This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Last night, you went over the pure standards, the Shingi, and also on the day of the opening ceremony, the Eno read, students should be like milk and water because we've all been good friends in past lives, sharing Buddha nature as each one's own. That may not be exactly the words, but pretty close.

[01:06]

Students should be like milk and water because we've all been good friends for a long, long time. In Tibetan Buddhism, the practice of arousing compassion, one way of doing that is to think of each person not only as a good friend from past lives but that at some point this person was your mother or your father or a life's partner or a sibling or your child and see what happens in that meditation reflecting in that way how do you feel about that person or what comes up and that you may have been their child or mother this kind of inconceivable intimacy with the one body of reality.

[02:09]

So, how do we be, how do we practice like milk and water together? And I think all the forms, all the all the admonitions and the standards of deportment and refined ways of being together in this valley allow us, help us to express the reality of us being like milk and water. Maybe we don't feel like milk and water. and allow us to settle enough to feel like milk and water. So as we settle and begin to settle more and more, and I do feel this morning somehow a different level of settledness

[03:35]

It takes some days to settle. Those of us coming from outside this practice place who have been practicing other places with a different weather system and climate and housing and friends and family and to make that big shift to come to the mountains. It takes a while to re... to regulate, re-regulate. But it happens. It doesn't take too long. And those of you who've been practicing here, many of you have new jobs, new responsibilities, maybe new housing. I'm not sure all the changes. Certainly new people to work with and many people that have left that maybe you are sorry to see leave.

[04:37]

So everybody needs to settle. There's no one who's ho-hum. This is just the way it's always been. Everyone transitions together. So in this new mandala with new relationships, what are the challenges that we find? What are the what do we see as this place I need to pay a lot of attention right here with this person or with this job or I know with this terrain. Sometimes we need to pay a lot of attention with this terrain. You probably know I the morning of the day off, which was the 11th, the first personal day, and the day we had the entering and the opening ceremony, I was offering incense at the bathroom altar and stepped off the step into the void and turned upside down, actually, and kind of re-sprained my ankle and got bruises, and I thought, oh, this is a different terrain.

[06:00]

You know, I don't have it, even though it's very familiar to me still. I can't assume that those steps are, that I don't have to pay attention. I can't assume that. So I really invite everyone to continue to settle, settle and settle, and whatever it takes to settle, through the whole practice period. The practice of being in the ango or peaceful dwelling, peaceful dwelling, how do we dwell together in peace like milk and water? This is our koan, this is our... question for the entire practice period and for our entire life, I would say.

[07:04]

And the ango is just a jewel of an opportunity to understand for ourselves how to live with others, how to be in this world together with others. So we go into the mountains, or it's sometimes called going up and seeking bodhi, going up, meaning into the mountains. Not necessarily high mountains, but an internal mountain, going up, but often it does mean the mountain itself, Tasahara Mountain. In Japanese, this is jōgu bodai, jōgo high up, And Gu is seeking, and Boddai is bodhi or awakening. So we go into the mountains with an intention to wake up to our life. Seeking like way-seeking mind, not acquisitive seeking, but because we are drawn to, in some inconceivable way, to wake up.

[08:18]

But this is only half the story, this going up. Then there's coming down from the mountain, coming down from the mountain and transforming and sharing our life. It could be teaching, it could be sharing in a very hard-to-point-out way, but the two things go together, the Jew, Jōgu bodai, going up, and the gei kei shūjo. Gei kei shūjo, the gei is G-E, go down, K-K-E, transform the many beings, the shūjo, the sentient beings. And this was the Buddha's practice, this was Shakyamuni's practice of going into the mountains, going into... a very particular training and practice and sitting under the Bodhi tree.

[09:29]

Jō Gu Bodai, way-seeking mind under the Bodhi tree in the mountains. And then it wasn't his awakening and great relaxation and peace, that's not enough. That's not the end of story. The end of story is gei kei shu jo, returning to the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands or transforming and sharing our life. So we can each examine if we have both of those operating. Actually, they can operate, I think, they don't exclude.

[10:34]

One does not exclude the other. They inter-are, they inter-penetrate each other. The way-seeking bodhi, bodhi, awakening and going down from the mountain and transforming and sharing. These happen daily. These can happen moment after moment in different ways. But I think it's important that we have both those things fully functioning. Both those practices. Wisdom and compassion practicing together. And you might say this is Avalokiteshvara Guanyin's, the Bodhisattva's practice. the Heart Sutra practice of Avalokiteshvara, practicing wisdom and coursing in wisdom and realizing emptiness.

[11:41]

And the Avalokiteshvara or Guanyin of the Lotus Sutra, the one who hears the cries of the world and responds when called, responds and speaks the language that's necessary, takes the form that's necessary, wears the clothes that are necessary in order to compassionately be there for beings. This is Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin has wisdom and compassion. This is one bodhisattva. so peacefully abiding together in this Tasara mountain, and we've gone up to the mountain.

