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'm having lectern. I'm wrestling with the lectern, which is not holding things. There we go. Okay. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. So nice to be here. And I imagine for a lot of you, you're also very happy to be together again in the Buddha Hall listening to a Dharma talk. I was wondering how many of you have not been able to come into the building for Dharma talks? Also, a lot of you have come in, yeah. I wanted to thank Anna for inviting me and for all the teachers and leaders of City Center for inviting me.

[01:13]

Today, I had planned on talking about something. And I found myself continuing to come back to another topic. And so I just gave up and thought, this is what I need to be talking about again. Because I spoke about what I'm going to be bringing up at a Dharma talk at Green Gulch in July. But I've continued to turn it and reflect. And so it feels like there's more there. which is how it works often, always, I think. So thinking about this heat wave that's coming over here in California, I think right now San Francisco is not experiencing what was predicted, but other places are. And...

[02:20]

you know, connecting that with climate change and these worldwide phenomena that are tremendously, what can I say, you know, extremely serious and sorrowful and also how are we going to practice And how are we going to help is part of the background of what I wanted to talk about. This time of year, for some of you, some friends are leaving, going to Tasa Hara for practice period. We are having one. And it's that time of the year. The harvest is coming in at Green Gulch. On community work day on Wednesday, my job was digging potatoes.

[03:28]

And if you've ever dug potatoes, you know what a kind of delightful event it is. You pull up what you can see above earth, and it's connected with some potatoes. And then you dig like a little badger and go under and deeper and deeper. And then these potatoes appear, these potatoes. These were red potatoes. They were like jewels in the earth. And you think you found them all and then you go further and more jewels. It was very enjoyable. So harvest, harvest time, the turning of the year. The spring full moon festival in Asian countries. countries, China and other places, the September full moon. So practicing within this wide context that we can never step out of, how do we live in a way that comes from kindness and compassion and does not turn away or

[04:46]

use kindness and compassion in a way that's covering up what's going on. So I've been looking at, you know, this teaching and practice of confession and repentance. And I think the reason I was... contemplating not bringing it up is because those words often immediately there's some reactivity maybe around them. Especially if in one's religion of origin you were made to do confession practices or there was shame involved in this. So somehow I wanted to shine light on this practice of confession and repentance and turn it with you to understand better, and this is what I'm working on, how this is, you know, the entry into our Buddha Dharma practice, confession and repentance.

[06:14]

How am I going to get to this? I wanted to bring up a story of one of our ancestors. This is, when we chant, this ancestor's name is Kanchi Sosan Dayosho, the disciple of Taiso Eka Dayosho. So it's the third ancestor. So it's Bodhidharma, and then Hueka, or Taiso Eka, and then in Chinese, who's the third Chinese ancestor. And this particular ancestor we don't know that much about. We just have his date of death, which is 606. And supposedly he had the disease of leprosy at that time, and connected that, he connected that, and maybe his culture connected that with unwholesome karma.

[07:32]

You have this disease because of transgressions in the past. This is a kind of... belief you can find to this day. So he was a lay person and older when he went to and said to him, I'm riddled with this sickness. Please absolve me of my transgressions. So he goes to this teacher, second ancestor in China. He's the one who stood in the snow until Bodhidharma accepted him and was very fervent to such a degree that he actually hurt himself as a... trying to tell his teacher how important it was to study with him.

[08:41]

So that's his... Kanchi Sosan's teacher is that person. So he says, you know, I'm riddled with this disease. Please absolve me of my transgressions. And the one translation is of my sin, which is a word that I don't think quite works for me. So after a long pause, actually, Hueca in meeting him said, bring me your transgression and I will absolve you. Bring them. And after a long pause, Kanchi Sosan said, when I look for them, I can't find them. And Huayka said, I've absolved you. And at that point, Kanchi Sosan was freed.

[09:42]

So this particular story is pointing to our karmic actions in the three times. Some of it is wholesome. Some of it is unwholesome. However, both wholesome and unwholesome actions of body, speech, and mind have no self-nature, have no permanent self-nature. They don't abide. The causes and conditions are rising in this way. So when Kanji Sosan tried to find what it was that he must have done, where is it? It's long gone. His actions, even the moment before, is long gone. So this teaching of both wholesome and unwholesome have no self nature or no permanentness is a freeing teaching.

[11:06]

Now, the danger in this is, which you maybe have already felt, well, if you're saying that both wholesome and unwholesome, have no self-nature, then you can do anything, right? Because neither of them, they're both empty. And that's the kind of what you call Zen sickness or being caught in doesn't matter because it's all empty. So the Buddha Dharma is being able to whim is what occurs to me, to be able to live out our lives with this understanding or realization, really, of the no-self nature, the emptiness of our actions, and at the exact same time be extremely careful and kind.

