Good evening. Welcome to Zen Shinji. Zen Mind Temple. Welcome to all the guests, retreatants, Stanford students. My name is Greg Fane, the Tanto, head of practice here. kind of new on the job. I wanted to say, firstly, thank my teacher, Sojan Roshi. Is this okay? And I just wanted to say thank you, Joel.

[01:11]

And my talk is just to encourage you in your practice, which is all it ever is. Hopefully my talk is for everybody, but I'll level with you. My talk is mostly for the summer students. So I cannot believe we've only had one week of guest season. Doesn't seem right. That gate opening ceremony seems so far away. But Tassajara has a funny way of compressing and dilating time. So it could be before long we'll be having a gate closing ceremony. I'll be saying, we just had the gate opening ceremony. Could be. I'm really amazed at the spirit of practice this morning in work circle, the way people were volunteering for zendo jobs and everything else.

[02:18]

Of course, that may change, but it's great. It's a great feeling. Sometimes at the beginning of guest season, My teacher, Sojan Roshi, if he were here, perhaps, might say something about, he likes to talk about the vertical and the horizontal. So there's the vertical wisdom, discriminating wisdom, and the horizontal, the wisdom of equality. And the part that these play in the sort of the mandala, which is a summer practice period at Tazahara. So, in the vertical, we have, of course, director and tanto, practice leaders, senior staff, crew heads, etc., etc. That's the vertical, you know. People have their places, they have their responsibilities.

[03:21]

But then, and, and we're all doing this together. That's the horizontal. You go to a Zen temple and you see The monks just lined up on the tan, all sitting together in... I'm out of time. My talk's over. Just come here. Come here. Just come here. What do you need? The farther back toward the wall you sit, the better it should sound, is my operating theory. How's that? So you have to keep the vertical and the horizontal in mind at the same time.

[04:25]

That's what Sojan Roshi would say. You can't neglect one at the expense of the other. What was I saying? Oh yeah, the Zen Temple with all the monks, you know, all sitting in a row. If you look at them from the back, you know, you can't tell who's been there for 20 years and who's been there for two weeks. And... That's right, because I'll equally Buddha nature. I'll equally Buddha. So, great 20th century Zen master, great favorite of mine, Kodo Sawakiroshi, put it like this, The eyes don't say, Sure, we're lower, but we see more. The eyebrows don't reply, Sure, we don't see anything, but we are higher up. That's pretty good right there, Joel. You're getting somewhere there. Homeless Kodo goes on to say, Living out the Buddha Dharma means fulfilling your function completely without knowing that you're doing it.

[05:36]

A mountain doesn't know it's tall. The sea doesn't know it's wide and deep. each and everything in the universe is active without knowing it. So I really like that sentiment. I really like fulfilling your function completely without knowing that you're doing it. So you really can't necessarily know what influence you're having on people. You really can't necessarily always know how you're encouraging other people. So, case in point, Yesterday, I went hiking. I was up in the mountains, tromping all around for hours. And I made it back just in time for dinner. And I was very sweaty and dusty. And I was wearing shorts and hiking boots and a t-shirt and a baseball cap and an old shirt.

[06:39]

And I was just standing over there Ed Brown comes walking up from the courtyard, and he's about, I don't know, about 20 feet from me. He locks eyes with me, and then he's just looking right at me, and he's coming towards me, and he's got this big smile on his face, coming towards me. And then as he gets close enough, he says to me, you have no idea how happy it makes me to see a Tanto at Tassahara dressed like that. So I was encouraging Ed by just being schlumpy. I was thinking maybe... Right there, Joel.

[07:41]

Right there. I was thinking maybe I could say something about myself. I was thinking about doing a way-seeking mind talk, but I don't think I really want to do that. But a couple things, maybe. One thing you might have already figured out, which is that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I know that. In fact, I might be a spoon. And this has not bothered me ever since I was a kid, actually. Somehow, I always got that people are smart in different ways. And Dogen, our guy, Ehe Dogen,

[08:45]

who brought this school of Zen from China to Japan, and probably had an IQ of 200-something, said, intelligence or lack of it does not matter. Between the dull and the sharp-witted, there is no distinction. If you concentrate your efforts single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. So I find that incredibly encouraging. comforting. And it also occurred to me, for all you Stanford students, you might want to trot that out sometimes, your faculty advisors giving you a hard time, you know, you could just, well, Dogen said, you could try. So, concentrating my efforts single-mindedly, that is my intention. Suzuki Roshi said, Zen is making your best effort on each moment forever.

