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. Good morning. Is there anyone here who's here for the first time? Okay. You're the closest. Okay. Have a good day, okay? Yeah, we have student flowers. So Paula sets out flowers after she does the flower arrangements. She sets out flowers for the residents to put in their rooms and

[01:01]

And so the offering that goes on the main altar of these flowers sometimes has leftover flowers or flowers that weren't necessary in those big main arrangements. And so what Paula does is she has a bucket and she puts out those flowers for people to use in their rooms. And this is called... or offering. And today I want to talk about a practice of citta prasadhanam, which is a yogic term. Citta is the mind, but more than just what we think of as the mind. It's all of our experience, our ability to experience and what is experienced all together at the same time.

[02:07]

And prasad means an offering. And citta prasadhanam means that our life and our experience is an offering to ourselves and to everyone around us. So we have an English word for this concept of citta prasadhanam. And it's called intimacy. Real intimacy, I mean. Not pseudo-intimacy, you know, not our ideas of intimacy, but actual intimacy that we can do, that we can be, that we can feel, and that we can give. So... That's the subject and it actually is the subject of all of practice. His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said, my religion is kindness.

[03:11]

So he didn't mean his idea of kindness, but actually kindness and its effect throughout space and time. What does that mean? Can we practice it ourselves? And how does, you know, arranging ourselves on a black cushion and just, you know, chugging along moment after moment have anything in the world to do with that? Well, you know, well, I'll tell you. So, okay. This is little offering flags. It's a greeting card. sent to me by Zenju Earthland Manual. And these flags are often put out in gardens for the wind to carry good wishes to all beings. So we're in the middle of a practice period.

[04:24]

A practice period is a time of reflection and as a community and individually in which there is a schedule that people do together. Some, in this case, are online and some are live. The practice period is being led by David and Tova and Wendy. Wendy is is here in spirit. If I don't see her, but I know that she's here in spirit. And the subject of the practice period is the perfections. And the perfections, otherwise known as paramita, is something that crosses us over from the shore of suffering to the shore of liberation. It means going beyond. going beyond not meaning like ignoring our life and experience, but going beyond meaning that our own experience goes beyond our thoughts and habits and preconceptions about our experience.

[05:38]

And last week, Wendy gave a talk about generosity, which I hope you can hear. It's available on live stream on our website at sfcc.org. And in which she talked about generosity as the first paramita. And about the elements of generosity as compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and social love. So actual things that we can do and feel and express that carry us from... a situation of suffering or habitual life to a situation in which life wakes us up for everybody's benefit. And the next paramita, of course, would be morality or shila. And what Wendy was pointing out in her talk was that with generosity, our practice of morality doesn't have to be about rules.

[06:49]

If we take too much refuge in rules, we'll lose what morality is actually about, which is living lightly on the earth and living lightly with each other with a sense of oneness, a sense of help, a sense of, well, how would an awake person truly live? So that life, if we... Live it according to our deepest desire, life if we live it with light, is a transformative practice of giving, receiving, and appreciating moment after moment, of feeling for the pains of the world around us, of forgiving people their limitations and mistakes, and starting with ourselves. of being grateful for all of the gifts that we receive moment after moment, and of expressing that with a community of like-minded people, whether it's with just ourselves, with one other person, with people like us, or with everyone, or whatever combination there is in between.

[08:15]

And so because... Our practice is about waking up, living and being lived for the benefit of all beings. By all beings, it doesn't mean all beings except the one that we're mad at or except our spouse or whatever. All beings means all. And because this all is much greater than we can ever imagine or encompass on our own at any minute, all beings is... opens our heart. You know, it opens us beyond what we think, beyond what we are conditioned to experience. All beings is transformative. All moments. All beings. The transformative possibility of, as Wendy put it, our mistakes. Hi.