[12:48]

This practice period, there is no such thing as the 89th practice period. That's a kind of set thing that everybody would even recognize. Each person in the practice period has their own 89th practice period. And they could be very different from each other. Certain things are the same. We follow the schedule. We can name each other. They were all there in that practice period. I can see the seating chart, you know. But for each person, it's a different practice period. And each person will have different challenges and different joys and sorrows and concerns and will open to different things and learn different things. And for some, it's just enough, it will be just enough to follow the schedule. That's it. That will be, that will ask everything of you to wake up with the wake-up bell or with your alarm, to wake up

[14:05]

and get to the Zendo. Or when you hear the Han, to go to the Zendo. That's it. And for other people, that practice of going to the Zendo when the Han hits, that is not the frontier, but there will be other challenges. Getting along with people letting go of habits, deeply ingrained habits that you see clearly and yet feel these habits are ruling the roost or running the show. So that might be the theme of the practice period for each of you. So whatever it is that

[15:06]

that this practice period will be and is for you already. In fact, I would like to see everybody in the practice period and hear what is arising for you as the most salient, the most alive practice that is speaking to you that you want to focus on. So I want to hear from you about that. But for each of us, the practice period, I have confidence will be transformative. How could it not? How could it not living together in this way, supporting each other, being supported and supporting one another? I have even more than confidence. I stake my life on that.

[16:09]

I bet my life on that. Don't take a bet on that. Just because I'm not a gambling gal, but I do stake my life on the fact that this practice is transformative. And if it weren't, you know, how would it have lasted this long, you know, through the centuries or this long in... in my life or in your life, we'd get onto it. We'd see through a kind of smoke and mirrors that it's just a waste of time. But I would say the transformative quality of this practice is is alive and each of us can express this transformation in our daily practice and it's expressed in the Shingi and in the precepts, in the Bodhisattva precepts.

[17:25]

This is how we transform is expressed and continues to be expressed through our entire life. I've been reading the commentary by Okamura Roshi, Shohaku Okamura Roshi, on the Mountains and River Sutra, which is what we'll be studying this practice period. And he was talking about the four Bodhisattva vows and the grammar of them, the impossibility of beings are numberless on one side, and I vow to save them on the other, which we've all noticed, I hope. He says something like, I think this is not exactly it, but you have to be stupid to take these precepts. Clever people will not, don't want to take these precepts because it doesn't make any sense, right? Beings are numberless.

[18:27]

I vow to save them. This doesn't work. So if you're too clever, or maybe he used the word stupid. You have to be stupid enough to say, yeah, I want to do that, whatever that is. And we do. That grammar, the impossibility and inconceivability of the grammar of those bodhisattva precepts speaks to some inconceivable part of ourselves, some inconceivable self-ness. that wants to be touched and isn't touched by worldly affairs and the world of grasping and acquiring and acquisitiveness and pushing and pulling and averting and clinging.

[19:28]

So even though it makes no sense, something in us responds so wholeheartedly that we say, count me in, or I vow. And we might think, oh my gosh, goodness, what have I done? But it's too late. It's too late. So we're all like a fool, like an idiot, stupid. In a foolish way, we come to the mountains to practice this what? The forms and ceremonies of a bygone day that doesn't actually address the life of God.

[20:31]

What year is this? 2012. You could forget, right? What we're doing has such a timeless quality to it. And we do forget what day of the week. What does Saturday mean? It means it doesn't mean anything unless it's a personal day. And to enter in that together and transform together, how wonderful, how rare. And it must be real for us. It must be alive, not just going through the motions. So in our practice period we have zazen, sitting meditation, and during this practice period I want to look at not only the mountains and river sutra, but our zazen practice and the nuts and bolts, meaning posture, as well as just sitting practice.

[21:50]

So that will be interwoven throughout the practice period with the mountains. It's not even interwoven, it is the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, but we'll kind of look at those in slightly different ways together and look at the transformative quality of our zazen. So each of you in Zazen might be practicing slightly differently than your neighbor. Some of you may be just sitting. Some of you may be practicing a concentration practice, following your breath, counting your breath. Some of you may be working very diligently on awareness of posture.

[22:56]

Whatever your practice is during zazen, the awareness, the element of awareness is maybe most important. Whatever it is that you're aware of, whether it's an object of your awareness or objectless awareness, the awareness itself is the quality of your zazen and the transformative quality, the awareness. So how do we take care of ourselves during the practice period and during each period of Zazen? There will be pain. Some of you are experiencing enormous amount of pain, some of you less amount of pain for now, but this is a flowing, changing situation and the ability to stay with whatever's happening and to be able to tolerate

[24:13]

the difficulties and challenges and pain, mental, physical, emotional pain in zazen, this ability to be aware, stay with it, without pushing away, without grasping, without averting, this capacity to be aware right within that awareness of each moment of zazen, each... breath is transformative. It's not that we sit zazen and we sit, [...] and then somewhere, at some point, we're going to transform. That way of thinking is maybe our usual way of thinking, but with our practice, all of our practices, the practice itself is, and the awareness within the practice itself is the expression of transformation and is transforming.

