This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Woody Allen remarked, More than in any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. Sometimes things appear very gray or sometimes black. And it's not that they aren't, but it's not the whole story.

[01:07]

I think of Zen practices falling down and getting up. Zen practice is not just the getting up, it's also the falling down. another way of looking at it is sometimes I feel like I know exactly where I am and am I at home and at times I feel completely lost both of those are part of Zen practice if you just know where you are then you're not aware of the mystery if you're completely lost then you'll never find home Or another thing I've been thinking about recently is sudden and gradual. Sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment. Sudden change and gradual change. This was one of the first fights within the Zen school about whether practice was gradual or sudden.

[02:28]

And of course it's kind of us funny argument because practice is both sudden and gradual. But how we understand it sometimes is helpful. That happened all of a sudden, didn't it? that's been gradually building on me for a long time. We need to be free in each moment. Free of microphones in each moment. we need to work on things moment to moment.

[03:49]

So a lot of it has to do with our feeling about time. Time is both and very wide. Time is both about successive successive instances of it and as one continuous Wow. Some schools of Buddhism emphasize the wow. We don't do that so much. Is the wow the background or is the continuous practice the background? Which is the foreground and which is the background? My favorite story these days, which I've been using a lot, is about Kategorin Roshi.

[05:07]

Kategorin Roshi has spent a lot of years here and left here to start the Minnesota Zen Center. Left here to start the Minnesota Zen Center. If you can't hear me, please wave. Okay, I'll try harder. Kategori Roshi was at the Minnesota Zen Center. Minnesota was not a hotbed of Buddhism at the time. Coming from San Francisco, in fact, it was downright discouraging. But they needed to raise some money. So they got a nice room and filled it with flowers and had good food and invited wealthy people. And they thought they'd reel in Kategori Roshi and he'd say a few words and That would be it. Kanger Roshi walked in and said, you're all going to die. He wasn't holding back.

[06:15]

He wasn't giving them fake Dharma. The truth is we're all going to die. And we have to laugh or else we'll cry. Anyhow, the room cleared very quickly. The fact is we're all going to lose everything. Whatever we think we have, we're all going to lose it. That's also a relief, isn't it? Things may accrue, but then they return to the source. About sudden and gradual, the Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor was written by someone who was of the sudden school and wanted to

[07:31]

talk about how they were much better than the northern school. And this was one of the first self-conscious Zen. I don't know if it's a diatribe or a document. A hundred years later, there's the Sandokai, which is a poem by Sekito Kisen. in which it says there is no southern or northern ancestor. There's no better between sudden and gradual. People in the sudden school who might always talk about their enlightenment experiences, they get quite tiresome. if they talk about the same experience over and over again. If they talk about their new enlightenment, that's pretty good.

[08:38]

Or people who drudge away and send practice, you know, it's just cold and gray and there's never any light. That's not a correct understanding of gradual, perhaps. In fact, what we need is dual tracking in our practice. Dual tracking about how our habitual ways of looking at things and getting some perspective on another way of looking at things. Dual tracking in which we're focused on ourself and we're focused on other people. Dual tracking where we see things, time is instantaneous and new succession of newness.

[09:43]

I have health problems and I was just really recently thinking about how my medical treatments are both sudden and gradual. I have someone who does sacral cranial work on me and it's a sudden throwing off of my illness and feeling great. That only lasts a short time. I need to work gradually on the causes of my illness, as well as completely throwing it off. If I just work gradually on my illness, there's no light at the end of the tunnel. But we're all going to die, so maybe there isn't any light. But each moment, there's some brightness. So it's kind of sudden and gradual.

[10:52]

There's some important teachers in our lineage who are struggling with illness problems. Suzuki Roshi was dying, a Zen teacher came to him and asked him how he was feeling. And he said, they have a new word for me, a new name for me, cancer. It's not exactly that he was cancer, but that's part of who he was. And he accepted it. In the past couple of weeks, Eakin Roshi, a great teacher who spent most of his time in Hawaii, died at 93.

[12:10]

And Eakin Roshi had many problems and faults, but he always He didn't get stuck by them. He kept going. He kept getting up. And as such was a great example of a great Zen pioneer. I'm not talking about it. Of a great Zen pioneer. I think his story is worth talking a little bit about is he was interned in Japan during World War II. And many of the prisoners were made fun of the Japanese and they happened not to be treated so badly. Some were, but not where he was.

