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. My name is Valerie. I'm the Eno, otherwise known as the Head of the Meditation Hall. And that pretty much means that my life is kind of one form after another. bowing, chanting, sitting, service. So what I thought I'd take up tonight was the forms because I am often asked when I'm doing zazen instruction or explaining something in the vindo or in the Buddha hall to somebody, I'm asked, so what does the form mean? What does this particular form mean? And those of you that have asked me that know that my answer is the forms don't mean anything. They're just a mirror. Now that might be A bit of an over-exaggeration, but we're going to go with it for tonight, that the forms are just a mirror.

[01:04]

And what they, in all of their arcanity, are here to do is to show us our typical habit patterns, which tend to be unexamined and therefore tend to cause suffering. So the first thing, of course, to acknowledge is that it's not like we didn't have forms when we were out there and then all of a sudden we moved to Zen Center and we had forms. It wasn't like that. We actually had a wake-up bell out there. It was called an alarm clock. We sat. We sat in our cars and we sat in our business meetings and we sat in various places. And we had forms. Did we brush first or floss first? Can't remember. Anyway, but we had our forms. We may have had our coffee, one cup of coffee before we had breakfast.

[02:05]

Anyway, we had all of these forms out there, but what we weren't doing is we weren't examining them because they were habits. At some point, they might have been a rut, and ruts cause suffering. So... One of the purposes of all of these weird forms that we have here is to throw in very high relief and to be a mirror to show us our habit patterns so that we can make some discernments about those habits that speak to our heart and help us feel aligned and to help us change those habits that cause suffering. So what I would like to do is examine some of our major forms tonight and talk about how they're just a mirror They're just a mirror and what they might show us as a mirror. I'm not going to talk about the meaning of any of the forms that I have tonight, because honestly, I don't know what the meaning is of some of them. But I think that their mirror value is very helpful in examining some of those unexamined forms that we have done throughout our lives that have gotten us into a rut, have gotten us into some habitual patterns, and to help us

[03:19]

break out of that. And sometimes it takes something very strong in the other direction to help us see what we're doing habitually that perhaps doesn't serve us particularly well. So there are several of the forms I want to take up tonight. The one which seems to be one of the most major problematic forms is bowing. We don't do that much as Americans. It's not really part of our culture. to bow, and inevitably, when I give zazen instruction, I inevitably have somebody in the group that says, I don't bow down to anything. And I'm so tempted. I've never done this. I confess. I've been good. I've never done this, but I've never said, you do realize you just bowed down to not ever bowing down. You do realize that. So we all surrender our power to something. We all bow down to something. It may not be a cushion, but it might be a boss or our smartphone or something.

[04:23]

But I'm interested and curious about what we bow down to. And often what we bow down to in our habitual life, we bow down to out of fear. And I did that. I was a single parent for 17 years before my daughter became an adult. And I bowed down to the 24-7 job that I had because I was terrified of losing it and losing our home and that whole story, right, that you go through about losing whatever it is that is important to you. So I did. I ceded my power to my job schedule. I bowed down to it. I did. So bowing is very interesting. Suzuki Roshi had a whole lecture on bowing, and one of the things he said is that when we bow, we give up ourselves. But if we do that with looking at what it shows us, we can begin to examine where we bow down in the rest of our lives that perhaps causes us suffering.

[05:31]

And one of the things that caused suffering for me when I bowed down to my job was that it caused an enormous amount of suffering for me and my daughter because I neglected her. I did. So when we bow, what is the resistance? It's just a cushion, right? So what is that resistance? And what does that bowing down to the cushion, and if there is any resistance there, show us about, what does it mirror for us about things that we bow down to in our life where we do cede our power, C-E-B-E, not planting a seed, but where do we give up our power that perhaps in the end makes us resentful? I doubt that it's bowing to a cushion that makes us resentful, that if we can examine that mirror, that bowing to the cushion, brings up to us. What is the unexamined giving up of ourselves and our power that perhaps causes suffering?

[06:40]

To be able to bow and bow away from the cushion and sit down. For me, what I say when I bow to a cushion, or pretty much to anything, is thank you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being here. Bowing is a very powerful mirror. to be able to see what we bow to in our everyday life that perhaps doesn't bring us so much happiness and joy and make us feel aligned. Several of you know that I have said several times that when I bow at the back of the bowing mat, that's where I feel most aligned in my entire life. Everything just lines up. So can we find those places where we can voluntarily give up ourselves and bow? Join. Join what is most important to our heart. There's a very important concept in Zen that the bower and the bowed to are not separate, not two.

