This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening everyone. Thank you all for being here. My name is Shundo, for those who don't know me. I'm very happy to be up here on the Dharma seat. So thank you very much, Greg, for inviting me. I also want to bow in this direction to Galen. I'm very happy that Galen is here. She was the director at Tassahara when I first came to live here in 2002. And I owe her a deep debt of gratitude for teaching me about monastic practice on and off the cushion and also setting me on the path to priesthood. Thank you. Also, thank you to Rex. who is here this week. We're co-leading a Zen and Yoga retreat.

[01:01]

Rex is very kind and wise, but I still do not like downward dog. But we've been working a lot with the breath, so I will be trying to pay attention to my breath while I'm going through this. I hope you can all hear me, and I hope you can all follow my impenetrable English accent too. So Greg asked me to give this talk about a week ago, and... I only said yes because I had some ideas floating around in my head about a future Dharma talk that I might give. And I think if I hadn't had any ideas, I probably wouldn't have said yes because I don't really like starting from scratch and being asked to talk about something on demand. So having a few ideas is a little like having the stock that you can start a soup with. At least it gives you some confidence that you can go somewhere. But last week was kind of a busy week for me. My day job is as director of City Center, San Francisco Zen Center's urban temple. And particularly last week, there were a lot of meetings.

[02:03]

I spent a lot of time in meetings. So we had the usual meetings, the practice committee, the senior staff meeting. planning meetings, strategy meetings, business modeling meetings, and even I had a personal meeting with the ABBA as part of what we call the Paths and Gates Process, which is a periodic revision of how we're doing at Zen Center and where we want our practice and our life at Zen Center to go. So it was kind of a full week, and I was trying to think about what I would talk about, and it was very hard to have any clear idea of what I might talk about when I got here. I knew there were two things I probably would mention. And one is the heat, and I'm certainly feeling it right now. I think if you've been here all summer, you're probably saying, what heat? It's a normal evening. But those of you who have been in the Bay Area recently know that we're in full fog season, and it's been pretty chilly there. I was at Green Gulch on Saturday and wearing three layers of clothing to do a fairly strenuous hiking and feeling cold all day. And wearing four layers of robes in here, it feels somewhat different.

[03:06]

But I like the heat. I do like the heat very much. And then I also imagine that I'd be saying something about the dragon song. So this is the name that I think Greg chose for this retreat last year, and I don't think he explained it then, and we haven't explained it yet. People will be saying, what is the dragon song? What is the dragon song? So I may say something about it. And to do that, I'm going to have to talk about Dogen. Now, I came down on Monday with Sean, who made the observation that when... Lecturers on the Dharma seat here in the summer mentioned Dogen. There's a variety of things they can say about Dogen, like long or short, depending on their aptitude. So I'll just say that Dogen was the Japanese founder of our style of Zen. So we trace our lineage back to him. He's a very important figure in how this style developed. And he also left an extraordinary amount of written material explaining his understanding at practice, which is more or less impenetrable to just about everybody else.

[04:09]

So amongst that material was a 95-chapter collection called the Shobo Genzo, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, which is completely wonderful, and I would recommend it to anybody who has a lot of patience. And Dragon Song is the title of one of the chapters. In Japanese it's Ryu Gin. And Dogen had a great knowledge of Chinese Zen stories. So the chapter actually starts with one of those Zen stories. I'm going to use the Kaz Tan Hashi translation, which unfortunately uses the Chinese names, which I'm not so good at pronouncing. So Dragon Song begins, Tu Zi, great master Shi Ji of Shu region, was once asked by a monk, is there a dragon singing in a withered tree? Tu Zi replied, I say there is a lion roaring in a skull. So some of you are probably thinking, uh oh, that sounds like Zen stuff. Or does that mean, I don't understand this? But we'll come back to it. So when I arrived on Monday, having really not thought about very much to talk about in the city, I went through the usual process of slowing down, which those of you who visit Tassajara regularly may be more familiar with.

