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. Good evening. I'm really happy to be here with all of you this evening and have the opportunity to speak with you. And I'd like to thank my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman, to whom I am enormously grateful. And I'd like to ask the tanto, since I forgot my watch, if you would give me a five-minute warning, or someone could bring me one if you have someone. Thank you very much. Thank you. So in the last month I've been spending a lot of time with my mother.

[01:08]

My stepdad had a bad stroke about a month ago and died after about a week in the hospital. And my mom has Alzheimer's. She's 87 and my stepdad was 91. So, you know, it's hard anyway, and it was particularly hard for her. having Alzheimer's. So I went up and I spent about two weeks up there with her total on two separate times. And it was really an amazing experience. It was wonderful to be with her throughout all the difficulty. It was just so wonderful to spend that time with her and to be so close and in such a unique way. When I was thinking about giving this talk and what I might talk about, what came up immediately was a short fascicle by Dogen, the Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance. And I hadn't been thinking about that previously, but I realized that that had been suffusing my practice in ways that I only realized looking back on it.

[02:28]

So that's what I'd like to talk about this evening. So the Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance is a very short fascicle. It's about four pages long. It's not usually included in the Shobha Genzo, Dogen's large work. It was, I think, written for laypeople. So it's very practical and very straightforward, particularly for Dogen. And the four methods are giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action. So giving is also the first paramita, generosity, dhana. And the paramitas are the traditional practices of a bodhisattva. So...

[03:29]

giving or generosity is also one of the main practices of lay people, traditionally, since the Buddhist time. Monastics and lay people were much more separate throughout the history of Buddhism in terms of how they practiced. Householders didn't really have time to meditate. So for a monastic, the three main practices were... meditation, wisdom, and ethical conduct, whereas for laypeople it was generosity, wisdom, and ethical conduct. And traditionally the laypeople would give to the monks and support their practice for the benefit of all. So giving is a really universal practice, monastic and And I think it's really a foundational practice in so many ways.

[04:31]

It's kind of the first way that maybe we dissolve the boundary or the separation between self and other. And in fact, Dogen starts right off saying, giving means non-greed. Non-greed means not to covet. It goes immediately to talk about non-separation. He says, whether it is of teaching or of material, each gift has its value and its worth. The question is not whether the gift is valuable, but whether there is merit. Give even a penny or a blade of grass. It will be a wholesome root for this and other lifetimes. I think giving is such a natural impulse when you look at small children. Really little children kind of play games with giving. They'll They'll give you something off their plate or, you know, the toy that they've been chewing on or, you know, some little bit of dirt off the ground, and they'll give it to you very seriously.

[05:40]

You know, and you can give it back, and they'll give it back to that, and you can just go on, you know, playing at giving. Yeah, so this is very spontaneous, you know, giving, which doesn't last, you know. Very soon we're into mine. I want, that's mine, don't take mine. And then giving enters a whole other realm where we're giving away. Really, little children don't have a concept of here, gone, mine, yours. So it's really easy to give away what's not mine anyway, right? But when it's mine, then it's harder. Giving is like giving it away. It won't be mine anymore. So the giving is related to renunciation of letting go. We're letting go of these things. I want this, but I want you to have it, so I'm going to give it to you.

[06:40]

But giving goes much beyond that, where it's not just giving away, but... just giving. It's not just giving things or giving things of benefit. It's just the pure action. It goes back to the pure action of giving. So to give even a penny or a blade of grass, just giving, just open-hearted giving. Buddha said, when a person who practices giving goes to an assembly, people take notice. You should know that the mind of such a person communicates subtly with others. And I thought about my mom and my stepdad a lot with this, because spending time with the family and with my mom again, and they were living, my mom still does live, in an assisted care facility. And everybody in there just loves them.