[07:42]

They are, in fact, acknowledging the connection and the oneness. So where can we find that bow and not do it out of habit, but do it out of form, to decide what we're going to bow to in our lives. We all do it to something, so what is it? And why not choose something that helps us feel aligned? The second form that tends to bring up a lot of issues and is a wonderful mirror is chanting, especially in a language you don't know. What are we saying? Kanji zaibo. So lots of chants that we do are not in English, and even those are the ones that we are. You sit there and go, Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva. What is that? Anyway, so chanting is also a very interesting mirror for finding our voice. And I don't know about you, but I spent many decades of my life being a really good codependent doormat, which means that I didn't find my voice and ended up with a lot of resentment.

[08:49]

and for the first several years that I was in Zen Center, all I really wanted to be was the Kokyo, which is the person who announces the chant, because that felt really safe, and it felt like I could do that, and I could find my voice, and y'all wouldn't argue with me, you'd just do the chant that I announced, and it was really nice, and thanks to some wonderful teachers about announcing chants, Christina, our abiding Abbas, and Judith, who was the Eno at Pasajara, one practice period I was there, I began to be able to find my voice. So doing a chant is a really interesting mirror about being able to find our voice, being able to breathe, being able to harmonize. especially when we're doing a chant that is not in a language we know. We can't fall back on the meaning.

[09:50]

So what we can pay attention to when we're not paying attention to the meaning is the harmony. And what can we find with the harmony? So how does chanting hold up a mirror for us about finding our voice and being able to express ourselves? And where do we get caught? Do we get caught if we don't know the meaning? And how many times in our lives Have we listened to something, maybe a presentation at work or something where we really didn't understand what was going on? So what is that mirror that it holds up about when we don't understand, we're afraid to ask because there's all these people running around in black robes and they look really intimidating, so we don't want to ask what the chant means. But what is it about chanting? What mirror can that hold up for us about finding our voice about harmonizing, about being able to speak up that really touches the precept and the part of the noble path about right speech, about being able to find our voice and harmonize and speak up for ourselves without flattening the other person, without causing disharmony and suffering for them.

[11:07]

So this is another fruitful area, another fruitful form to look into is chanting. Another form that tends to drive us crazy is the schedule. Oh, heavens, is that relentless or what, right? It starts at 5 in the morning, ends on Dharma talk nights at 8.30 or 9 at night. The other thing I have to say about the schedule is we had one out there. The alarm clock rang. We got up. We did whatever we did. We got dressed. We had breakfast. We do that here. The getting dressed part isn't on the schedule, but breakfast is on the schedule. Work is on the schedule. Lunch is on the schedule. Probably what our schedule when we lived out there didn't have was Zazen, but maybe it did. But was there a time in our schedule out there where we had an enforced period to sit down and be quiet and find our center? Maybe not. Maybe not. So what is it about...

[12:11]

This particular schedule, that seems relentless. Those of you that just sat the sashim, it's like 5 in the morning till 8.30 at night. Every 15 minutes, the schedule is packed, right? And there is some resistance to that sometimes. What is that? Is it that we want to go back to that schedule that we know that is maybe a rut? You know, what is it about... the schedule. Even though I did have problems with the bowing and the chanting sometimes, I actually didn't have any problem with the schedule from when I moved in. I got some really good advice the very first practice period that I did from Reb Anderson, who's one of the senior teachers at Green Gulch, who said, just surrender to the schedule. Just do the next thing. Whatever you're doing, just do the next thing. And I have grown to really appreciate that over the years because regardless of how I'm feeling, regardless of what suffering is coming up for me at the moment, regardless of what deep, dark thing that I have to look at that I really don't want to look at, but gosh darn it, there it was, came up in Zazen again.

[13:22]

Oh, it's time to go have dinner. Oh, it's time to go sit. Oh, it's time to go to service. So just to do the next thing on the schedule is actually kind of a relief. So that form can be really helpful in examining and holding up the mirror to our preferences of all the stuff we'd rather be doing and then to be able to ask, well, why would you rather be doing that than going and sitting and being quiet with 50 of our friends? What is it about that? Is it an addiction? Is it a distraction? Is it really something that we really do actually need to take care of? So what is it that the form of the schedule tells us about our preferences. This really hits our preferences. The schedule really hits our preferences. In the Sashin, there was a moment when, and you know, I can't exactly go running out of the Zendo, right, where I thought, you know, I really, really want to go see Man of Steel.

