Good morning. And welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. You're all very welcome. Our great ancestor Hakuin Zenji, a Zen master and poet said, having had the good fortune not only to have been born into this world as a human being, but also to have encountered the teaching of the great Shakyamuni Buddha, how can we help but be overjoyed? I like to teach Talk to you today about lineage. Lineage, our lineage as human beings, our lineage as family members, and our lineage as people who've stepped onto the path of the Buddha way. The dictionary defines lineage as the descendants of a common ancestor, considered to be the founder of the line. An ancestor in Latin means to proceed. But lineage is also our connection to one another.

[01:24]

It's our ability to find our place right where we are, right in the midst of things. Our lineage is our location. And it's such an important part of our Zen tradition, a central point. Every day during morning service in Zen centers like this one all over the world, in the morning we chant the names of our ancestors. When I first came to Zen center, we chanted the names of the Buddhas and patriarchs. And now we include our women ancestors, so we say Buddhas and ancestors. And this lineage, the names of these teachers in our lineage stretch all the way back to Buddha. Now we include our female ancestors, including Mahapachapati, which not only was... Buddha's stepmother and his first woman disciple, but it's really fun to say Mahapachapati, our first woman ancestor. When we formally take the precepts and become Buddhists, we sew a rakasu, which represents Buddha's robe.

[02:31]

And in this beautiful ceremony, we're presented with this rakasu and a Buddhist name that our teacher has given us. And along with our name, we receive our lineage papers, which place us firmly in the stream of this great lineage. From our teacher, our own teacher, back to our founder, Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, and his teacher, Kyakujin Sojun Daisho. One person after another, back to Dogenzenji in the 13th century, all the way back, 2,500 years to Shakyamuni Buddha. who grew up in the Shakya clan in what is now northern India in the great Ganges River plains at the foot of the Himalayas. And many of us who've gone through this process of stepping onto the Buddha way, finding a teacher, taking the precepts, we feel such a great sense of relief and gratitude.

[03:35]

Gratitude for the support we've received from our teachers. And also for everyone who went before us who practiced this way, so it was here waiting for us when we were ready for it. Guta said, at the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to help. At the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to help. So when this modicitta arises in us, this longing for awakening, This place is here for us. Now, I don't think anybody wakes up and says, it's a beautiful day, I think I'll go practice Zen Buddhism. Most of us have experienced some really dislodging experience of suffering or impermanence. I'm sure most of you have had a kind of cataclysmic gap in your life. And that gap, as painful as it is, is an opening that leads us to practice

[04:37]

So we come to this realization that there might be another way of life supported by the precepts and the sangha, that we have to be ready to make that commitment. We have to be open to it. And then that help will come. And we can step into this lineage. All of us in this room right now are in this lineage and take up this way of life, a life of mindfulness, a life worth living. It's often said in our tradition that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. But I think we can also say that when the teacher is ready, the student will appear. The teacher-student relationship is one of the jewels of our practice. And it's a dynamic relationship calling forth what is within both the teacher and the student. The word education comes from the Latin word educare, which means to lead out.

[05:42]

And the teacher leads the student out. But the student also leads the teacher out. Without the teacher, there's no student. But without the student, there's no teacher. When the Buddha was dying, his beloved attendant, Ananda, was very concerned about what would happen to the Sangha, to the lineage, once the Buddha died. And... The Buddha reassured him by saying, you must be a lamp unto yourselves. So each of us must take up this practice in our own way and find our unique way to express our practice. Do we express our practice as a worker in the workplace or as a monk in the monastery? We can express our practice through art, through music, personal relationships. through craft, through physical activity. We might decide to teach kids and we might decide to fix cars and whatever we take up will be flavored by Zen.

[06:45]

It will be somewhat different than it was before we took up this way of life. So we have to find our own way and yet so many of the wonderful Zen stories we tell have to do with this teacher-student relationship. this Buddha and a Buddha meeting face to face. And these stories are about connection. The Buddha said, you must be a lamp unto yourselves and yet every morning we chant the names of the teachers all the way back to Buddha. So these stories, these wonderful Zen stories are about connection, about two people face to face coursing in this way together My teacher is Adrian Linda Cutts, senior Dharma teacher at Green Gulch Farm. And I wasn't looking for a teacher because my first teacher had disappointed me. And I really wasn't looking for a teacher. And maybe that's good because then this opening could occur when one day I realized Linda was my teacher.

