Good morning. This Dharma Talk today is offered in the midst of great sorrow and great sadness. And some of you know what I'm speaking about and others of you don't. So I'll just say that Dear, beloved, Dharma sister, Sangha member, Caroline Meister, who was in residence at Tassajara, died in a hiking accident in the mountains of Tassajara.

[01:30]

And the heartbreaking reality of that, many, many people are sitting in the middle of those flames of sorrow. So I wanted to dedicate this talk to To her memory, this is not a memorial service for Caroline. However, I did want to say a few words. Out of love and the agony, really, of her death. Caroline's Buddha's name was so she. Gokon, ancestral kindness, diamond root.

[02:40]

And I've been so moved by the far-reaching effect of just one person, just one person. living a life of kindness and compassion and love, how many people she's touched and are mourning and grieving her loss, her family, her church that she was part of, all the Sankha members, her Dharma brothers and sisters, And even people who just, I heard, you know, they were at Tassara last summer for a few days, a week or so, and Caroline was their crew leader. The effect that just one person can have on others' lives is so moving to me, so remarkable, so inspiring.

[04:02]

just one person guiding the world. So the circumstances were particularly wrenching in that she was missing from Monday and last week until Friday when she was found in a kind of hard to get to place by waterfall. And I just wanted to include great gratitude for all the help for those four days of search, searching and rescue. Not only did the Tazara community go out into the mountains and walk and be up all night, and also people from Green Gulch and

[05:09]

probably the city center, but there were many, many agencies, search and rescue agencies. Just read a few. Monterey County, Solana County, Santa Clara County, Search and Rescue, Bay Area Mountain Rescue, Marin County, Contra Costa County, Napa County, all these over 100 people, including helicopters, infrared technology, canine help for days without people knowing. And I think the unanswered questions are so painful. We want to know, just like we want to know for all of our loved ones, you know, did they suffer? May they not have suffered?

[06:12]

We wish that, we feel that so strongly, and we may never know. Great condolences to Caroline's family, her parents, John and Jean, and condolences that I send out condolences to. or to have pain, dolore, with another condolence and feeling that. There was a short church service from her Catholic church in Chicago. Just 15 minutes, there'll be other services, and one of the members, of the church, saying a gospel song, Take My Hand, Precious Lord, which was written by Reverend Thomas Dorsey many years ago.

[07:26]

And it was written, that song was written after he lost his child and wife to fire. This song came from that. take my hand, lead me home. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home. And I feel like we, whether we have a relationship with a precious Lord or we want to be led home to our true home, to be relieved of our suffering. And at the same time, this suffering is Our love and connection with beings and our compassionate connection with all who suffer. We feel that when we suffer. This is our human life.

[08:28]

This is our home. This afternoon, senior Dharma teacher Fu Schrader will be offering precepts to three students, three practitioners, and this is a joyous occasion, receiving Buddhist precepts. And it also is a response to our life of Inevitable loss and grief and longing to live in our true home.

[09:32]

Receiving Buddha's precepts, taking the vows of a Bodhisattva. The vows, the Buddha's precept vows, we've been taught, Suzuki Roshi taught, and his teachers taught, that observing Buddha's precepts, following Buddha's precepts, is no different than Zazen. And one might think, wait a minute, following these precepts of a disciple of Buddha does not kill, a disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given, misuse sexuality, lie, intoxicate, so on. But how is that, Sazen? It seems like those two might, we might look at those as two separate things.

[10:40]

Maybe we practice Sazen in order to, or we practice precepts to support our, But to talk about them as non-dual is actually the teaching that's come down to us. And in exploring this, one of Suzuki Roshi's teachers wrote, a commentary on another one of Suzuki Roshi's teachers about precepts and quotes the Avatamsaka Sutra where it says, when the Buddha woke up, when the Buddha realized his true home, his true nature, spoke.

[11:47]

This is the teaching story saying, I, together with all beings and the great earth, have attained the way. And in this teaching, this teacher said that that very expression, I, together with all beings and the great earth, attained the way, is, restraint. That is why they are called Buddha's precepts. So this teaching that we are at our true home is connected with all beings and the great earth. That is our true, the true reality of our existence.

[12:52]

And that truth is the restraint on doing unskillful things, hurting others, not following the precepts. The restraint is that self and other are non-dual. And when we realize this, all the precepts are observed. Precepts mean restraint, and restraint is not being in chains. In this, it means we are restrained by the actuality of our existence, which is our nature and others' natures. Our bodies and others' bodies are not two.

