This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Morning. Thank you everybody here for coming. It is a beautiful day at Green Gulch. And to those of you online, I hope it's a beautiful day wherever you are. So as always, I'd like to begin just by grounding myself and grounding all of us together appreciating the upright body and letting the breath come all the way out from the low belly flowing all the way out and then a little more

[01:24]

Then breathing in and letting the breath reach all the way to the low belly, being this breath and this body. And then opening our eyes and taking in the whole all the light and the sound, the sensation, noticing that that's our own life. And that's what I wanted to talk, surprise, about this morning. that we are each other's life.

[02:35]

We're not actually separate. There's nothing separate from your life for you. And opening to this, you know, I've been feeling that our practice of stability, of grounding, is... in part to open to how kind of intense that is, that we are each other's life. Do you know? Yes, thank you, people nodding. So intimate, unbearably intimate. What are each other made of? We're made of each other's life. We're appearing in each other's life as each other's life, right? Where else would we be? Everything that happens in your life is made out of your life.

[03:41]

So there's this teaching, everywhere you turn, you're meeting yourself. So I've been kind of meditating in this way, appreciating this sort of teaching, and looking on the lookout for the second thing. on the lookout for some other kind of thing. So maybe you all can help me. Often people here are very good at helping me. Notice the second thing, for example. But the problem is that as soon as it happens, it's going to be swallowed up in my own life. It's maybe too silly to put the teaching that way, but to feel that. to feel the intimacy that everything is just your own life. I have been meditating on this and trying to share this and deepening my trust and my confidence that living in this way is wholesome and trustworthy and beneficial.

[04:48]

To just understand that everything is my own life is a good ground. I don't find that it makes me not care about other people. I find that it makes me really care about other people. I find it's a good ground and guide for my life. So I've been sitting and teaching in this way, and then there's all kinds of, you know, it's also a limited way. It's appreciating. The other day I was looking at Suzuki Roshi, you know, who's kind of despairing like Zen teachers I think always have. He's thinking about the ancestors, the great enlightened Zen ancestors and saying, and this one Matsu who had an enormous tongue, a giant, even Matsu, this enlightened ancient Zen master with this giant tongue, couldn't say the thing, couldn't get around the thing to say it. Even though his tongue was really long, it couldn't kind of wrap around the back of the thing, you know?

[05:54]

When you see one side, you can't see the other side. You say one thing, you're hiding the other thing. So it's kind of a principle in Zen teaching. And then in my own teaching, then I get a little bit like, start to speed up. Like maybe I can, if I go fast enough, I can sort of get around and come back. But anyway, so we say one thing like, Everything is your life. Everything is your life. And of course, there's another side. This morning, I encountered a line by our Zen ancestor, the founder of our school of Soto Zen, founder in Japan in the 13th century. He said, one person transmits emptiness and then 10,000 people transmit reality.

[06:58]

And that hit me. One person transmit emptiness, and then 10,000 people transmit reality. And I felt like, I get that. And then I read the footnote, and then I thought, oh, no, I don't get that at all. So, and then I thought, this is why I stopped. You know, this is why I quit graduate school. It's like... Especially in the study of Buddhism, you know, it's like it's really landing. And then they say, oh, no, that's not what it meant at all. So just skip the footnote and just let it water whatever seeds of wisdom in yourself. So I think, you know, this idea like one person transmits emptiness is a little bit like aligning just in one moment or one teaching. We align with non-separation. And then... Everywhere we look is confirming that non-separation. But the way it landed for me this morning is like 10,000 things.

[08:06]

You know, we talk about these two truths in our teaching. There's the side of oneness, and then there's the side of separation. And reading this, I felt like the 10,000 people are doing a really good job of transmitting the truth of separateness. Like, all day long I'm receiving passionate transmission of the truth of separateness. Everyone is helping me with that. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, you know, I was, you know, I occasionally check my news feed I occasionally maybe, let's say, more than once a day. Significantly more than once a day. And every refresh of the newsfeed is another transmission of the teaching of separateness.

