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. Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for this invitation. Can you hear me okay? I see a thumbs up, Brian. Can you hear me okay? Good, good deal. I'm, she, her pronouns, I'm in Querétaro, Mexico. It's a beautiful day here. The jacaranda are in full bloom, and they haven't been dropping the purple leaves yet. So right now, as we go on our rooftop, that's what I see everywhere is purple blooms. Today I'm sad, and it's okay. I might have to stand up to read a poem. but I've been in ceremony all morning as it's the 49th day ceremony for the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh.

[01:03]

So I've been with my community in Vietnam, thanks to YouTube, and then in France all morning, and now I'm with you. And I took refuge with Thich Nhat Hanh 30 years ago, and I didn't know what it meant. I didn't care. I felt something. I felt something touch me. You know, often we come to the practice because we've been wildly inspired or we're in big suffering. And in my case, it was big suffering. And somehow, through the practice and being with this community, I touched into something more. I'd never heard of the word bodhisattva. I'd never heard of the three refuges. I just fell in love and went for it. And so today I wanted to start with, in our tradition, Ty, for at least the first 10 years I was with him, introduced himself as a poet.

[02:11]

And on the 49th day, we're to offer gratitude. And so here's a poem I wrote. Let's see. become stardust. A great peacemaker has become stardust. Did you see my teacher become sparkling radiant light? Did you catch the golden light as it tapped on your roof, vibrated the windows, shook the leaves off the trees, dropped rain and snow and sunshine everywhere? Did it tickle your neighbor, your cat, your dog, your beloveds? This golden light caressed your shoulders and bathed your face. Did you feel this? Say yes. Thay told us decades ago that his Dharma heir was to be us, the Sangha, the beloved community, all of us.

[03:15]

He said he offered all of us the feet of the Buddha. And if we didn't claim this gift, well, that was too bad. Now he has given us even more. We are his great continuation, the mind of love. Where do peacemakers go when they pass over? Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, my beloved teacher, where did you go? There is no coming and going for peacemakers. Their voice remains in the green forest and in the city streets. Their smile settles into the marrow of our bones. Their courage invites us all to stand tall in our no fear. Their footsteps echo in the halls of time. Their perfume of goodness cuts through hatred and enmity. Their beauty, their strength, their heartbeat lives on.

[04:22]

This love never dies. How could it? My teacher's hand is in mine. We slow our steps so our prints remain solid and clear. Each step reflects my love for you. Ties smile in my smile. Our smile together. This soft and tender smile. We are breathing with Tai's lungs. Tai is breathing in us. Tai's heart is beating in our chest, radiating light from hearts tenderized by love. Tai, I will do my best to be a beautiful continuation. I know that is all you ask of me. And this is the soft, true vow I make to myself. We will do our best to love everything and everyone, even those shady and shaky bits.

[05:28]

There is no I with this vow. We will do our best. I wrote this in January. My name is True Original Vow. Thank you for this invitation to be together. Of course, we didn't know what this day would mean. But somehow it seems right that I'm with you, that we're together, that I'm with a sangha. And Brian's right. I'm crazy about the vow. Just crazy about it. Like I said, I went to this retreat to meet Thich Nhat Hanh because I'd been widowed and my heart was so broken. I was used to being a very light spirit, and my life was dark. And so I went there to that retreat, not knowing much of anything, and immediately heard about the bodhisattva vow.

[06:30]

And I wanted to take it right then. There was going to be a ceremony. I was like, no, you can't do that. You can't do that. No, I've got to take it. I could die. I could die tomorrow. I know this is my calling, this is my calling, this vow." And, of course, they wouldn't let me, but I did receive the refugees in the five trainings that day, and I did start a sangha that month. But I wanted to start before I looked at refugees with vow, because this is the energy that informs the refugees, is this vow. And vows aren't just mysterious, arcane forces in the universe. They're every day. You might have made a vow to brush your teeth or floss in the morning. There's positive and negative vows. But this vow in Buddhism is called one of the nutriments. It's this energy.