[12:11]

and compassionate in all of our actions of body, speech, or mind. Those two together is Buddha Dharma. It isn't just, they have no self nature, so hey. And it's also not, you know, if I do it this way, then I'm going to be a good person. And being caught in that, it's I take care of my life and all beings. Because this is the Buddha way, which has no self-nature. So I'm going to continue with trying to look at this right now with you.

[13:14]

Many of you know, I think we studied it here for a practice period not so long ago. The first line is, the supreme way is without difficulty. One translation is only averse to discrimination, or another is just, you know, don't pick and choose. This is that same teacher. So confession and repentance goes along with seeing there's three kinds of confession and repentance. And we practice those daily actually here. We didn't at the beginning of the start of San Francisco Zen Center. These were not daily practices. But for the last, I don't know how many years, 20 at least, we've done.

[14:19]

the formal practice of confession and repentance every morning at the beginning of service, right? And we do it for full moon ceremonies, and we do it for precept ceremonies. So this formal confession and repentance, there's the verse, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, Those are the three karmas I now fully avow. So this formal confession and repentance is called Ji. The Ji has to do with the relative, the phenomenal, the conventional, the forms of our life is Ji Sangye, which is this particular kind of confession and repentance. And You know, the fact that we do it regularly, it's familiar to us.

[15:27]

Maybe we feel friends with doing this practice. Also part of this formal practice, other than this in a group setting with... chanting together, there is also this formal confession and repentance that you might do with your teacher, where you bring something up, something from your own actions that you are not comfortable with, you feel was not observing precepts, was actually hurt someone. And you can feel remorse, which is to chew again, you turn it over and you feel it. And when you bring that to someone else, it doesn't have to be your teacher. It could be a Dharma friend. It could be a family member. It could be, you know, a stranger even.

[16:30]

Sometimes that happens where someone, they feel the most comfortable talking about things like that to someone who knows nothing about them. But it can be very relieving, very, we feel, purified in a way, or to get something off your chest. So this is also jisangai. It's formal. It's in the conventional world. It's in the phenomenal world. You could also say to a Buddha statue or a practice figure that you have where you might confess and repent. So there's all these different ways in the ji-sange or formal way. There's another kind of confession and repentance, which is called ri-sange, which is formless, the formless repentance.

[17:36]

And formless repentance is more, it's at a level that is ungraspable. It's more, if we're talking about form, it's the emptiness side, the formless side. And sitting in Zazen is called formless repentance. This total giving, letting go of our actions. without trying to get anything, without pushing anything away, without kidding ourselves, and just sitting in this way. So this formless confession and repentance in Zazen opens us to form an emptiness and the interfusion.

[18:47]

of form and emptiness in our lives. That's who we are. There's a third kind of confession and repentance, which is called jiso sangye. And this confession and repentance is the repentance of... Jiso is the true marks of all things or the true reality of all things. So this repentance is, it's not about particular actions. It's not sitting open, letting go, and just being the interfusion of form and emptiness and zazen. Ji-so-sang-ge has to do with confessing and repenting the true reality of the way things are that we don't understand.

[19:59]

And because we don't realize it, we cause suffering. We hurt others. We do things based on belief in separate self. that we feel regret. You know, the word regret and remorse. Regret, etymologically, means lamentation. And another meaning is to moan. This is the earliest meanings of that word, regret, regret. I think Sissukuro, she says, we practice so as not to have regret, you know, to not lament lamentations and moaning because we hurt beings and lived in a way that wasn't living out the true mark of the reality of all things, which is this interfusion.

[21:04]

So the Jisosange is this wider... Understanding that there's a need to confess and repent. And as I say, as I've been studying this, my sense is that every moment is a moment of confessing and repent. Every moment of not thoroughly realizing the Buddha Dharma and being able to live it out is a moment of confessing and repenting. Now, that... Coming from, gee, who needs to confess and repent? That's kind of practice I'm not so interested to. Every moment, every moment is the key. This is kind of what I've been turning. So our karmic actions based on our self-centeredness, meaning our sense of self, which is delusion. It's not that we...

[22:07]

Replace that with awakening. But we understand that even that delusion is without substance, you know, is without self-nature. I think this is what Kanchi Sosan, you know, when he brought this terrible thing, relieved me of this terrible, you know, my transgressions, which I have these karmic consequences of. And he says, bring them to me. But they can't be brought. And understanding that even transgressions have no self-nature. But it's not that anything goes. So this is the line. This is how we negotiate the way. So there's a koan. that I wanted to bring up, which is Seigen Gyoshi Chingguran and the price of rice.