[09:08]

That guy is not me. Those guys are doing life wrong. They are bad. Bracket, I am good. It doesn't usually surface into consciousness, but it's always behind the they are bad. They are separate. That's not me. Sometimes, you know, there's some suffering that lands. There's some feeling of opening to suffering and responding with compassion. But I feel that, you know, I want more help with the other side. So could just the 10,000 and first person, and in a way, I think that's why we come, that's why we turn towards the Dharma. It's like, I know about separation. I know about doing my own life by myself, separate from people. I know about how I'm different than everyone and everyone is outside of my life.

[10:12]

But could I just have a particle at least, or just a few drops of reminder That everything actually is just my own life. So I felt like, yeah, I want that. And I trust that we're getting all of us well-trained in the separation. And that now and then to come here or to come to our cushion or to turn towards the Dharma in some form and remember the non-separation is deeply valuable. So that's my apology for talking more about oneness. So one of the ways that this sangha has helped me is in the form of a bodhisattva sangha member after a talk several months ago now, maybe even a couple of years ago, asked me, you know, full of compassion, really, full of opening to the suffering in the world,

[11:26]

of the world and really overflowing with her compassion for that suffering world, said, with an edge. So are you all saying that we should just be kind and that's enough? Are we saying you should just be kind and that's enough? I thought that's a fantastic question. I wonder about that. And so I wanted to lift up that sentence today and just study it a little bit together with you and see what it might unfold. So, you know, what is our response? This is the Bodhisattva's question, right? Practicing Buddhism is... comes from this honoring or opening to suffering, and then this naturally compassionate wish for that suffering to be relieved, and then the call like, I think I should sit down for a minute, or I think I should explore how to not kill in my life, etc.

[12:45]

I think I should study non-separations. So she was asking, you know, of taking in all of that suffering in our own limited life, you know, our broken hearts and our grasping, restless kind of minds, never satisfied. And then the great suffering of the world, the great intense suffering of famine and war, addiction, violence. Saying, taking that all in, do you really believe that you should just be kind and that's enough? What is our response? What is your response to the suffering of the world? What do you trust? In the Bodhisattva way, we keep that question close.

[13:46]

And then in the Zen way, it's a little bit strict, like if you notice, taking in that question, what is my response to the suffering of the world? If it's about something you're going to do later or something you did before, that's not quite it in the Zen sense of the question. Does that make sense? Like what right now in your body, in your heart, in your being is responding to the suffering of the world? What is the posture? What is the being? Does that make sense? This is what our Zazen practice is. So I wanted to, you know, so we should just be kind and that's enough. I wanted to start with this word enough. Because I think there's, this is like, there's all these acupuncture needles in this wonderful sentence and enough is a really good one.

[14:49]

I don't think anybody said that, just to be clear. But, you know, I don't always remember what I say, so I may have said it. Maybe someone else said it. Just to be kind is enough. That's a crazy thing to say or think. That anything is enough, right? Enough isn't really like a Buddhist... concept i think what is enough is it enough or is it not enough what does that do to my heart or to my compassion or to my action is that enough what does enough have to do with it if it was enough like how could i say well i like we're checking the boxes you know i was kind to my friend today that's enough you know signing off here as bodhisattva

[16:01]

But to say, you know, all I was is kind to my friend. That's not enough. It's also like, what are you talking about? What are you measuring? What are you measuring? Do you have in your feeling of response to your own suffering, to the suffering of your friends, of the whole world, do you have this concept of enough? And what would it be to let go of that? Is that a helpful concept? Enough is like based on an assessment of a result, right? And this is one of the principles of Zen practice is that we're not, we're in some process, we're expressing something through our life that's not about a particular achievement or a result. So it's not about whether it's enough, it's about that it's a true expression of our heart, of our vow.