[07:52]

And maybe for me, because of my earlier disappointment, it had to happen in that organic way. that she became my teacher before I even realized it. And I remember saying to her one time, sometimes I'm very disappointed at the way Buddhists act. And she said, well, has the practice ever disappointed you? So I think it's important to remember that our teachers are human beings and we're human beings and we're flawed. We'll make mistakes, our teachers will let us down, but the practice won't let us down. So for me, my teacher is a living example of practice in everyday life. And she could see things in me I couldn't see for myself. I had the wonderful experience when I was on sabbatical of going to Oaxaca, Mexico to study Spanish. And I met a wonderful man there named Chai. And we would meet in the afternoons and we would speak English for a while and Spanish for a while.

[09:00]

He told me this wonderful Mexican proverb. Now, this isn't the Buddhist party line, but I really like this proverb. He told me that every person has four parts. The part that everybody knows, the part that only that person knows, the part that everybody but that person knows, and the part that everybody knows. And if we're lucky in our choice of a teacher, our teacher will show us that part of us that everybody knows except us. And if we're really lucky, she'll even show us the part of us that nobody knows. One thing I really appreciate about Zen practice, and you might say it's in contrast to the rest of our culture, is how much we value our elders in Zen practice. And I'm not just saying that because I'm getting to be one myself. The others in our community are so important to us just to be around someone who's been practicing for a long time.

[10:06]

So encouraging that those many years of practice give a kind of stability and light that is very hard to mistake and overlook. But also important are people who may be coming here for the first time. Some of you Is anyone here for the first time? Could you raise your hand? Oh, that's wonderful. So it's wonderful that you're here. It's said that Buddhism is passed from warm hand to warm hand. And so our lineage includes the newcomers that are just coming into these rooms. And there are people in this room that have been practicing Buddhism for most of their adult life. And both are essential, the beginner and the... and the elder. The other morning after Zaza and I saw our eno, Greg, who's responsible for running, the smooth running of the zendo.

[11:06]

Maybe other enos have done this, but I've never noticed it before. We're walking out of the zendo and he stopped at the shoe rack to greet. There were three young people there. And it must have been obvious to Greg that they were here for the first time. And he just stopped and spoke with them and welcomed them and guided them to Zazen instruction. And I thought that is Buddhism being passed from warm hand to warm hand. That made me feel good to see that kind of friendliness. And many of us have had to go through this awkward time at Zen Center where we're not quite sure what to do and we feel kind of self-conscious and a little exposed. You know, which foot do you step in with? And did I put my chopsticks down at the right angle? And that's just part of our initiation. And maybe a little bit of hazing or a little bit of an obstacle course you have to go through to show your sincerity and your intention. But this morning during service, there were some new people there and people who'd been here a while went over and showed them their place in the chant book.

[12:12]

And that's Buddhism being passed from warm hand to warm hand. I don't know. In the Episcopal church, when I was growing up, they'd put up what song we were going to read and what hymn we were going to sing. But here we want to keep you in the dark a little bit. So, you know, and it's in Japanese, too. So good luck, you know, finding your way in that book. So I think it's it's just another example of extending the hand of Buddha to one another. So when this temple is called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, was the founder of this temple. I wasn't fortunate enough to meet him. He died shortly before I arrived. But next weekend we'll be celebrating 50 years since Suzuki Roshi came here from Japan. And you probably know his book, Many of You Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And the fact that he named his book that, that his book was called that. Another sentient being in the back there.

