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. I offer this talk today to Carol Alexander, who is a member of the Saturday Sangha and is a member of Zen Center. for many years, and he's very sick. So, anyway, take care, dear Carol. So, welcome to San Francisco Zen Center. Welcome, you are here in this room. some of you in the dining room, and I thank some of you in time who might listen to our podcast, so welcome to all of you.

[01:07]

My name's Jordan, Jordan Thorne, and I appreciate having this opportunity to reflect on practice and to try and say something, to consider what helpful words I might have. It's a special spot to be on, on this lecture seat. I generally don't find it so hard to say something in conversation, but when I sit here, when I have this special, unique chance, I sometimes feel a little, well, intimidated, but also I want to be careful. And anyway, for reasons beyond my knowledge, this room is kind of full of people. And so I want to say some things which I hope will be helpful.

[02:18]

this world that we live in is just what it is. This world that we live in is many things and it is what we make of it. And this world that we live in is the field of our practice. This room right here that we're together in, this tiny from, relatively speaking, is the infinite field of our practice. And this room and this world is what we make of it. When we're young, when we start off, we see life as, we might see, it might appear, that life is unfolding as an addition of things.

[03:40]

We add education and independence, money, cars, perhaps romance, houses, jobs, stylish thoughts. But as life passes and as we ripen, we get in touch with what we lose. Like Carol, who's at the hospital and not sure she's going to leave. I think the momentum of everyone's life is always like this. Our attention begins with addition and then turns to subtraction.

[04:56]

Yet still, it's a beautiful world. Yet still, it is a beautiful place to be, to live. This is a lovely room. And this process of addition and subtraction and recognition is called transformation. And it's sometimes also called the first noble truth of Buddhism, the truth of change. In practicing Buddhism, in practicing Zen, there are many gates to enter through. But I think really the place where practice begins is when we...

[06:06]

notice how things change and how involved we are in taking part in this change. In Zen, which this is a Zen center, in Zen there is something called Zazen, which is meditation. And Zazen is an effort we make to face the world of impermanence and learn who we are. Some of you today might have attended Zazen instruction, and I'm sure what you heard was useful and helpful, and it maybe took an hour. Well, there's a one-hour version of Zazen instruction, there's a rest-of-your-life version of Zazen instruction, and there's a ten-second version.

[07:16]

And the ten-second version is, in Zen meditation, we notice what happens when we stop moving. We make the effort to stop moving and then see what happens, which is that we keep moving, actually. Our thoughts keep moving, but we make the effort to stop. Making this effort, we try to let go of the life that we've planned in order to make way for the life that's waiting for us. This effort that we make to sit down and stop is one of the ways we understand how life is changing.

[08:30]

But we don't actually have to notice it for this to be so. Because this is just the way things are. Things are always vibrating, moving. And It's actually a gift to realize this. It's a gift to realize that we are writing, we are like a chip of wood on a river. And sometimes it's a river that goes over waterfalls. And sometimes it's a river that flows into a calm lake. mountain lake on a calm day. There was a Chinese poet named Li Po.

[09:34]

I think he's one of the big ones. Li Po wrote, the long river passes east away. Surge over surge, white blooming waves sweep all heroes on. As right and wrong, triumph and defeat, both turn unreal. But ever the green hills stay to blush in the west waning day. But ever the green hills stay to blush in the waning day. I think I can say with some confidence, each of us were born. And I hope it's most likely that when we're at that moment, we were the apple in our parents' eyes.

[10:40]

I hope so. It's a great joy as we grow up and move from the proxy of our parents to our independence. It's a great joy to discover we can make choices on our own. That we can make choices that we think will satisfy us. And making these choices sometimes We come to a place where we feel that life has gotten somehow strangely complicated and maybe even lonely. How does it start that we might lose our way?

[12:06]

How does that start? Well, this is my answer. This is my review of my life. I believed I was incomplete. I felt separated and small. And so I started looking for something outside of myself that was going to make me happy. And I looked for a girlfriend, and I thought maybe a new car. And I thought that book over there would make me happy. you know it didn't work out.

[13:10]

It's not that I was miserable, it just somehow in this way that I knew deep in my heart it didn't work out. So this life that we have is a Precious gift. It's a fragile, precious gift. And when we least expect it, it can be vanished in a flash. We don't really know when it's going to reach its end. The Diamond Sutra, which is something we read every Friday morning here in this room. The Diamond Sutra says, everything we think of as precious is nothing more than a fault of vision, a mock show, dewdrops, a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash, or a cloud.