[09:17]

And our limitations dancing together. And so, we're in a tradition called Soto Zen. And Soto means Sozan and Tozan. Those are generally recognized as the founding teachers. Those are names of teachers. And founding teachers of our school. And Tozan, woke up one day. And it's interesting to know how he woke up and what he said when he woke up. So he was a young man when he went to see his teacher for the first time. And his teacher had asked him to attend him as Jiko. So Jiko is the person who, like Ellen, follows the so-called leader or the teacher like a shadow, and learns from them as a body-to-body transmission.

[10:23]

And then if they need something like I did just now because I get dizzy if I do full bows, and Ellen put out her arm. So that is a practice by which a student and a teacher learn directly from each other. We're both humans, so we can learn as peers. And then there's a teacher and a student, so you can learn generationally, even if the student is older or more experienced than the teacher. Both kinds of transmission are possible. And so Tozan had been with his teacher for many years, and the teacher felt that he was about to die. And he said to Tozan, it's time for you to go. And Tozan was... astounded and basically said, what? The teacher said, it's time. And Tosan said, but if in the future someone asks me how to remember you, what should I say?

[11:39]

And the teacher said, just And Tozan really didn't understand. He went away confused. What? Just this? What does that mean? And so you can imagine Tozan in his room packing his robes, folding his robes, going, this? Just this? What are you talking about? This? Just this? After all these years, just this? He packed up. He said goodbye. He went out the gate. And at that time, in that monastery, as you exited the monastery, there was a little stream. Now there's a bridge, but then there was a stream.

[12:39]

And as Tozan was crossing the stream, he reached down to get a drink of water because he was going to be on the road for a while. And as he reached down to scoop up the water, he saw his own reflection. And he had a massive enlightenment experience. He was flabbergasted and he said a poem spontaneously that... my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman, gave to me when I was the head monk as my kind of study topic to try to understand with everyone in the practice period. That was in 1987. And I'm still trying to understand it. So the poem was, don't see the world or yourself as an object. or far from it you stray.

[13:41]

Today, as I walk alone, whichever way I turn, I meet myself. She is just me. I am not he. If you understand that you as an object is not you yourself, then you have your own true way. So don't see the world or yourself as an object or far from it you stray. Today I walk alone. Everywhere I go, myself is what I meet. What I think of as this is just me, but I'm not it. I'm not you. Now if you understand that the object you isn't you, then there's your path. So that was his poem. That's what's come down to us as a foundation for our school.

[14:45]

So Dongshan's poem, Tozan's poem, Dongshan is his Chinese name and Tozan is his Japanese name, exemplifies emptiness or the basis that Wendy was talking about, which manifests as compassion. forgiveness, gratitude, and social love on a day-to-day basis. By social, I don't just mean for a big group of people. You could also have a social group with one other person. And this is important later on when I talk about relationships. So, because the non-objectification of thou, you know, turns out to be really important for our own peace. A peace that doesn't include everyone isn't peace. And if we objectify others, there's no peace.

[15:49]

You know, even a simple question like, what about you don't I know? What about you don't I know that if I really knew you, I would know? unobjectifies, disobjectifies, deobjectifies the person in front of us. And sometimes when I'm fighting with someone or I feel like they've hurt me, that's the kind of question I have to ask myself. Like, what about you? What about this don't I know that I need to know? That this thou wants me to know. What is this? And other transmission stories talk specifically about love and intimacy as a subject of contemplation and talk about how we usually think of them and how we think of them in Zen as a practice for liberation.

[16:58]

Would you like to hear a couple of stories? that we're talking about. These are transmission stories and they're from a book called The Denko Roku, The Transmission of the Light. And this translation I'm using is by Dojin Francis Cook. If you want to look it up or you can email ccoffice at sfcc.org and Elliot or Christopher will email you back with the reference. So these are two generations of teachers who were one right after the other. And I'll just read you the cases, okay? So Doan Kanshi, I'm sorry, so Doan the latter, or Tongan the latter. And Ryozan Enkan, Dayosho, which means great teacher. So these are just cases. And maybe you can kind of smell the fragrance of love and intimacy in these cases.

