This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Is my voice coming out clear enough? Yes? Great. Anybody new today? First time here? A bunch. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is Sosa Miglioli. I'm a resident teacher here. And I've been living here for a while. The story becomes something, or becomes true, When I first visited San Francisco Zen Center 12 years ago, no, 15, 13 years ago, 13 years ago, actually in my honeymoon, my honeymoon.

[01:13]

I am originally from Argentina, and we decided to come here for a honeymoon and start in San Francisco, go down to L.A., and I was already practicing Zen in Argentina. I've been practicing meditation. for about a decade, but in another lineage, Taisen Deshimaru lineage, Deshimaru. So we came, and of course, like San Francisco Zen Center, if you're here and you're in Zen, you want to just take a look, right, at least. So we came. We came for a morning program. I think it was Paul Haller giving the talk that morning. And it really, really moved me. It really moved me. It was kind of different to the lineage or line of Zen I was practicing there and then. One thing is, in the Deshimaru lineage, there's no sutra translations.

[02:19]

So everything's in Sino-Japanese. And it's kind of frowned upon to say, okay, can I... Google what this means, and your teacher will go, okay. So I come here, first service, and the kokyo goes, Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra. I say, what? And in English. And for the first time in 10 years, I understood what this sutra said, which was, wow. This is powerful. And no this, no that, no nothing. I was really, really, really, really moved, really impressed. And there was this sweetness in people. And I hear a lot, being here for a while, that some people say, oh yeah, I go to the Zen Center, everybody's like looking down and nobody says hi.

[03:25]

Actually, are really sweet here. There's some other places where it's really, really, like Zazen instruction takes 30 seconds. That's a safu, that's a wall, sit, let's talk in two years. That's it, right? But no, here people talk to you, say, well, something's different happening here. And then we went back home. Back home, back to my job. I was working in advertising there and then. But something clicked. Something happened. I asked a few questions. I even asked my teacher there, like, can we do this or that? I said, no. No, no, no. San Francisco Zen Center, oh, no, that's hippie yoga zen. I said, I don't know. I don't know. But, yeah, nothing happened. So... At that time, we had opened offices of the advertising company in Mexico City.

[04:30]

So every time I went to Mexico for a meeting, I hopped on a plane and came to San Francisco for the next year. Stayed a day, stayed two days, stayed three days. And at one point, I met a teacher here and started talking to them. I said, well, maybe I should come to a practice period at City Center. a three-month practice period. I said, three months, wow, like that. That's a lot. And I'll do that end of 2014. I will, three months, be enlightened at least all that time, go back, start something, and there we go. I think it was like 15 days in, two weeks in, and I said, This is not going to happen. I don't think I'm leaving this place enlightened. It's more complex than what I thought.

[05:34]

So I stayed for the three months completely true. I did not get enlightened, but I get more curious. I went back more curious. So in talking to this teacher, What they said is maybe, maybe you should try Tassajara. By then, I was still working in advertising. I was working with my sister. There she is. And said to my sister, Cecilia, Tassajara. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's beautiful. For how long? A year. okay, what's going to happen with the advertising company? It's yours. I want to do this. This is important.

[06:34]

So I had already arranged to go to Japan for six months because I'm a tea student, a way of tea student. And I went to the Urasenke school there for six months in Kyoto to study tea. But right after that, Tazahara was awaiting. went to Sahara for a year, then I was going to get enlightened, like a year into Sahara, forget it. You're in Argentina, you're thinking, like, wow, what a privilege, right? You guys have this, and you can stay for a year, and you don't even have to pay? Like, actually, what? They give you a stipend? Works for me. Now I'm out of a job. I went for a year, didn't get enlightened. A year became a year and a half at the Sahara. I was closing to two years. And I was asked if I would come back to city center and become the work leader here.