[13:54]

These are Buddha's precepts. And our true home. Wow. Suzuki Roshi speaks about this in many different places, but... I wanted to read this excerpt from a talk given in the 60s, 65 I think. The secret of the entire teaching of Buddhism is how to live in each moment. Moment after moment we have to obtain absolute freedom. And moment after moment, we exist interdependent with past, future, and all other existences.

[15:06]

In short, if you practice zazen, concentrating on your breathing moment after moment, that is how to keep the precepts. to have an actual understanding of Buddhist teaching, to help others, and yourself, and to attain liberation. So when we offer zazen, a time for zazen, teaching and instructions, And practitioners take it up. This is also taking up the precepts.

[16:10]

The precepts that flow from my nature, others' nature, not to living each moment. whether the moment is of suffering or of joy or confusion, each moment is the wholeness of your practice. There's a saying, before the donkeys leave, the horses arrive. Before the donkeys leave, the horses arrive. And when we understand that each moment, a moment of suffering, when we understand that it is ungraspable, inconceivable, it is completely brought to us

[17:28]

by the entire universe. And it is a moment of suffering. And it is a week of suffering. That donkey, before that donkey leaves, we understand that the horses have arrived. Each moment is wholeness. So when we want to push away and get rid of and blame and find fault and have greed, hate, and delusion, if we study those very moments which arise in our human life, we study them thoroughly enough, we will see they are also

[18:29]

ungraspable, inconceivable, the truth of our life of interconnectedness. Each conditioned moment is unconditioned reality taking form. we come home to this, these difficult teachings, hard to, hard to realize, and yet they are being realized right now. They can't not be realized. This is the truth of our existence.

[19:33]

to live each moment. I, the other day, saw a movie that was highly recommended as a Buddhist movie, and I recommend it too, called The Tokyo Toilet Cleaner. I think it's called. Toilet Cleaner. It's a Japanese film. about a man who his job is cleaning toilets, public toilets in Tokyo. And you enter his life. Now, I wanted to say something about, you know, we may have some view right away. Ooh, toilet cleaner, I sure don't want to do that job. I'm glad I'm not doing that job.

[20:41]

And here when we pass out soji assignments, tidying up, 20 minutes of tidying up in the morning after zaza, and some of you may think, ooh, I don't want to have to do all the bathrooms because we do those bathrooms every day. Or maybe not, but it's part of, it could be part of our karmic formations around that job. kind of marvelously, the head monk of a practice period, the Xu So, head student, head monk at Tassahara, and also here, one of their jobs, one of their main jobs is cleaning the toilets. So you have a student who is... sitting next to the leader of the practice period, the abbot or the senior dharma teacher or senior dharma transmitted teacher.

[21:54]

They sit, they face out to guide others. They give dharma talks. And their job, their daily job in the monastery is cleaning the toilets. It turns our notions of... Pleasant, unpleasant, good, bad. I want, I don't want to. Kind of upside down. That's a monastic. That's one of the things that we find out living in community. Everybody does dishes. Everybody helps. There was a guest student years ago who came from a very wealthy family and was assigned dishes, and she had never done dishes before, ever.

[22:56]

And it was like, I don't do dishes. Well, we're at Green Gulch now. Everybody does dishes. And that turning of what is mopping the floor, cleaning a bathroom, or... doing dishes, really. We have our notions, our cultural views, our status, where it fits in terms of status, and to throw that all out the window and enter that moment, each moment of whatever it is, sponges and suds and sounds. So this Tokyo toilet cleaner enters this job with enormous care, effort, love.

[24:01]

And you see him day after day. The movie is not much dialogue. You go with him, and he's in these different public toilets. He takes a mirror and puts it under this kind of shelf with a little brush, gets in these places that no one would see, but he would know if he didn't clean it or did a slapdash job. It's the nobility of his work and his care for these spaces and for whoever he meets and caring for himself. After work, he goes to the public baths and enjoys a hot bath. And he listens to the birds. And he lives out the reality of his life on that moment, on those moments, with joy. It is very inspiring, very inspiring.

[25:09]

And one takes joy with him. How do we live our life without complaining, blaming, getting wrapped up in notions and views? And there's a place for notions and views, too. But to see them also as no nature, without grasping, without using them as a weapon. I feel this kind of spirit of life. is there for us.

[26:15]

It's not a secret that's being kept away from us. Even in moments of great, great grieving and tragedy and heartbreak. There's a that brings up this koan, really, of life and death. There's probably many of them that I wanted to tell you, look at with you, a teaching story about life and death, because I feel that many, many, many people come to practice from the pain of loss, various kinds of loss, loss of loved ones, loss of ability, various abilities, loss of livelihood.