[18:03]

So the 41st ancestor was great master Doan the Ladder. He studied with Doan the former. And his question to Doan, his teacher, was this. The ancients said, what worldly people love, I love not. What do you love, teacher? And the teacher said, I have already been able to be like this. And Doan was greatly enlightened. There's this this again. Darn. Like this. What does that mean? So that's the story. And very simple question. So imagine going to your teacher and said, I've heard it said by a sage, what worldly people love, I love not. Teacher, I wonder what you love.

[19:06]

And then the teacher saying, I've been able to be like this in this life. I've been able to be like this. Like this. Just means myself. I've been able to really be myself. I've been really able to be myself as part of the real world. in a free way. And so the commentary of this particular story is about love and it talks about how, you know, in usual life we have these ideas about love and we love this and that and I can't read this right now. I don't have the right glasses on for it. But anyway, how we love this and that and our love grows deeper and deeper and... In a certain way, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole because we come to love thinking, I love this and I don't love that.

[20:14]

And that my love is the way I love and I love you and then if you change, there's a problem. Or if something happens, there's a problem. So that's what usually we do. And then we fall in and out of love and it really, makes everything worse, in a way. Even though that first feeling is great, what is actual love? So that's what the story is about. But then if you try not to love anything, it's worse, this story says, Kazon's commentary says. And so it says... First, you have to free yourself of false views. And next, don't get stuck in nihilism or no view either. If you want to experience it personally, don't look either outside or inside, but go back to the time when you didn't have a body, before you had a body, before you were conceived, and look there.

[21:27]

It means before any of our structure of how we do things came to be. And he said that this state of existence, or this mind, is fundamentally clear and bright. It illuminates perfectly. It's open as the sky. Anyway, arrive here fully, that story says. But what does that mean? Because it could sound like there's something that's kind of a mind that's independent from everything, and I should just go there and drop everything. The person in front of me isn't wonderfully clear, transparent, and bright, so forget them. It could mean that to us. So the next case helps with that. So the next generation, that teacher, became old after a while. And he took on a student named Ryozan Enkan. And he asked Ryozan Enkan to be his attendant, to attend him.

[22:34]

And so part of Enkan's job was to carry Kanchi's robe around after him. And so he would sit down to give a talk, and then his student would hand him the robe. And anyway, the student was about to hand the teacher the robe, and the teacher looked the student in the eye and said, what goes on under this robe? Well, you're doing better than he did because he couldn't say anything at all. He couldn't say everything. He couldn't get out a word. He just went, oh, he froze. And then the teacher said, why don't you ask me?

[23:36]

And then the student went. what goes on in the robe? And the teacher said, intimacy. And the student was floored and tears came out of his eyes and so many that they wet his robe and he started bowing and bowing to the teacher. And the teacher said, I guess you got something, huh? And the student went, Yes, I did. And the teacher said, what's the business beneath the robe? And the student said, intimacy. And the teacher said, intimacy, intimacy. And that's the end of the story. So there's both intimacy and there's

[24:40]

Intimacy, intimacy. So take that how you want it. I'm not going to interpret it for you. You get to have your own intimacy story. I'm not going to take it away from you. But just if you have a moment to think about intimacy, maybe over the next 50 years we could talk about, well, why did... the student get enlightened when the teacher said intimacy? And then why was he further enlightened when the teacher said intimacy, intimacy? And how did the teacher get enlightened when the student said, repeated his own question back to him? And how did the teacher become even more inspired to say the word intimacy twice? What happened there? Why is this important? Why is it a transmission story that talks about someone receiving the way and becoming of the mind of the Buddha who lives for the benefit of all beings, wakes up in a way that helps everyone?

[25:56]

How come? How did that come to be? So, anyway, there's... Years and years and years, eons, decades, hundreds, you know, centuries and thousands of years of teaching on intimacy just in Buddhism alone. It starts with the second noble truth of the cause of our suffering is self-centeredness, as Sojin puts it. And the fourth noble truth is that the path is the way of freedom. that takes us out of the bondage of self-centeredness. And morality, which in Buddha Dharma is refuge, and it's having the intention not to do bad, to do good, and to spread it around, live and be lived for all beings.

