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 morning, everyone. Lovely to be here with you. I'm Dan Gudgel. I'm a resident here at Beginner's Mind Temple and one of the resident priests here as well. Is there anybody who is here for the first time today? Excellent. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Anyone who's here for the first time since we reopened after our renovation? Excellent. Lovely to have you all back with you. Lovely to have you all back with us as well. The residential community is really delighted to be reopening the temple in this way. So welcome and welcome back. We're really...

[01:01]

We're really glad you're all here. If you have any questions after the talk, there will be a question and answer session in the dining room. But if you have any general questions after the talk, feel free to ask anyone who has a robe or a rakasu. They may not know the answer, but I am deputizing them to help you find out. Just looking at my Zagu. this bowing cloth sitting here. I'm having this sort of conjunction of the old and the new. It's been a while since I have sat in this seat in this room. So this part feels familiar, but this is all new to Tommy, which still has that kind of lovely fresh hay sort of smell. And if I look over that way, there's a whole new arrangement to that part of the building. So this kind of enlivening of the old with the new and the highlighting of both as they come together is really striking me as a very beautiful thing.

[02:15]

So thank you all for helping make this present moment what it is. So the general format for today, I'll talk for a little while. Then, as I mentioned, there'll be a question and answer session in the dining room for anyone who wants to join in. That question and answer will be in person and online both. So folks who are online, and I have the online folks here on a laptop next to me as well. Oh, I don't know how well you'll all be able to see me, but you are here up on the teaching seat with me Thank you for being here. So we'll have that question and answer session. And on the way to question and answer, there is tea and cookies in the hallway. And you're welcome to only make it as far as tea and cookies. That is its own wonderful part of this morning.

[03:19]

So since we are just returning and reopening most of this building, I wanted to talk a little bit today about what we do and how we do it. And since we just had this sort of musical symphony for the last 15 minutes, and then I came in and did this very formal-looking thing, I thought I would start just by talking a little bit about what that all was and what it means. So the loud bell is that was ringing from about 10 o'clock until about 10.13 is the Densho, and that's our big ceremonial bell. That bell is hanging just outside the back door of the Zendo down in the basement level. While that bell was ringing, I was standing up on the second floor with my attendant for the day.

[04:23]

Thank you, Peter. The attendant, as you saw, carries my notes and brings in the incense. And in this temple, we use flower petals instead of incense to be mindful and kind to people who may be sensitive to chemicals or strong smells. So a few moments, a few minutes ago, you then heard a high-pitched, sort of louder, higher-pitched bell, and that was the doan. who is now sitting over here on this side of the room, they were standing at the bottom of the stairs here, and they rang that bell basically to say, here we go, things are happening. So that bell, the sound of that carries quite clearly and sort of cuts through any other sounds that might be happening. That sound let me know that we were getting ready to begin, and it also let the person who was ringing that dencho bell in the basement know

[05:26]

that it was time to begin the sort of final sequence of sounds. In that sequence of sounds, there was sort of a long, what we call a roll down on the bell. And then one hit on the bell, and then there was a sort of wooden clunking sound. And that was, again, my attendant for the day. Thank you, Peter. hitting a wooden block with a mallet. And that call and response is a sort of checking in. That is the person ringing the bell saying, are you there? And us up on the second floor saying, yes, we're here and we're ready. And then the person with the bell says, with the next ring of the bell, we hear that you said you're ready. Here we go. And then we hit that wooden block one more time to say, okay, here we come. And then we arrive here at the door.

[06:29]

So that whole thing is really quite functional. It provides a lot of information for the temple. So that loud densho bell rings for at least 10 minutes before a ceremonial activity so that everyone who's in the immediate area knows that there is something about to happen. and it gives them enough time to get ready and get here. And then that call and response is sort of the final check-in to make sure that we are ready to do what we think we are about to do. And people who have sort of been around these sounds for a few months or a few years, it kind of gets into your body. If I happened to not be ready, we would not have hit that wooden block with the mallet, and the whole process would have just paused there. That does happen sometimes for all sorts of reasons, and when it does, I always kind of try to take stock in the room of watching people notice.

