This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Further adventures in technology this morning. So how are we doing on the sixth day of Sashin? That's... I'm seeing a lot of thumbs up, but I know that a lot of people are sick. And I hope there's lots of vitamin C amongst us or whatever. I hope people are getting what they need to take care of themselves. Please take care of yourselves. So sunrise at 7 this morning, sunset at 7.30. Nice numbers. And the moon rose at 3.32, not too long before we did.

[01:07]

And it's going to set at 1.30 this afternoon. I saw it this morning, a little crescent. It's sort of, let's see, what direction is that? South. So it's sort of, it was southeast, so I couldn't see it too well, but it was kind of peeking through a a mountain this morning and it was very pretty. It's a waning crescent. You know, so much has changed since we arrived in January. First of all, I didn't know any of you. And it was scary. Now I know many of you and you are all so dear. And next Thursday we'll say goodbye. And some of you I probably won't see again. And I won't see any of you every day, including Norman, because we travel separately so much.

[02:16]

There's leaves on the trees now. And even the sycamore trees have... Some of them have leaf buds. I don't know if they'll leaf out before we leave. But the buds are starting to appear. Why is that funny? Tell. Before we leave. Before we leave. Oh, yes. Yeah. You know, like, make like a banana and split, make like a tree and leave, you know. Yeah. So the leaves are growing and my hair is growing. It's growing up. I'm wondering how long it's going to grow up. Will it ever become subject to the Earth's gravity? We don't know.

[03:22]

I'm looking kind of like Bart Simpson. I don't know. I was kind of hoping for something more like James Dean. And on the personal day, in a couple of days, I'm going to be hanging out with the microscopes in the mornings. Aiden helped me and helped us with the microscopes last personal day. We searched for tardigrades, did not find them, but were not giving up so easily. And then I want to take a hike because there's so many flowers blooming right now. The last personal day, I took a walk up the road with Ami, and we saw a whole hillside of shooting stars. And the personal day before that, when we went to the wind caves, coming back on Church Creek Trail, there were lots of shooting stars.

[04:23]

The trail was lined with them at night. At certain points, there was a hillside full of shooting stars. And baby blue eyes, lots of baby blue eyes. So I'm looking forward to seeing what's happened this week in the world of flowers. If you haven't eaten maple flowers yet, see me. And there's also miner's lettuce available. I would like to suggest to those of us who are able to give to Tassajara. Our support is needed at this time, and we have received the benefit of this unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to practice together, thanks to Zen Center and thanks to Tassajara. We now have an insider's view of what it takes to pull this thing off.

[05:29]

And we know what it takes financially to do something like this and what the cost would be to recreate this. Meantime, right here, Tassajara is humming along in this rare and wonderful place after all these years. And Tassajara can use our support. So here we are with just a few precious days of Sashin, savoring our time together, while feeling the excitement of spring and the transition ahead. Beware of transitions, I remind myself. If I were to make one bumper sticker for my car, it would say, transitions suck. Let's especially take very tender care of ourselves and of each other through these next few weeks.

[06:36]

And this day and a half that we have together of Sashin, let's gather strongly, all in, with commitment and with love. our bodies and minds alone and together, this bag of bones, this location, with energetic awareness of this moment, this body, this breath. I wanted to tell you a verse that you probably know. It's lodged in my heart. from many years back, and it comes to mind from time to time. It goes like this. The inner tangle and the outer tangle. This generation is entangled in a tangle. So I ask Gautama this question.

[07:40]

Who can succeed in disentangling the tangle? Again, the inner tangle the outer tangle. This whole generation is entangled in a tangle. So I ask Gautama this question, who can succeed in disentangling the tangle? This verse was written in the fifth century by Buddha Gosha, and it's the introductory verse to the Vasudhi Magga, The Path of Purification, to which the entire Path of Purification, which is really fat, it's a fat book, is the answer to this question. It's the Theravadan Treatise on the Buddhist Path, one of the most important book for Theravadan Buddhism, aside from...

[08:49]

the talks of Buddha. The first begins with an assumption basic to how we think about the nature of life and being in Buddhism. The inner tangle, the outer tangle. They mirror each other. In the commentary, the tangle is compared to a tangle of roots of bamboo The roots of each plant are entangled while being entangled with the roots of each surrounding plant. So no one has their own personal tangle, isolated and static, even though it often feels that way to us. How odd is it, I often think, how odd it is that our most common human experiences our most messed up human entanglements which leave us feeling isolated and unique and alone are what we share more than practically anything more often and more widely like anger like depression like shame

[10:15]

I want to thank Ami for your courage to share your story of childhood sexual abuse and to bring out the point that such an experience is accompanied by shame, as though the child herself had been at fault. Children tend to blame themselves and feel responsible for everything bad that happens to them. So we can bring to mind that where there are people all over the world, there are ones who have been abused, who hold the secret of it in their core, gnawing them, inhibiting the feeling of worthiness and belonging. So to speak up about this is to give a gift of incalculable value. Thank you.

