This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Audio is okay? Yeah? Yeah. Welcome. Nice to see you on a Wednesday night in San Francisco. It's that time of year where the Dharma talk time, all the buildings are turning blue. It's just so lovely. Wednesday night is like family night at City Center. I'm so glad you're here. It has a sort of family feeling. A touch of gratitude just at the beginning for one, you're coming out, and two, for all of the people who are... in this room and also not in this room who are caring for this temple.

[01:01]

There's some very practical decisions about Zen Center being made at a board meeting tonight. I want to give my gratitude to those folks who are considering all those things that have to be considered. So my name is Kodo. I've been living here at this temple for about six years. And just a couple of weeks ago, we finished up Sesshin. We had a period of seven days of silence. Many of us participated. I found myself reflecting after Sashin, trying to find words for the power of our practice to transform us, the power of our practice to bring forth a sort of metamorphosis in us that goes all the way in, something that we touch into in silence. in that sort of practice. So my inquiry followed a similar line, something I like to do, I'm pouring through books, I'm listening to Dharma talks, I'm looking for language to try to put a name on this experience, how to characterize it.

[02:14]

And with that in mind, what I want to emphasize tonight is this understanding of our Zen practice as a path of transformation. or a path of metamorphosis. In a way, going beyond ourselves, or I think maybe Suzuki Roshi might have said something like giving ourselves to ourselves in a true sense. So I think those of us who practice now in these times, in these places, we have a... We have a sort of heritage of narratives of transformation over quite a long period of time. You can go all the way back to the Greek myths. Joseph Campbell said of myths that they're like clues to the spiritual possibilities of a human life. As part of our heritage, we have the life of the Buddha, other transformative lives, the life of Christ.

[03:21]

I think of the hugging saint Amaji, how many lives she may have transformed just by giving a hug. Transformation, of course, isn't limited to our Buddhist practice. And then we have this heritage of this sort of narratives of social transformation. I think of the Ahimsa movement of Mahatma Gandhi or the social rights movement, civil rights movement, MLK is the exemplar. it's like so thoroughgoing is this belief that we can change or that change is possible for us in zen particularly of course we have something like the ten ox herding pictures as an arc of transformation for the eightfold path among others but all this all this is our our heritage for a transformational practice Sometimes it's something outside that better expresses this than what we can say about what's inside.

[04:45]

Across the globe from here, there's this little island in south of Japan. It's like southwest of Obei and Kobe and Kyoto, and it's called Shikoku. Shikoku is known for being a pilgrimage site. You may have heard of the Shikoku pilgrimage before. And this island, on this trail, there are 88 temples that constitute the Shikoku pilgrimage. It's a circular route, and it's meant to commemorate and dedicate Kukai, the founder of Shingon, Kobo Daishi. The travel apparently takes you through four provinces, representing these four aspects of the path to enlightenment. It's arousing the aspiration. the practice for the discipline, bodhi, and then entering nirvana. The journey takes time.

[05:48]

Shukoku pilgrimage is some 750 miles, and if you walk the whole thing, it's supposed to take you 45 days. I have some inkling that the person who starts on that journey is not the one who stops. You're sort of outfitted with supplies. You're given this white pilgrim's garb, supposed to represent a shroud or a conical hat to protect you from the sun, the wind. You carry a walking stick, and your supplies are also incense and coins. And the notion is that you go to a temple, and then upon entering the temple, you chant the Heart Sutra, and then the mantra of that temple. And then you go make an offering at the... main figure. Usually it's kukai, kopodaishi. So you would offer incense, you would offer coins. You go through all this devotional practice, all this mental and physical posture of giving.

[06:51]

And then if you do the whole pilgrimage, you do it 88 times. Not only are you sort of decked out with your own supplies, but the community supports you. Apparently, when seeing these pilgrims go, the community members will come out and give alms, which I just love. It's like the arising of support that you couldn't have expected. Going on a journey like this, I can imagine there's as many motivations as there are people. I was talking to a good Dharma friend. He's done a lot of Dharma training. These days, he doesn't practice in temples so much. He does most of his transformative work on solo camping retreats. He says, the quieter, the better. I was sort of working through this language, trying to figure out how to talk about transformation and Zen practice.