[07:40]

Oh, this isn't following the pattern that I usually know. Because it's so deep in the body, sometimes We notice something isn't quite right before we even realize what it is that isn't quite right about that process. So if I happen to not be ready and that sound did not happen, before long someone would have come upstairs to see what was going on, see if I needed help or if they needed to deputize an alternate speaker for the day suddenly. And that would be that process working. That would not be that process breaking down. in any way that is exactly what that's designed to do to share the information and to give us an opportunity to check in and adjust as we go if necessary today I happen to be ready I'll let this fire truck pass by may all beings be well wherever they are

[08:46]

I happened to be ready when that bell rang, so we answered with the wooden mallet and came right on down. Then I came in and I made a fragrance offering up here at the altar and did these three bows here in this central ceremonial space. And that process, to me, has a couple of overlapping things. layers of meaning. One is, for me, just an expression of gratitude to the Buddha, who here on our altar is represented by this beautiful Gandharen Buddha statue. There's also, for me, an expression of gratitude to all of the Buddhist ancestors who have taught and have received teachings and passed them along. If the Buddha had not chosen to teach what he had awoken to, we wouldn't be here.

[09:53]

And if each successive generation had not also chosen to teach what they had been awoken to, we would not have this opportunity. So it feels to me appropriate to express a little gratitude for 2,500 years of unbroken transmission. Some of those teachers and students have been in this very room and have done exactly what I did. So there's also this kind of direct connection with the lineage and our forebears that I find really moving and also really supportive in engaging with this practice. It somehow makes it a little... easier or a little less intimidating that so many others have done this thing as well. And finally, and not least importantly, what I just did is also the beginning of a ceremony.

[11:03]

That offering and bowing is the traditional opening for a Soto Zen ceremony. We call this experience that we are having a Dharma talk. Informally, sometimes they're just called lectures. Around here, we often call it the Saturday program to sort of encompass the whole thing. But by doing what I just did, I began a ceremony that we are in the middle of right now. This just happens to be a ceremony that has a talk. in the middle of it. The chanting that we did at the beginning of this fits right into that ceremonial structure, and the chanting that we will do at the end helps close out this ceremonial structure. And then I will end this ceremonial portion by getting back up and again doing three bows and making a sort of formal exit.

[12:09]

So that's where we find ourselves in this particular moment. We were brought together by this series of sounds that has been used in Japanese temples for at least several hundred years. Some of these sounds and processes date back to China in the first centuries of the Common Era. It's all built on a framework that is at least as old as Buddhism itself, probably older. There's a whole group of people involved in making this thing happen. Not least of all, all of you who are participating in this moment. So thank you for helping make this moment happen. So having just identified this as a ceremony, I do want to reassure you all that you're not in over your heads and there's no way you can really break or disrupt this ceremony.

[13:18]

I want to encourage you to just go on being yourselves exactly as you have been up to the moment that I started talking about ceremonies. You may notice that since I pointed this out as a ceremony, you may have felt some formality or stiffness enter your mind or your posture. Please feel free to let that go. As I'm talking today, if you need to move, adjust your posture, stretch. If you need to get up and leave, please do whatever will support your own body and your own care for yourself. In the Zen world, we really seem to like this structure of nesting our activities inside sacred time and sacred space. So a few times a year, we do these extended, focused times of extra effort in our practice, which we call practice periods.

[14:22]

During those times, we sometimes sit a more rigorous schedule of meditation. We do some additional Dharma study or study of the teachings. And those practice periods start and end with ceremonies. And though those opening and closing ceremonies are complete in themselves, for me, they give a really explicit feeling of kind of bracketing that whole period of time as sacred space and sacred time. Kind of puts... puts everything inside that parentheses of ceremony. During those practice periods, we usually also have, not usually, as far as I know, we always have some one-day and multi-day extended meditation retreats, one-day sittings or sishins, as we call them.

[15:27]

And those day or days also begin with opening and closing ceremonies, things that mark those transitions. So nestled inside this larger ceremonial time and space of practice period, we may have a few days which are themselves bracketed by another layer of ceremony. And then within those formal days, we have formal meals that we eat together in the meditation hall. And those meals, even more explicitly, are a ceremony. They begin with a ceremonial opening. There are offerings at the altar. There is chanting. So in those cases, we have this ceremony with a meal in the middle of it inside a ceremony of a lot of meditation and sitting inside a ceremony of kind of intensive practice in the midst of everyday life.