[05:21]

So you start on the freeway, and then you get to the Carmel Valley Road, and you get to Jamesburg, and then you're going over the road nice and slowly and over the mountains. And then finally down to walking pace. There's something really lovely about that. And I also love the way that when you drive in, the valley feels very narrow, and you're kind of at the very bottom of a very steep canyon. And the longer you spend here, the more it seems to just open up. It becomes your whole horizon. So it's a really beautiful process, and I enjoy going through that. It was very nice this time. I did notice how quiet it was, and I don't just mean the quiet of being at Tassajara and not being in the city, but just the fact that there is no creek noise. It's alarmingly quiet. Very different from my usual soundtrack. And as part of our retreat, something I've done on other yoga retreats I've led, we took everybody up over the bridge at the end of the flats, along the next section to where normally there's a little path that goes across the creek, except there was no creek there. There was a very deep swimming hole, and you could see the normal water line, which is about six foot right at the corner.

[06:27]

Nothing. So we didn't even have the... the consolation, a little babbling brook to enjoy our silent lunch with, but it was particularly silent. And I have seen the creek dry up once before in 2007, but this is still kind of an alarming thing to be around, and I do hope we survive the season. So when I arrived on Monday, I had a whole lot of conversations with different people. There were some people who were keen to see me, to talk about coming to City Center and doing a little business and talking with Rex, and I had some lunch. And then I went to the bathhouse and I was lying in the creek and suddenly thought, I know what I'm going to talk about. And if you go to the bathhouse on the altar, there's a picture of the 16 great arhats who were spontaneously enlightened when they went into the water, which is why they're on the altar in the bathhouse. But I wouldn't say it was quite like that, but somehow things got a little clearer. So I was lying in the creek and it was just a dragonfly sitting back and just like dipping into the water. flying off.

[07:32]

I wasn't even sure if it was taking a drink or catching bugs, but just watching that and sitting in the creek and looking at the mountains. And then when I got up on the deck, there were a couple of hummingbirds dancing through the trees. And me being me, this brought up two Dogen quotes. So the first Dogen quote was something I read when I first came to Tassahara in 2002. It comes from one of his early works, The Bendo Wah, The Wholehearted Way. And it's really struck me reading it here in the mountains. I think some of you will know this quote. Grass, trees, and lands which I embraced by this teaching together radiate a great light and endlessly expound the inconceivable profound dharma. Grass, trees, and walls bring forth this teaching for all beings, common people as well as sages, and they in accord extend this dharma for the sake of grass, trees, and walls. And the other Dogen quote is from the Genjo Koan, which is another early work and, as far as I'm concerned, is the best thing ever written in Buddhism.

[08:46]

Genjo Koan means actualizing the fundamental point, which is what we're all doing here in our Zen practice, actualizing the fundamental point and what that means. And early in the writing he says, To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. So if you take those two quotes together, they might seem a little odd, but when I was lying in the creek, I was thinking about how we can step away from our usual ideas of human agency. We normally think about we're going through the world, we're moving through the world and doing particular things. And instead, if we just allow things to come, allow the dragonfly to fly by us and dip into the creek, Allow the trees and the mountains to be the trees and the mountains. And just see that the teaching is right there. It might not seem that the teaching is right there, but really the teaching is right there. And I have great faith that this is so.

[09:49]

And I think in the wilderness, maybe it's a little easier to see this than it is in a city. So in a wilderness, our human scale somehow becomes much more insignificant when we're surrounded by mountains this size. and surrounded by the somewhat indifference of nature to human affairs. I think it's a little easier to see that human agency doesn't extend everywhere. I'm glad that it doesn't extend everywhere. And I was also thinking that this is somewhat at variance with the biblical notion of humans having dominion over the land and the fish and the fowl and all the other creatures of the earth, which is an approach that I think has got us into a lot of trouble over the years. So instead, allowing the grass, trees and lands to bring forth the teaching, and allowing the myriad things to come forth and express themselves, is an awareness and acceptance of the interconnection, interconnectedness of everything, and the mutual interactions that I think are how we can live our life.