[07:58]

The point he wanted to prevail upon me was that the spirit in which we take it up, the intention that we set, has everything to do with what we find. On this pilgrimage, Shikoku pilgrimage, I was checking out the Shikoku website. Apparently people do this for all kinds of reasons. Some are motivated by, as they say, filial duty. Some do it to gain merit. Some do it to become better people. Some want to go on an adventure. And I love this. The last sentence was, very rarely a pilgrim will walk to seek enlightenment. I love that. And in the next paragraph, we hear a little bit of how this process, these processes we put ourselves through

[09:02]

ourselves into and allow to unfold in us metamorphosis, self-inquiry. We can hear in the language how they've been modernized. The language is centered around some desire to feel authentic, some desire to explore their own spirituality, to shut out the modern world, or to collect a great adventure. And in this moment, as I say that, what's arising is that maybe I'll speak for myself, in my own path, how rarely my intentions have been perfect. And my imperfect, deluded intentions keep propelling me forward on a transformational path. So digging around in the language, trying to find the words for this, I was looking around at the, looking deeper into the word for transformation, the Latin, has connections to changing shape, transformation, change of shape.

[10:10]

Also has a close connotation to the word conversion, or close connection to the word conversion for turnaround, which I thought was interesting. That tipped off my care. For some reason, the word conversion sparks up just a teeny bit of caution in me. So I was looking around for other languages that maybe went deeper or went older, and that's when I came across metamorphosis to change form or structure and the action of changing form. Metamorphosis is still connected to the words for transformation, but also transfigured. And then I got really excited, as I do, about words, and the prefix meta- It has so much valence to it. And what I like about this is that all these layers of our being get to be included in a path of transformation.

[11:15]

It's like nothing gets left out. Nothing really gets left out if we're to be fully changed. So metta can mean both higher and in the midst of. It can mean beyond as well as between. And it can mean the the means by which we pursue something and what we're pursuing all of this all of this connected and included we don't have to get lost in the words though joseph campbell said what's the meaning of a flower it kind of stops the mind we see metamorphosis we have models of metamorphosis and the change of all sorts of creatures not just words over over centuries but salamanders for example undergo this really dramatic restructuring had pulse to frogs we see certain fish do this and an image that is still provocative the caterpillar becoming the butterfly

[12:29]

larva, pupa, spits out a whole bunch of silk, puts itself in a shell, a chrysalis, and then something else emerges. Why that image still has any juice left for me? It's been used so many times, but it so clearly illustrates how thoroughgoing a metamorphosis can be. For a long time, if this is still true, it's believed that the caterpillar goes into the chrysalis, it totally turns to muck. Everything stops. It's not like consciousness goes in. Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm just going to prune this here and change it, like attach a wing over here and it's the same thing that emerges. It literally turns to goo in the chrysalis and then it comes out with wings. That's transformation. Everything, everything included, everything changed.

[13:38]

And without really knowing how. It's a mysterious process. And certainly for them. Mysterious process and metamorphosis is a mysterious one for us. So let's say we're on a path of transformation. We're entering into a journey of our own metamorphosis. And you happen, like all of us, to make your way to a temple gate like this one. that 300 page. You might then encounter some of the, what I would consider just three of the many, many Dharma gates of metamorphosis in a place like this. The first one is Zazan. It's like our daily chrysalis. Dogen called this the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, but... I think the part I want to emphasize is that when we sit, we let everything be and we let everything go.

[14:41]

It's like we don't or can't hold on to anything. And very, very slowly that changes our sense of who we are, our gripping, grasping, clinging function. Very, very slowly we're changed. despite not really knowing how that happens. The second sort of gate of metamorphosis you might encounter, something like seshin, these long stretches of intensive meditation and monastic-style practice. Often they catch the end of 90 days, and whenever I think about a 90-day practice period, a 90-day ango, I think the question comes up, and I never look it up. Maybe someone in the room knows. long does it take to break a habit or how long does it take to form one and i have to think that within 90 days we're making some significant shift in how we how we operate um riushin roshi in one of his session talks a couple of weeks ago pointed out how vigorously it is that we cling to our normal day-to-day