[11:19]

This verse, the inner tangle, the outer tangle, this whole generation is entangled in a tangle. To me, it's like a human anthem, a universal human wail or a cry or a moan. It's like wolves howling at the moon. First... the strong, vivid experience of inner tangle, outer tangle, then the observation that there is nothing residing outside of the tangle. And it brings to mind Dogen's Twining Vines, which we've talked about several times as one of the transmission fascicles, in which Dogen turns the image around from the tangle to be removed as in the verse, to the tangle that is the structure and the means by which this teaching is handed down, warm hand to warm hand.

[12:27]

He quotes his teacher, Ru Jing, Gourd vines entangle with gourd vines means that Buddha ancestors master Buddha ancestors. Buddha ancestors merge with Buddha ancestors in realization. Today I wanted to tell you a couple of stories and also a koan that feature women. The first story was told here in maybe 1978 or so. And this story was really important to me. It was a core, just really guideline story for me at that time. And this is the story.

[13:29]

It's in contemporary Japan, which would have been the 50s, 60s, or 70s, not so contemporary anymore. There was a young woman who lived with her father and she always respected him. She always acted toward him with respect, and she took care of him. He would drink every night and become belligerent and mean to her, yet she stayed with him and always showed respect and took care of him. The story implies, though it was never said, that he abused her. It wasn't spelled out in the story. But friends and neighbors were concerned and talked together, considering what they could do for the young woman. Finally, one neighbor asked her why she was so respectful to her father, this person who abused her over and over again.

[14:42]

And she said, I do it for the sake of respect. That's the story. And for many years, I forgot about that story. I didn't, you know, it just wasn't in the front of my mind. Until a couple of years ago, I told it again, the way I'm telling you, as a story that was important to me at that time. But when I heard myself telling the story, I was really disturbed by it. Today, we would not stand for a young woman being abused or mistreated by her drunken father. We would find a way to intervene. And the idea that she endured her situation just doesn't sit right with us. the way we think about things these days. But the practice of respect is what gave her her strengths and her commitment to do her life.

[15:57]

She refrained from judging her father, or when she did get angry with him and judge him, she returned to her practice of respect. It reminds me of when I was a teacher, when I was a school teacher, I was having a conference with a mom whose very unhappy son, very smart, underachieving and misbehaving son, seventh grade boy, we needed to talk over because he was having a rough time. She said, you know, He figured out when he was in kindergarten that he was always the smartest one in the room, so he never respects anyone. And I thought, what? And I said, I found myself saying to her, well, you know, respect is a human quality that a person could cultivate.

[17:04]

We can respect anyone, anywhere, if we want. And like, how does it work for Michael to like wait for someone, like people have to wait for Michael to earn their respect? Like what if he's looking away at the time? And what about the billions of people that he will never meet? When are they ever going to earn his respect? The practice of respect requires our imagination. It requires refraining from judgment. Here's a verse about refraining from judgment from Huinang in the Platform Sutra. People who truly follow the way don't consider the faults of the world. Those who consider the wrongs of the world add to their own. I don't condemn the faults of others.

[18:09]

My own wrongs are what I'm after. Just get rid of thoughts about wrongs and all your afflictions will shatter. It's cool how they turned that into a rhyming thing. But this teaching poses a dilemma for us. That is, what do we do with the wrongs of the world? and the wrongs of others. I think we can get easily confused about this thing of not passing judgment when we apply it as a rule rather than a practice. When we think of practices as rules, we are tense and nervous about breaking them, about others witnessing our breaking of them. And the slippery slope of beating ourselves up for breaking them, which leads us to blaming others for making us break the rules because they didn't communicate like they should have.

[19:13]

And anyway, I've always tried to break the rules to see what happened, and what happened was always bad, and I hate rules anyway. I'm not saying any of you ever go there. I'm just... Maybe it's just me. A practice, unlike a rule... is like getting in a warm bath. We can't stay in the bath all day, but we feel comforted and refreshed and restored by the bath. A practice of not considering the faults of others is like that, as is a practice of gratitude, of forgiveness and respect. These practices restore our dignity. They do not make us stupid and blind to what is in front of us. They do not make us blind to what we can do to change that which we imagine can be changed.

