on to something else. And I think that's my 21st century voice that gets bored pretty easily and wants to move on to the next shiny thing and maybe wants to be impressive.

[35:59]

And then I come back to this Like, am I learning something? Do I think something's opening for me here? Is this okay? And usually I land on the answer yes, which is why for all these years I've kept doing this. So I think one of the things I could say as encouragement to each of you is that there are 84,000 tenant teachings. There's a lot. And if you each find one thing that penetrates your heart, that is a miracle. And then when you find that thing that penetrates your heart, stick with it for a while. Get to know the shape of that thing. Get to know the texture. Get to know how it feels. how it feels for you and for you in relation to another person.

[37:00]

Hang out there for a while. I think that's dharma. Thank you very much. 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 that May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:38]

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