[15:58]

like our normal routine. And to paraphrase, it's like we have this perception that it's impossible to change our daily habits. I was so struck by this point. Impossible to change our habits. And then poof, three days later, it's like everything, everything is different. And it feels like home. Impossible. Maybe it's all the zazen. Maybe it's all the, you know, the different container. Maybe it's the community support. Maybe it's the fact that we don't get to choose very much about what we do during that time. But whatever it is, it changes us. I think Sashin is such a powerful example of a sort of a Dharma chrysalis for us. I wanted to read this, which is the opening of a chapter called Prolonged Rituals of Seeing and Listening in Zenji Eartha Manuel's book, The Shamanic Bones of Zen. She was describing in poetic form her experience of the fourth day of Sashin,

[17:01]

And I think this really captures something. She says, on the fourth day of silence, the world outside the walls no longer exists. I am speechless. And it's not because there are no words on my tongue. There's a forest with 90 people surrounding me, animals in the wilderness. Their voices are no longer. but there's a grunt or two. Some wander the forest, stomping. Some move quietly. Some are flying. The cloth of our robes rustles. Chanting is soothing when the mind goes places in the dark silence. And then I come upon this place, as if lounging on a bouncing branch. I know that if I come into my mind, I'll be afraid that the branch will snap. In the meantime, I am a bird.

[18:06]

Yes, Ashina is like our own pricillus. Something of our structures melts. where it's like our own Shikoku pilgrimage. Zazen, Sesshin, and then the third Dharmagate, I wanted to point out our ceremony, our liturgy, the way we practice the precepts even. I wanted to note that we call it entering ceremonial space. It's like, it's a temporal shift in how we move, how we relate to one another, we function as a body, the activities that we do, it all happens in this very specific way. It's a temporary transformation. In the morning, after we do the robe chant, celebrating the Buddha's robe, we come in and we do what I am starting to reflect on as a sort of summary of the entire Zazen path.

[19:31]

And it's this first little nugget this first section of our liturgy after we bow first we we confess or not put another way we take responsibility for everything that we have ever done in the way that it that says yes this did actually happen this was a this was a true part of my life this action i did or i contributed to i totally take responsibility for the fact that that that arose and in that in in the clear acknowledgement of that bringing bringing a simple awareness and the the sort of opening and freedom that comes from just that that inner gesture of taking responsibility Then we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.

[20:31]

Dogen called this whole form the pure and simple color of true practice. I think it's just like that in Zazen. We sit down, we can't help but see everything we've ever done. Ever had visitors in Zazen? Memories? Reflections? Sometimes. Can't help but see. and we keep taking refuge in awareness. We keep taking refuge in Buddha. On the outside, our ceremony, our liturgy, may look like, I've even described it this way, it may look like a sort of theater, of course. I think to describe it only that way sort of covers over the fact that There's something meaningful happening on the inside that reflects an inner process of change that is happening or that's being expressed.

[21:39]

Both of those come together, just like a good haiku, you know, describes the outer landscape in a way that reflects something about perspective. So these three modes, Zazen, Sashin, liturgy. and I have some body demands, not texting. A path of metamorphosis is all-inclusive, can be all-inclusive. It can include everything that we are and everything that we've been. And it's certainly not limited by our language and not limited by any particular religion or approach. There are paths of transformation that can take us all the way, such that we're completely transformed.

[22:50]

I want to tell a short story of someone not in the Zen stories of history, who is so deeply transformed that I still find it to be such an inspiring story. And that's this character who was once known as Dr. Richard Alpert, Ram Dass. So he, in the 60s, he was a professor at Harvard, right? I mean, he tells his own story. He was just like, in terms of career status, power, respect in his field, he was like, he was top of everything, you know? He had... he'd sort of topped out as a Harvard professor. And interestingly, he described all these ways that he was like ticking the boxes of success and status. And then he describes the story that the end of the day, he always kind of felt like he was faking it. Always felt like it was just kind of a hustle.