[16:37]

To me it's sort of like a kind of feels sort of like Zen algebra. You have these nested series of brackets and parentheses and so we are kind of opening and closing them in sequence to add up to some kind of previously unknown value. And for me personally, I find this wealth of ceremonies doesn't make my life more constrained or sort of arbitrarily formal in some way. These ceremonies and the nested nature of the ceremonies and the ways that there are activities like eating and meditating and sleeping, brushing the teeth, in the midst of those ceremonies, that to me really highlights the sacredness of everyday activity. We don't stop eating. We don't stop bathing. We don't stop using the toilet just because we're in the middle of a ceremony of seshin or of a practice period.

[17:46]

We bring that very mundane human activity in to the ceremonial world and the sacred space. and investigate what does it mean to bring these things together. So with all of that as preamble, if you can believe it, now I'm going to get to my main point. With the rest of my time, what I want to talk about is how this sacred space, how this Buddhist... effort of ours is extended out into the wider world in the modern day. And I am coming at this from a particular point of view. Maybe not quite an agenda, but certainly an opinion on some of these things. My work role within San Francisco Zen Center is Director of Online Content.

[18:48]

What I do is manage and do the administrative work that supports the people who schedule and host and organize our online courses, classes, meditation retreats. If it is online Dharma engagement, I most likely have my hands in it in one way or another. In addition to doing that sort of administrative support for these things. I also lead a few of the online gatherings. Occasionally I teach some of the classes and I meet with students both online and in-person for practice discussion. And when we're having events that are both online and in-person, often we have somewhat similar numbers in the online space that we have in the in-person space. And generally, it's sort of difficult from one side or the other to really tell what's going on in the other or how lively or full it might be.

[19:57]

But I get the pleasure of standing in the doorway and looking into both of those worlds. I also have the great pleasure every week of sitting with Mountain Source Sangha, again, both online and in person. And Mountain Source Sangha is a neighborhood sitting group in the lineage that flows out from San Francisco Zen Center. We call these branching streams sanghas, and there are 50 or 60 of them around the country and many all around the world. These are the groups that are led by teachers who were ordained or trained at one of the San Francisco Zen Center temples. And most of the members of Mountain Source Sangha are what in the Zen and Buddhist vernacular we call householders, people with lives and responsibilities out in the

[20:58]

so-called real world. And as far as neighborhood meditation groups go, we have a pretty big neighborhood. The in-person congregation, which meets up in San Anselmo in Marin County, is joined by people elsewhere in the Bay Area online, people from a couple of different locations around California, and through... Wondrous causes and conditions, we have a lively core group from Idaho who joins us online as well. And so my time in this kind of big urban temple is balanced with what I think of as this parish church zen, which happens outside the temple, often in temporary or rented spaces, church meeting rooms. classrooms, those sorts of things. So I'm curious, how many people here in the room have done a spiritual thing online, whether that's with San Francisco Zen Center or any spiritual group, a meditation, a class, anything spiritual online?

[22:14]

I see a lot of hands. More than half of us have done that. And how many have been online with San Francisco Zen Center for an event at some point? Again, Quite a lot of hands. And I'm going to turn to the folks online now. How many of you online have been at an in-person event at any of the San Francisco Zen Center temples? You can just put your hands up. I see all of the... Everyone I can see has their hand up. Yes, yeah, yeah, there are many. So, as we can see, there's a lot of crossover. We, I think... conventionally often think of these as really separate practices or separate modes of practice but many of us are moving back and forth across these spaces it seems that today in this modern world online activity is human activity so the question is how do we bring that into the sacred space how do we really

[23:20]

make that connection and that relationship explicit. So there has been certainly sometimes some resistance or hesitance about online practice. There are legitimate questions to be investigated about privacy, about who has access and when when and how people are seen or known online. And I see this really as an area to refine and adapt to the needs of the community. I don't think this is something we are going to identify an answer for that will serve us for the rest of time. Here in the physical temple, we are constantly changing and adapting our processes and our guidelines and our expectations to meet what is happening in the world and in this community.

[24:27]

There is in Buddhism a history of beliefs at various times that certain groups of people or certain kinds of practice weren't legitimate. There was a time when it was thought only monks who had renounced the entire world could really truly practice. It was thought at one time that only men could practice. Even within San Francisco's Zen Center, we sometimes notice these sort of little bits of sort of hierarchy or... feeling that practice at one temple or another is better or more serious or more authentic in some way. So these conversations have been going on for a long time in various forms.

