Well, good evening, everyone. Good evening. So my name's Ed Sadezon, and I'm the abiding abbot at the San Francisco City Center. And I've had the pleasure of being down here for four days practicing with everybody. And I'm just curious, how many of you here are guests at the center? That's quite a few. Welcome and a special welcome to you. I hope you're not too intimidated by the formality of temple life here and are enjoying the baths and the beautiful stream. And how many are summer students here for which this is your first experience of Zen? A special welcome to you since I came here as a summer student and it was my first experience of Zen. many years ago.

[01:04]

So the rest of you are all then experienced Zen institutes, I can gather. Good. I accidentally, the morning before last, was asked by the Eno what my talk was going to be about. And I had been talking to a guest here earlier who had said, well, what is Zen? So I casually said, well, I'll talk about what Zen is. An impossible topic to talk about. You know, there's a famous story where a Buddha went up in front of the assembly, stood up, went through all what I just did, five minutes to sit down, sat there, Mandri said, Ranjushri, who was the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, said, Here, the Dharma will be spoken.

[02:11]

Buddha said nothing and got down. That would be an appropriate lecture for me to give on what is Zen. Or another famous saying, Dungshan, who was the founder of Soto Zen in China, as he was leaving Yong Yan, his teacher, and they were having tea together for the last time, he said, well, in the future, if someone were to ask me, what is your teaching? What is the meaning of Zen? What should I say? And Yunnan was quiet for a long time and he said, just this is it. Just this is it. Now I probably should get down. that you've had now a more complete answer than Buddha's answer but no I'm going to continue on a little bit just this is it just this moment is it just this connection between us is it just all of this is it yeah so anyway I was I get

[03:33]

I had been given a lecture here for a couple of years, but I was in the summertime at least. I led the practice period a year and a half ago. And I get a little nostalgic thinking about this place. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the founding of this temple. The founding ceremony was July 3, 1967. And next year, actually, in the fall practice period, will be the 100th practice period that Zen Center has led here at Tassara. A practice period, for those of you who don't know, it is an intensive 90-day period of practice. It usually starts with a seven-day sushin. It has a seven-day sushin in the middle of it and a seven-day sushin at the end. It's a training intensive practice that's been passed down for a long time. at least from the 12th century Japan when the founder of Soto Zen Dogen started it.

[04:39]

And this place was established to do 90-day practice periods and was the first place outside of the Orient that established such a thing. So it's very special that for almost 50 years now we have managed to continue that practice here. I always feel very grateful for Suzuki Hiroshi who founded this place and for the many people who have carried it and continued it for that long period of time. And for all of you in this room, all the students that are busy doing the daily chores that are keeping this place going. And the leadership, Leslie, Greg, the tanto, and Linda, the director who lead this group so well. And the guests who come here and support it. So thank you all. And I was thinking one way I might talk about what is Zen is to tell you the first answer I got to that question, which was I was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico in the summer of 1970, and I was...

[05:54]

working on my PhD thesis, and then I got all wrapped up. I'd been wrapped up for several years in the whole counterculture thing, the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. There were a lot of cross currents in American culture at that time, and I started to lose my sense of what my life was about and also got caught up in all the other activities at those times. Some person said, well, you know, Ed, you might be interested in Zen. and he gave me this book, Three Pillars of Zen, and I read some of it, and I thought, this sounds interesting. And he said, you know, there is this place at Tata Ara that a real Zen master has actually set up an authentic Zen monastic training center. Anyway, I sold my Triumph and bought a VW van, drove out to California in search of the truth, did some partying in Los Angeles, drove up the coast, did some camping in Big Sur, drove into Carmel and said, where is this place, Tossau Area Hot Springs?

[06:56]

And I said, well, it's, you know, down this road. And, you know, they gave me some directions. And I thought, well, I'll just go there and do a Hot Springs thing because, you know, I knew that you could pay just to use Hot Springs. So I drove in. A couple of students before me walked up into the office and said, by the way, I drove over that road without having any idea what it was on an old VW van. Made it anyway. They went off to the bath and I walked up, but I didn't say, well, I'll just go to the bath. I said, for some reason, I've read a book on Zen and I'm interested in it. The guy looked at me and he said, well, we have this program here where you could stay and follow the schedule of a student. And if you stayed here a week, you'd know more about Zen than if you read all the books on Zen in English. Would you like to do that? And I said, yes. Before I knew it, Rev. Anderson was giving me zazen instruction.