[14:28]

And I'd really rather do that than, you know, the umpteenth period. I did finally see Man of Steel, but not during Sashin. So, and it was still there. And, you know, it was good that I went later because then there weren't all the lines. But this is so interesting, right, to examine the schedule really does make us come to a full stop if we let it. It's a gift of the schedule, of the form of the schedule, to come to a full stop and say, why do I want to do what I think I'd rather be doing than sitting here quietly? Such a gift that is to do that. But what is it? Is it a distraction? Why do I think there is something better? It's so interesting to me that I don't have a whole lot of data on the other side of this, but it's really interesting to me. I get to look through the Tenkin log, which is why everybody signs out. If they're not coming to Zazen, why all these myriad reasons, and we have codes, and we have all kinds of stuff. We keep stats. Anyway, why people don't come to Zazen. And it's so interesting. A lot of people sign out of Zazen to go to work.

[15:30]

I'm wondering if anybody signs out of work to come to Zazen. Does anybody do that? Yeah, okay. I think he does. All right. Patty does. Great. Yay. All right. So it does go both ways. But it is interesting to watch the sign-outs and to watch, you know, why we don't want to sit there and face ourselves otherwise known as the wall. That's interesting. Sometimes Susan O'Connell, when she was the Eno at Green Belch, I heard her give a really interesting piece of advice to somebody one day, and some of you may have heard this, and that is she said, if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to go to Zazen, get up and stand up before you make that decision. And once you're up, then decide, and if there's any hesitation, go and deal with it later. So the schedule is an interesting form of to hold up the mirror to our preferences of all the stuff that we would rather be doing or that we think we would rather be doing and to be able to investigate the why of that.

[16:44]

Another form that's just a wonderful mirror is, of course, Zazen itself, right? So we sit down and we face a wall and we get ourselves all contorted into these positions and then the mind goes down Crazy, right? Because we're not doing anything else and we don't have another distraction. So this form of just sitting, of just sitting, what a marvelous form to watch what comes up in that, to watch what we would like to push away, to watch what keeps insisting that we look at it, our speech, our habits. So... Some might say that that ought to be considered the ultimate form, the ultimate mirror in Zen Buddhism, but I don't think so. I actually think that sort of the ultimate form and the ultimate mirror in our practice is Sangha, is all of us, just being a mirror for each other.

[17:52]

One of the reasons that we have trouble with people sometimes is because they show us in very high relief and in a very sharp reflection, the parts of ourselves that we don't like, and that we would rather not take a look at. So for me, Sangha is sort of the ultimate mirror, because anytime I see somebody doing something where I cringe or go, ouch, it's like, okay, I am that. I am that. And the only reason I'm cringing and the only reason I could recognize it is because that's me. They are doing such a good job of reflecting to me that now I have to look at it. And when you live in a community like this, there's nowhere to hide and there's nowhere to run. So we sit to look at that, to look at the reflection. And also to look at the reflection that our sangha gives us

[18:55]

not only for the dark things within us, but when we resonate with someone, when we like them, even in the extreme when we fall in love with someone, they have shown us a mirror of all the things that we like in ourselves and are afraid to admit to, because perhaps we don't think we're good enough, we don't think we deserve them, but they are us. We are us. We are all a mirror for each other. It doesn't necessarily happen to be just in this community. Everybody who's running around everywhere is a big mirror for us to say, here's what I like about myself. To be able to say in Sangha, I'm at my best when I'm with you, and I also see that I'm at my worst when I'm with you, and you don't run away, which is really nice. To be able to have the forms that are right there and are in front of ourselves every day, showing us who we are, showing us in high relief sometimes some things that we might want to do differently in our lives.

[20:09]

So why do we do this to ourselves? Why come into a place that has all of these ridiculous forms that have us do all of these crazy things? Well, the first thing to say, of course, is nobody was involuntarily committed to Zen Center, right? So we're all here for some reason. And I think the reason for that is that there is a part of us that is tired of the unexamined habits. And there is a part of us that realizes that we need to do... something radically different. Said another way, we're ready for the mirror of all of these weird, unusual forms to be held up for us. And we're ready and we have now the willingness and the patience to look. To look into the mirror and to see what's there. And I think sometimes perhaps what we see, what we're afraid we're gonna see there is not the bad stuff, but the good stuff.

[21:15]

And sometimes we think we don't deserve it. But I believe that we're all here because we're all ready to take a look. And to have that very unusual radical mirror of practice held up for us so that we can look and examine. This is one place in Buddhism where discernment actually is allowed. And that is to look at our behavior and decide what speaks to our heart that we are already doing? What causes suffering that we're not seeing because it's so habitual that we don't see it? And how can we be more aligned? Somebody asked me the other day when I was doing the introductory sitting if I could say Buddhism in one sentence, and the answer is sure. Buddhism in one sentence is we have the capacity to reduce suffering for ourselves and others. And we do that by unflinchingly being willing to examine what is helpful and kind within us and what is not so helpful and kind or otherwise known as suffering.