[07:34]

It's just like a little capsule, this unique thing that is an energy bunny that's in us. this vow. And our vow might be to be enlightened. Mine's always a little bit more simpler than that. Sometimes it's just to be a little bit more awake or a little bit saner that day. But the big vow is there because I am determined to continue to do my work of waking up and waking down. Waking down to me is about bringing the vow in, embodying the vow, bringing it into my everyday life. Mizumi Roshi was once asked in an interview, do Buddhists believe in the soul living after death? And his response was, no, we don't believe that. We believe in the vow. And the vow is what lives on and is living on with my teacher,

[08:38]

Thich Nhat Hanh. Right now his vow is alive in me. So this vow, again, it might be simple. It channels energy. It holds it. It's like a gyroscope, you know, that thing that's in a ship that helps it right and balance. So I wanted to start with this vow because it's very useful. Every morning I remind myself of my bodhisattva vow. Every morning. Sometimes at the end of the day, I think that'd be a good practice, but I at least remember it every morning. And before I get out of bed and put my first foot on the ground, that's when I rekindle that flame in me. And you can't discover your vows by thinking. Now, some of you might have been Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H. There were some lofty vows that we had as kids, some of us.

[09:40]

I don't know if you remember yours. I wrote down the 4-H one because I think it's so lovely. The Boy Scout one's impossible. So you Boy Scouts out there, boy, it was a lot. But the 4-H one, I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living for my club, my community, My country and my world. Yeah. I like that one, huh? I'm not going to read the Boy Scout because it's so intimidating. But these vows, again, they can be reactive. They can be inherited. Could be inherited a vow from your parents or lineage. But they tend to be kind of this package of inspiration, big inspiration, or big suffering. Or sometimes a combo. I don't know about, but if I were in a group, I'd ask you, right, and I'd want to go, okay, how many of you came to the practice with big inspiration?

[10:44]

You met someone, you read something, you saw something and thought, this will do it. That was Thich Nhat Hanh's story. He saw a picture of the Buddha when he was six, seven years old. And there was something about that smile on the Buddha that inspired him. And he heard there was a monastic living in the woods. And his boy scout boy, the Buddhist boy scout thing they have in Vietnam, they went in the woods, and he vowed to find that monk. And he never did find him, but he fell asleep by a brook. And he somehow had one of his first big experiences of awakening. And one of the stories he always asked us was, who is our monk? What is the hermit that we're looking for? Have we found that song in us? So this song runs through the refugees, in my experience.

[11:45]

And they're life vows. And it's a living vow. It's a living ritual, just like the three refugees are. If it gets rote for you, then I'd invite you to take it into the forest or dance with it. or bring some music or have a festival with it, something to keep it enlivened, because it's alive, and it's here to serve us. Well, I better get to the refuges. There was a question that Dalai Lama was asked, I think it was about 25 years ago, by a group of Western teachers, and they asked him, what is the most important thing for teachers to share with students? And his answer has been one of my Cohen's too. He said to trust the power of love and awareness to awaken under all circumstances. I'm going to repeat that. To develop this trust, and this is what we cultivate by coming on retreat like you are, being together, practicing together, that we trust the power of love and awareness to awaken us under all circumstances.

[12:58]

think the all circumstances is part of the key here too you know some days are easier than others to feel awake like if the the days when it's going to be purple rain out my window when the jacaranda leaves fall it's pretty easy day to be awake but right now i know i have um i have friends that have family in the ukraine and it's not so easy but to remember to dig deep into the vows. I also want to read Tai's words on the three refuges because this has informed my practice of them. To take refuge in the three jewels is to turn to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha for protection. The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are three precious gems. Now there's a living metaphor for us.

[14:04]

The living precious gems. To take refuge in the Buddha is to take refuge in the awakened ones who have the ability to show us the way in this life. To take refuge in the Dharma is to take refuge in a way of understanding love and compassion. To take refuge in the Sangha is to take refuge in a community that practices according to the path of understanding, love, and compassion. The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are present in every quarter of the universe as well as in every person and all other species. To go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha also means to have confidence in our own ability to be awakened and to develop and manifest understanding and love in ourselves, and to practice the way for ourselves and for all of our society.

[15:07]

So it's that confidence in our awakened nature that to me is one of the reasons I practice. Tai often reminded us that we had a baby Buddha in us, and we had a practice of bowing to each other, especially with an informal tea, I bow to you, Buddha to be. And we greeted people at a doorway before we had a tea. I bow to you, Buddha to be. So if you've even had a glimmer of that baby Buddha inside yourself or maybe a couple of minutes or a couple of hours or maybe a couple of days, this is our practice. And if it's just been that glimmer to notice that, We were in China with Tai, and he was asked what he was famous for. And he didn't answer that question that day.

