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. I see a lot of familiar faces and a lot of faces I don't recognize. So hi, everyone. I'm gonna talk a lot about Rinzai and Soto Zen today, so I thought maybe I would define those terms a little bit for people and talk a little bit about koans and what koans are before I get into the meat of my talk. There were originally five schools of Zen in China, and three survive today. One of them, Obaku Zen, only has one temple left in Japan, so, and it's, Obaku Zen is very aligned with Renzi Zen.

[01:07]

The other two are more prominent. Renzi Zen is reputedly emphasizes koan study over any other type of study. Koans are, hmm, what are koans? They're the folklore of Zen, they're parables, they're meditation devices, there are questions to be answered and questions to not be answered. And I'll give some examples of koans. The Soto Zen style emphasizes just sitting, which is formally called Shikantaza. Shikantaza is just sitting quietly, quietly, and letting the whole world wash over you. The world of the inside, the world of outside, the whole world is non-differentiated.

[02:09]

It just is. But in fact, the Rinzai school uses both Shikintaza and Koan study, and the Soto school is known for using Koans in some of its study as well. So it's not completely 100% one way or the other. Some famous koans, probably the most famous one is a monk asked Joshu, does a dog have Buddha nature or not? And Joshu said, moo. This moo is not just no and not just nothing, but it's also everything. the whole world of interdependence. And as a Rinzai student, you must manifest that whole world of interdependence in your answer to your teacher.

[03:10]

When I first came to California from Lubbock, I was coming from a small pond where I was Lubbock's leading beatnik. And I had fallen in love with things like Dharma Bums and On the Road, Chuck Kerouac's novels, and Allen Ginsberg's poetry. And I was really attracted to that life, and I began to read Zen koans. First I read Paul Ripp's book, Zen Bones and Flesh, and I began to read those koans, and they really touched me and sparked a deep interest inside of me. So in 1979, when I was about 34 years old, I went and did my first Sashin at Mount Baldy. A Sashin is a week-long meditation retreat, Zen-style, no talking, sitting motionless for hours, and at the Mount Baldy Rinzai Center, letting shaven-headed monks beat you with sticks while you were just sitting there.

[04:21]

So I didn't even know I was hit half the time I was hit. So I went and did my first retreat without ever having sat a period of Zazen before. I had no idea what was going to happen and no idea what I was going to do there. But there I was in the middle of the, on top of a mountain with a bunch of shaven-headed monks being hit with sticks and I was given a koan and I was Sasaki Roshi was a little, small Japanese man that could manifest a huge lion in the Sanzen room. So meeting with Sasaki Roshi would go something like this. I should back up a little bit. I'm being rather unclear. Excuse me. The first time you would meet with Sasaki Roshi in his room, he would give you a koan.

[05:25]

The first koan that I got from Sasaki Roshi was, how do you realize pine tree when you see pine tree? I had no idea what he was talking about. But it became an object of meditation. Meditating on a koan, I digress all the time, so please bear with me on my digressions. Meditating on a koan, is often boiling down the koan to a very short phrase that you can say to yourself on the out-breath. So meditating on how do you realize pine tree when you see pine tree is pine tree. On the exhalation, pine tree. And you repeat this over and over during your meditation periods, when you were brushing your teeth, when you were going to bed, when you were going to the bathroom.

[06:30]

Pine tree. I thought it was all rather bizarre. Nevertheless, I went along with the program. We would get up at 3 at Mount Baldy, and we would begin our first period of Zazen at 3.15. So you had to be in your seat, in your robes, dressed, ready to go at 3.15. And you would sit, meditation, chant, have meals, or meet with the Roshi from 3.15 a.m. until 8.45 p.m. And then you would, if you were lucky, you'd get in bed at 9 and get a nice six hours worth of sleep. Um... I would go to these meetings with Sasaki Roshi. Well, I should back up again. I digress. At a certain point every day, four times a day, the monks would say, San Zen.

[07:34]

And you would run out of the room and you'd go to the waiting room. You'd run out of the Zendo and you'd go to the waiting room. And at the waiting room, you would line up and singly, you would visit the Roshi's room for two or three minutes in which you would go in, bow, to the Roshi, recite your koan, and he would ask you questioningly if you had the answer. My koan, how do you realize pine tree when you see pine tree? And the Saki Roshi would repeat back, how do you realize pine tree when you see pine tree? And he would give him an answer, often he would just say nothing and just ring the bell, which means you were dismissed and you would make your bows and return to the zindo. Or sometimes if you were closer to the mark, he would say, 80%.