[07:45]

They're like their favorite people there, because they're They're lively. They're engaged. They're extroverted. They're kind. They're probably among the highest functioning people there, physically and mentally. And I got to see, particularly since Lamar had died, the outpouring of love for my folks. It was just amazing. And having so many people... about them and about their experience of them and going to Lamar's memorial. It was really more of a wake, you know, but a few people spoke and mostly people had a party and just exchanged stories. He always had a word for people, always was telling a joke, usually pretty dirty, with great glee.

[08:46]

You know, he loved to pull people's legs. He did little magic tricks and stuff. He wrote a little, not a newsletter, but like a little monthly collection of jokes and stories he'd find on the Internet and pass it out to people. He really, I heard this from so many of the staff. Like, he made it a practice of knowing what soda you liked, and he'd keep it in the refrigerator. He'd keep, like, the different kinds of sodas different people liked in the refrigerator so that whenever they came in the room, because the staff come in the rooms a lot, you know, to bring medication and stuff, it's like, oh, would you like a cherry soda? You know, he'd always be there waiting for you, whether you had one or not. And he'd go to Costco and buy people boxes of, you know, Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars and stuff like that. He loved sweets. He liked... giving people chocolates all the time. He wrote his own obituary, his own epitaph a few years ago, and it was published in the paper.

[09:52]

And in it, he talked a lot about giving. And it was really interesting because he... And he talked about gratitude as well as giving, you know, that he was so grateful for all the people in his life. And he said something like, all the people who made me the wonderful person that I think I am, or that I am, and I think I am, you know. So he also appreciated his own good qualities. But this gratitude and generosity, I think, really went together for him. And I saw how that really went together for my mother, too. She had a really hard childhood, really never had a stable home, was dependent on a number of different families at different times who took care of her in the neighborhood. She never talked about how hard things were.

[10:55]

She always said, I'm so grateful. I had so many people who took care of me. All my life I've had people who take care of me. And she never dwelled on... I needed people to take care of me because my family wasn't taking care of me. She just talked about gratitude for friends and other families who were caring for her. And because she was so profoundly grateful and always felt, I think... kind of in debt to people. She was always giving. Always giving. Stopping in on people, visiting, giving in like just myriad, myriad ways. Drove me nuts as a kid, of course, you know. She was not always a saint at home. But now that she's older, you know, it's like just the positive remains. It's amazing. There's like

[11:57]

There's nothing but the giving. There's nothing but the loving. So Dogen says, to leave flowers to the wind or leave... Hard to see. To leave flowers to the wind or to leave birds to the seasons are also acts of giving. to leave flowers to the wind or to leave birds to the season are also acts of giving. So giving is also an expression of trust and of faith to let things be, to let people be, to let ourselves be. We can get caught in thinking that we have to give and fix or do But it can be just as much a gift to allow people to be as they are, to allow them to have the feelings and the experience that they have, to trust them.

[13:05]

That can be often the greater gift, is the gift of trust and the gift of fearlessness. It is said that one of the main things that a monk has to give is fearlessness. since monastics often have very few material possessions. They give of their practice, they give of the teachings, and they give their own fearlessness. Because of their own experience, they have no need to fear. You should know that to give to yourself is a part of giving. And I think in some ways... our giving will always be incomplete unless we can give to ourselves. Because it can come from a sense of unworthiness or dependence or trying to make up for some felt lack. So to give to ourselves is completely not separate from giving to others.

[14:13]

Giving to ourselves can be nurturing, can be giving space, giving time, listening deeply, sitting, letting go of our expectations of ourselves and others is all giving to self and all of that is giving to others as well. So kind speech and beneficial action, which are the next two of the methods, are really extensions of giving. We give of our kind speech. We give of our beneficial actions. And Dogen says, kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, you arouse the mind of compassion and offer words of loving care. It is kind speech to speak to sentient beings as you would to a baby.