[17:05]

Am I doing enough? So Suzuki Roshi, you know, many of you know I've been kind of deep in this book of Becoming Yourself and teaching a lot from it this month and really these years. And there's this point that he makes Suzuki Roshi, the founder of these temples, San Francisco Zen Center and its various affiliates, He says, you know, we don't observe the precepts or do our practices of harmonizing and loving and supporting each other. We don't do those in order to attain enlightenment. We observe precepts and take vows in order to actualize Buddha's spirit. We do it in order to, he says, to give rise to Buddha nature or Buddha mind at that moment. We do it to enact enlightenment. We're kind to our friend, not because it's enough, not even enough for them.

[18:13]

We do it because it's an expression, an enactment of our actual heart, which is our Buddha mind or our Buddha spirit or our innate love, our inherent intimacy. We're enacting the intimacy. We're being authentic to our true loving heart. And that's why we're kind to each other. Enough or not enough is not the point. That makes sense? What am I expressing in this present moment now? What is the result? Zen is always pointing us back to the heart of our own expression. Where are we coming from? Are we coming from this love?

[19:15]

Are we coming from this intimacy? And then are we curious about how that is for everyone? So the next problem that I would like to point to is, you know, to say, either to say that my kindness here is enough. That's like very defensive for yourself, right? Like, why would you say that? I'm doing enough. Leave me alone. I'm doing enough. But how could you think that it's not enough? Like, what do you think you are? You're just, you are the gift of the universe to the universe. You are like not anything other than that. How could you say you're not doing enough of something? How would you be doing any more than that? Your own action is a gift. It's not enough. How rude to see to this whole universe that just gave us a life and an activity. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not not enough. So there's something, too, in that enough, either way, that has this kind of certainty or sureness.

[20:24]

And I wanted to raise that for a moment. Another one of my favorite passages in here. Suki Roshi is talking about this kind of feeling of doubt in our life. You know, Zen practice has this great confidence, like... My being, my expression in this moment is just actually the unfolding of the whole universe together. That's actually how it's happening. I'm so sorry that it's not quite adequate. But it really is okay because everything is unfolding to create this. Do you know what I mean? Even if I think I did something, it wasn't my idea. I don't have that kind of independent power that I can just do something by myself. This is kind of the basic Buddhist insight. our life is unfolding together with everything. There's a great confidence in that. And then there's this great doubt that's always nearby, this uncertainty that is also authentic.

[21:32]

So... He's talking about the precept of not killing. This book, Becoming Yourself, the second half of it is about the Bodhisattva precepts. He's talking about the precept of not killing. And he gets into expressing this really important point that applies to our practice of kindness, of supporting one another, of living our life. He says, when the flies come, you might kill them. But you are always prepared for the possibility that you are doing something wrong. So somebody, and this is such an important theme, somebody might say, you know, if you're doing a rules-bound kind of practice, somebody might say, well, Suzuki Roshi said it was okay to sometimes kill a fly, so I'm sure it's okay to kill this fly.

[22:43]

That's not in touch with your actual innate heart or intimacy. That's some idea about that somebody told you something was okay. You might kill them, but you are always prepared for the possibility that you are doing something wrong. Hmm, I'm not sure I should have killed the fly. Not sure I should kill the fly. Even when you are eating, He's talking about how we take this vow not to kill, and then we eat rice that has all of this killing around it. But he doesn't say, don't worry about it. Sure, some bugs had to be killed to make the rice, but don't worry about it. It's okay. That's an okay kind of killing. He's like, I wonder. I wonder what this precept means. I wonder. Even when you are eating, you are prepared for, uh-oh.

[23:46]

You are not eating your rice carelessly, and you are reciting from the bottom of your heart the verse of gratitude. So I'm not sure that this vow that I'm feeling, this practice that I'm feeling of wishing to practice kindness with everything I encounter... because it's just my own life. You know, I'm not sure anything about that. Does that make sense to you? To not be so sure that we're doing the right thing. So that's what I was struck by that sentence. Like, really? Did a Zen person say, I'm sure that it's enough to just be kind? That's not so sure. Okay, then there's this great word right in the middle of the sentence.