[26:59]

And then also there's specific clear mind precepts like not harming but cherishing life. Not taking what is not given but honoring the gift not yet given. You know not misusing sexuality but honoring the mind and body of the other. You know not falling into false speech, but speaking with clarity, expressing yourself clearly and wholesomely. You know, not intoxicating mind or body of self or others, but staying clear so that we can do our real intention. Not putting others down, not praising the self, not staying angry. not being stingy and not disparaging this precious path, the example of the teacher or the people around us who wake us up.

[28:15]

And so there are many eras of teaching and many types of teaching, and there's vehicles for studying this in ourselves and freeing ourselves. There's vehicles, the bodhisattva path that Tova talked about this week is about opening to the other and being interested in whether other people are awake even before one's own awakeness. And then there's the vajrayana path of everything, both bad and good, both virtuous and non-virtuous. can be used as a gate to enter a realm of more transcendent virtue if we take refuge. But that's if we take refuge, if we turn everything over for the benefit of all beings and for our own benefit, learn on ourselves first.

[29:21]

So refuge is a function of... the possibility that every single moment and problem and issue has to wake us up. And so when we take refuge, refuge just means to fly back. We're flying back to ourselves. Our heart flies to its real state. That flying means It's not bound. And so it's our basic goodness that we fly back to. And everybody and everything equally partakes of that. So we just had a ceremony in which we work with the emptiness or the possibility that's

[30:25]

inherent in giver, receiver, and gift. The act of giving requires a language of intimacy. If we give something that the person's not ready for, or if we give in a way that doesn't have boundaries, it can actually not be experienced as a gift. Boundaries or morality is an essential feature of good giving. So on about now in the lecture is when people's legs might start hurting. So I highly recommend that you take a little bit of a break to look inside and see if intimacy is possible in the... physical state that you're in right now. And if not, just why don't you rest your legs for a second and then put yourself back in a way that you can really be here.

[31:33]

Does that make sense to you? So refresh your posture. And then let's settle down once you've given that to yourself. So I just want to ask you a question. When I said refresh your posture, did you understand what I meant? You already knew, right? Just checking. That's called intimacy. That's what I mean by intimacy. You don't have to be a special person or have some sort of special high-flown ideals for intimacy. We know. The only thing is we can't assume because before you refreshed your posture, you kind of assumed that you were okay, maybe.

[32:40]

I'm not sure. I mean, I would have to check with you to know that, but don't we do that? Don't we just kind of go along and assume? And then when I said refresh your posture, I could see everybody's gaze kind of going in. You were checking it out with yourself. And then you gave yourself the gift of life. So that's the basic relationship skill. That's the basic intimacy skill is to care about impact moment after moment and be willing to use your faculties or be willing to use our faculties to create peace and harmony. And actually that's what's taught. in our path. How am I doing on time, by the way? Anyone know what time it is? 10.54, okay, I'll try to be concise.

[33:42]

So, we have a teaching about refuge, that refuge is actually a transcendent act, it's a historical act, and it's an act in our personal history. So it has different aspects. And it's transcendent. Let me just read you the teaching. This is from Dogen Zenji's Kyoju Kaimong. Dogen Zenji was the founder of the Soto Zen School in Japan. And he went to China with a lot of hardships to try to bring back to Japan the teaching. And the first thing he wrote was How to Sit Zazen. And then later on he wrote this work called the Kyoju Kaiman, which is about giving and receiving the precepts or giving and receiving morality. And so the refuge of Sangha in brief is that the transcendent aspect or otherwise known as the single-bodied aspect, the aspect in which we're all one body,

[34:58]

is that refuge in sangha or intimacy is the virtue of peace and harmony among beings. In our personal history, refuge in sangha is each of us who are learning Buddha or awakeness and Dharma or the teaching. And in the maintained or abiding aspect of refuge in Sangha. It's defined as relieving suffering, the moment of relieving suffering. So all of these are, all of these aspects of refuge, whether it's the single-bodied, which is peace and harmony, the manifested, which is people practicing, or the maintained, which is the opportunity of relieving suffering. All of those are called Sangha treasure, and taking refuge in Sangha is taking refuge in the deep meditative quality of oneness, taking refuge in the people around us as good and wholesome, and taking refuge in any opportunity to relieve suffering.