[13:13]

And he felt... Anyhow, he met... internment camps he met an English person who had studied Zen. And he studied Zen in the internment camps. Usually if you're a prisoner of some enemy you would not be looking at one of its philosophical schools for sustenance. He met R.H. Blythe. He was a real character. If you ever read the name of R.H. Blythe, he's very humorous and has some good understanding. So in the middle of the war, when he was a prisoner, he began his Zen studies.

[14:20]

He went on from there. So the theme of this lecture is probably something like, more than any other time in history, man has reached faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. It's not about choice. Circumstances reach us and we need to deal with them. And sometimes they're pretty grim, but they're also some light. We're not victims. Horrible things happen to us in our life, but we're not victims.

[15:36]

We're not exactly in charge. We participate with things. In fact, that's the teaching of karma. Karma is not that we're in charge. but it's not that we're victims. We participate with everything. Everything we do has effects and everything that happens to everyone else has effects. And the total sum of those effects is what happens. So... Usually we prefer to have happy times and success rather than painful legs and illness and failures.

[16:57]

But in fact, that's where we learn from. We don't learn from our successes very much, maybe a little bit. learn from our failures. In fact, it's people who come to Zen Center who have a lot of problems, who are usually the most successful teachers, because everybody can connect to them. Of course, it's not just about having problems, it's also about working through them to some extent. people who come and can sit full lotus and have no problems and they don't stay in fact we worry about them because they have nothing to work on or at least apparently it seems that way so how do we help other people

[18:07]

This is a poem by Estonian poet, Jan Kaplinsky. Shinryu Suzuki, a little Japanese living and teaching in California. Couldn't be my teacher, one of my non-teachers. A little lit match from God's matchbook. Sea wind soon blown out, somewhere between California and Estonia, somewhere between East and West, between somewhere and nowhere. Nobody can find out what remains of him. After the wind has blown and the tide come and gone, the white sand is smooth as before, but his smile from the back cover of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind has silently infected book after book on my shelves, and perhaps shelves themselves, and walls and wallpapers too.

[19:22]

His practice infected his books, which infected our bookshelves, which brought us here today. It's not so much what our circumstances are as how we meet them. So how many people here are having a little bit of a hard time with it these days?

[20:29]

I don't believe it. I blame them more than that. And maybe just as many who are having a good time, and that's good. But if you're having a bad time, that's not a judgment about you. I think one of the big problems we have in the West, it seems like, at least with many of my students, there's a really epidemic of low self-esteem. And low self-esteem is not so good for a couple of reasons. If we have low self-esteem, You can't take criticism because you're already devastated. Then you can't take praise because you don't believe it.

[21:37]

I wonder, because in the East they don't think they have that so much, I wonder if it's the difference between Buddha nature and original sin. I think you should. You should. Notice the light that you have within you. Don't deny the dark. But appreciate the light that you have. and let it infect your bookshelves. We have a lot to do in this life.

[22:46]

We're put into a life which our parents had problems, the world has problems, our bodies have problems, There have been many generations of built-up problems. So there's a lot to work on. And little by little, gradually, we can have sudden insight into that. Suzuki Roshi said, each one of you will have your enlightenment experiences, and you may not like them. Everybody thinks enlightenment is a great big ice cream cone. So what am I summing up this to be?

[24:03]

I guess it's gratitude for your coming, for your interest in practice, and for the work you're doing to find a third choice among the two choices of Woody Allen. I'm going to read another story. This is about Aiken Roshi. A longtime Zen practitioner from another Zen community wrote Robert Aiken in Hawaii, what is Zen training and how do you teach Zen?

[25:25]

Aiken Roshi wrote back, mind your own business and floss every day. The longer you practice and the more you realize when you first practice and you say, if I was a teacher, I'd tell them what to do. The more you practice, the less you tell anybody what to do. You just explore the territory with them. Two other stories. These are by, this happened to Issan Dorsey. This is another kind of commentary on karma.

[27:04]

Everybody gets what they deserve, whether they deserve it or not. We participated with things, so we have some, there's some connection to what happens to us but it's not necessarily exactly our fault one last story Isan was dying and a student of his came to him and said I'm really going to miss you Isan nodded and then said are you going somewhere this is about sudden and gradual we're here let's be here thank you thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center our programs are made possible by the donations we receive please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support for more information visit

[28:18]

and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:26]

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