[07:56]

He's the senior Dharma teacher at Green Gulch, and Suzuki Roshi was giving lectures that evening, and I was sending zazen, having no idea what I'd gotten myself into. But the truth is, I did learn more about Zen in one week following the schedule here than if I had read all the books on Zen and English, because Zen... is not something that you learn from a book. You learn Zen by sitting Zazen, by bowing, by working, by having friends that help you, a Sangha, a whole sort of system that was very generously brought here by our founder Suzuki Hiroshi. so that we could actually experience what Zen practice was instead of reading about it in a book by Alan Watts. So I would encourage any of, well, first of all, any of you who are summer guest students and are wondering if you're practicing Zen, yes, you're practicing Zen.

[09:05]

If you're getting up in the morning and sitting here doing Zazen, even if you're wondering, what is Zazen? What is Zazen? You can spend a lifetime and still not know what is other than this, but a marvelous practice to do. What is bowing? They didn't teach me bowing when I was in grade school. I don't know, maybe some places, maybe if you went to a Catholic school, you learned something about bowing. But you can't understand what bowing is by reading a book. I mean, somebody could talk about gratitude or reverence or various things, but you only... get some feeling for what bowing is by bowing, by actually doing the practice. So, I'm going to tell you some other stories that famous Zen teachers have used as an explanation to just give you

[10:14]

a feeling for how this Zen stuff works. Zhaozhou was a very famous Zen teacher in the 8th to 9th century China during the Tang Dynasty, which was the golden era of Zen. And he was a favorite of Suzuki Roshi's. In fact, probably there's more koans or little short dialogue stories about Zhaozhou than any other teacher. And he was a very down-to-earth But he was well-trained. He first went to meet his master when he was 20 years old, and he lived with his teacher for 40 years until his teacher died. And when he was 60, he left and said, well, I'm not ready to teach yet. So he spent 20 years in pilgrimage around China, visiting all the great teachers. And then when he was 80, he finally settled down in a monastery, according to the records taught, until he was 120 years. So here's an example.

[11:25]

A novice had just entered the monastery, walked up to Jiao Gu and said, please teach me, what is Zen? And Jiao Gu said, have you eaten your rice gruel, the morning gruel, morning hot cereal? He said, yes. And Jiao Gu said, then go wash your bowls. You see how clear Zen is. What's the meaning of Zen, teacher? Have you eaten your cereal? Yes. Well, then go wash your bowls. Zen is sort of very practical. If you've eaten, and now it's time to wash your bowls. It's time to wash. Optics are something we practice with in Zen. You know, a teacup or a bowl. I don't know if you get a chance to, if you're a summer teacher, Student, you know if you go up to the shop, all the shop tools are in their place.

[12:27]

And if you take them and use them for your work period and you're through, then you wash them and you put them back in their place. And all of the garden tools are in their place. And the knives in the kitchen are in their place. They're taken care of. That is just the simple thing of taking care of what you're doing carefully, well, with your full intention. That's Zen practice. Katagiri Roshi was one of our early teachers here at Zen Center used to say, I love the way he'd say, wash a bowl, wash a pan, wash a pan. He would gesture like this. And if you could wash a pan with your entire mind and heart and body, the whole universe is yours. I lead a small group in Mill Valley besides being the abiding habit at the city center. Various people who have trouble cleaning their dishes, I inspire them with this story. Dishwashing, great Zen practice.

[13:31]

Chopping vegetables, great Zen practice. Just wholeheartedly do whatever it is you're doing. That's Zen practice. So here's another Zhaozhou story. A monk asked Xiao Zhou, what is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from the West? Xiao Zhou said, the oak tree in the courtyard. That was the end of the conversation. You got it? Well, first of all, bodhidharma, for those of you who are not in the know, was the person who came from India and founded Zen in China. So he was the founder of Zen in China. And he was famous for various things like his interchange with the emperor, where he sort of brushed the emperor off and went north and sat for nine years in a cave. He was a very serious sitter. And there isn't much really said about what Bodhidharma said.