[10:54]

One thing I've been doing is reflecting on the role that music has played in my life. When I was a little kid, I was very rhythmic somehow. I'm not quite sure where it came from, but I would always be tapping on the table or taking the sofa cushions and pounding them with wooden spoons or something like that. Usually my parents would say, stop drumming, boy. And that was about as much encouragement as I got in my music career. I had an older brother who was not useful for very many things, but who did have interesting taste in music. And depending on your age and your cultural education, this may or may not mean so much to you, but when I remember graduating from top 40 hits in the early 70s when I was 9 or 10, my brother was listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. And I was like, wow, this is pretty exciting stuff. And then I went to high school in 1977, which was a pretty... big year for music in England. And actually one of my classmates managed to wow everybody by saying that he'd been to see the Stranglers in concert, which in 1977 was quite something for a 13-year-old, I think.

[12:07]

And the following few years, I think music, punk, new wave, and various things that were coming out of England in those days were pretty much the savior of my adolescence. I think it really helped me make sense of all the stuff that was going on for me. And there were different ways that happened. Obviously, listening to music was a great thing. There was that sense of just absorbing this huge amount of energy and feeling how my life and that energy reflected itself. And there was music that we used to call Here Comes the Truck music, which was just really dramatic and powerful. And just kind of allowing yourself to be, kind of surrender to that. But then also, you know, I had a little sensitive side too, as I think most adolescent boys probably do. And so there was something about melancholy music or, you know, Soft music also spoke to me. And I also obviously started playing. Everyone in those days was playing in a band, so I started playing, and that was part of my identity as well. And the fact that I became a bass player probably says something about my personality, and I think there are at least a couple of other bass playing Zen teachers in the audience here.

[13:12]

I know Linda in a former life played in the bass, and so did Brad. Brad still plays the bass, I think, so I don't know what it is about Zen teachers and playing the bass, but maybe we don't want to hog the limelight all the time. So I played all the way through high school and had a lot of fun doing that. And in college, I didn't really find anyone I wanted to play with, which was disappointing to me. It was the only disappointing part of college as far as I was concerned. And I kind of started drifting away from pop music towards jazz, which I felt was more of something I can grow into or kind of keep digging deeper into. And when I moved to London after college, I ended up playing the upright bass and joining a jazz band and having a certain amount of fun doing that, even though I was never more than... Somewhat mediocre. We didn't practice very much, but we had a lot of fun. And when I came to Zen Center, I actually brought my upright bass with me, but quickly realized that the life of a jazz musician, the life of a Zen student were very incompatible. And so I didn't even really try going very far with that. But nevertheless, I did bring my upright bass down to Tassajaro when I first moved here, which was, I'm not quite sure why I did that.

[14:14]

It's just because I had it with me and I didn't know what to do with it. So I shared my cabin. And during the summer, I would sometimes go down past the suburbs right to where the pre-crossing was and just kind of play around after dinner, which I think entertained some of the guests who were wandering up from the Narrows. But it was around that time when I really kind of stopped listening to music quite so much. In London, I lived by myself for a long time. I just had music playing all the time, and I would go out to concerts a lot. And Tassajara was kind of the beginning of a shift, and that's partly because you're not really... You're supposed to be listening to music very much at Tassajara. It's, I think, discouraged in the summer and certainly very much not recommended in the winter. I think it's part of the guidelines that you don't listen to music. So I really got out of the habit of listening to things. And I started paying attention to what was going on around, because obviously we have an amazing soundtrack here at Tassajara. Every evening in the summer we have an orchestra of crickets playing for us. And I think I just started picking up the habit of listening to the music of life all around me.