[20:21]

I have another story to tell you. about a member of our sangha in Mexico. But first, let me tell you about Zen practice at Mardejade, Mexico. Norman started leading seshin, two seshin's per year, maybe 25 or 30 years ago. And people keep coming year after year. Rick came from Canada to sit seshin at Mardejade. He loved Mexico. He learned Spanish and moved there. Arhelia also came to sit at Mardejade many years ago. Took priest ordination a couple of years ago with Rick in Puerto Vallarta. Many people have received jukai at Mardejade and can sit continue a sitting practice at home with friends or alone.

[21:28]

Now Norman and I do seshin together there once a year, and people are still coming, bringing friends and family. Mexican people have a different relationship with color than we do, as far as I can tell. Mexican people think colors are beautiful, They're not garish, they're not immodest, and they're not distracting. They are beautiful, like Rick and Arhelia's red shoes. So in the Zendo in Mexico, people wear colors, like magenta embroidered tops with white pants, lots of orange and red t-shirts and shorts because it's hot. people don't seem distracted by colors in Mexico.

[22:30]

In December of 2017, three women took jukai at Mardejade, all wearing white and lovely jewelry. Family members were present, and the occasion was joyous and celebratory, just like here with Joe and Greg the other night. One of the women who received Jukai owns a small mining company near Mexico City. She's probably about 60 years old or so and has done this work most of her adult life. She has a family. She has lots of responsibility. It's not that usual for a woman in Mexico to own her own company, especially not a mining company. She'd been telling me for several years about projects she'd started to help women in mining villages earn more money, like making jewelry with stones and things like that.

[23:36]

Because people in these mountain villages where the mining is done are very poor. Last year, about a month or maybe six weeks after this woman's jukai, she was kidnapped and held for ransom. Her daughter immediately hired negotiators, specially trained to handle kidnapping cases. There's a whole profession for kidnapped negotiators in Mexico because it is so common. Most kidnapped victims are killed. This woman's daughter, against the advice of the negotiators she'd hired, paid the ransom, and her mother was returned after two weeks in poor health from the trauma.

[24:39]

She came to Sashin last December, less than a year after this ordeal. That week, we'd invited sangha members... who'd had Jukai to give 20-minute way-seeking mind talks. And they all accepted, including this woman. She talked about how important her practice had been for her over a decade and how she came to practice. Then she told about being kidnapped a short time after her Jukai. She said she decided to accept it as a retreat, though she was very scared. She saw how upset her kidnappers were, so she decided to be calm, to stay calm, to talk softly and stay present and alive as long as it lasted.

[25:51]

She didn't know from moment to moment if she would be killed. So she decided to stay present. She was very scared. She said she couldn't have done this without having had, just had, Jukai. After she was released, it took her some months to regain her health. In fact, her health was not fully restored as of last December. She can't live in her home or stay in any one place for very long. She goes to work but doesn't tell anyone what time she'll arrive or leave. She comes and goes at random hours. She was full of joy to be alive. she wore colorful clothing. And one day during Sashin break, she had ladies from the beach making tiny beaded braids in her hair.

[27:00]

She told me she couldn't do anything to take care of herself for months after the kidnapping, and now it just made her so happy. I wanted to tell you these stories so you know how important and how strong this practice is. These women in life-threatening and compromised situations survived on this practice. Actually, I don't know anything about the Japanese woman, just that she had a clear sense of her work right where she found herself. So now I would like to talk about Liu Tiemo, who we chant. We chant her name in the morning. She's known as Iron Grindstone Liu.

[28:09]

She was born in 780, died in 859. So that makes her contemporary with Zhaozhou, who was born in 778. And then, of course, he lived 120 years. Guishan, another major heavy hitter among Zen heavy hitters in the golden age of Zen in China, was her teacher. And she received Dharma transmission from him. So Guishan was born nine years earlier. So all of these people were contemporaries of each other. And meanwhile, back in Europe, it's the time of Charlemagne. I think I forgot to mention that Buddha Gosha, who wrote the Vasudhi Maga, the inner tangle, the outer tangle, he was contemporary more or less with...

[29:14]

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the semi-legendary and very important figure in British history and literature. So Liu Tiemo was born into a Chinese peasant family that lived in northern central China on a mountain. It's said... She was a short, plain girl who grew up helping her father farm a rich man's plot of land. The family was poor and often hungry. When she was old enough to leave, she left. Liu wandered through the mountains and towns, often seeking shelter in convents. Eventually she asked to be ordained. She worked hard at study and at meditation. After a few years, she left the convent and began wandering again.