[24:48]

Our favorite word, should. Should. Just in our body, you know, where does should go? So we're breathing in and out. Waiting for our activity to unfold. Connecting with our loving heart. Feeling into the intimacy of our life here. In the belly, in the body. Where is should? Should is way up here. Should is way up here. And someone else's idea. So if sitting, you know, what is my response to the suffering of the world?

[25:53]

You know, there's whole armies of people ready to tell you what that should be. What you should be doing. And much of that we've internalized, you know. So sitting, what should I do about the world? You know, even that. What's my response to the suffering of the world? you feel that all the shoulds start to go in. Which of these shoulds should I pick? According to who? Is the Buddha better than someone else? The Buddha said should do this way. Someone else said should do that way. So for Suzuki Roshi, this kind of should is in our practice of good, in our practice of kindness, in our practice of harmonizing with each other. We have an idea of should. We're limiting our freedom of action, our actual responsiveness. If there's something we should do, it's like we might be missing what it's actually time for.

[26:58]

You know what I mean? And should, more fundamentally, just distracts us from the compassion and wisdom that's in our own heart. It's just looking in the wrong direction. So the practice of kindness, if you feel called to take up that practice of kindness as the sort of overflowing of the intimacy and non-separation of everything, you know, notice if that becomes a should. I should be kind. Who said anything about should? This is what you wanted, remember? So don't... It's like our wanting then becomes a should, and then we lose touch with the wanting of it, and then we're doing it in the level of the should. The point is always, and this is Suzuki Roshi's teaching about how to live in harmony with each other, stay connected with the way that you actually love each other.

[28:02]

Forget about what you should do about that, or what that should look like, or if that's enough, or whatever. Stay in that innate love. Stay in that inherent non-separation and intimacy. Let your action unfold from there. And it doesn't mean it doesn't matter what you're doing. It matters a lot what you're doing, which is why it really matters that you stay connected with your heart and your presence in non-separation. And you might, you know that you have that, right? Does anybody wonder, well, my heart might not have this innate love thing that you're talking about, so I'm going to just stick with shoulds because I can't trust that. This is a deep teaching. He says, you know, in kind of moralism, you don't have the freedom that we need to fully respond because you're always in should and so you can't be free to respond, but we need a faith.

[29:09]

In our way of trusting our loving heart, we kind of need faith that that love is going to be there, you know, that the intimacy and non-separation is real. He says, you know, as you maybe heard, it's like the hat. It's like finding the hat that's on your own head. How do I love people? We're looking in the shoulds and we're missing that. The hat is on our head. So the direction of the practice is always towards what should I do? forget what I should do. I wish to connect with my loving heart and my presence here, the non-separation. So he says, you know, when we're in should, morality or kind of moralism emphasizes You should do this.

[30:12]

You should not do that. But this understanding of the rules of human beings does not work properly because under moral rules we have no freedom. The religious realm is different from laws or morality, moralism. Precepts in the religious realm are what we feel we have to do or want to do instead of what we should do. When we say, I should, we are in the realm of of moralism. When we observe the precepts or this practice of kindness with the feeling that I cannot help doing so, or I have to, or I want to, we have the religious understanding of our rules. Love that. I want to. My friend is suffering. I want to help them. And so should, it just distracts me from that. Now I think I'm helping them because I should. Actually, I want to, remember? Our friend told the most wonderful, powerful story when I was at Tassajara sharing some of these teachings about how, you know, this goodness is in our own nature and we don't have to get into should, you know?

[31:35]

We don't need somebody to tell us. We don't need to do rules in a kind of moralistic way. The Zen way is to connect with this intimacy. And then to be curious about how that's going, you know, to be receptive and open, to not be so sure. And she told this story of being a little kid, and she made a friend at school, and they were talking, and, you know, the friend said, do you want to come over to my house? And our friend, Lynette, said, I'd love to go over to your house. And her friend said, okay, let me ask my mom, what church do you go to? And her friend in that said, well, we don't go to church. And her friend said, okay. So her friend asked her mom and then next day comes back and says, you can't come over to our house.