[15:15]

And I also realized over the years as I continued to practice that I didn't need that same emotional outlet that music had offered me. I had the powerful, energizing outlet and also the sensitive, sad, heartbroken aspects too. And I didn't need music to do that in the same way. And that doesn't mean that I didn't have those emotions. It's just maybe I had slightly different ways of dealing with it. And maybe it's just a slightly bigger picture on how the emotions played out. And it doesn't mean that I'm indifferent to music these days. I can still put on something that I listened to when I was 16 and have... kind of a connection with that same emotional response that I had in those days, and this is part of the power of music for me. Like I can still, you know, if I listen to something from 1979 or 1980, I can still picture myself as a 16-year-old getting into it, and it still has that same effect. And Rex, as part of the workshop, offers kirtan.

[16:20]

Last year when I was at the workshop, you know, I'm thinking, yeah, that'd be fun. And then the first song started, you know, Rex started playing the first song. We were doing the call and response. And I could just feel in that moment just a little bit of resistance. I'm not quite getting, I'm not quite getting into this one. Oh, well, never mind. I'll just sing along. It's okay. And he started playing the second song and I just started crying. I just started like tears running down my face. Just there was this, whatever happened, there was just this big emotional releasing. And it's like, oh, okay. Well, maybe it's doing something for me after all. And so we played the same songs again yesterday, actually. And I didn't have quite such extreme responses. But I was actually, tears were welling up yesterday as well in the second song. And I just, I don't know if that was just remembering how powerful it had been last year or just the feeling, the feeling that that music can evoke, you know, the power of this music. But then, as I say, we have the music of life all around us. So maybe we can get back to the dragon song.

[17:21]

So if you remember at the beginning, Tozi, great master Shuji of Shu region, was asked by a monk, is there a dragon singing in a withered tree? And Tozi replied, I say there is a lion roaring in a skull. And I looked at two different translations of this. This is the Kaz Tanahashi version. And also online you can find a free translation of the whole Shobo Genzo by Shasta Abbey. At the beginning, there's a note by the translator of what all these different things mean and spelling out things. But I think if I read that, I don't think it would help anybody. So what I think in terms of reading Dogen is think of it as poetry. And I don't pretend to understand most of what he wrote. And I'm quite happy about that. It's really fine if I don't understand it all. Maybe I understand a little bit more than when I first read it 10 years ago, but not much more. So if you're getting stuck as you listen to this and you feel like you're not getting it, and I would say this is the same for any Zen text, just let it come in as poetry.

[18:28]

Just kind of absorb it. Don't try and get your thinking mind around it. Just absorb it, listen, and maybe something will filter through and kind of reappear unexpectedly. So then Dogen also quotes some other Zen stories. which reflect on the original Koan conversation we have here. So Xinyang, the great master Ziden of Xinguan Monastery, was once asked by a monk, what is the way? Which is a typical beginner's monk question, but can also hide a variety of traps. Xinyang said, a dragon is singing in a withered tree. The monk said, I don't understand. Xiangyan said, an eyeball in the skull. Later, a monk asked Shishuang, what is the dragon singing in a withered tree? Shishuang said, it still holds joy. The monk asked, what is the eyeball in the skull?

[19:31]

Shishuang said, it still holds consciousness. Later, a monk asked Saoshan, what is a dragon singing in a withered tree? They're all trying to find the answers, you see. Nobody's getting them. Xiao Shan said, the blood vein does not get cut off. The monk asked, what is the eyeball in the skull? Xiao Shan said, it does not dry up. This time the monk isn't satisfied with the quick call and response. He goes a little further. The monk asked, I wonder if anyone has heard it. Xiao Shan said, in the entire world there is no one who has not heard it. The monk asked, I wonder what kind of song the dragon sings. Cao Shan said, No one knows what kind of song the dragon sings. All who hear it, lose it. So those are the Chinese stories, and that's not even where Dogen starts commenting on them. So for the withered tree, if we think of a withered tree, we think of something that's dead, gone, on its way out.