[09:51]

Best effort means not looks like good, just best effort. He also said to be just you is enough. Be just you. I'm very sensible of the role, the responsibilities of being Tanto. As I said in my installation ceremony, it's pretty humbling. I had this sort of aha experience. You know, furthest thing from my mind before January of this year, and then things started moving pretty fast. And I guess I knew by late February or March that I was going to be coming here to be Tonto. So I was driving up Market Street in our old Camry and I was driving the car by myself.

[11:03]

There's no one else in the car. So I'm playing this oldies R&B station that I like. They started playing Jungle Love by Morris Day in The Time. It's a song I like a lot. It's got a really hard dance beat. And so I'm driving there and I'm tapping the steering wheel. And then this thought occurs to me, gee, I'm going to be Anto. Tassajara. I don't know if it's okay. You know, it's a pretty dubious song. Not exactly politically correct. Not that anyone ever really listens to the lyrics, you know, but if you did.

[12:07]

And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Hello. They asked me to be Tonto. It has to be okay. Yeah, that's right. It has to be okay, because they asked me to be Tonto, and I really like that song. So there. So that was kind of an aha moment for me. But that's enough about me. Speaking about making your best efforts, I know that some of you are having a hard time. Some of you are really working really hard, maybe challenging yourself in some pretty new and interesting ways, making some big adjustments in your lives, whether you came from

[13:14]

transitioning from practice period to work period to guest season, or you just came from elsewhere to guest season. Either way, it's a big adjustment. And we've only been in guest season for one week. So there's a lot going on. A lot going on with people. And I know it's tough. It can be tough. I know this because I've been talking to you and because I read the Tenkin Pad and because this is my seventh guest season at Tassajara. So I'll tell a story that I already told some of you. The last time I was here was for Rahatsu Sashin.

[14:15]

Abbot Paul Haller invited me down, and some others, quite a few others. It was a pretty good cohort of people that Byushin Sendoh, our abbot, invited to join the practice period, to sit that last seven-day Sashin, a period of concentrated practice that ended the practice period, and then following that was our director Mako's shuso ceremony. So I joined the practice period for Sashin. And that Sashin really kicked my hiney. It was hard. I had a hard time. And so I go back to the city And people are like, oh, hi, Greg. Greg's back. How was Tassahara?

[15:18]

Great. How was Sashin? Oh, what an ordeal. And then they'd be like, oh, I'm sorry. Oh, too bad. And I'd be like, wait a minute. What's wrong with something being an ordeal? What's wrong with that? Actually, an ordeal is not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to test yourself, to try yourself, to practice at your edge. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. And yet I got all this sympathy. Oh, you poor thing. You had an ordeal. So Suzuki Roshi used to say over and over and over again, he would tell us, you should be grateful for your problems.

[16:29]

You should be grateful for your problems. Your problems, the tough things you get to practice with, show you where your practice is. If it was all smooth sailing, well, I don't know. I don't know what that would be. Sounds like hell, actually. No. Be grateful for our problems. But the good news is you're not on your own. We are not on our own. We do not face our problems on our own. We do not practice on our own. It just doesn't work that way. couldn't work that way. One of Kurt Vonnegut's books I read so long ago, I'm not even sure which one, but I think it was Slapstick.

[17:34]

So feel free to help me out if this rings any bells. There's these two kids who are like gifted in some ways, but kind of retarded and challenged in other ways, and a big problem for their parents. And the protagonist, the boy, it's a boy and a girl, he hears a caseworker comes to visit his parents, and he's eavesdropping. And he hears the caseworker telling his parents, he's going to have to learn to paddle his own canoe. And his response is, what? Paddle my own canoe? What does that mean? Yeah, what does that mean? Paddle your own canoe. That's ridiculous.

[18:37]

It's crazy talk. You don't have to paddle your own canoe. And I'm not just talking about summer work practice. I'm talking about the whole process of waking up. You don't paddle your own canoe. That's just not consistent with Mahayana understanding. There's one canoe. There's just one canoe. We're all in one big canoe. All of us. So Ehei Dogen, Dogen Zenji, great master Dogen, in his life work, the Shobo Genzo, the 91st fascicle of the Shobo Genzo is called Yoi-butsu-yo-butsu, which means only a Buddha and Buddha.