[07:39]

We just said yes to. I said yes to. That year became 12, right? And here we are. Thing is, and this is what I want to really talk about today. So this is a bit of a way seeking mind talk for you guys to understand where this is coming from. I think it's important. I was moved, but I was sad. Looking retrospective, I was kind of sad. Basically because my feeling was Not only this particular flavor of Zen Suzuki Roshi's warm heart to warm heart flavors, which I started to really feel part of and really love, and this idea of being kind, not just being like samurai kind of thing, not only it wasn't available, but it wasn't available in Spanish anywhere.

[08:52]

Yes, there is Zen in Spanish. Yes, there are other lineages. But Suzuki Roshi's way of practice, we do have and did have teachers that went maybe to Mexico and gave, you know, but there weren't, I maybe do a retreat and come back. There was not any Spanish, native Spanish-speaking teacher at that time teaching this in Spanish. So I said, okay, so maybe that's why I'm here. But this is going to take time. It didn't take three months. It didn't take all that time in Tassajara. We'll see. We'll see. But I'm interested in offering at one point, if I can, if this happens because you never know, to offer this in Spanish. There was a Spanish-speaking group here at City Center. There are many affinity groups. There's a group called Zen en Espanol. Actually, it was called Dharma en Espanol.

[09:56]

Then I changed it to Zen en Espanol. And it was a group of Spanish speakers who met here in the art lounge when we had the art lounge. Those of you who remember before the thing that we did two years ago, the remodeling. We met on Thursdays. It was like seven or eight of us, maybe. We read some Suzuki Roshi. We meditated. It was lovely. It was lovely. Then COVID hit. Then COVID hit. And with COVID, I said, guys, we cannot meet anymore. The only way we can meet is on Zoom. Oh, okay. And we started meeting on Zoom and the word got out and then more people started joining that Zoom room. Suddenly there was, you know, people in many, many places countries and little towns in the north of Chile, in the south of Chile, in Uruguay, in Spain, all joining this meeting.

[10:59]

At one point, I think at one point, I understood that I wasn't going to be able to put all those Zen worms back in the can, right? Because COVID vaccines, et cetera, et cetera. Now we're meeting again in person. But I am not a believer in four of us meeting in person and having a camera here that points to us and you're like flying the wall and you are part of this, but actually this is more interesting, right? And you're seeing that fun there and saying, I'm not really, I am, but more or less. So I said, no, guys, even though we might live two blocks away, we're going to keep doing this on Zoom. In 2019, that's how Zen Sin Fronteras started, Zen Without Borders started. At that point, I was a vice president here. I became president in 2020, I think.

[12:07]

And this just started to grow. When my term was coming up on 2024 as president, Of course, we said, well, what's next? And for me, what was next was stepping down and devoting my whole energy to this. That was my thing. I really want to do this, and this is growing, and this is important, and I really want to do this. So, at that point, I founded 501c3, a non-profit corporation called Zen Without Borders, and gave it some legal stature, and That's how he began. That's why many of you who live here don't see me that much nowadays, right? I kept living here at the San Francisco Zen Center because the San Francisco Zen Center decided, thank you, San Francisco Zen Center, that this was important and that they would support me to keep doing this, even though it wasn't directly related

[13:15]

to the temple, although it's branching streams, although it's Suzuki-Roshi lineage. So that's why I'm still here, and you see me at lunch. But in the morning on Saturdays, I'm doing a public program that has everything we have here. And people from all over the world register. And you can register online, and then you get all the information. And of course, not everybody comes any given Saturday, but right now we have around... 2,500 registrants from around the world, right? So it's big, it's growing. Of course, it's only like 50 or so that come a Saturday to hear my Dharma talk. I give a Dharma talk every Saturday in Spanish. But that's why you don't see me so much. And I don't like to call Zen Without Borders an online sangha. That's not what it is. It's a people sangha that uses technical tools to meet. And the community is very real and the practice is very real.