[32:38]

Isn't that a sad story? And Nanette, brilliant little kid, both of them, then her friend said, how do you know how to be good? Isn't that a fantastic question? I guess that's what her mom had said. It's like this little girl can't come over to our house because no one's taught her to be good. She doesn't go to church. How will she know how to be good? She doesn't know what she should do. We can't trust a person who has never been told what they should do. And then this little kid talked about this kind of visceral feeling of, but I know how to be good. I know how to be good. Isn't that beautiful? Just a little kid saying, wait, wait, I know how to be good. No one had to teach me. I see the puppy. I know how to pet it.

[33:39]

I see my friend crying. I know how to give them a hug. I know how to be good. This is what Zen is pointing us to. We know. We know how to live in harmony with each other. We forget sometimes. When we forget, we don't remember the rules again. Jerry, you said you should be kind. We remember the practice, which is, I want to reconnect with my loving heart and this feeling of intimacy. And I want my kindness to overflow from that as an expression. Not as a kind of tacked on should. And that's maybe the last point then. And sort of raising up this wonderful sentence of, is it enough just to be kind? You should be kind and that's enough. Again, in our lineage, in our practice, what we are, and it can become palpable in our sitting, but it's true all the time, what we are includes everything.

[35:05]

Our sitting includes everything. So this is one of the big themes that Suzuki Roshi is talking about. You could say it's like becoming one, but really it's more like your life includes everything. And if you want to connect with that, then a good way is to forget everything that you think about everything. So as I've said, you know, he uses the example, I am sitting at, let's say, Green Gulch. You say, I am sitting at Green Gulch. If you have that view, your life is kind of small and doesn't include everything. He says, that's good. I mean, it's an okay sentence, but could we just let go of the eye and the sitting and the green gulch? And then we've got an excellent sentence. Or he says, drinking the teacup, you know, drinking the, forgive me, drinking the tea, drinking the tea, surface tension.

[36:15]

He says, so when you know what the tea is, here's a teacup, And here's a Jiryu, and it's got some water in it. And what's going to happen? Some water. I know what I'm doing. I know who I am. I know this is a teacup. It doesn't include anything. It actually doesn't include any of you all. It doesn't include the air or the light or any of the beings in this valley. It doesn't include all kinds of things inside or outside. Because it's kind of... It's become things that are opposed to other things, you know? The teacup isn't the cushion. And it's not. But we don't need to remember that for that to be true. We don't need to keep in mind, okay, don't try to drink from the cushion. You really made a fool of yourself last time. I talk about oneness, you know, and people, it's just like, yes, we're one.

[37:18]

Everything is my life. but I know that I'm not my cat or my kid. There's no confusion in the non-separation. We don't try to drink from the cushion. We don't have to remember and divide. So it's kind of a simplistic teaching, but it's a wonderful practice to take up. Why not, right? Again, how about just once out of the 10,000? Just let go of our views. And this... it's right behind, it's right together, letting go of what we think we are, who we think we are, what we think this is. Right there is the way that what's here includes everything. And then we just live in this intimacy, and that expresses itself as kindness, as not killing, as not putting each other down, as not separating. So I'll close in a moment here, maybe with two passages.

[38:20]

It doesn't sound like a moment, does it? The first, maybe I'll just summarize, the first that I've been exploring and I want to kind of stay with because I'm finding it so wonderful. Suzuki Roshi talks about this expression where you can't draw water with a basket. I think I've mentioned this before. I've mentioned all of this before. We say the same thing over and over, and yet people come every week. I'm amazed. A lot of new people too, you know. It's like, oh, okay, that's all? So putting the basket in the water, you can't get any water out of the pond with a basket. We have farmers here who can attest to this. You take the basket, you know, Bring a bucket of water for the chard. All you have is a basket. It's not going to work. So you put the basket in the water. You take out the basket.