[23:54]

I don't know what that was that was going on in him, but I think of it as like a whisper that there was something else that needed opening up and expressing. And so... His path of transformation, profound, actually begins with a psychedelic experience. I don't think the sort of insights he had are limited to that field. What it did for him, he started to see that he didn't have to be the identities that he had crafted for himself. He started to see, oh, there's a being that's not Dr. Richard Alpert. Dr. Richard Alpert is a projection of just making him up and living him. And then he kept seeing layer after layer after layer after layer, just going deeper and deeper in. And you can imagine how that has sort of complications in one's life. He had this great analogy that if an explorer is going deep into the Antarctic, deeper and deeper, the things that they're concerned about and interested in are no longer really relevant to someone living in New York City.

[25:08]

I think it's the same for us if we go deeper. Ultimately, he learns, he comes to a place where he realizes that his path of transformation through psychedelics isn't satisfying, so he takes a turn and dives really deeply into basically like a great doubt. He's spending all of his time trying to find out how to live from a place of freedom that he has glimpsed. in what I take as a sort of move of desperation, he flies to India, starts following around this 20-something-year-old yogi, and eventually is led to Neem Karoli Baba, with whom he has a transformative encounter in practice. And then Ram Dass is born. And the person we know as Ram Dass, we could say in some ways he's, yeah, that's Dr. Richard Alpert. And in others, it's like, no, this is a totally other being. This is a different person.

[26:09]

Anyway, I take heart from the depth of his change, the depth of his story. He's been quite a mentor and teacher to a number of the teachers at Spirit Rock. There was one who was having a conflict and came to his teacher, Ram Dass, laying out the X, Y, and Z of the scenario. These are my complaints. These are my feelings. This is what's going on. Ram Dass gave him a one-sentence answer. He said, oh, for you, it's easy. You need to make the journey from here to here. And something in him turned. It was just that simple. So I think on some level, our way-seeking mind or like this whisper from beyond that pulls us into a transformative path.

[27:15]

It's like on some level we already know that what we're perceiving about reality maybe isn't quite clear. Maybe it's just a little askew. Maybe we're sort of bumbling around I have these memories of my own story, like totally feeling like I'm in a giant cloud of not knowing. With this clear sense that just learning one more thing, just learning one more fact is not going to do it. Reading one more book isn't going to do it. There's like a call to some deeper practice that touches. It's hard to articulate exactly what that is. But one of its features and one of the characteristics I see in people that I've known in places like this is that one of the precursors to a really profound change, a really thoroughgoing change, is recognizing that what we're doing is not working.

[28:29]

Or a recognition that my means or my belief that I'm going to get happiness by that thing over there, it actually isn't working. So then there's this turn for something different. Sometimes I wonder why we don't hear more about transformation. And I think, in part, I'll point a finger right here and think about how many times I have quoted Suzuki Roshi or Sojin Roshi saying, just to be alive is enough. And you know what? It totally is. It is totally enough.

[29:32]

So maybe there's something in... Maybe there's something in the way that we talk or we approach language that might actually put a shadow over the transformational side, but that's not quite a satisfying explanation. Maybe there's something in the context of our school. Suzuki Roshi came here at a certain time when Hayes Valley was figuratively soaked in LSD, and he's quoted as saying, enlightenment is not the thing that needs to be emphasized right now. It's not the part of Zen that needs to be emphasized right now. So maybe it has something to do with context or trends. Thomas Cleary wrote this great thing. As the 17th century Zen master Bunan remarked, quote, people hear that there's no good or bad, and they think that that means bad is good. So maybe we don't talk about transformation so explicitly all the time, in part because it's really important that we emphasize the other side.

[30:44]

There have been so many what I would call ethical tragedies in our spiritual communities. We should really emphasize this. So maybe something about context. And then one of my last hypotheses about this is maybe it's just that transformation happens really slowly. It's not dramatic, always. One of my teachers said she doesn't really notice that she's changing. But people tell her when she sees them again, oh, you've changed. You've changed in these ways. But she doesn't see it happening. So it's slow. But nonetheless, whatever our approach, I think both sides are there. Even to call them sides is kind of limiting. I think it's so multifaceted. But there's this way of talking about the tradition where we don't really discuss transformation all that much. And transformation is right there. Aitken Roshi had this point about Dogen's approach to holding both of these.