[20:39]

But I think the meaning in this case is something that's just stripped down to the bare minimum. So in the second story, the withered tree can still hold joy. So it's not completely gone. Elsewhere, Dogen says, it can still know springtime. So it's just stripped down. Think of a stripped down tree. And the same with the skull. The skull isn't necessarily dead and finished. It's just the essence. And within the skull, the eyeball is still functioning and still conscious. Now, in the third story, with Cao Shan. Now, Cao Shan is the Sozan, who, along with Tozan, was the Chinese creator of the Soto lineage that we are a part of. So he's kind of an important person along here. So his first answer is the blood vein does not get cut off. Now, those of you who've been around Zen said to know what a blood vein is or looks like, but for those who aren't familiar,

[21:45]

When you receive ordination, lay ordination or priest ordination, you're given a little document, which is called the blood vein lineage, which traces the lineage of teachers and ancestors all the way back to the Buddha and then circles back to you. So the blood vein not getting cut off really means that the teachings of the ancients are still alive. And this takes me on a little sidestep to another Dogen fascicle, which is a favorite of mine, which in Japanese is called Shoho Jiso. And it's translated by Kaz Tanahashi as the reality of all things. Although I also like the translation, all things are ultimate reality. And the beginning of that says actualizing Buddha ancestors is reality thoroughly experienced. Reality is all things. So I think the blood vein not being cut off and Buddha ancestors being thoroughly experienced kind of the same thing. We have the present, we can be with the present, but the present includes every action of the past.

[22:49]

And if we can imagine that, bring that awareness to the present moment, then the activities of the ancestors and the Buddhas are still alive. And Dogen has many different ways of saying this in many different fascicles. We're in the present moment, but the present moment still contains the vital teachings of everyone who has gone before, and of course, everyone who comes after us. so we can have the same experiences as those people because we have the same potential. And so this reality and this actualized activity isn't something that's kind of over there or isn't something that's other people. It's not just the Buddhas and ancestors have done this and we can't do it or we have to do something special. It's available to us right now. And then in this other answer, when the monk says, I wonder if anyone has heard it, Saoshan says, in the entire world there is no one who has not heard it. So again, everyone has this capacity within them.

[23:52]

I'm going to take another Dogen sidetrack here and think about the Tenzo Kyokun. The Tenzo Kyokun is the instructions for the Zen cook and was written for the cook in the 12th century Japanese monastery. But even if you never intend to set foot in a Japanese monastery in the 12th century, I really recommend that you read it. In it, Dogen recounts, as a young student, that he asked a question, and the question doesn't actually matter, because it's just, it's a what is the way kind of question. And the answer he was given is, in the entire world, nothing is hidden. If we can imagine ourselves in this place of accepting that in the entire world, nothing is hidden, there isn't some secret that we're trying to dig out of this paper. It's right here in front of us. So there is no one who has not heard it, and there is nothing that is hidden. But what about this line, all who hear it lose it? I think this is where we get into the realm of the inconceivable, because most of this stuff happens beyond the thinking mind.

[24:54]

So once we start thinking about it, it's already gone. And we were talking earlier, and I was reading about, you know, something that Daigaku Arume, some of you know, always quoting his master saying, you cannot think about the present moment. So you can only experience the present moment. The rest of the moment is always there to be experienced, but as soon as you start thinking about it, you've lost it. So if you think you've heard the song, you've lost it. You can hear that. I think that's the skunks playing, is that right? I was waiting outside in the abbot's garden, and there were some skunks running around in the flower beds, and they dived under the kaisando, luckily. So how does the music of life become the dragon song? Annie told me a great story yesterday about a professor on the tuning fork, but she made me promise that I should tell it absolutely correctly, and I don't feel I can do that. So I think if you want to hear that story, you should ask Annie about it.

[25:56]

But really, accepting that nothing is hidden. I'm sure you'd be happy to tell it when you're in. Accepting that nothing is hidden. and accepting that there is no one who has not heard the song. But then the dragon song sings in a withered tree, and how can we become a withered tree? In the age of a selfie, how can we lose the self? I think at Tassajara it's a little bit easier. We have the mountains, we have the trees, we have the dragonflies. You have the crickets, the blue jays, and the morning woodpecker that we had this morning, and we were sitting in a retreat hall, and there's this woodpecker tapping away, getting his breakfast. What happens when we go back to the city? So can we take this feeling that we've maybe experienced a little bit at Tassajara, can we take it back to the chatter?