[14:36]

There's a sort of a famous four-line quote, and this is what he said about Zen. Zen is a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words, and letters. By pointing directly to one's mind, it lets one see into one's own true nature and attain Buddhahood." So there was a kind of a revolt in Zen against the scholarly side of Buddhism in India, tomes of scriptures and sutras, and Zen said, a special transmission outside the scriptures, forget the scriptures, not founded on words and letters, by pointing directly at one's mind. Look directly at your mind and see your own true nature and you will become Buddha.

[15:40]

That's about all we got from Bodhidharma, but kind of a general direction that Zen Lee Zen, too. So he sat for nine years in a cave looking at his mind. Suzuki Roshi liked to sit with other people. So we had a very easy life here. We sit together. When I first came to Zen Center, there were a lot of students, hanging around Zen Center, and I ran into a couple that had been sitting for a hundred-day sashin in the woods, all day long sitting for a hundred days. Maybe they were trying to emulate Bodhidharma sitting in a cave. I said, well, did you talk to Suzuki Roshi about that? He said, yeah, we did. What did he say? He thought it was a little greedy. So we sit together, just... in the summertime, just, what, in the morning for an hour and in the evening for 40 minutes.

[16:46]

I mean, when we sit practice periods here for 90 days, we sit maybe nine periods a day. So we sit a lot more when we're not running a guest season. But getting back to our cypress tree in the courtyard, I actually went to Zhao Zhou's temple in China. It was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but they rebuilt it since then. And they have these marvelous cypress trees in the courtyard, hundred-year-old cypress trees in these magnificent large buildings and big courtyard. And I can imagine this monk coming up to Zhao Zhao, who's standing under a cypress tree, asking this fancy question, you know, what is the meaning of bodhidharma coming from the West, which is kind of a fancy way of saying, what's Zen about, anyway? And Zhao Zhao thinking, this guy is just not paying attention to anything. And he says, the cypress tree in the courtyard, the cypress tree right here, right in front of you. Do you see it? Are you even aware of what's going on around here?

[17:49]

And you know, the thing about trees, trees are amazing things. And if you're here at Tassara, you have the luxury of all these beautiful trees around us. When I led the winter practice tree in 2015 here, that goes, you know, from the beginning of January through March, mislabeled the winter practice period it's really should be called the spring blooming practice period because these big maple trees come out with these blossoms you know huge yellow blossoms hanging off of them and you just fall in love with them and then the next the sycamore trees come out and then the alders and then the fruit trees and it's just this blizzard of magnificent you know nature exploding around you But we hardly notice it because we're so busy in our minds with our problems. We're thinking all the time about all of our problems.

[18:51]

We can't actually experience anything. What Zhao Zhao is pointing to is, what is it like to actually experience just being alive? What is it like to just be present and experience being alive without adding hope? commentary on top of it, a whole dialogue to the whole thing. You know, these Zen stories have all kinds of little trailing commentary, so that same thing, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West? Lenji, another famous teacher. Oh, I wrote down something here. Ah, yes. Linji's response to the monk saying, what's the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West says, if Bodhidharma had had any meaning, he could not have saved even in himself.

[19:53]

If Bodhidharma had any meaning, he could not have, this is a play off the word, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West? He said, if Bodhidharma had had any meaning, he could not have even saved himself. I was out at the baths and the sunlight was just at one of those places and there was this butterfly that just sort of like started soaring down the street, you know, kind of. And for a moment I was just there watching the butterfly. It's a perfect moment in an afternoon here. And then immediately my mind went, what a beautiful butterfly. Maybe I should use that in my talk. I think I'm going to add a lot of meaning to this experience, I think. Because this experience by itself is not enough. I should attach some meaning to it. I should throw some sentences on top. I should sprinkle meaning all over it, right?