[25:35]

But to my mind, to my eye, all of these ways of practicing meditation practices amongst different groups, and approaches to the Dharma, they are all true practice. There is only one single undivided flavor of the truth, and all of these practices are attempting to engage with that same singular truth. So my... question that I bring anytime I'm encountering a teaching or looking at a new practice is, does this thing reduce the overall burden of human suffering in the world? And does it move people in the direction of awakening? For online Buddhist practice, to me, it appears that answer is unequivocally

[26:42]

Yes. Online practice can reduce human suffering and can move people in the direction of awakening. It's not universally effective, but none of our practices or teachings are universally effective. That's why we have so many of them. Online practice doesn't work for everyone and will never and is not trying to replace in-person practice. But what it's good for and what it's helpful for, why wouldn't we let it be helpful? For online Zen practice, there are a few, what seem to me, relatively obvious benefits. There's the accessibility of the technology, making captions, recordings, and transcripts available to people for whom those are helpful. It makes practice accessible to many different schedules.

[27:44]

It allows maintenance of that community connection and practice when people are in times of change and transition. It can have a feeling of flattening the hierarchy a little bit. Somehow being in a single Zoom room together feels a little different than this sort of more formal relationship where I am sitting up here kind of with a circle of people around me. In the Zoom room, we're kind of all in one continuous circle. And online practice also lets people connect with communities of their choice. In some times and places, people have not had very many options for different practice groups to connect with. But in this modern world, we can find practices and groups that maybe suit the conditions of our particular lives a little more closely.

[28:52]

And this online practice really opens up the Zen Buddhist space to people who are ill, who are homebound, who are at a distance or don't have options locally. And there's an aspect of this that I want to really point out in particular. I certainly have a natural tendency when thinking about that relationship to focus on what I perceive as a benefit to the person who is ill or homebound or otherwise could not attend. But I think at least as important, and in my lived experience with online groups, perhaps more important, is the benefit that flows from people who could not otherwise attend into the group that is meeting online. Hopefully this will not embarrass my good friend Larry too much if he happens to be online, but one of the people who I have

[30:00]

pleasure to sit with in recent years has moved from his own home into an assisted facility and so would not be able to continue to engage with the group practice if there wasn't this online possibility and if Larry could not join us online we would lose the benefit of this wondrous deep thinker and writer and more than 50 years of practice experience. Because we have this online connection, we are still able to hear these incredible teachings and stories from people who otherwise would not be able to be with us. So it is a great gift to the Sangha. for people to be able to continue to show up in that way.

[31:02]

So in my time with DigitalZen, there have been a few principles that have emerged that I think have been particularly helpful. The first one is that we can only do so much. Sometimes things stop working or unexpected things happen. We just do our best and if something happens, we don't blame ourselves. Thank you for trying. Thank you to all of the online folks. A number of people in this room have filled these roles at various times, sometimes in the midst of greatly confusing technological situations. So thank you all for doing that. Another principle is that wholeheartedness is palpable and effective whether it's online or in person. So to just show up and authentically and fully be in the Zoom room is as effective as authentically fully showing up in the physical space.

[32:14]

These experiences are, of course, a little bit different, so it's helpful to in online situations give a little more context and a little more maybe a slightly wider view of what's going on. In a literal sense, showing a little bit of what's going on in the room and just having a microphone on so that people can hear the sort of shuffling and coughing and murmuring in the room allows people online to know that they're not missing anything. The sound of a muted microphone is very different than the sound of a quiet room. And even online, you can hear that difference. So here at San Francisco Zen Center for our morning meditations, for instance, we have a nice... shot of the altar. You can see the candle flickering a little bit. You get to see the priest doing offerings at the altar.

[33:18]

These days, most mornings, it's Abbot Mako doing the jundo and making an offering. And then throughout the course of the meditation, you can hear the occasional fire truck go by outside or somebody walk by with a radio. You might hear a cough or a sneeze or something like that. There's just a little warmth in that. And that helps bring the online experience into the physical space. And one of the really necessary steps in making this sort of work and settle in has been to bring the computer operator into the sacred work crew. So I... spoke at the beginning about the Doan and about the Jiko, the attendant. There are a number of the other bell ringers who I did not name by their roles.

[34:21]

But we have now added in this computer operation portion, opening the online Zendo, as part of our sacred work crew. And we are now calling that computer operator the boot-up Chidan. boot-up being a word for starting a computer, and chidan, at least in the way we use it here, being someone who is responsible for preparing ceremonial space. We also have a light-up chidan, who in the mornings prepares the altars, lights the candles, makes sure the space is ready. And we often also have a flower chidan, who takes care of the flower offerings on all of the altars. So the computer operator for our online Zen meditation events is the Budapchidin, who prepares and takes care of the digital sacred space.