[14:25]

And it says, in such a way is how we should see everything that is conditioned. And I do believe that our personality, my personality, my hopes and dreams and your hopes and dreams arise from the dance of cause and effect. And we can have some impact on this dance. We can help. navigate on this river. The world is what it is. We go to bed at night, full of troubles or maybe full of happiness.

[15:31]

We wake up the next day and start over again. And doing this day after day after day after day, we might maybe perhaps ripen, grow up, realize our sense of connection with people, realize our sense of responsibility for ourselves and others. we might perhaps maybe learn how to be helpful. But in order for any of this to be possible, we need to have some friends. It's so difficult to do it on your own. It might be possible, but it's so much more difficult. So friends are what

[16:37]

we see around us in this room, people who share a sense of enthusiasm for understanding how to wake up. This is what we need to be associated with if we're going to have any chance in this life. Any chance to wake up. So here's a Zen story. This is a story that goes back some hundreds of years, actually maybe like 1,000, 1,200 years. It's about a teacher and a student. It's about someone who was growing up and someone who had grown up.

[17:41]

And the teacher was somebody named Guishan. Actually, well, Guishan was a teacher later on, but first he was the student. And when he was a student, he met a person named Bai Cheng. Very important. If you're going to study Zen, you ought to know about who Bai Cheng is. He was the person who developed the first rules of conduct or shingi for a Zen temple. And one day Guishan had the lucky opportunity of being the attendant to Bai Cheng. And it was probably a chilly morning and he knocked on the door to enter. And Bai Zhang said, who's there? And Guishan said, well, it's me.

[18:42]

And so the teacher said, bring a poker in, bring a stick, and stir the fire. See if you can wake it up. So Guishan did so. He leaned down, he stirred in the fireplace with a stick, and came up empty. He said, there's no fire left. Bai Jiang then leaped up from his seat and took the stick from him and vigorously stirred in the ashes and uncovered a burning ember and said, what about this? And the story is, at that moment, When Bai Zhang said, what about this? The attendant Guishan suddenly experienced himself as complete.

[19:48]

In the complete presence of that moment, the literature, the story that is carried down, tells us that he dropped body and mind. And what would that be? I wonder, what would that be, dropping body and mind? And Bai Chang witnessed this opening in his student and spoke to him, right then and said, what you've now experienced is temporary. It's a fork in the road. If you want to deeply understand the meaning of Buddha nature, then you need to further understand the truth of causation. In other words, his teacher said, well done, well done, but don't rest here.

[21:01]

Well, as things do happen, the story continues. The next day, these two were together again, this time on the hillside, gathering firewood. I don't know what they were doing. They were on the hillside. And up there, Bai Jiang asked his student, he said, did you bring the fire along? And Guishan said, yes, I brought it. And then Bai Jing said, well, then where is it? And Guishan looked around and picked up a piece of wood and whistled twice, then handed the piece of wood to Bai Jing. And Bai Jing said in response, You are like a termite eating wood.

[22:11]

And at that time, at that moment, that was how his affection and love for the student was expressed. Like a termite, he said. Lucky Guishan. There are actually a whole lot of stories in this end tradition. And I'm going to continue. I'm going to tell another one because it's useful to hear these. To a very large extent, actually, reading about these, when I was a new student, reading about these stories of the early Zen teachers gave me a foundation of curiosity and enthusiasm. Here's another story. There was a young boy who lived in China at the time when Zen was becoming its own tradition in Buddhism.

[23:22]

And he was in school at a country temple where as part of the curriculum they recited the village priest who was the teacher of this country school. The village priest recited the Heart Sutra. We call it the Heart Sutra as a sort of shorthand. It has a longer name. And it's a very concise distillation of Buddhist teaching that to some extent is enigmatic in its brevity and in its consistent thread of emptiness that it expresses. In this Heart Sutra, there's a sentence that goes, there is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.

[24:25]

No eye, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. And when this young boy heard the village priest reading that, he stopped him and he said, wait a minute. He kind of like wiggled his nose and touched his ears. He said, I have these things. What do you mean? What are you talking about? I don't understand, in other words. And, you know, I think it takes a certain bravery to ask a question like that. I've been in this room myself. I've chanted this text a bunch of times. But I actually, and I've said, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. And I've used my tongue and read the text with my eyes. And I don't necessarily know what that means, what this message really is.