[08:36]

Back to zindo. So it was very frustrating, but the frustration is... is part of the stress that builds to an answer. So frustration is very important, actually. So I sat at this machine at Mount Baldy, with Sasaki Roshi, and I went home and I vowed never to do it again under any circumstances. I would not do it again. Three months later, I went back. And for the next three or four years, I kept going back, sometimes often, sometimes annually, but I did maybe a half-dozen sashimi over the years. Then there was a crisis in my family.

[09:43]

One of my children got cancer. have four children. And I wanted to be, I wanted to sit more and I wanted to sangha, sangha is a congregation, a group of people that you sit with. And I wanted to be more involved in a center that was near my house and that I could could visit every day. And I found out about San Francisco Zen Center, and it turned out that at 4.15, 4.30, 4.45 in the morning, it was only 10 minutes away from my house. So I started coming to San Francisco Zen Center first wearing my Rinzai robes. I was very proud of my Rinzai robes. They're a little bit different than Soto robes, so I was very proud of my Rinzai robes. And...

[10:43]

For about six months, I didn't really meet anybody at San Francisco's Zen Center. I just came and wore my Renzi robes and then disappeared into the night. Finally, I became more comfortable in my Soto skin and went to the office and asked if I could be introduced to a lay teacher. And the office suggested that I meet with Michael Sawyer. So I began to see Michael Sawyer quite a bit, and he was a wonderful teacher. He really helped me during the period of time that my daughter was really sick and in the hospital quite a bit. And he taught me how to sit, counting my breaths and a little bit of how to sit, just breathing. He was wonderful. But one day he came to me and he said, I'm going to move to Green Gulch and have another teacher for you.

[11:50]

And I was introduced to Michael Wenger. Michael Wenger became my teacher for the next 30, 40 years and still is my teacher. He teaches me every day his teachings. Michael and I became friends as well as the teacher-student relationship. We both loved sports, which is not something that you find every day at Zen Center. We used to go to Giants games. We saw Barry Bonds' 700th home run together. We went to the Warriors games. We saw Sleepy Floyd go crazy in the playoffs. We had a wonderful, wonderful relationship. Michael encouraged me to take Jukai. Taking Jukai is... Taking Jukai is... I took Jukai with Reverend Zimmerman, if you remember.

[12:55]

And it was... Taking Jukai is agreeing to take Buddha's rules, follow Buddha's precepts, become a member of the congregation, and... agree with everyone, or in front of everyone, agree to take the vows of a Buddhist. You get a new name, and you get a piece of Buddha's robe that you sew yourself, called a rakasu, and I was very, very poor at sewing my rakasu. I started my rakasu in 1985, and in the late 80s when it came close to the late 90s, 14 years later, when it came time to take my Jukai, I'd already missed about four Jukais. They scheduled Jukais once every year, maybe twice every year, and each time Michael would say, well, we'll do Jamie.

[14:03]

And as it turned out, I never had my Rakisu ready. I don't know if that was on purpose or if that was because I was inept at sewing, but whatever it was, in 1989, I was fiddling with my Rokosu on the third floor of Zen Center, and Blanche Hartman came up, and she said, are you taking Jukai in April? And I said, I don't remember if it was April or May or June, it was in the spring. she said to me, let's see how you're doing. And then she looked at my rock and said, and she said, give me that. And she took it and she finished it to make sure that after 17 years, I would take Jukai. You know, I'm telling all this story about myself, but what I'm really doing is I'm trying to encourage those of you that are lay, those of you that are living at home that have

[15:08]

jobs, that have a family, that you too can practice in a way that becomes meaningful and profound to you, and you can have a solid practice where you can come daily and learn a lot about yourself, about Zen, and about its traditions, and about meditation. That's the purpose of my talk. I should mention that. I'm just flying all over the place. I'm really not a very good speaker, but that's my intention, Theo. So I took Zhukai in 2000. In 2005, I was Shusou at San Francisco Zen Center. And Shusou is the head student. And you get to learn how to become a teacher You get to give Dharma talks, meet with students, ring the wake-up bell.