[14:19]

And changing that way of thinking about this really makes a difference. We're a sangha of people meeting online. I do travel once a year. I try to travel to different places of the world because for me it's important that once a year I try to see everyone I can in person. for a one-day sit, for a practice discussion, at least once a year in person. That makes all the difference. But basically, we meet online. And why I say the practice is very real? One of the things that, for me, is an indicator that this practice is really real is, of course, people coming back. And I can see people really, really making an effort and practicing hard in their own places and showing up. And we have an e-note and we have a... director, and we have, like, everything you would see, like you see here. But again, one of the main indicators for me is that people start to study the precepts and take the 16 bodhisattva precepts in the Jukai ceremony.

[15:31]

When that happens, then for me, that's the first step and indicator that this has need. So we do study online, and I have the great, great fortune to have Paula, who's my wife, who is a sewing teacher here with Tim Wicks. So she was given the possibility to teach others how to sew. So now we have a Spanish-speaking sewing teacher. Yay. And Paula, with those students online, take their time, we send them the kit, and they sew. And today, in this room, Jonathan and Esmeralda, Esmeralda's there and Jonathan is there, will be taking juca here in Spanish, in a Spanish ceremony for the first time in the history of San Francisco Zen Center. There's going to be a full Spanish ceremony of juca here in this hall.

[16:34]

Because that's non-negotiable for me. rituals of passage like a Jukai are in person. So here they are. They came from far away, and Jonathan came from Spain, and even though Esmeralda is from Mexico, she's living in San Diego, but they're traveling, and here they are for Jukai this afternoon. But that feeling that Jukai is happening in Spanish, that kind of sadness that I was feeling, it's not there anymore. Right? It's, oh, man, now we have this. And we have this lineage of Tsuki Roshi. And is it, you know, because this sadness became a koan, right? The sadness went away, but the koan came in. And the koan, and something that I want to bring up today, is a koan of silence and words in our practice.

[17:39]

Because now we've been practicing with this kuan for a long time, and if you read, you'll see that basic definition, let's put it that way, that Bodhidharma, the first ancestor that brought Zen from India to China, said, I want to... read it verbatim, a special transmission outside the scriptures, not dependent on words or letters. And I'm happy because we're speaking Spanish. There's something that I need to investigate here, right? Is it important? Is it really important? Is it, like, was I... confused or something that this Spanish thing was so important to me words were so important to me when Bodhidharma says not dependent on words or letters and and that's that's kind of the coin you know because words were what started this story I said this is not not available in Spanish and the lineage I was coming from as I said and words were a trap of the mind

[18:55]

And then what? This transmission outside the scriptures, not dependent on word. But then Zen is arguably the line of Buddhism that produced more written text. Dogen, on its own, wrote 90 fascicles. It's huge. And we keep writing, and words keep appearing, words keep showing up. So what's going on here? Because if we go right to the beginning of the story, of our story, there is a Buddha. Many of you know this. And everybody's around the Buddha, like you're around this not-Buddha here. And everybody's around, and Buddha picks up a flower. He curls it in his fingers and says, nothing.

[20:08]

Nothing. And Mahaka Japa smiled. And Buddha said, it's you, you got it. Right? Mahaka Japa understood what nobody else did. And I transmit this to Mahaka Japa. And Mahajapa was the first, that was the first transmission in our practice. The Buddha in silence, drawing a flower, and Mahajapa smiling. Complete silence. And there's more. Then there's a story where all these bodhisattvas are, this is from the sutras, right? All these bodhisattvas are meeting, and there comes Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom and says, who can explain non-duality? And all these Bodhisattvas started, well, there is no birth and death, and there is no beginning or end, and everybody had their own idea.