[31:55]

And he was quoting Dogen's passionate search for liberation through concrete activities and expressions. Everyday life is there. and this passionate search for liberation. It may be the last person I have time to talk about. Another journeyer by the name of Basho. Basho was As it's written, he was traveling for about 150 days back in the 90s, 1691. Of course, Basho was known or is known as one of the finest of haiku poets. And he kept a travelogue that would become what we now call his masterpiece, translated as The Narrow Road to the Interior. And it's my sense that he sort of lived for a journey.

[33:02]

Something really nourished him just by the journey, just by going on pilgrimage, right? So it seems like he lived a large amount of his life living in huts provided by his disciples. And at some time late in his life, he sort of fell into a depression. And then what he was inspired to do was to take it on the road. It was time to move. It was time to go. So he started writing travelogues. were sort of like prose and haiku interspersed with one another. And he wrote one called The Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones. And then around that same time, he wrote this one that would become his masterpiece, The Narrow Road to the Interior. The style is beautiful. It's so simple. It's elegant. And it moves, like I said, between these prose sections that are short and then these little haikus. And he's able to put so much in just a few syllables, right? He's painting these scenes, and he's going just like I imagine Shukoku being, just like the pilgrimage.

[34:08]

He goes sort of temple to temple, to poetry spot, to famous tree. He's following these trails and writing, painting the scenes with his words as he goes. I had the sense, reading him, of walking along with Basho on a transformative wandering. just going with him step by step, bit by bit. And I wanted to share something in the sense of that. There's this moment pretty late in the story when his traveling companion and disciple, Sora, has fallen ill and needs to go home. Can't fall, can't be on the road with him anymore. And in his emotional state, Basho puts it this way. One night like a thousand miles, as the proverb says. And I too listened to fall winds howl around the same temple.

[35:12]

But at dawn, the chanting of sutras, gongs ringing, awaken me. An urgent need to leave for distant Echizen province. As I prepared to leave the temple, two young monks arrived with inkstone and paper in hand. Outside, willow leaves fell in the wind. And then he taps it with a haiku. He says, sweep the garden. All kindness is falling. Willow leaves repay. My sandal's already on. I wrote it quickly. And I departed. In this other scene, he's made his way to a sort of like mountain temple. And he describes himself like scrambling up boulders and like needing to crawl around to make his way to do his bows at these different altars. And he says, the temple doors built on rocks were bolted. I crawled among boulders to make my bows at shrines. The silence was profound.

[36:15]

I sat, feeling my heart begin to open. And in that little touch, I hear our chrysalis of seshin, or zaza, and the way that the heart opens, just in its own time, in our practice of silence. Aitken Roshi said, when we take the path of Zen, he spoke kind of emphatically. He said, you must be prepared to change. So our intention matters in shaping what this becomes. We can feed this process of transformation and metamorphosis through our intention, and then something else grows. So the territory I was hoping to move around in tonight is something about part of what's on offer at a place like this is a thoroughgoing path of transformation, of metamorphosis.

[37:30]

I envision a community like this actually to be big enough to hold all sorts of understandings about Zen practice that can be lived fruitfully, that can support us through anything. all times of our life, all needs and all perspectives about what Zen practice is. But I just wanted to hold this one up and really shine a light on it tonight. Again, I see metamorphosis as a practice through which we gain everything by letting everything go. to close our time with just a little one more story of basho this is right when his journey is about to begin and it so beautifully represents how the inner and the outer reflect one another and the sort of mood or the tone that can come forth in us when we're we're embarking on a path of transformation

[38:43]

Very early on the 27th morning of the third moon, under a pre-dawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, Mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Uno and Yanaka. When would I see them again? A few old friends had gathered in the night and followed along far enough to see me off from the boat. Getting off at Senju, I felt 3,000 miles rushing through my heart. The whole world, only a dream. I saw it through farewell tears in his hycoon. Spring passes, and the birds cry out. Tears in the eyes of fishes. With these first words from my brush, I started. Those who remain behind watch the shadow of a traveler's back disappear.

[39:48]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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