[39:25]

It doesn't have any water in it. So Suzuki Roshi says, you can't take water out with a basket. And when we're trying to figure out who we are, it's kind of like trying to take water out with a basket. maybe too much to squeeze into this minute of a Dharma talk but I'll plant it as a seed because I think it really is profound when you try to figure out who you are or what this life is you're trying to like you have to pull the basket out of the water and then look inside and you might see something in there but it's not the thing that you wanted to figure out because as soon as you tried to figure it out you stepped back from it in a way. So then what Suzuki Roshi says is, this is a real problem that you can't draw water with a basket. But if you leave the basket in the water, it does fine. Isn't that marvelous? So you can't pull out water with a basket, but if you leave the basket in the water, then the basket can hold water.

[40:33]

So... Okay, that was not helpful. Um... But it's beautiful, right? It's not helpful, but beautiful. That's like... What's that? Almost enough. It's just enough already. So the point is, you know, to not separate. It's deep. You can go different ways with it. To just don't take the basket out of the water for me is not separate from this intimacy. And then I feel like we separate from the intimacy, and then we want to use kindness or something to try to patch that separation. But the teaching is just leave the basket there. Just don't separate. And then you're in the intimacy, but the problem is you don't know what's going on. But that's okay. You don't need to know what's going on to get through your day. You already know what's going on.

[41:37]

The 10,000 people are helping you know what's going on. They will remind you. they will remind you and you will know, you know, in this deep way, we can live in this wonder, in this openness, in this intimacy, knowing that everything is just this ungraspable and boundless life of our, of ourself, if you want to say it that way. So instead of pulling it out and trying to figure out what to do, just stay in and let the action come from the intimacy and the love there. So I'll close with one more that I also have been sharing a lot and just want or wish to keep in mind and offer if you also want to keep it in mind. It's a teaching. Not that we shouldn't do things to help the world, to help each other. It's not that we shouldn't do things. We absolutely should do things. But we should do things...

[42:38]

We can do things. Our practice is calling us to do things from intimacy, to do things without separating. Not do something to someone. I'm going to be kind to you. Don't do anything to me. Leave me alone. But if you want to do something with me, like let's be completely intimate and manifest kindness together, that sounds really good. But I don't want to do something to someone. And actually you can't. Because we're together. So this is how Suzuki Roshi puts it. And now I will end with this. When my English wasn't good enough to read Alan Watts' book on Zen. It's so humble, right? He wasn't sure. Suzuki Roshi was ordained when he was 13. And he's asking Alan Watts what he thinks about Zen. Give me a break.

[43:39]

Always seeking. So... Alan Watts expressed his point to me like this. When a stone is completely a stone, that is a real stone. That is how he put our Zen into words. When a stone is completely a stone, that is... When a stone is completely a stone through and through, that is really a stone... Not only is it really a stone, but when it is really a stone, it includes everything. When the stone is really a stone, it cannot be picked up by anyone. When it is not a stone, someone may pick it up. But when it is really a stone, no one can. No one can do anything with it. When a stone is really a stone, even if you think you are picking it up, you cannot. It is part of the universe. And you cannot pick up the whole universe. To pick up that stone or to pick up the whole universe, you would be outside of the universe.

[44:47]

You would be a ghost. Nothing exists outside of the universe. All that exists is within the universe. To think that you can pick up a stone is a big delusion. We aren't separate, so don't separate. We're picking up stones all day long, but it's as our own life. We're not outside of something, doing something to something. And that's our practice of kindness. That's the source. So yes, I have this vow and intention and wish and to practice kindness wholeheartedly and to encourage others in the practice of kindness. as an expression of my actual heart, as this kind of overflowing from the contact with the non-separation, the intimacy of what's here.

[45:54]

And it's not enough. and may it nonetheless be of benefit to others. May our effort and study of the way to be a complete human being, may that benefit accrue to everyone. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving, by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:54]

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