[21:12]

But there was Vimalakirti, and some of you might know of Vimalakirti. Vimalakirti is the lay Bodhisattva, lay Bodhisattva, also a very wise person. And then Manjurji asks Himalakirti, what do you think? Himalakirti, tell me. And Manjurji goes, like the Buddha, you got it. So Isilas is so important. What are we doing here with words? What's happening? Suzuki Roshi himself, and this I picked up from a Lance Roar article. Let's say it's probably true, right? But I haven't seen it anywhere else. But it seems like there was a student that for years couldn't describe or didn't know what to say when somebody said what makes Suzuki Roshi so special.

[22:16]

And what this student said is that Suzuki Roshi mostly transmitted with his silence what couldn't be transmitted in any other way. Not through words, but through his very presence, is said in this article. More silence. Mokurai in Japanese. Mokurai. Mokurai. Mokurai means silence and thunder. It's a silence that's so deep, it lasts like thunder. That was Bimalakirti silence. That was Buddha silence with a flower. This is deep, of course. Katagiri Roshi was a teacher that helped Suzuki Roshi in the early days of San Francisco Zen Center. Katagiri Roshi came from Japan.

[23:18]

My understanding is Katagiri helped a lot with forms and how to create our first ceremonies and not. He wrote a book. called Returning to Silence, which is a very good book. And I encourage you to read it if you haven't. It's a very good book. But guess what? Years later, he wrote, you have to say something. I'm not joking. So there's those two books. So this koan that I'm working with, processing in my mind, my heart, maybe Karagiri Roshi had Something of that, you know? He wrote the books I haven't yet, but something had to be said. And there's a koan, right? But then you go back to the Buddha, and the Buddha was silent with the flower, but then there's the Eightfold Path. And in the Eightfold Path, you go, write this, write that, write this, write speech. So, boom.

[24:21]

Okay, words are okay. It's not just about silence. And this can be a very deep koan for all of us, to ponder, to think. Is zazen silence? Because I don't think that zazen is silence. Zazen is either silence nor words in my... exploration they're not words as spoken words but Suzuki Rishi said that Zazen is a direct expression of our true nature expression right is the word expression and said okay so what are we expressing in Zazen what is this true nature that's being expressed and how and it's

[25:27]

Very meaningful, this word, because then Dogen, the teacher born in the year 1200, founder of our line of Zen, the Soto Zen School, Dogen, wrote a fascicle in the Shobogen, so one of the most exquisite and important literature that we have in our practice and in any other practice. It's been read by many, many people. He wrote a fascicle called Dotoku. Dotoku. And Dotoku, I'll go to the actual meaning, but its main message is that words are Dotoku and silence is Dotoku. They're both Dotoku. And he gives this example in this fascicle for a monk sitting for many, many years in silence and not saying a word.

[26:34]

And he calls that a portion of dotoku, for this monk being in complete silence. Just a portion, not full dotoku. So for Dogen, both speaking and sitting in silence are dotoku, each in their own way. It's the truth expressing itself. Expression is part of the do toku here. So that's where the blood thickens. Are words important? Are they not? Dogen says do toku. Both words and silence are do toku, are an expression. of practice. So I don't think we're solving this koan by staying silent or by speaking. That's true. It's not going to happen that way.

[27:36]

The way this happens, the way this works for Dogen is I don't care if you speak or if you're in silence. I care very much about Where is it coming from? Where is it coming from? Neither one is closer to the truth. The koan is not solved by choosing a side. This is what Dogen says. It's resolved the moment silence and speech come from the same place. That's the toku. Call it the toku with a tongue. or not. So then that's where I am at right now. So this coin is not about words or not.

[28:40]

It's not necessarily about being silent all the time. Being silent all the time doesn't make you necessarily a great practitioner. I like to say something that I don't know how it's going to translate in English, but smell odor. It's like, no, right? People are, I'm silent. You know, or, you know, I've read this and that, and this, Dogen says this, and Kazan says that. Hmm. No, smell odor. So both are important, but as Dogen says, it depends if they're coming from concept or if they're coming from realization.