[16:15]

But the next day, he said, All of you have been given the feet of the Buddha. All of you. So that to me was what I heard as his response, that we had the feet of the Buddha. And I don't know if any of you in the room were at the 21-day retreat on the feet of the Buddha. It was a wonderful practice time. I think it was in the early 90s. But those feet of the Buddha, to remember, to feel that glimmer, And another question and answer, and this was in the United States, there was a gentleman that really was angry at Ty and challenged him and said, people are looking at you like you are a guru. Isn't that a bad thing? And Ty said, you know, sometimes we have to start by seeing something outside of us.

[17:19]

And later on as we practice, we can start to see and feel it inside of us. So it's their practice, if that's what they see. It's not my practice. And if they're bowing to me, that's their practice of the bow. I really love that response, that this is my practice, that this is their practice. And to begin by seeing things on the outside, and then through time, through continued practice, that we can see more of that Buddha within. It was very easy for me when I met Tai to see that in him. And like I said, it took me a lot longer to start to see it in me, although even that first retreat, I had glimmers of what that meant.

[18:23]

And the Dharma... Boy, isn't that a koan? I love looking at how to define the Dharma. I'm an academic background, so when I first showed up, I wanted things defined. And every time I heard the Dharma defined, it had a different definition. How many of you have found that? So I realized it was up to me. It's a metaphor. It's my practice. It's my jewel. What is that? What is the Dharma for me? What is the Dharma for you? And yes, we heard in the reading, it's the path of understanding and love. It's the path of waking up. But to me, the Dharma is a path of remembering and forgetting. And remembering and forgetting. And remembering and forgetting. And that's another thing about a morning practice that I love is that I can wake up, waking up this morning, I smile, 24 brand new hours.

[19:32]

I vow to look at all beings with eyes of compassion and a heart filled with understanding. And I can remember again. And I can forget again. heart of the jewel. I'm also thinking of sometimes with Ty when we had, Larry and I would have tea with him when we'd had something difficult happen in our lives. One time we had a Sangha member do a lot of crazy things with our house and internet and neighbors and all kinds of disruption in our life, because a Sangha member went off his medication and started a fire in our house.

[20:34]

And we lost our dog for a while, but somebody rescued our crazy dog, and everything all worked out. And we sat with Ty before we had to fly back to the United States to take care of the mess. And we sat, and I told the story. I know I was just crying because I wanted to stay at Plum Village, and we had just gotten there, and we had to turn around and fly home. This was the turn of the millennium, so it was really easy on January 1st to get seats. We were almost alone on the airplane going from Paris to the States. And he sat with us maybe a half hour totally in silence, and then he said, It's like this. And then he didn't say anything again. It's like this. It's like this. I still think of it.

[21:38]

I mean, at the time, it just stopped me, and it pulled me out of the drama trauma because we had plenty of it. Oh, my God. We had the police at our house. We were, oh, geez, it was a mess. It's like this. And then another time, I tell you, if you have some horrible things happen, you get to sit with the Zen master. That's the big benefit, I think. We got to have these private teas with Ty when things happened. And we had our house bombed by an Aryan nation group. Someday I'll be able to do more of a Dharma talk on this, but it's still hard as I was in the house. And so we flew to Plum Village within the week of that happening. We knew we needed a lot of help from the Dharma and from the Sangha.

[22:41]

In Thai, the tea with Thai that time was, again, a half hour of silence. And then he looked at me and he asked if my dog was okay. And I said, yeah, my dog was with my mom and dad, so my dog wasn't at home. And then he said, I'm sorry that happened. And then there was another 15 minutes of silence probably about that. And then he said, and it did. And then another 15 minutes he said... You have a lot of work to do in the United States. So all three parts of the Dharma, that comfort with, I'm sorry it happened, it did. Now what are you going to do? What are you going to do with your precious life? What are you going to do? So that to me is about the Dharma, the path of remembering, forgetting. opening up to something bigger, and creating a clearing, which is, again, what you're doing on retreat, is creating this clearing for yourself.

[23:54]

Ty, for the last 20 years, has said that mindfulness has to be a lifestyle. And there has been a lot of emphasis on the lifestyle piece. And Larry and I have worked very hard... to do that. And it's been very hard, which is why we're living in Mexico. It's been very hard for us in the United States to have a lifestyle where we could practice the Dharma as much as we needed to. Some people, I think, have charmed lives and it's easier, but we keep having these really difficult things. You know, being an African American in America is really hard, really hard. And it's not easy for me partly loving Larry and partly living through things. And I tell you, I learn about privilege all the time, things that I don't even think about or notice that still get brought to the front.