[20:55]

Because if we don't sprinkle some meaning on our life, it's not just enough to live it, right? We don't have enough life just happening here. We have to clutter it with a lot of thinking and a lot of meaning. It's lovely the way he said that. You know, life does not require us to supply any meaning to it. Life has its own meaning. It's enough. I mean, it's fine to write poems. I like reading poems too. How am I doing on time? Well, I think I'm going to There's a beautiful commentary on that koan. It goes, Words do not convey the fact. Language is not an expedient. Attached to words, your life is lost.

[21:58]

Blocked by phrases, you are bewildered. Words do not convey the fact. Well, that's obvious. I say cypress tree to you, or oak tree to you. That doesn't convey what an oak tree is. Attached to words, your life is lost. If words run your life, if your thinking is running your life, you're in trouble. If your life allows you to use words, then you're all right. Anyway, we could go into that, but we're not. I want to do one more koan this evening. One more. This is another one by Jiaojo that is... Beautiful. And Zhao Zhao was teaching the assembly and said, the great way is not difficult, just avoid picking and choosing. The great way, you know, the path of Buddhism, Zen.

[22:59]

The great way is not difficult, just avoid picking and choosing. Well, first of all, that's kind of encouraging that the great way is not difficult, right? That part's pretty good. But just avoid picking and choosing. Just avoid picking and choosing. Just avoid showing preference for things. So you start with that editing and say, OK, fine, I'm just going to quit being picky about things. I really don't care whether my food is a little salty. I'm going to just not care whether this flies are buzzing about me or a little too warm. I can get past all that. But then somebody dishes you and you go, oh, I do care about that. Or somebody's really mean to you or somebody you love dies. You know, there's things that we do, you know. And then if you examine very carefully, there's a sort of second sentence. I'm going to finish the rest of this column because it's very, as soon as there are words spoken, this is picking and choosing, or this is clarity.

[24:03]

As soon as you use words, you're picking and choosing. You've chosen words. In fact, we all know by now that, because they've done all these studies from our early childhood, based on a need to have attachment with our caregivers or our parents, we formed a view of the world that basically creates the view of the world we see. I look at certain people differently than other people and have all kinds of ideas in my head. Visual perception is not actually just a picture of what's on the back of your retina. What you see is formed by a combination of what's coming into the eyes and what the brain is doing with it. So just in every level of what we're doing, we're picking and choosing. So there's no avoiding picking and choosing. Although we would really like to just... Of course, back in the hippie days, we did do that. It's all good.

[25:04]

Right. Remember that? Whatever. And I'm cool. You know, let's go all lie out in the mud field and listen to, you know, rock musicians. It's cool. It didn't turn out to be all cool. There's no escaping picking and choosing. So the question is not whether you're going to be picking and choosing. The question is, what are you picking and choosing? What's driving your picking and choosing? that's been running around in my head lately is the following. Self-concern is the organizing principle of all your thinking and feeling. Self-concern is the organizing principle of all your thinking and feeling. You know what I'm talking about? Anybody here get that? So that's a problem. Because you're not going to be able to satisfy all your desires.

[26:05]

It's just not going to happen, and you're going to suffer. In fact, that's where all the suffering comes from. So there has to be a turn here somewhere on this picking and choosing. We have to turn from picking and choosing that's all about self-concern to picking and choosing that comes from something bigger, something different. So I'm going to tell a wonderful Suzuki Roshi story. Gosh, I've got all kinds of wonderful little paragraphs about picking chocolate chip cookies versus folio cookies. How confusing that becomes for us. But anyway, I'm not going to go there. So Suzuki Roshi was...

[27:06]

giving a lecture here. He was in his cabin, which was right over across the way there. There were all these blue jays. Have any of you noticed the blue jays around here? Squawk, squawk, squawk. If you leave any of your food unattended for just a second, they've got it, you know. It's hard to love blue jays. I mean, lately, I do the jindu in the morning, and we have to, after we snuff up, That means I'd go to all the altars and offer some incense before I come into the Zendo in the morning. We have to stuff out the candle and then cover it up because the Blue Jays are eating the candle wax. What's going on with these Blue Jays? So he was trying to get a lecture together, yak, yak, yak, over his head. This is what he said. He was talking about the difference between sound and noise. Sound is something more real that comes from your practice.