[15:22]

And I think what he means like that is not to engage in baby talk. But, you know, when we talk to babies, we're very kind and we're very engaged and we're very attentive. And we don't, we try not to yell at them. You know, kind of get down, we get to their level and it's like, We check in with them and play back and forth. And we find some way to engage. So I think that's what he means, speak as you would to a baby. The mind that we approach babies with, not the content. Kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. Those who hear kind speech from you have a delighted expression and a joyful mind. Those who hear of your kind speech will be deeply touched. They will never forget it.

[16:26]

I think very often we don't really know how our kind speech touches others. I've often thought of very simple words that people have said to me that have meant so much. And when I think about it, I think they probably were not aware that it was particularly significant. They were just being themselves. And conversely, I've had people express gratitude for things that I had said sort of in passing, years before, that they would come back later and say, that meant so much to me when you said X. So the practice of kind speech... You know, we don't always know how things will land with people, but when we practice kind speech, you know, we're sowing the seeds of kindness in the world, and we never know when or where they will sprout.

[17:33]

And we all know, of course, how harsh speech affects us. It's also notable that four of the ten grave precepts have to do with speech. Not to lie, not to slander, not to praise self at the expense of others, not to abuse the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So our speech is very significant for how we live together and harmonize together. Four of ten It's really amazing and I think it came up out of living together, out of the Buddhist community living together and seeing how do we live? What is it that supports our lives together? There are so many forms of kind speech

[18:42]

Offering words of gratitude or praise are obvious, but I think often it's the small ones that can be the most significant. Thank you. Being friendly. Making small talk with someone who is new or looks uncomfortable. Sitting down at a table where there are new people. At Tassajara, that's always a good way to offer kind speech. And one that I think is very significant here is silence, actually, giving the gift of silence. Because it really takes everyone involved to give that gift to let go of what you might want to say if it's silent time. I'm thinking about practicing at Tassajara when we have periods of silence. So to hold off on what you wanted to say until it's a time when there's talking and to give everyone around you that gift.

[19:52]

So beneficial action, Dogen says, is skillfully to benefit all classes of sentient being. That is to care about their distant and near future and to help them by using skillful means. So we develop skills by practicing them. We talk a lot about skillful means, but you just get them by practicing them. There's no other way. I had an art teacher many years ago who I think in some ways was my first Zen teacher. And one day he said, your first 500 drawings are crap. Get started. Don't wait to do the perfect drawing. Don't wait to have the perfect beneficial action. Just with your good intention, do something. Say something. Go forward. See what happens. Make mistakes.

[20:58]

Lots of them. Find out. Find out what happens. Don't hold yourself back. by thinking, I can't do that or I'm not worthy or I don't know how. You don't have to be good at it when you start. And you may or may not get good at it after years, but you'll probably get better. So the last of the four is identity action. And that's really what made me think about this fascicle because I'd never really gotten what identity action is. Dogen says, identity action means non-difference. It is non-difference from self, non-difference from others. It's classic Dogen, right? When we know identity action, others and self are one.

[22:02]

And I thought of a few instances of identity action that illuminated that for me. One is a story that Steve Weintraub, who is Linda Ruth Cutts' husband, likes to tell. Steve's parents were visiting from New York and Steve brought them to meet Suzuki Roshi. And They spent some time together. And Steve's parents were older. This was in, like, probably around 1970 or something. And they ran a luncheonette in Manhattan. And it's 1970. They didn't know from Buddhism, Zen, any of it, you know. So they're hanging out with Suzuki Roshi. And afterwards, Steve's dad said, ah, it was just like he was in the luncheonette business. This is identity action, this non-separation.

[23:10]

What does a Japanese priest have to do with a couple who are running a luncheonette in Manhattan? It didn't matter. It was just like he was in the luncheonette business. I recently heard that on some road trip somewhere, the car Suzuki Roshi was riding and stopped at a gas station, and there were some Hells Angels hanging out on one side of the parking lot. And he just went over and started talking to them. No problem. Hi, what's up? What are you doing? Nice motorcycles. I don't know. Just complete non-separation. And I read a story years ago about a student of Aikido who was studying in Japan. And he was young at the time.