[13:16]

tells you that for him, beginner's mind was very important, really essential. And beginner's mind is not something that hopefully just wears off as we practice. It's something we can cultivate and retain, this fresh, open, flexible mind. So if you're a beginner, you're very welcome here with your beginner's mind. And don't worry about making mistakes. Just find your place with us if this way of life is calling to you. A very famous phrase from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the experts there are few. So Suzuki Roshi wanted to remind us over and over again to cultivate this fresh, flexible beginner's mind and not get caught up in being an expert no matter how long we've practiced. We'll go on making mistakes. Mistake after mistake. So at Zen Center we value our elders and

[14:17]

and see how they practice with wisdom and stability. And we value the newcomer, the beginner who has that fresh, pure mind. Both are respected in our lineage. So when I was in high school, my biology teacher's name was Enid Larsen. And she was ancient. And she really was ancient. It wasn't just that I was 16 and she was 40. She might have been, I don't know how old she was, kind of ageless. She didn't know my brother, but when my brother was drafted during the Vietnam War, I went and I told my biology teacher this, and she cried. She cried, and she didn't know my brother. And that touched me so much that an older person, her heart could be so open and so vulnerable that she could shed tears about someone she didn't know. I also remember Ms.

[15:17]

Larson saying, discriminating between fact and opinion. She'd always say, opinion. And I also remember her saying, you have to move, adapt, or die, which I thought was very good advice. That's a biology teacher for you. And because of teachers like Ms. Larson, I became a teacher myself. I teach my day job as teaching third graders at the San Francisco School. And I'm very happy some people from my school community are here today. At the beginning of our school year, we have a ceremony where the parents hold up these red flags and the children kind of go through that tunnel into our music room. And it's sort of symbolic of the parents handing over with love their children to their teachers. And we have this ceremony where we have one child from each grade, from first grade to eighth grade. They come up to the front of the room and they're all holding glasses, you know, drinking glasses.

[16:21]

And the middle school student, the oldest student, pours water into each of these glasses to represent that the older student has experience and compassion and wisdom to pass on to the younger students. But then the younger student goes back with the pitcher and everyone pours their water back in to the pitcher, symbolizing that those first graders, they're so excited on the first day of school. And that's their beginner's mind. They're so happy to be there. What are we going to learn this year? And so both of those things are important. I feel so lucky. I teach at a school where ceremony and tradition and lineage are so valued. And that ceremony is always... Reminded me of the Zen story about Zen master Nanyin. Zen master in the late 1800s and a professor came to him to learn about Zen. And they were having tea and Nanyin started pouring tea into the professor's teacup and he kept pouring and pouring and pouring.

[17:24]

And the professor said, stop pouring, it's too full. And the Zen master said, well, how can I tell you anything about Zen when you come so full of opinions and strategies? So our practice is like this. Our elders who show us wisdom and stability are beginners who remind us to have beginner's mind and open-mindedness. Rilke said, if the angel reigns to come, it will be because you have convinced her, not with your tears, but with your intention to be a beginner, to be always beginning. So this is our lineage. And of course, each of us sitting here today is the intersection of many lineages. Sitting with us here today are our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. They're all right here in this room. Can you hear them? And all the people that will come after us are also here today. So we share that family lineage and also the lineage of evolution.

[18:29]

Hockwin says, having had the opportunity to be born into this world as a human being with our big brain and our ability to walk upright and our opposable thumb and our potential to develop wisdom and compassion to live a life that benefits others. We've been given this precious opportunity. Another kind of lineage is our family history. And when we have our full moon ceremony and we chant, all my ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. And when I hear, those words just go straight through me because it just reminds me that each of us comes into being shaped by causes and conditions we can't even begin to know or understand. So whatever our family history, we can be very grateful that it's given us this life to live, the opportunity to be a human being.

[19:40]

Recently I heard Ruth Reichel, the food critic, speaking on NPR. And she was talking about being asked to give a lecture about her mother. Several writers were giving lectures about what their mothers had meant to them. And she said, I'm so grateful to my mother, not because she's a great mother, a great cook, but because every morning I wake up filled with gratitude that I'm not her. And she said, but this would have been her mother's 100th birthday. But when she said that, as you can imagine, there was this collective gasp. that she went on to explain that her mother was of a generation of very well-educated women who were given every opportunity in education and then were absolutely bored because of society's pressures, there was nothing they could do without education.