[24:57]

I don't know how many times we've had guns pulled on us, cocked and refused service even five years ago. Refuse service at gas stations and restaurants. People spitting at us. Yeah. Not pleasant, huh? But this too. This too. It's like this. And not getting confused. Not getting confused. And that's where Ty has been. Oh, I'm going to cry. He's been such a great friend because he's never gotten confused about who we are, who he is, or who the Dharma is. And it's always been there. It's constant. All I have to do is remember, and even just a five-minute practice, even just five minutes of walking,

[26:07]

Even just reading one quote, and I can remember again that life is precious and it's a miracle, and I'm so lucky. And I don't get caught in a small definition of life or who I am. And it's that small stuff. You know, I think in our individualistic culture like we have, There's this sentiment that a vow is limiting freedom. And those of us that practice know that it expands it infinitely. That the greater vow, those of you with a marriage vow know this too, that somehow that vow made things bigger. There's more freedom when we dip into the vow, when we take refuge. were expanded. So the small little piggy gets a lot bigger.

[27:13]

I'm not alone. I'm not isolated. And yeah, I get to practice with that. We were with Ty having tea. One time when somebody brought in the news that his brother had died, And he wasn't allowed in Vietnam and couldn't go to the funeral. And we watched him immediately leave his Zafu and go into walking meditation. We watched him as he moved those feelings through himself, the sadness, the disappointment. And then he sat back down and we had tea and we watched. He tapped into equanimity.

[28:16]

Tapped into it. Yeah, it reminded me that's been a really useful practice with the Three Jewels for me, is to recognize that equanimity is a river. that isn't mine it lives outside of me and I can put my feet in it and that's what we watched him do and another time he invited us to have breakfast and he was probably the most upset I've ever seen him and there had been a news article in France about graves that had been found in Afghanistan that were filled with bodies and The story was that it had been U.S. soldiers that had done these atrocities. So he sat down at breakfast with us and he said, I just had to look at, he said, I lost my faith in America last night again.

[29:27]

And I said, I just had to see some Americans so that I can renew my faith. So he said that. And then I watched it. You could see he got really upset again. And then he took off into walking meditation. And we sat there with Sister Chung Kong. And he came back. He started to sit down, pick up his bowl. And he got up again and walked another 10 minutes. I whispered to Larry. I said, boy, that would have taken me months. But I watched him just do his practice. He didn't worry about being impolite to us, missing his breakfast, anything. He just went into his practice. And over and over we saw that. So that's been my inspiration, is just to lean into my practice.

[30:33]

and immediately do it to stop what I'm doing when I catch myself confused or forgetting or thinking way too small for life. Yeah, so I think I wanted to do a little bit of a meditation with this, if that's okay. So I think part of this, the vow first, and then creating a clearing around us and inside of us is what's really essential, that we have to make some space, and then make some space on the outside, space on some inside. I have some pre-teens that I've been... and teens that I've been meeting with maybe for half-hour sessions on Zoom.

[31:36]

And this week, one of the young people said to me, she said, you know, I'm not too excited about who I am, but I spend my time, all my time thinking about myself. What is that? Isn't that great? She got that insight so young that I'm not so impressed with me, but I'm always thinking about me. Oh gosh, we laughed so much. We looked at that and how that works and how our mind works and how we can shift our mind and not get hijacked. So I think I got more time. We can do a little meditation. Are we doing okay? I've been really losing time lately. So Brian, tell me, give me a thumbs up, Brian, if it's okay. We're good? Yeah, so let's... Take a breath out, and if you need to stretch, maybe just stretch a second and shake it off, shake it off, shake it off.

[32:40]

This actually is from somatic work with trauma, which part of my work in the world is with just kind of shake it off. Those of you that are standing, if you like, and are seated, is great. Sometimes bodies don't want to stand or can't stand. It's a wonderful meditation posture. Feeling the earth beneath us, the sky above us. And as a clearing practice, I think I did this before with you, I called the French press, just Reaching out, stretching our arms. You can do this from your seat too. Stretching up with in-breath and then breathing, breathing, breathing. We're going to come down like a French press through our body. Breathing, breathing, breathing.

[33:44]

Feet on the ground, soft knees. Breathing. What we're doing is helping to create a clearing inside. Soft knees, soft belly. Breathing the whole time. Very nice. We'll do this one more time. And again, this can be stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch. Arms of love reaching up. taking out your arms and hands and your belly just to settle in.

[35:21]

You can do this again on the chair. As I've arrived, I'm home. Okay. As of you who are standing, have a seat. Well, just do a short, well, a few things, just very quick. I know I'm at time. And just settle, let your body drop. Wear the support of the cushion or chair. Feeling the four legs of the chair, the points of the Zabiton or cushion. deeply rooted into the earth.