[29:41]

If they're coming from concept or if they're coming from realization. Concept is something that happens basically in the mind. Basically in the mind. And that's when I... said, okay, yeah, words can be a trap of the mind if the net is concept. And then we're trapped. And we think we know. And we study more. And we think we know more. And now I think I'm really getting close to being enlightened because I've read so much, I know so much, I can, you know, bring up so many teachers saying this and that. Maybe that's not dotoku. Maybe that's not Dotoko. Or you go to an infinite number of retreats and you're in complete silence and you come back. I did a 10-day silent retreat. Whoa, your friends go like, wow, that's huge. I say, yes, it's huge. Is it Dotoko?

[30:45]

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So it's not so much about one or the other. It's where this is coming from. And that's a hard part. Because when you can actually explain where it's coming from, it's not coming from the right place. Now that's a koan. And that's kind of the heart of Zen. If we can put it into words, it disappears. And yet, Dogen says, it can also disappear in the ocean of silence when it's not expressed. Dōtoku. Suzuki Roshi's Dharma reached many, many people, and many, many people here in the U.S.

[31:53]

Once I stumbled upon a phrase from Nelson Mandela, and Nelson Mandela said, if you speak to someone in a language they understand, you're talking to their heads. If you speak to someone in their own language, you're speaking to their hearts. just rings so true to me. And there's so much need of our practice in the world right now. So much need. And honestly, being here, I was tempted so many times. You know, my English is decent enough just to, you know,

[32:59]

America is huge there's no lack of more students or we don't have enough teachers yet speaking English to English speaking people we could have more and that's kind of the story with many many Spanish speaking teachers that the Advertiser me would say, there is no market in Spanish countries, right? It's usually very Catholic. It's hard. And it's very hard for a teacher to just be a teacher. Then you need to become a physical therapist or something. You need something else, and suddenly your job, because it's hard, takes most of your day, and then you're a teacher just on weekends. So first to say... I would suggest that everybody who's sitting here right now connects with the privilege you have.

[34:05]

This is freaking unique. And we forget about this. I forget about this. So this is not available. Even in English. Even in English. This is very rare. So enjoy it. Be serious about it. This is like... Think of... You know, sometimes you are eating and thinking of, okay, there's people who don't have a bite for today. So I'm going to respect this food. Respect your practice. Because you are very, very lucky to be here. And something is growing. Something is growing in other parts of the world, in other languages, and now in Spanish. So I... I don't want to solve this koan for you today, right? Words and not words, but you get where I'm coming from.

[35:11]

They're both important, and it depends where that is coming from. And it's not dependent about language, because it can also be in Spanish and be coming from concept, right? And I'm far, far to say that I... My dharma comes from realization. No, still trying, still failing, but trying. I'm going to keep trying. But there's also intent. There's also intent. So feel the silence, feel the words, and try to make sure you're very vigilant where those are coming from. That's Totoku. And today, as I said, in this room, Jonathan will receive the precepts.

[36:15]

Esmeralda will receive the precepts. And as I said, in Spanish, for the first time in this room, for the first time in San Francisco's Zen Center's history. And somewhere in this room, I hope, Suzuki Roshi's silence, the silence that came, you know, when he sat, a silence that I just inherited secondhand. I didn't know Suzuki Roshi. It's coming to find a new town. Hopefully as totopo as I can make it. I'm not sure. I hope. I don't fail. Not instead of silence. Because of silence. Not instead of silence. Because of silence. This is coming to be. And that's what matters.

[37:19]

Right now, there are six people sewing their rakusus between Peru and Argentina. So there's more bodhisattvas in the pipeline. Probably I'll do that one in Argentina because it's easier for me to go there than for everybody to come here. But it's happening. Not without effort. Not without commitment. But it's beautiful. So maybe that's us close to an answer that I can get to about this koan. The koan, as I said, it doesn't ask you to choose. It actually asks you to sit until you don't need to.

[38:23]

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. 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.

[38:51]

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