[24:13]

He was telling the story when he was older, but at the time he was quite young. And his teacher kept repeating that the purpose of Aikido is not to engage in combat. Yes, we do these practices, but the real purpose of Aikido is beyond that. It's to not have to use... physical force or violence. But still, he was young and he wanted to try it out. One day he was riding home on the subway at night and a very belligerent drunk got on the subway train and was kind of crashing around and being kind of threatening and he was starting to focus on this one woman and things were kind of escalating and the Aikido guy is like, He's starting to stand up and get ready. He's like, well, this is really a legitimate use of force. I need to protect everyone in this car. I need to protect this woman.

[25:14]

And he was kind of at one end and the drunk was in the middle. At the other end of the car, this little tiny Japanese man jumps up and he goes, hey, what you been drinking? And the guy turns around and he says, sake, what's it to you? He said, I love sake. Come over here and talk to me. So the drunk comes over and he sits down by him and the old man says, ah, my wife and I, we used to sit out every evening and drink a glass of sake together. And the drunk says, wife, I just lost my wife. And within a few minutes, he had his head down in the old man's lap, and he was sobbing, and the old man was patting his shoulder. And the Aikido guy's like, okay. So that's what my teacher was talking about. You know, that went so far beyond what he could understand at that time.

[26:22]

And to him, that looked like... you know, miraculous powers, right? How does someone so tiny be so brave? You know, the trunk was big, you know. You know, I say, hey, what's up? You know, totally not caught. So when you're not in it, it looks like miraculous powers. And when you're inside it, it's nothing special. It's nothing ordinary. It's just being with people as they are right in front of you. So I got to spend, you know, like two and a half weeks living in an assisted care facility, living with my mom, sleeping with her, sleeping in bed with her, eating all my meals in the dining room. And, uh, being friendly with the staff, hanging out, especially in the early days, just spending a lot of time holding my mom when she was kind of freaking out, really confused, feeling like she was in a vacuum, like she just couldn't.

[27:42]

She kept saying, I can't get my head screwed on straight. I'm just in a vacuum. She couldn't remember anything. It was just overwhelming. And because she has Alzheimer's, it was very much like the movie Groundhog Day, you know, because we got to do the same things over and over again, you know, many times in a day. So I had a chance to learn how to respond, you know. So when she'd wake up in the morning and she'd be in a vacuum, I learned to tell by the look on her face. So I'd just say, oh, are you vacuuming again? She's like, yeah. it's really a vacuum. I said, yeah, you do that every morning. You know, but, you know, it seems like it must be really unpleasant. But, you know, it passes in a little while, and it seems to help if you get up and get dressed and move around a little. It doesn't seem to help to worry about it much.

[28:44]

Like, oh, okay. So she could kind of learn that, even though she couldn't remember. She could learn it, which was really interesting. And after about a week, she said, I think this will just pass. I'm like, oh, great. So part of what we spent our time doing was singing. My mother has always had this habit of kind of free associating to things that you know, with songs, like something will happen, it will remind her of a song and she'll kind of burst into song. So almost every time she would get up and use her walker, because she's really unsteady, like her hips giving out on her, she would start singing, show me the way to go home, I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

[29:47]

Had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went right to my head, complete with drunk accent. So we'd start singing together. So we'd be walking around the grounds at the assisted care place, singing, show me the way to go, harmonizing nicely, over and over again. This is identity action. I was just completely with my mother. I wasn't separate from her. I wasn't trying to fix her or change her. I was completely present with her where she was. I just joined in with her. And it was lovely. It was amazing. I kept thinking, I should be... I don't know, I should be sadder, feeling more of the loss of Lamar, you know.