[36:23]

We're going to wear the vertical energy that runs through the body. From the earth to sky, sky to earth. breathing and noticing how the heart lifts just a little how you might feel just a little taller shoulders relax just a little baby and aware of the horizontal energy that runs through us, inviting your body to be wide, hips wide, shoulders wide. This energy that connects us to people, animals, plants, and minerals.

[37:51]

Gee, I didn't say much about the sangha, did I? Well, check in. How wonderful to have a sangha. And I always said, there is no perfect sangha, and this is the perfect sangha. Feeling the width, the space you take in the room, and the variation of Master Dogen, what, 14th century? I knew to do this. And then front and back side of the body, just tipping back and forward just a little bit. Pelvis relaxed. The backside of our body, aware of our ancestors. Forward, tipping back, forward, just finding the center of

[38:57]

Using your breath to help create a clearing in your body, in your mind. Aware of the space you take in the room, the shape of your body. Good. This is the first foundation of mindfulness. There is a body here. There is a body here. Each breath settling even more.

[40:06]

seeing what comes to mind, if I ask what vow brings you here today. breathing in and I take refuge in the Buddha. Just noticing with your body and mind what comes up. What really helped me early on with my practice that I still use is to know from science that every cell of the body has light.

[41:41]

So when I say I take refuge in the Buddha within, I light up. Imagining those cells. And something Thich Nhat Hanh said a lot to us is to light up the incense of our heart. take refuge in the Dharma. Maybe something comes up, a word, a symbol, a color, an image, maybe not. Sangha, I take refuge in the Sangha. more deep breaths just breathing in light and space and freedom breathing out anything old or tired past time

[44:02]

The next few breaths, any goodness from your practice, just letting that sink into your skin, your body, your shoulders, your hips, your thighs. Just let that energy sink in. Mindfulness is a sparkling, effervescent light we're generating, so take it into your body. Savor it. accepting whatever you experience today. Letting go of anything that doesn't serve you. I think I've got a bell here. Hold the bell. Thank you.

[46:40]

Just a few things to close, and then if there's questions and answers, maybe you're cooked, I don't know. I know I've been really, really lucky. have found the Dharma. Really, really lucky. And I hope you can experience that inside of yourself, that good fortune to have found a practice center and community. And really, really lucky of the great work for the Dharma that the San Francisco Zen Center has done. One time we were meeting with Tai and I They were talking about how hard, what were we doing?

[47:44]

Something was hard. And he said, the first hundred years of the Dharma in America is going to be really hard. You just have to support each other. And he mentioned seeing the geese by the lake and recognizing the bird that was often the lead bird. all the feathers were worn off its chest. And the minute he told that story, I started crying because I could feel that, and I could feel that admiration that I have for the lead birds and the Zeners and the practice Zeners that have done this good work to help root Buddhism in America. And with our first years with Ty, he even talked about us not having brown jackets in the States, but blue jean, because he thought that was the color of peasants in the United States.

[48:49]

We never got to do that, darn it. I really like the idea of a blue jean jacket. But he also was very aware of not even wanting us to put Buddhas on the altars when we first came to the United States. And you'll see that at our monasteries. He said that The United States needs all the roots it can get to please have flowers on the altar so that we can support this country. Yeah. He didn't emphasize devotion so much here or ritual for the first 15 years, 15, 20 years. So to keep your altar, keep your light lit, and sangha is critical. I'm sorry I didn't say more about it today, but I appreciate you listening.

[49:51]

I thank you for being part of Thich Nhat Hanh's 49th day ceremony. This is a day in the Vietnamese tradition to express gratitude to our teacher, and I hope I did that, and gratitude to the Dharma. that has informed and changed my life. And as I've reflected on Thay's passing, I couldn't separate out my life from the Dharma. I couldn't find a before and after, but I just knew that everything good in my life has been connected to this practice of love that we share. So I wish you good joy on your path of practice. Taking refuge isn't about going on a desert island. It's not the safest place to be, but we have to know how to create safety in our own body so that we can get through the stuff that is less safe, both on the outside and within us.

[51:08]

And I wish you Godspeed with that. And I have time for questions if you want to. I don't know if I can answer. I miss having Larry with me because Larry answers questions. Sister Peace, I work with her a lot and she loves Q&A. Me, I'm an introvert and I'm a reflective learner. And I'll be really brilliant an hour from now. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:58]

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