[30:19]

There must have been a lot of wandering going on at that time in China, in the mountains. Many, many teachers that we read about, they wandered and they met this one and they met that one and they had these Dharma dialogues that are recorded as koans. There must have been a lot of wandering. So she wandered. There's only two koan records of hers. One is she met Zi Hu. And we don't know too much about him. We just know a little bit about him. She met him and he said to her, let's see, he said, he told Liu Tianmo that he'd heard she was hard to handle.

[31:19]

Who says this? asked Liu. It's conveyed from left to right, Master Zhu Hu replied. Don't fall down, Master. And she turned around to leave. And he hit her. There was a lot of hitting going on then, too. A lot of wandering and hitting. But I love this hard-to-handle idea. Many of my best friends are hard to handle. You know, Paul Haller's ex-wife, Melody, is a very dear friend of mine and a dear friend of Ami's also. Hard to handle Melody. She's the one that Philip said, Paul and Malody, which I found not very nice.

[32:22]

Melody and I came to Tassajara once for a weekend. I don't know when it was. Norman had finished being abbot and Paul was abbot. So we named our weekend... the wife of the former abbot and the former wife of the abbot, weekend. Or maybe we said, the wife of the ex-abbot and the ex-wife of the abbot. That's what it was. Anyway, Liu Tianmo was hard to handle. So then she sought out Master Guishan and studied with him. He was a very famous teacher with 1,500 students. Many of these monasteries at that time had thousands of monks. The monasteries during the Tang Dynasty... During the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism was...

[33:34]

a friend of the rulers and some of the rulers were Buddhists and then they would have like one of the greatest of the teachers come and live in their court and be called the national teacher and they would the monasteries would be very wealthy and you know lots and lots of people would come to them and then the Buddhists would be kicked out and the Daoists would come in and the Daoists would send everybody in the monasteries back home to the villages or wherever they came from. Sometimes they would kill them, behead them, close down the monasteries. So there was this back and forth scourge of Buddhism and, you know, honoring Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty. So one source said that Guishan had 1,500 students and That would have been at a certain point he had 1,500 students, and maybe he was hiding out somewhere at another point.

[34:37]

Probably Zhao Zhou, since he did not have successors, or rather his successors did not survive, he probably lived and ran aground with the rulers. But we don't know that. At least I don't. So, of course, most of his students were men. He had 43 Dharma heirs, and one of them was Liu Tiamo. By that time, people were calling her Iron Grindstone because she ground to bits anyone who dared challenge her in debate. It was said she was as sharp as a stone-struck spark. So a little bit about Guishan. All the sources say he said he wanted to be reborn as a water buffalo.

[35:39]

At his monastery, a lot of water buffalo were raised, lots of them. And there was lots of farming. His teacher was Baijong, also a very famous teacher, who was famous... saying, a day of no work is a day of no eating. When Bai Zhang was old, his disciples took away his tools so he could rest. So he stopped eating until they gave him back his tools. And it is said that he worked till the day he died. So, Guaishan is getting old. He's in his 80s in this conversation. And Liu Tiamo, Iron Grindstone Liu, it's not Liu, it's Liu, has her own hermitage, which is probably a monastery not too far away, so she can come back and visit from time to time.

[36:44]

So she comes back to visit. And Guishan says, Old cow, so you've come. Now to us, That's really insulting. But at that time and that place, it was definitely not insulting. It was affectionate. Old cow, so you've come. And the grindstone said, in the coming day at Lookout Mountain, there's a great assembly to provide monks with a vegetarian meal. Venerable, will you be leaving to go there? Guishun relaxed his body and lay down to take a nap. And Grindstone turned around and left. That's the story. You know, I wanted to tell you about this woman, Liu Tiemo, and her life's work and found just pretty much what I just told you.

[37:53]

There isn't that much information about her. though I kind of want to go and look some more. I've been thinking about this, and also thinking about how the commentary on these two koans features the dharma combat aspect of the conversation, as a lot of koans do, with, you know, images of military battles and, you know, sparring. So I found a commentary in The Hidden Lamp by Pat O'Hara that I liked very much. She talks about how well these two Zen teachers knew each other, such that they can have a good-humored, warm-hearted, sparring conversation like this. Guishun says, old cow, so you've come, to which she replies,

[38:53]

Are you going to the festival tomorrow? Which we're then told is 600 miles away and therefore physically impossible to get there by tomorrow in those times. But maybe they're not talking about travel plans. Maybe they're talking about no coming, no going. So when Guishan said, old cow, so you've come. She's saying, among us, there is no coming or going. How about you? Are you going to a place you can't get to, Guishan, who is an old man? And he just relaxes and lies down, maybe to say, yeah, just this, here with you. And she turns around and like lightning, she's gone. Pat O'Hara calls it a perfect dance, affectionate and warm.