[36:22]

And that's what relationship can be for us. That's what the practice of relationship is. Now, on January 20th, Larry Yang came here and gave a lecture on beautiful and beloved communities. And I took down, I went back and listened to Larry's lecture a few times and took down the beginning of his lecture, because I think it's important to understand what he means. Beautiful means beautiful in becoming more free. And Beloved comes from the work of Nelson Mandela and Reverend Martin Luther King, and Larry was citing them in his talk. And the Beloved community was the community that can sit together and provide a refuge from oppression. And... You know, as anyone who's ever been in a community knows, despite the best intentions that we have, we can make mistakes, we can be limited, and as a matter of fact, the ideals of community are always being observed in the, what should I say, in their mistakes and gaps, in the unconscious,

[37:47]

problems and suffering that we have. The unconscious racism, sexism, classism, what should I say, opportunitism, adultism, ableism. I could spend the whole rest of the time just naming the isms that we're all subject to every day. And that... various sorts of majorities that we're parts of are always inflicting on various sorts of minorities that we're part of. Everyone's both. And some people are more than one of minority or more than one of majority, which exponentially increases the possibility for harm. So Larry said, we don't live in an enlightened world. And so all the issues that we're going through right now destabilizes all the interactions that we go through, which is the Sangha treasure. So that what we do, what you and I do in this room, Larry continued, is so important, so vital, so precious.

[38:58]

How we connect our inner world to the world that's around us can be our personal transformation. Personal transformation is intimately involved, Larry said, in social transformation. And sometimes it feels like we're meditating to create peace in our own hearts and minds. But these teachings have a larger intention of transforming the world so that we live our lives, so that we lift up our lives from the unconscious harm that we create to creating less and less harm. for all of us. So that's what Larry said. And that's the basis of our path. Larry was pointing out how we use mindfulness to know the harm that we create and to return to our deep intention to be able to see each one of us interconnectedly as the beloved.

[40:00]

There's so many things that one could say about this. I just, I can't say them all. I can't even say most of them or many of them, but I do, there's so many bodhisattvas or awakening beings that we can observe to find out through seeing or through attending. What is it that is really intimate? How do we become intimate in our own hearts and minds with us and with ourselves and with those around us? Of course, Dave's in the room. And Dave and I have been having a conversation that goes on for many years on what is intimacy and what is love. Dave's written many books, and we'll talk about that in the question and answer what is intimacy in relationships.

[41:12]

How can we use the Buddhist practices, particularly the social emotions, to generate actual love, not diluted love, like in the story that we heard at the beginning? How can we... How can we use practices to be with what is and to allow what is to enter our hearts and minds as a teaching? This is important. And so we'll talk about it more in the question and answer after lecture. There are specifics that... You know as well as I do specific issues, specific problems. What happens if someone doesn't want me or doesn't love me? What happens if that's in the Sangha and someone doesn't love or doesn't want me?

[42:15]

What happens if someone yells at me or corrects me? What happens if someone hands me food in a way that makes me not want to eat it? And what happens if they hand me food in a way that... venerates me and my intention. What happens if they actually include me? What happens if they're actually willing to know me? This is important. We can't just jump over it. I guess I didn't intend to talk about this poem and maybe somebody else knows this poem better than I do. I heard it decades ago, but I think there's a poem by Rumi that says, don't seek outside yourself for flowers. Inside you is a garden with hundreds and thousands and millions of flowers, and that will do for a place to sit.

[43:17]

So there's a poem like that. But what do you call you? In Sangha, means that our very understanding of what our own body and mind is becomes bigger. What do we call ourselves? What do we call the world? What is intimacy? Sorry I didn't answer any questions. Sorry I just asked them. Oh well. Next lecture. Thank you very much. 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.

[44:20]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:23]

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