[23:19]

And this is a koan that's brought up a lot. People bring it up, and I've brought it up, and now I understand how it connects to confession and repentance, this particular koan. So I'm going to do my best to see if I can express this. So the koan is very simple. A monk asked Ching Yiran, what is the great meaning of Buddha Dharma? And Ching Yiran said, what is the price of rice in Lu Ling? That's the koan. So this question, what is the great meaning of Buddhadharma, is a question we may all have at times or have right this minute. And the response from the teacher was this question or this statement, depending, what is the price of rice in Lu Ling?

[24:32]

Now, Lu Ling in China was known for its rice, this delicious rice. And for years, the way I understood this koan was, you know, the price of rice in Lu Ling is dependent, is a dependent co-arising that includes everything. It includes how much rainfall there was in the sun and the farmers and the quality of the soil. You name it. It's, you know, what the middle person did in marketing it and whether there was a flood and it just, whether there was famine or disease. What is the price of rice in Luling? You can't say. It's the entire universe, the entire Buddha-verse is manifest as the price of rice in Luling. Everything's there. Nothing's left out.

[25:34]

That's how I understood this koan, and I think it still resonates in that way. And then recently, in studying this essay by one of Suzuki Roshi's, not in our ancestor lives, but who was very important for Suzuki Roshi, Oka Sotan. Oka Sotan was the little boy who was... in the monastery and sent to buy tofu for lunch in town. And on the way, he saw a circus poster with all these bright colors and pictures of animals. And he got just totally involved in this poster and looking at everything. And then he heard the bell for lunch for noon service going, ah, I have to get the tofu. And he ran to the tofu vendor and said, give it to me. And he said, what? Or the person selling it said, what?

[26:36]

He said, the tofu. So he got the tofu. And then on the way back, he said, my hat. I forgot my hat. He ran back. He said, give it to me. What? My hat. He says, it's on your head. Oh, and he ran back to the monastery. That's Okasotan. And Suzuki Roshi said, he was a very good boy, Okasotan, which I never understood. Why did he say he was a very good boy? He was late for the tofu, got all confused. This is a koan, Suzuki Roshi koan. Okasotan was a very good boy. Anyway, Okasotan, I'm reading this with a study group that Tenshin Roshi is offering about the precepts. And also this, the precepts have no self-nature. Our actions of body, speech, and mind, The precepts themselves have no self-nature, but that doesn't mean that we don't observe them.

[27:37]

So in this koan, in this, what is the price of rice and lu-ling? It points to the price of rice and lu-ling is what I described of the Buddha-verse, all comes together to create price of rice and lu-ling, or everything, actually. Each appearance is just like that. Everything you see and touch, and it's all the causes and conditions coming together, including all of you, to appear like that for that moment. So in this koan, what Okasotan brings up is that there's confession and repentance is the theme of this koan, really did not occur to me. It's in the pointer. It's in the opening paragraph that points to what the Kohan is about, which is just bringing up that in this little preface, Siddhartha, or the Buddha before he was the Buddha, took good care of his parents, and in previous lives actually...

[28:59]

as a Bodhisattva in the Jataka tales cut his flesh off and gave it to feed. You know, we have these stories. However, he didn't get written up in the book of Filial Bhai. He wasn't like applauded, like, oh, you did good. And then it says Devadatta, who was the Buddha's cousin who tried to hurt the Buddha, He also wasn't, you know, nothing really happened to him. So this is looking at these wholesome and unwholesome actions with no self-nature, both the Buddha and Devadatta. This is in the pointer. And then it says, what is the great meaning of Buddhadharma? What is the price of rice and lulu? So what I... In turning this, how I understand this is the price of rice and lu ling is the reality of all things, the ocean of reality.

[30:07]

And this ji so sang gay, this confession and repentance of the true reality of all things, not understanding the true reality of things, which is the price of rice and lu ling or anything else. This calling to confess and repent has an entryway into our practice life. Now, I wanted to bring this up also, which is about the price of rice. I watched a documentary called High on the Hog, which maybe some of you have watched. It's about African-American cuisine and how it created American cuisine and the importance of it. And the narrator, Stephen Satterfield, goes to Africa and talks with

[31:19]

all sorts of chefs and cooks were using traditional ingredients, and then he tours America, and it's very, it's difficult to watch in many ways because it brings up the horrors of enslavement and the transgressions, you know, created and continuing over so many hundreds and hundreds of years. And while in this documentary, one of the episodes was about Carolina rice, which is called Carolina gold. And this rice, which made North Carolina, Charleston and North Carolina, incredibly wealthy. This rice was so delicious.