[22:32]

And I think we're here. We're here to do that. A part of us is here to do that. Whether or not the conscious part yet is here, we've all come to a place like this that's so relentlessly but compassionately holds up the mirror in every moment of the day for us to look into with all this help, with all this help that's around us. 1,500 years ago, about late 600, China, an illiterate peasant showed up at a monastery and was put to work washing and cleaning rice and scrubbing floors, sort of the lowest of the jobs.

[23:37]

And one day, the abbot of the monastery decided that it was time that they find a successor. So he put out a call for a poem, an enlightenment poem, and said, whoever wins this poetry contest basically will become my successor. So the head of the assembly wrote a pretty darn good poem, pretty good, and wrote it up on the wall. And the abbot said, yeah, pretty good. but didn't name that person as the successor. And during the night, the illiterate peasant had a somewhat better poem that he got someone else to write on the wall. And in the morning, it was clear that that poem was better than a student's poem.

[24:45]

but the abbot quickly erased it because he knew who had written it and he didn't say anything. But that night, he invited that peasant into his room and gave him his robes and his bowl. In other words, gave him the transmission so that he would become what he became, the sixth ancestor of my name, Daikon Eno, Daisho. And the other monks were so incensed that this illiterate peasant had gotten the robes and the bowl, in other words, the form, from the master and had been proclaimed as the ancestor, that the abbot knew that the new anointed person was not going to be very popular and invited him to go away for a while while the assembly settled down. And the assembly wasn't going to have any of it. So the monk in charge, by the name of Ming, who happened to have been a former general and had some pretty good understanding, but was incensed that this illiterate person had been given the forms of the robe and the bull, decided to chase him and, if necessary, kill him to get the robes and the bull back.

[26:00]

So the chase went on until finally, on a peak, Ming caught up and caught the sixth ancestor. and demanded the robes and the bull that. And the sixth ancestor said, these should not be fought over. The dharma and the form should not be fought over. If you think this is, if you think these forms of the robes and the bull are the dharma, then pick them. How about it? Go ahead. And Ming tried to pick them up and couldn't. They were heavy as lead, and he couldn't pick them up. And in that moment, he got it. He got it that the forms were, in fact, just a mirror, and that they are not the carriers of the Dharma. It is the relationship that is the carrier of the Dharma.

[27:00]

And he said to the sixth ancestor, I didn't come for the robes and the bowl. I came for the peeking. So we didn't come here for the robes and the bowl and the schedule and the bowing and the chanting and all the forms. We didn't come here for the forms. We came for the dharma, even though we didn't know maybe that that's what it was called at the time. And it is the forms that help us and show us those preferences, the preference that says that an illiterate peasant can't be the sixth ancestor, the preference that says that if you're illiterate, you can't write an enlightenment poem, the preferences that go on and on. So it's not the robe and the bowl, but it is the robe and the bowl that help us see and that hold up the mirror.

[28:04]

That's all they are. They really are. We've designed all of this stuff around them, but the robes and the bowl and the forms really are just a mirror to help us see as they help men see where we cause our own suffering by chasing after our preferences and how we can change those and ask for the teaching from each other and from the robes and the bowl and say, basically, help me to become a kind and caring and compassionate person. It is worth spending our life on the rest of our life, letting other things be a mirror to show us how we can become compassionate and awaken the compassion. I think we have a big time. I invite your questions or comments. Thank you very much for listening. Yes.

[29:12]

You alluded to a part about chanting and I'm wondering if you could say more about and the way that we're called . Yeah, thank you for that. You can tell when it's off, can't you? When the chant never gels. fingernails on the blackboard. It's like, ooh. Yeah. Yeah, isn't that interesting when the chant doesn't harmonize, doesn't happen very often, but boy, when it does, ow, ooh, and you just want to go to those people that aren't finding the right no and say, please, right? But maybe they can't. Maybe their voice doesn't do that. So this is interesting that I would say that Buddhism is a philosophy of harmony, not of melody. And sangha, not hermitage, is important.

[30:16]

So the harmony that comes in a chant is us all trying to resonate, not all trying to be on the same note. So that would be the harmony of the chant for me, is can we find resonance, not the exact same pitch. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Heather, then one. Okay. I'm sorry, one. Yeah. I'm sorry, I can feel habitual. That's a good one. Yeah. I would say in sort of gross terms, I would say that a habit is an unexamined thing. a pattern of behavior that we don't know if it causes suffering or not.