[25:29]

So this boy... asked this teacher, and the teacher said, you need to go study somewhere else to find the answer to this. He said, I can't help you. I don't know how to answer your question. In the name of this young man who asked this innocent question, it was, Tozan Ryokai, who is the toe of Tozan, is the toe of Soto, which is the particular tradition of Zen that we follow, the Soto Zen tradition. So this is one of the founders of our lineage, one of the ancestors of this particular Zen tradition that we're enthused about here at the San Francisco Zen Center, an important person. When I first heard this story, I thought it was kind of regrettable and maybe even sad that this teacher who was reciting this Buddhist text, when asked, couldn't explain it.

[26:50]

But I think, in fact, actually, I've come to see it slightly different. I think that that... village priest acted with compassion. Because it's probably very likely that Tozan wasn't ready to understand the answer to his own question. That in order to understand the answer to his own question, he needed to spend some time at it. So he spent some time at it. He went off on a journey to visit another teacher. So Tozan moved on, and he enrolled in the monastery of a great teacher named Nansen, who's famous for a koan about killing a cat. And from there, he moved on, and he studied with Guishan, who I've already told you about just a moment ago.

[27:56]

And from there, Tozan moved on, and he studied with Yunnan. And once he landed at Yunnan's temple, he settled down and stayed there, which is something I think we all have to do. We have to find a place where we can settle down and stay. After years and years of practice in Yunnan's assembly, After years of following the schedule and sitting lots of meditation, Tozan asked his teacher, Yunnan, he said, when I want to see it, when I want to see it face to face, what should I do? And I'm not going to try to explain what it is here.

[29:03]

Yunnan said, well, ask someone who's done it. And Tozon replied, that's what I'm doing now. And Yunnan said, you know, really, what can I say? Yunnan's words were like the village priest saying, you know, I can't really talk about it. I can't really talk about it. because the meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. Sometime later, Tozan was preparing to leave Yunnan, and as they were saying goodbye, to each other.

[30:06]

His teacher, Yuan Yuan, said to Tozan, he said, where are you going? And Tozan replied, I don't know where I'll end up. Yuan Yuan asked him then, are you going to return home? Tozan said, no. Which is wonderfully modest. And then Yunnan said to his disciple and student, he said, you know, if you leave, it's going to be difficult to see each other again. And Tozan said to his parent, to his teacher, he said, though I leave, it will be difficult not to see you.

[31:08]

This was Tozan's expression of love to his teacher. And then, you know, these departures sometimes are drawn out. Finally, as Tozan is about to depart from Yunnan, he says, one last question. If in the future someone asks me how to describe my master's truth, What should I say to them? And Yuen Yan said, after a pause, he said, just this is it. Just this is it. And Tozan's reply was a sigh. Of course the story continues.

[32:21]

Tozan travels around. He travels around and while he's settled in the Dharma, settled in his commitment to practice, there still are some remaining doubts in his art. Until one day he's crossing a stream, a small stream on a wooden bridge. And crossing the stream he looks down at the water below and sees his reflection. And at that moment, upon seeing his reflection, we're told, it's come down to us as a record, that on seeing his reflection in the water, Tozan finally woke up. I wonder what that meant. I wonder what it means to see your reflection in a flowing river and to wake up.

[33:36]

You know, some of us, it might be that some of you in this room have some problems in your life. you know somebody that has problems. And I want to say that those of you and those of us who recognize this are in some ways the lucky ones. And being lucky like we are, you know, and recognizing we got some problems, we might come to a Buddhist temple or a Zen center, in order to solve them. Good luck, but I don't think it's going to work out. Really, no one else is as interested in your personal problems as you are.

[34:41]

And they should At some point you have to just let them go. Stop. Realize you're still moving and stop again. You know, with some high probability of likelihood happy moments will appear in your life. And also just as certainly difficult times. To understand that the difficulties you experience are something we should be grateful for, is a wonderful moment and not an easy one also.

[35:55]

It is a fact that the awkwardness of our life experience makes compost for our practice roots. It is a fact that the soil, the ground of our practice, sometimes needs to be fertilized with what might be called night soil. But if you're going to be a student of Zen, When you have a hard time with someone else, you ought to also make an effort to understand that that other person is the same as you, has the same hopes and dreams and wishes.

[37:05]

And you need to understand that wherever you go, wherever you turn, you meet yourself. And that when we are intimate, and I mean intimate in a heart's way, when we're intimate with one person, we meet ourselves wherever we go. Just this is it. Just this. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[38:09]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:25]

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