[39:55]

I realized as I was trying to find out more about this woman that I look for, when I read this stuff, I look for the affectionate warmth and caring between these accomplished ancestors. I'm looking for their Dharma friendships more than their understanding. I mean... If they found their way into the Blue Cliff Record, who am I to evaluate their understanding? My interest in reading and considering the koan literature is just a matter of whether the story opens to me at this moment. And that has a lot to do with my knowledge and feeling for the people in the story and for their feeling for each other. I've worked on koans only a little bit. It was mostly with Tetsugen, Bernie Glassman. And to be honest, I can't remember the koans I passed.

[41:02]

I can only remember the koan I didn't pass. And I will tell you the answer. Because Tetsugen told me. In my last docusan with him in 1984, before Norman and our sons and I were planning to drive across the country back to Green Gulch, he told me he really wanted me to know this koan. So he was going to tell me the answer. So the koan is something like, someone has fallen in the well. How do you pull them out without using a rope? He added, the situation is dangerous. You don't have time to go look for help. This person can't swim. And I would go in and say, and, you know, I think I went in once and went as though I jumped into the well with the person.

[42:08]

And he said, that's no help. Now there's two of you that need help. So anyway, I went in there and he said, I'm going to tell you the answer. So it's a pantomime. So... I might do the pantomime twice, so you can both see it. Okay, this side. That's the answer. So, what just happened? I think a lot of koans have pantomime answers or shouting answers or hitting answers.

[43:19]

The answer he gave was this. In that moment, you don't have time for the word rope. You don't have time for the concept rope, let alone the word or the concept compassion or caring or even helping. You become the moment. You become the activity itself. No separation. No hesitation. Just merging. Total dynamic working, I remember Katagiri Roshi calling this, which is a Dogen term. Many of us have probably had this kind of experience in an emergency, doing sports, especially extreme sports, or doing art. And I think the moments... these moments of merging, of no separation, of total dynamic working, it may happen, that may happen in these activities, brings us back to those activities, even though we can't count on the moments.

[44:34]

I think we place ourselves in situations in which there's a greater likelihood of merging. So in this context, The peculiar conversation between Guishan and Liu Tiamo about no coming, no going, no now, no then, no you, no me, comes into focus. We can catch a glimpse of their regard and respect for each other and for their warm Dharma friendship. I'd like to finish with a short reading from Maureen Stewart Roshi's book called Subtle Sound, which was her name, Mio On, Subtle Sound. Maureen Stewart Roshi died on the same day that Katagiri Roshi died.

[45:45]

It was... one of the strangest days of my life in the morning Ami called me to say that Maureen had died and we rang the bell at Green Gulch and a little later we heard that Katagiri Roshi had died and we rang the bell at Green Gulch again so here is just a bit from Maureen Stuart Roshi's essays lectures, her collection of lectures. Our practice never comes to an end. There are endless steps along the way. Even the most outstanding Zen masters are taking endless steps. And with each step, the circumstances of our lives are asking, are you here? Are you present? What is it that impedes us?

[46:51]

How seriously are we taking our own individual and separate selves too seriously most of the time? To live with our consciousness rooted in this present-minded condition is to lose our self-important seriousness and to live more playfully. Buddha nature, the essence of it all, we take supremely seriously, but not this passing form. How do we live this way? How do we begin? When sitting, just sit. When walking, just walk. To think over what has just gone on or to wonder about what comes next or to think about how it will affect us is to lose the moment. we can get so caught up in such concepts that we live our lives second hand. If we are so much with what we are doing that there is no room for anything else, then we are in direct contact with the flow of our lives, with the flow of Buddha nature in us, working through us.

[48:09]

in the last paragraph of that particular talk. The bodhisattva kanan grows arms... This is a commentary on the amoeba way. The bodhisattva kanan grows arms and heads in abundance to be able to respond wherever there is a need. This bodhisattva spirit in each of us bows down in humble gratitude as we become freer, more awake and aware of what it means to be a true friend. Nobody is forcing us to do something. We spontaneously do what needs to be done. This one treasure is found within ourselves. This untaught wisdom is found in all subtle actions of our lives." Thank you very much.

[49:35]

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