[35:22]

And they are met online by an online doan, who is someone out in the world, a volunteer in the community, who joins the sitting, does... does the meditation as they would, but keeps a little attention on the experience of people online. Since we are here broadcasting from a very quiet space, sometimes we don't notice right away if something goes a little wrong. Someone who is on the outside can notice and communicate back to us and help us take care of that ceremonial space. So once this space is actually prepared and opened, how then do we actually practice online? Again, I have a couple of mostly practical suggestions.

[36:32]

One is to mark the transition. If we are entering the zendo, the physical space, we bow just after we step in the door. If you're beginning an online spiritual event, maybe it's helpful to mark that transition in some way. It might be bowing, it might be lighting a candle, it might be lighting a stick of incense, or whatever personal practice works for you. But to mark that transition, to notice that you are doing something different than what you were doing in the moment before. And that to me includes trying to completely set down whatever else you have been doing. Finish whatever you were working on and then enter that online ceremonial space, that sacred spiritual space, in a complete and undivided way.

[37:36]

Be on time when you can, but if you can't, still come for what fits. This is my personal recommendation for online things. Other teachers who are leading online things may have other preferences, but to my mind and my experience, there is great benefit even just from dipping in for a few minutes and doing wholeheartedly whatever fits with your life and schedule. And if you need to do something, just make a clean decision to do that thing. If you need to answer the door or clean up after the dog, just notice that that thing needs to be done. Make a clean decision to do it. And when you're done with it, again, return wholeheartedly to the shared space. So we're just optimizing the conditions for people to practice and then

[38:40]

meeting them in the moment as best we can. Part of that meeting is to provide spaces that work for the particular thing that we are trying to do. Some things work better in person. Some things work really well online. And so to follow that and offer dedicated spaces when necessary and when appropriate is a part of finding the new online dharma. So I will invite all of you to dip into online practice if you have not done so before. If you have done it before and were a little uncertain, see if maybe you might be willing to give it another try. it may have changed and evolved since the last time you gave it a try. Fundamentally, what I'm trying to say is that online practice is real practice.

[39:47]

Here at San Francisco Zen Center, we have online zazen, mornings and evenings. We have online versions of talks like this one. We have a Thursday evening online only drop-in group practice discussion and many one-day sittings, multi-day sittings, courses and classes. There are all sorts of possibilities out there in all sorts of levels of dharma exposure. In a few weeks, Abbot Mako will be leading a practice intensive here at Beginner's Mind Temple focused on the Tenzo Kyokun, which is a well-loved Soto Zen text about kitchen practice that comes to us down 800 years of transmission from monastery kitchen practice.

[40:52]

And that exploration that we'll be doing in that intensive of the relationship between practice and work practice and what is the difference and is there a difference between these kinds of practice has a real corollary with what I've just been talking about with the distinctions or perhaps lack of real difference between online practice and in-person practice. And of course, that intensive is also being offered online. So it is itself an in-person and online experience, which again gives us another opportunity to investigate how practice shows up in our everyday lives. So my main purpose in this talk has been really just to encourage us all in our practice to just notice and treasure

[41:56]

Whatever works for you, whatever reduces your suffering, whatever gives you the capacity to help reduce the suffering of others, whatever moves you in the direction of awakening and towards what seems like truth. I also, of course, from my own perspective, wanted to point out the fact that I personally think that online practice is real. practice. And that is just another option alongside the many practices and teachings that are really the great wealth of Buddhism in general, of Zen in particular. There are many things out there please, if you have not yet found the thing that seems to help and speak to you, continue talking to other practitioners and to teachers. And I strongly suspect that somewhere out there is the thing or the mode or the method that will speak to you.

[43:05]

So thank you all for engaging in this exploration with me today. Thank you to those of you online, to everyone in the room. I will in a moment get up and formally close this ceremony. I'll get a cup of tea and a cookie on my way, and then I'll be in the dining room. Anyone who would like to join me in the dining room or online to explore any further, you're welcome to. And if you've had enough talking and you just want to have some tea and cookies and marvel at this wondrous reopened building, please do that. Thank you all so much for being here.

[44:14]

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