[27:02]

I think being here can maybe just give us a little deeper perspective on how our usual everyday lives go. Maybe when we go back, even if you've been here three days or three weeks or three months or three years, I think it will give you a little different perspective on the activity of your life. Leiman Pang, a famous Chinese practitioner from the 9th century, talked about the miraculous activity of chopping wood and carrying water. We don't have to do those things anymore. So what about the miraculous activity of commuting to work and writing emails? How can we make that happen? There's one more bit of the story I was going to read. So this is Dogen himself. This isn't quoting the Chinese stories. This is his commentary. Now the dragon song of Xinguang, Xixuang and Cao Shan come forth, forming clouds and forming water.

[28:07]

They go beyond words, beyond seeing eyeballs in the skull. This is thousands and myriads of pieces of the dragon song. It still holds joy, is the croaking of frogs. It still holds consciousness, is the singing of earthworms. Actually, in the Shasta Abbey translation, they call it the mumbling of worms. So this dragon song is audible in the mumbling of worms. So this is always accessible to us. The crickets are always going to be making that noise, but are we paying attention to them? So this music can be joyful, it can be ecstatic, it can be troubling, it can be complex and painful. And meeting it doesn't mean that we have to like it or accept it. We just have to allow ourselves to come forward, meet it and respond to it. So it's an interaction. The grass trees and lands bring forth the teaching.

[29:11]

We have to meet that teaching and respond to it. Let the myriad things come forward and experience themselves that if we don't take part in that, it doesn't happen. If we respond to it, maybe without even thinking about it, the dragon song will come forth. So we maybe have a little time for questions. If anyone has a question or a comment. Otherwise I'll let you all go to bed early. Yes, Juliana. Why do you think it is that we don't see it even though it's right in front of us? I think we spend too much time thinking. Usually we're thinking about the past or thinking about the future or thinking about stuff that's going on, and we're not paying wide enough attention to everything else. Yeah?

[30:20]

Is thinking less happening than other things? It's part of the present moment, but I think we spend too much time thinking about our thinking or relying on our thinking or paying attention to our thinking. So in Zazen, we're aiming to allow everything else to be present as well as the thinking. And in doing that, get the thinking mind kind of back from the front step. Thinking controls most of our day and most of our life and doesn't always have to. we all glimpsed the divine. As soon as we came into this body, we forgot it, and it left us.

[31:27]

And our task in this life is different, and we don't see the divine in the same way in this world. So that's what was going on for you when we were talking about. We've all heard it, but Well, I think the Zen way would be we haven't forgotten it. It's just buried deep down inside. It's still there and we can still access it. And I was talking with Nick who was very kind to drive me down about hanging out with three-year-olds. And three-year-olds are completely in tune with this. You know, they don't have any problem thinking about this. It's just as we get older, we get all these karmic formations and mental patterns that get in the way. I actually brought this book, Suzuki Roshi's Branching Streams, Flow in the Darkness, to read the Blue Jay quote that some of you may have seen.

[32:27]

When the woodpecker was tapping this morning, I was thinking about bringing the Blue Jay into your heart. And rather than me read it, I would say go and look it up on YouTube, because it's one of the few pieces that Suzuki Roshi was actually filmed while he was speaking. And even though they didn't have the words attached to the footage, one of our clever people found the tape, put the tape, to the film, so now it's a synchronized thing that you can find on YouTube. So if you don't take anything away from this that I've said, at least go and look up this on YouTube and you can see Suzuki Roshi saying maybe the same thing slightly more succinctly. Okay, well thank you very much for your kind attention and I hope something has been useful and if you have any questions later just stop me on the path. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[33:46]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_87.06