[30:53]

But what was so up for me was the intimacy with my mother. Just the complete not holding back. And Dogen says, the ocean does not exclude water. That is why it is large. Mountain does not exclude earth. That is why it is high. A wise lord does not exclude people. That is why he has many subjects. Being with my mother, I realized how often in very subtle ways I would exclude her. And when I was a kid, it was really obvious, you know. I wouldn't walk with them when I was of a certain age. They're not with me. But to hold a little distance, a little judgment, a little something, rather than just completely opening and softening my heart.

[32:04]

So it was such a gift for me to be able to be with her in that complete opening and softening. And I think that it's so often the presence of death that brings us to that point, when we let go of our self-concerns, our smaller worries, our resentments, our fears, our greeds. Many years ago, when my dad had had a stroke and was in the hospital. I remember walking into his hospital room the first time I had seen him in a coma. And the feeling arose so strongly, there is nothing in this world more important than being kind to one another. And that lasted for some time, and of course it didn't last forever because small concerns keep coming up.

[33:10]

But that's a part of practice, is to remind ourselves over and over again what's most important, what is most truly of value in our lives. Because we have the ability to choose. You know, all the causes and conditions of our life are as they are, were as they were. But in this moment, we have the ability to meet them. completely mind is beyond measure things given are beyond measure moreover in giving mind transforms the gift and the gift transforms the mind We have just a few minutes if anyone has any questions.

[34:16]

Yes? I think it's interesting that they've been showing speech specifically in the expression when there are so many ways to communicate outside of speech. So why do you believe he focused, he emphasized these small number of principles When you say expressions, do you mean like physical gestures or just actions? Because you just talk about actions. Actions and even like in presence, in silence, like in being with someone in a certain way or... I think partly because speech has been such a traditional teaching from the precepts and actually the four methods of guidance go back to the Lotus Sutra.

[35:41]

So this is an old, I mean, Dogen didn't actually choose these. These went back to the Lotus Sutra, which is 500, 700 years before Dogen. But as to why one would choose speech, I think partly it's just that speech is so powerful. It's, you know, we live in speech and in our thoughts so much. We filter the world through our thoughts internally and externally. And the words that we say have a profound impact. And I think on another level, it's only been somewhat recently that we've become so attuned to body language. I think awareness of speech has a much longer history than awareness of body language in the way that we have now. That's a great question.

[37:05]

Some of the question and answer in Dogen, I think he wrote both the question and the answer. I think it's a didactic form. But compassion speech can have many different forms. The intention of kind speech is to foster awakening, is to help people to be free from fixation on ideas, concepts, free them from clinging. In the history of Zen, there have been shouts and blows and all kinds of things with the intention to help people find freedom. So I think in the 12-step community, interventions may look pretty rough, but I think that's definitely a form of kind speech.

[38:06]

I don't imagine people often appreciate it in the moment. But I think the gratitude comes later. This turned my life. And I think Dogen is also fiercely protective of the Dharma and not wanting it to be corrupted, wanting people to have true understanding and not corrupt understanding. And he could be pretty forceful about that. Time for one more. Yes. Well, I think the first thing to say is that Alzheimer's is kind of a random thing.

[39:11]

It's my understanding, which is somewhat limited, is it's the growth of kind of plaques in the brain, and it totally depends on where they grow, what part of the brain is affected. So, you know, it's like this kind of spatter shot thing, and it can affect different people very... It's kind of like a stroke. It can affect different people very differently and over time. That said, the person... that I've known the best, who had Alzheimer's. Toward the end of her life, she would radiantly come up to people, as she always did, you know, hi, how are you? I love you. You know, limbically connected, emotionally connected, having no idea any longer who you were. You know, but just, you know, radiant, you know, loving. caring. But then she was always like that. Yeah.

[40:13]

So some people some people it kind of focuses on the you know they go toward the negative and anger and acting out and some people that falls away and they're just in sweetness and I don't think you can even predict Alzheimer's has profound and uncontrollable effects. That's it. Thank you very much.

[41:07]

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