[27:38]

Loss is a... runs through, you know, runs through all of our lives. And coming to practice and feeling like you've come home. Many people, in fact, just yesterday morning someone said, I was introduced to the practice by a friend and I felt like I had come home. This is not unique. This is widespread, I think. And that coming home is also stopping running away from. Often it's turning the light back, turning back to see who we are. And a letting go of ways that were unskillful, that weren't

[28:48]

We actually let go. We don't have to have them taken away or removed. We let go because we see it's unskillful. It's not in alignment with how I want to live. And we let go. These are the precepts of restraint. This is Zazen. This is together with all beings and the great earth attain the Buddha way. So the koan is a story of a teacher and a student and the teacher is Dao Wu and the student is Shen. And Dao Wu took his student along with him to pay a condolence call.

[29:50]

The name of the koan is the Condolence Call, number case 55 in the Blue Cliff Record. And I remember visiting Suzuki Roshi's temple, Rinsohen, and Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi asked me to come with him to a parishioner's house, one of the lay practitioner's homes. But he didn't tell me. anything about why we were going. And when we got there, there was a person who was lying in state. The husband of this woman had died, and he brought me along to do the ceremonies and chant and offer incense and help at this home. So that's what the case, that's the situation here. had Qian come with him to pay a condolence call.

[30:57]

And then Qian asks a question. He knocks on the coffin and says, alive or dead, to his teacher. And Da Wu says, I won't say, I won't say. And Qian says, This question is a burning question. It's an existential question. And on their way home, he asks again, alive or dead? And Dawu says, I won't say. I won't say. And Chien then gets really agitated. He said, if you don't tell me, teacher, I'm going to hit you. And the teacher said, you can hit me if you want, but I won't say. And Xi'an hits his teacher.

[32:00]

And the teacher said, the Shusou will not be the head student if they find out about this. They're not going to be very happy with you. And this would be, you know, like, this would be a big deal. if you kind of beat up your teacher. So Da Wu kind of makes it possible for him to not return to the monastery, actually. Now, in the commentary, so the case goes on, and I'll tell you the rest of it, but in the commentary, there's a further part to this. So Chan is in the forest. He's... away from the monastery, and one day he comes upon someone, a monk, I think, in a small shrine that's in the forest in China, and he's chanting from the Lotus Sutra the chapter on the powers of Avalokiteshvara.

[33:15]

the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion. There's a whole chapter, I think it's chapter 27, where the hour of calling upon great compassion is revealed. And great compassion comes in any form that you need it. It comes in thousands, millions, immeasurable ways according to your own needs. What do you need to relieve your suffering? That's avalokiteshvara. That's the bodhisattva of infinite compassion who's come to you. So the... He hears this person chanting the verses and one of them is... to those who would attain liberation through the teaching of a monk, Avalokiteshvara comes in the form of a monk to teach the Dharma to them.

[34:25]

And upon hearing this, Qian has a realization of what his teacher was teaching. which was great compassion, his I won't say, I won't say is not I'm going to keep a secret and I know and you don't. It's I can't say. Birth and death are the great matter and you're saying alive or dead. I can't say what it is. This is And the Buddha was asked also, if a person of great realization dies, what happens to them? And the Buddha remained in silence, remained in noble silence. This is out of compassion. This is not parsimoniousness or I've got the answer and ha-ha, you have to figure it out for yourself.

[35:30]

It's more out of compassion. I will not steer you, push you. send you in any direction. This moment, you find out for yourself. And he did. Later, after Dao Wu died, he went to another teacher and had remorse that he had hit his teacher, and his teacher was no longer alive. And he told his teacher what had happened. And he said, I have to ask you, alive or dead. And that teacher said, I won't say, I won't say. And he understood or he realized his true home. So we have this question too.

[36:30]

I would propose what is our life? What is death? What happens after? How are we going to live in this world of birth and death where there's no way to escape? Nowhere to go where there is no such thing. And seeing the destruction of our forests and habitat and species and wars and genocides and retaliation and intergenerational trauma that goes on and on that we carry. How are we going to live? How are we going to live moment after moment in alignment with these teachings?

[37:40]

that we are not separate from others, that all beings together with the great earth attain Buddha's weight. and again dedicate this humbly I dedicate these words to the memory and to the life of Caroline Meister ancestral kindness diamond root

[38:43]

May her memory be a blessing. May her life be a guiding light for all those who lived with her and spoke with her and shared her life and for those of you who never knew her but do now know of her. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:40]

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