[32:21]

It was sold all over and known and was sent to Asia and even Japan, which had a kind of blockade about exports, imports, bought Carolina gold. And Carolina gold rice was From this documentary, the African-American enslaved people knew how to grow rice and knew how to do it. And they were set to clear swamps and cut trees, move earth, and create these rice paddies. And many people died. It was very difficult work. And also the swamps had mosquitoes. After the talk I gave in July, someone told me that sickle cell anemia is connected with malaria.

[33:30]

And there's another gene change that protects against sickle cell anemia that That came to be through this being forced to be in these swamps and so forth that over all these years developed. So this connection with sickle cell anemia, I hadn't known. Anyway, this rice called Carolina Gold was the most delicious. What is the price of Carolina rice? You know, that was my question. What is the price of Carolina gold? The price, you can't, we can't measure it. It's fathomless. The human price of this work is enforced.

[34:40]

And what comes out? This wonderful, delicious rice that's in all cuisine in the South and North Carolina. They were saying rice was just all these rice dishes and all. Well, after the Civil War, after emancipation, the production of it dropped to about 80%. And people didn't who were left, who owned these plantations, didn't know how to do this work. And it was almost lost, this Carolina rights, Carolina gold. However, just to complete that story, this person, a white man, actually took it upon himself to bring it back. And he has a mill. And to repay, he gives away seed to whoever wants it.

[35:44]

And he's trying to do it with that feeling of, because it's very complex, Carolina Gold. You can buy it from Anson Mills. So there's a question, what is the price of rice in Lu Ling? What is the price of rice in Charleston, North Carolina? That same question points to this repentance and confession on the true reality of all things, around the true reality of all things. We cannot forget that we are part. You know, we are connected. We are not. This is what our life is. completely interpenetrated and interfused in this way. We can't pretend otherwise. And so confession and repentance comes up for me.

[36:45]

So in this Okasotan essay, he's saying, he brings up this koan. what is the great meaning of Buddha Dharma? Or he says, great purpose. And then he says, people answer, what is the price of rice and luling? And then he says, and if one asked, what is Buddha? They would answer, I don't know who the they is exactly. And then this, I've been turning this for the last month or so. what is Buddha? That's another question. And what they would respond is, a new bride rides a donkey and the mother-in-law leads it.

[37:46]

A new bride rides a donkey and the mother-in-law leads it. That's the response to, what is Buddha? Now, if you're anything like I've been, it's like, what? New bride and a donkey and a mother. So I've been turning this and discussing it. So how is this Buddha? And then what is this to do with confession and repentance? It's so wonderfully a Zen expression, the new bride. So this is what I've turned. For the new bride. In China. And also in Japan. In different places. The bride leaves their home. Right. They leave the family of origin. And go to. This is a. Heterosexual couple. Goes to.

[38:51]

The home. Of the husband. And. That may be. A very scary experience, a very dreaded experience, a very exciting. What fun to leave behind my old place and new adventure. We don't know what it is. But this new bride is riding a donkey that's being led by her mother-in-law, who also left her home and family and went off. So she understands. She understands exactly what the new bride might be going through. And the two of them together, this is the, what is Buddha? What is awakening? And as I looked at this and imagined this, what I saw was, you know, form an emptiness, walking together.

[40:00]

They each, you know, harmony of difference and equality together is the Buddha Dharma, is Buddha, is awakened mind. It's not just one or the other. So that's how I saw it. You can turn to yourself and see what you see. But the two of them are both without self-nature. without separate nature, and walk together and are entwined in harmony. This feels like it's harmony. Then it says, this is the confession and repentance of our school. A newly married bride rides a donkey, and her mother-in-law walks along, leading it. Don't you find that amazing? as an image, and that it's connected with this confession and repentance.

[41:07]

For me, this confession and repentance right there in this instance is the Ji, so Sanghe, the confession and repentance of the true reality of all things, how things exist, how we all exist really together. And when we don't understand that myriad, you know, can be done. Myriads, myriads of harms can be done. So I think that's what I wanted to bring up with you. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I've got more things here. I celebrated my 75th birthday a couple weeks ago.

[42:11]

And, you know, it was one to mark feeling, you know, practicing as if to save my head from fire, you know. Who knows? The time left to practice. with all beings, and to take up the Buddha Dharma, realize Buddha Dharma. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[43:17]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:20]

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