[19:46]

Only Buddha and Buddha. as translated by Kaz Tanahashi and Ed Brown in Moon and a Dew Drop. They give it the title, Only Buddha and Buddha. And the first line of that fascicle is, Buddha Dharma cannot be known by a person. Buddha Dharma cannot be known by a person. person. And then he goes on to quote, actually, it's a line from the Lotus Sutra. You knew I'd get the Lotus Sutra in there at some point, right? He's just waiting. When Kokyo was here, I was explaining to him how we happen to have a copy of the Lotus Sutra on the altar. And he asked me, he said,

[20:48]

well, so is the Lotus Sutra going to be like some kind of theme for the summer? And I said, well, I don't know that it is or that it isn't, but I just got here, you know, so. But anyway, it's from the second chapter, Skillful Means or Expedient Means, where Shakyamuni Buddha says, only a Buddha together with a Buddha can thoroughly master the Dharma. This also foreshadows Chapter 11, the emergence of the treasure tower, which is one of the more psychedelic chapters in the Lotus Sutra, where this tower rises up out of the earth and floats up into the sky. And there's another Buddha inside it. It's total Steven Spielberg. And this other Buddha, the tower opens up and this other Buddha invites Shakyamuni Buddha up there into the tower with him and moves over and shares his seat.

[21:56]

And the two of them sit side by side and expound the Lotus Sutra together. So only a Buddha and a Buddha can thoroughly master it. Maybe you could take that in one way. You might think, That's kind of disheartening. That leaves me out. I'm neither a Buddha nor a Buddha. But, no. Nobody's left out. That's the point. One big canoe. It's all of us. Only a Buddha and a Buddha is all of us. Buddha Dharma cannot be mastered by a person. all of us together, you know. He goes on to say, examine a Buddha's practice.

[23:03]

A Buddha's practice is to practice in the same manner as the entire universe and all beings. If it is not practice with all beings, it is not a Buddha's practice. I repeat, If it is not practice with all beings, it is not a Buddha's practice. This being so, all Buddhas, from the moment of attaining realization, realize and practice the way together with the entire universe and all beings." So that's all of us. That's why I've been emphasizing these core Buddhist virtues of helpfulness and friendliness. We practice together, we wake up together, we realize Buddhadharma together. He goes on to explain it in a very poetic analogy.

[24:13]

There has been a saying since olden times. No one except a fish knows a fish's heart. No one except a bird follows a bird's trace. Yet those who really understand this principle are rare. To think that no one knows a fish's heart or a bird's trace is mistaken. You should know that fish always know one another's heart, unlike people who do not know one another's heart. But when the fish try to go up through the Dragon Gate, they know one another's intention and have the same heart. Or they share the heart of breaking through the Nine Great Bends. The Dragon's Gate and the Nine Great Bends are rapids on the Huang River in China, famous rapids. The fish who swim through the Dragon's Gate, by being able to swim through it, I don't know what it looked like, Probably a dam there now, but if they could swim through the dragon's gate, they would turn from fish into dragons.

[25:20]

Or they share the heart of breaking through the nine great bends. Those who are not fish hardly know this. Fish always know one another's heart. Well, I think, you know, the analogy is fish are sincere practitioners. So... I hope that, you know, we can be like this. Fish swimming together in the same school, thoroughly knowing one another's heart and intention. Because what we're actually doing here is practicing the Buddha way. Reading about Buddhism is great. Talking about Buddhism is great. But we're actually practicing and waking up together.

[26:25]

If I did not believe this, I would run out of here as fast as my feet could carry me. So it's not actually written down anywhere that I have to use every minute of time allotted. We don't actually have to end. We can end early. That's allowed. But if anybody has a question, do that too. Yes, Kogan. I can't remember what happened. Yes?

[27:29]

He became president of the United States. Oh, he became president of the United States. Thank you. Yes? Could you explain to a guest the practice that you called Sashin or He? Oh, Sashin is... Just lots and lots and lots of zazen. Actually, you know, practicing together with the universe and all living beings. That's what we're doing in this hall. Allegedly. sometimes you know and and maybe some summer students are having a similar experience sometimes when we put ourselves in that condition in that sort of container and we take away what we think are the usual things that drive our habit energy and thought patterns and they're removed

[28:54]

But the habit energy and thought patterns keep going. So we can look at them real good and get to feel them and all their juiciness. That's like, we can be, you know, it's like the things that drive that are supposed to be It's just Nirvana, right? Yet somehow they're still going. So we get to study that. We get to sit with that. That can be kind of hard. Yes, Kando, sorry. I believe that sitting zazen is practicing with all beings.

[29:59]

I'm not sure if I can explain that. To be still and Find your place completely on this cushion. I don't know why this comes up, but I was a kid. We used to go to the Smoky Mountains for hiking. One time, I was in the forest there. It's like the oldest. deciduous forest in the US and I was by myself and I had a sense of I'm not a visitor here I belong here and it's pretty powerful and so I think that I'm kind of going out on a limb here just for the sake of

[31:24]

trying to give you an answer of some kind. But I think that, you know, when we really sit with our full awareness and presence to the best of our ability, that we can find our place, find our place in this world and say, I'm not a visitor. I belong here. Something like that.

[31:58]

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