[28:08]

Noise is something objective, something which will bother you. And then he goes on about sounding both subjective and objective. That's too complicated. Let's just go with this. So he was preparing his lecture and the blue jays were squawking above him and he says, You think the blue jay is over there. But I think the Blue Jay is in here, singing inside my heart. You think the Blue Jay is over there bothering you, and I think the Blue Jay is in here, singing in my heart. When you are able to turn things away from everything being related to you, to everything being connected to you, that everything is part of you, that there's no difference between inside and outside, that if you take care of everything, you'll be taking care of yourself, then you can turn your picking and choosing from a self-centered place into compassion, into love, into kindness.

[29:24]

That's the daily practice. the last line of this koan that I was reading goes, where is this last one? So Jao Joe said he doesn't want to sit in picking and choosing or clarity. And the monk says, well, if you don't abide in, you know, we would like to get away from all this picking and choosing and just be in this serene place. And the monk says, well, if you don't abide in that serene place, what do you do? And Zhao Zhao says, I don't know either. How do you do this? How do you do this picking and choosing in a way that's compassionate and not self-centered? How do you do this at every moment? How do you live a life?

[30:28]

And Zhao Zhao, the most esteemed Zen master of the ninth century in China, says, I don't know either. I don't know just like you don't know. There's no formula for living life. I can't tell you a formula about how to live your life. I got to work it out every moment just like you got to work it out. Isn't that beautiful? I mean, it puts a lot of responsibility on us because we got to work it out, each one of us, every moment of every day. I don't know either. And the monk says, since you don't know, teacher, why do you say you don't abide in enlightenment? Jojo says, it's enough to ask the question. Just bow and withdraw. I mean, the monk just kept pushing him. Tell me, you've got to tell me how to do this. And he says, it's enough to ask the question. Do you get it? What is Zen? It's enough to ask that question. How do I live my life?

[31:32]

It's enough to ask that question. On each moment, life asks you to answer a question. It asks you to answer the question, how do I live this life, this moment? How do I act in this moment? That's the question. And when faced with that question and you don't know what to do, just bow. Now, express your gratitude that you have a life to live. That's enough. Just bow and express your gratitude that you have a life to live. Well, the Tantra always encourages lecturers to end on time here because we have to get up early, so I have three minutes if anybody would like to ask a question. Each moment I'd like to ask you a question or give us a question.

[32:52]

So we have to be aware of that and be mindful. You're not mindful to recognize that question. That's correct. You know, they say the two wings of Zen are wisdom and compassion. Part of knowing how to act compassionately is having some wisdom, which means being present in this moment enough to actually see what's going on. That's helpful. Question. Yes? There's a beautiful description of how those non-knowing and leaving the decision in the thinking and the ability to the individual seeking answers.

[34:03]

So it opens up a whole range of possibility of what answer might be. How do you create community in this at least? Well, there's a lot of questions there. I think one of the things we face as humans, given the way we were raised, is we have such a narrow view of what we think our life is about and who we are and what's going on. So one effort is to really realize how much bigger we are than what we think we are and how much more possibility is there and how much more freedom we have than we allow ourselves to think. How do you create a community? Well, I'll end with this story. It was a summer, I think it was a summer of 71 or 70.

[35:07]

I was down here. I was just a sort of new student digging ditches. But apparently the senior staff were having a meeting with Suzuki Roshi and they were complaining probably about how the new students weren't doing things right or all the problems in the community. And he was very strict with them, very strict with them. So he gave a very short lecture, maybe 20 minutes, and he said, are there any questions? One of the students raised his hand and said, Siddha Kirsi, I've been practicing for five years. I still, it's very hard for me to be kind when things are difficult, you know. Siddha Kirsi said, five years is nothing. You don't know how hard it is to love some people. It was a very odd moment in that room because somehow all of us, and we were a pretty weird collection of people, a pretty diverse collection of people, had felt loved by him more than we'd felt loved by anybody else.

[36:22]

And how did he do that? But it's just a reminder that the whole point of this is to figure out how to love people, how to be compassionate. how to be kind to people. That's the whole point. Well, thank you very much for your attention.

[36:55]

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