[16:11]

Ring the wake-up bell meant that I would be getting up at 4.15 in the morning, and John King, who lived in my neighborhood, a priest at Zen Center, was very helpful because he was always either calling me or coming over to make sure I was up at that hour. And then I would be at Zen Center by the time to start the wake-up bell in the morning. And so then I would do the wake-up bell, sit the first two periods of zazen, go to service, clean the bathrooms, and then go home and get ready to go to work. And then after work, often I had soccer practice with my kids. And I would finish the soccer practice and get back to zenzener. Usually I would miss the evening zazen period, but I would get back in time to for dinner or meeting with students or giving lectures or whatever I was doing at that time.

[17:13]

But I was exhausted. But being Shouseau was one of the most glorious periods of my life. It was as much fun and as meaningful at the time I got married or on my honeymoon or the birth of my children. It was really a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing. So I started giving zazen instruction on Saturday morning and it was a tough Saturday because sometimes I would have Zazen instruction at 9.30, and then the soccer game at 11.30. And it was, sometimes I would come to the Zen Center with my soccer uniform under my robes.

[18:17]

So we got to, we had just kept going, and we just kept our Zen practice. Then in 2011, Michael Wenger and So, Janelle Weitzman took me to lunch, and at that lunch, they asked me if I would like to have lay entrustment. And I had no idea what lay entrustment was, but it sounded good. There was one hangup, I had to sew another rocker suit. So, I took lay entrustment in 2011, And I, right after taking Jukai, I mean right after taking lay investment, I started leaving San Francisco to go and give lectures and practice in other parts of the world.

[19:21]

I did a practice period with Monja Cohen in Sao Paulo, and I gave lectures and gave workshops all over Texas, which is my other hometown place. Then came the pandemic. Well, before the pandemic, in 2018, I sat at Sashin at Zen Center, and I had, it was the end of the year Sashin, the Rohatsu Sashin, that celebrates Luther's Enlightenment Day, and I sat that sashim, and I had a really difficult time. I had already had a back operation, and now my ankle was really bothering me. I had turned out to have an arthritic ankle from all the soccer playing that I had done throughout my life.

[20:24]

It felt like when I would put my ankle down on the cushion, It felt like somebody had put sand down on the Zabaton. And it was very uncomfortable. And I decided that I couldn't really participate in Zen Center's activities any longer. So through Abbot David Zimmerman and the Eno and the Tanto at the time, I gave a farewell Dharma talk. on a Wednesday night and that was my retirement talk. And then came the pandemic. During the pandemic, I found that I really wanted to meditate. It was a lot of, a lot of things were happening in the world and I felt that I could best serve it by meditating and I found out about Zoom. Zoom was the answer.

[21:28]

all of my problems. I could sit in my easy chair that my wife had bought for me at Ikea and put the Zoom on and sit Zazen with people in Germany and in France, Australia and Argentina, Brazil and the East Coast, Bozeman, Montana, Albuquerque. There's people sitting Zazen and I really got to enjoy sitting zazen with them. And as well as, in addition to my sitting zazen with everyone, the classes I was taking and sharing with others on koans and other things really expanded. So I developed a very, very large group group of friends and teachers that I met through Zoom that we would study koans together or Shobo Genzo, Dogen's collection of essays.

[22:42]

And that was very, very meaningful to me. And then my son took his life. And I don't know how much I wanna talk about that now because it's such a deep, deep subject, but to not acknowledge it is not right. I wanna acknowledge it a little bit. There was a memorial service in the midst of the pandemic here at Zen Center that was on Zoom as well. Reverend David Zimmerman led the service and I'm forever grateful to him and to Vicki Austin and to all the people who participated in that. It was very healing. And as well as my sangha on Zoom.

[23:44]

People came out and sent us food and flowers and took care of us mentally and physically in a way that I had never anticipated. And I could just feel the love, through everywhere, and did a great deal towards healing me and my family, and I'm forever grateful. Today, I still sit a lot on Zoom. I don't sit much in person. My rectal, almost 80-year-old body, I'll be 80 on my next birthday, is... not so adaptable to the half lotus and lotus positions that I was able to sit in in my youth. And you can see my wobbly old walk up to the stage today and my full bow is being sort of wobbly.

[24:48]

But I'm still loving my practice and the practice is the center of my life. It has been for 40 years, 50 years, and I'm so grateful for it and for all of you that have supported me. So I know it's really early. I'm a speed talker. But I don't really have much else to say. 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.

[25:43]

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