[20:40]

And so she found it very humbling and really illuminating to read the journals her mother had kept when she was little. And she cried, realizing the sacrifices her mother had made so that she could have a full life. And this is one of the reasons I always vote. Because women went before me, some of them gave their lives so that women would have the right to vote. And that's one of the reasons I think it's very important for me to vote. So we get both negative and positive things from our family and whatever those things are, we're not stuck with them. We can transform those things. We can carry on the good that was given us, and we can transform the difficulties we grew up with. We can choose to change, if we have the courage and the vision to do it, some of that ancient twisted karma. We don't have to continue some of the family suffering we may have inherited.

[21:42]

And this way of life, practicing in accord with the precepts, in alignment with teachers, In a Sangha that will reflect back to us our patterns and potentials. Choosing a life that benefits others. These are ways right before us, right here today, that we can use to heal this kind of family suffering. And there's another lineage I'd like to speak about because we're in a retreat right now for people in 12-step recovery. And for people in recovery, there's this amazing lineage. that has given us the 12-step work that helps us heal some of the damage that happens sometimes in families. And this lineage is also based person-to-person lineage going back to the 1930s where two alcoholics met and spoke about their troubles.

[22:43]

And from that one conversation 70 years ago, They spoke with other people, they spoke with other people, and out of that came the 12 steps, which have helped people recover from alcoholism and have helped families recover from alcoholism. And as I'm sure you know, many other 12-step groups addressing other destructive behavioral patterns have come from the 12 steps. Just because two men spoke to each other years ago, now there's AA active in over 100 countries. untold suffering healed by one conversation. Another aspect of our Zen Center lineage is the children that have grown up here. And I'm a little sad there aren't more kids around here these days. A great crop of kids has grown up at Zen Center and they've gone off to do really interesting things with their lives, my daughter being one of them. And these young people, I notice, are just bound together in such a lovely way, having grown up at Zen Center.

[23:45]

They're a lively part of our lineage. And I'm so grateful to kids because they really keep us from taking ourselves too seriously. They can really inject some leavening and lightheartedness into our serious Zen practice. So I'm really grateful to my third graders who've taught me far more than I've ever taught them. And Tim has heard this story many times. But one of my favorite stories about my kids is... One day I was sitting at my desk and Nathan Miller walked by and he did this little dance. And I called him over and said, Nathan, what were you thinking about right then? He said, Lara, do you ever forget you're alive and all of a sudden you remember again? And I said, Nathan, yes, that has happened to me. So to have experience a little enlightenment with my third grader was so precious to me. And finally, in closing, I'd like to say that this experience of lineage is one way to understand Buddha's teaching that there is no separate, independent self.

[24:54]

And I think sometimes when people hear that teaching, they go, aww. But actually, this is very encouraging teaching. And I think maybe one way to think about it is if you picture a beautiful oak tree, that oak tree does not exist separately by itself. Botanists say that the blue jays plant the oaks and the oaks feed the blue jays. So in one sense that tree is part of the cycle of life but if you remove the soil and the sun and the rain that tree doesn't exist. There is no tree. And so this is incredibly encouraging for us too that we do not exist apart from countless other beings and causes and conditions that contribute to this ever-changing thing we call ourself. Just as there's no true without seed or soil or rain or sun, we don't exist outside of our lineage, outside of these interconnections, this incredible complicated weaving of teachers and friends and family and our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and all beings, plant and animal,

[26:12]

The ground we walk on and the food we eat, the water we drink, there is no separate self apart from these things. And in the words of Chief Seattle in his wonderful speech said that we are not apart. We're a strand in the great web of being not apart from it. And we're also ancestors of the people in the future. And this is becoming so clear to us in our environmental awareness today that the things we do affect the people that will come after us, far-reaching effect into the future. So may we honor our ancestors with our practice and many thanks to all of us who share this way together and I'd like to say especially thanks to Lou Hartman. Is he over there? Lou's not here today. Lou and Blanche, thank you. Thank you so much for your many years of practice and all of our teachers and

[27:12]

the whole sangha, and especially my teacher, Ajin, Linda Cutts. So against a background of impermanence, may this way of life go on forever. Thank you very much.

[27:26]

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