[31:17]

A form might look like it causes suffering. Oh, no. Nine more bows. But I think within a form is the constant reminder, the sort of relentless reminder and invitation to please examine, please examine. And if the form begins to become a habit to examine even that, to examine if the form, if you're sort of doing it, you know, sort of mindlessly or just to do it. You know, it's interesting to watch. I have this front row seat on people coming into the Zendo and bowing. All right, so I know tomorrow morning everybody's going to be really careful because it's like, oh, she said this tonight. But you can tell when people come in and it's a habitual bow. You know, it's sort of, it's become, you know, you take three steps in and you bow. And it's interesting when that bow... even becomes habitual. So I would just say, just be willing to keep looking at that, and watch that turn when you're not there for the bow, when you're not there for the chant, and notice that, and just come back.

[32:34]

Just come back. One. I think for me, there is, Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. how do I do this motivator, the strength, which actually I've noticed like one time, I don't like to go to karaoke a lot, so I like to start playing. And one time I was there, and it made me feel like my desire to be a real person wasn't any problem.

[33:42]

So I think the program has been the hardest time trying to work solution about it. I learned from, you know, bringing some fear of the time I fall and I'm doing what everyone else is doing. I'm going to, like, one-year-old . Thank you. That's a hard one. I would say that probably there's two forms that really hit our buttons, at least. One is the tank and pad, and one is Oriope. There you go. You got them both, right? Right in the same one.

[34:46]

Yeah, so the Tenkin Pad, for those of you who don't know, is the place where residents sign out if they're not going to be at a period of Zazen, at an Orioki meal, or at a lecture like this one. And, oh man, does that bring up, what kind of a mirror is that Tenkin Pad? Huge, right? about authority, about being watched, about haven't had to take attendance since I was in grade school. What is this about? I mean, you name it. You name it. It's all kinds of issues. So I just want to acknowledge that. That is probably one of our most fraught forms is the pink and tad. And first thing I want to do is I want to thank all of you who so diligently have do sign out. So this is really interesting. Regardless of all of the stuff that may be going on for you, you do it. Which is really nice. And I need to also say for the people who aren't here, it's not like we go around and give tickets or detention to people who don't show up.

[35:54]

It's not like that. So... But it does have this sort of feeling of the cops. It can, and it does. So let me just acknowledge that. We're all adults, but we're being checked on. So this is a very fraught form, and I would guess nobody has an unexamined habit around signing out. It hits the forms all the time. I do have a couple of things to say about that. One of which might sound a little harsh, and then my own feeling is, you know, I can share with that. And that is that we came here with this perhaps unconscious commitment to want to examine the ways that we cause suffering. And the major form for doing that in this community, besides the Sangha, is Zazen. and is service with the bowing and chanting.

[36:56]

So we have made a commitment by moving in here and becoming a resident to those particular major forms. So we did, and sometimes we forget that we did, but that is an integral part of practicing Buddhism in this location is the commitment to go to those major events. So I hope that didn't sound too harsh, but we did make that. We did make that commitment to moving in. The other thing is that particularly as the Eno, but kind of in my life and loving the forms and loving the mirror that they hold up and being a monastic at heart, is that I really want to help myself and the whole Sangha be able to sit down and settle and find that calm center that is our birthright, that Buddha nature that is within us.

[37:58]

And so when I look at the Tenken stats and someone has not signed out that hasn't been there, or they haven't been there more, they're usually there and they're not there, I really want to find out how I can help you come back. and that might be to a different seat or a different way of sitting or perhaps a different schedule, you know, but let's work it out. Let's work it out so that you can come home to the core practice of what we're all here for. That's just my own personal, is that I would like to help everyone be there because you all helped me be there. One more question, okay? Yeah, not that I have a, appreciate it. Well, you've got to be able to find it at 4.30 in the morning.

[39:05]

So, I mean, I'm up for other options, but unfortunately, and I do take, as you know, I do take email signouts. And that's sort of a way to be a little bit more anonymous. But I don't know how to make the thing accessible. So this is probably another conversation that we can have. But you're right. Anybody who signs out can see the reasons for anybody else that signs out. And I guess my request would be is, could you just look at the line where you're signing out? Could we just sort of have that agreement that you not make it reading material? And that we just have a form that we just look at at our own reason. All right, so onward with the forms. Thank you all very much for being here this evening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[40:07]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:16]

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