[25:19]

So we don't have to cast ourselves way into the future when we hope something may happen. The transformation is happening. We are bodies of transformation already. This is the reality of who we are. And the awareness of that transformation body and the expression of our practice through our awareness is our going up to the mountain and waking up. And our coming down transformed and sharing. to be kind to ourselves and gentle and with loving, open hearts, take good care of ourselves and our bodies.

[26:32]

How do we learn to do that? I think many of us have learned pretty thoroughly how not to do that, how to set aside what's going on with ourselves, either a pain, mental, physical, emotional pain, and take on everybody else's agenda as the most important thing, or to denigrate ourselves with calling ourselves names about how weak we are and how we're no good and judging ourselves if we have difficulties. These are habits karmic formations, very old, and for some very deeply ingrained, that it's opening to taking care of ourselves, profoundly taking care of ourselves, immediately the word selfish comes up, or self-centered, or that's not okay, or... So this, the taking good care of ourselves is taking good care of others.

[27:47]

is protecting others from our own inability to be aware. If we're not aware of what's going on with ourselves, it's a joke or we're kidding ourselves to think we're really aware of everybody else's needs. We have to know what's going on within and without. But taking care of ourselves without indulgence and without separating from others and without holding ourselves above or below or separate in any way, this is the art of our living together. When is it indulgence? That's why we talk with other people about it. They can help us. understand what's going on sometimes because it's hard for us.

[28:49]

This morning I have a confession to make. I overslept. Now, this was like shocking to me, absolutely. I usually set my alarm five minutes before, an hour before Zazen, whatever that is. So that's 3.15 here, and it's in the city, it's 3.55. I mean, you're not in the city. I live at Green Gulch. 3.55 at Green Gulch. And whatever the clock says Zazen is, it's an hour before minus five minutes. And... Also, since I've been here, I've been waking up almost hourly and sort of staring at the clock. You know how that is. It's kind of the Jikido's practice, you know. So I've been doing that, and I don't know what happened this morning, but I'm sure my alarm went off, and I must have gone back to sleep, and I woke up with the wake-up bell.

[30:00]

Now, that meant that there was no making a fire, no washing my face with the warm water from my stomach. my hot water bottle. There was no yoga. There was no warming the clothes by the fire. There was no nothing. There was like, boing, you know, and I threw cold water in my face. It was like, it was the fastest. It just felt so fast. But it was kind of great, you know, to not have all my little things that I do, you know. I could actually make it. I wasn't late, you know. I don't need... a full 55 minutes before Zazen to... And tea. Yes, a cup of tea. And study a little bit. There was none of that. So we can get into our routines, and can we drop our routines when we're asked for help, or when the alarm doesn't go off, or when whatever.

[31:05]

We're not feeling so good, or can we just, can we drop it and move with the situation? Yeah, it was kind of fun, actually. And one thing that I noticed was going from the sleeping under the covers right immediately into ropes, I didn't get cold. You know, usually I get pretty chilled during the yoga, you know, the room is pretty cold. But there wasn't time to get cold. I don't know, maybe some of you know that. Right out of the bed, into the ropes was, you know... So maybe, I don't know, maybe I'll get up with the wake-up bell more often. Anyway, these practices that we find, are we attached to them? Are we clinging to them? Can we let them go? Can we try something else? And this is all, not just for the sake of it, but for, it just occurred to me the Jane Hirschfield poem about the cold water.

[32:20]

What is it? It's not for discipline or nostalgia or something that I wash my face in cold water every morning. excuse me, Jane, for not getting this exactly right, but it's to practice wanting the unwanted. Do you know that poem? Something like that. So to just practice it, you know, to practice something because the situation calls for it and because we're noticing we're getting a little too clingy around it. things the way we like them. So taking care of ourselves without indulging and without separating ourselves, but thoroughly taking care of ourselves. And I did want to say something about the cold.

[33:21]

Did this come up yesterday at the Shingi about how to take care of yourselves in cold weather? So one thing, maybe you have all heard this, but It's important not to go from freezing, freezing cold feet and hands into the plunge. This is where you can burst capillaries in your hands and feet and get chilblains, these little sores, which happened to be my first practice period and then they last and happen in cold weather all the time. So if your hands are really, really cold, warm them up with lukewarm water or in the shower, and same with your feet, or keep them out. So I just wanted to pass that on to you. Also, when it's really cold, there is the practice, in fact, Yuto-san, the Japanese monk who was here for a year and Green Gulch for a year, now is in the city, was doing this at Green Gulch when I didn't think it was that cold in the center, but it can be pretty cold, but you can sometimes wrap

[34:27]

your sleeve around your mudra if it's really, really cold. So there used to be a date. In Japanese monasteries, there's a date when you can start doing that. It doesn't go by the temperature. It's like, I don't know, January, whatever, March 15th, whatever the date is. So we don't really have a date upon which you can wrap your hands up. But I leave that to you. If you really feel your hands are, you can't get your hands warm just through your own. bringing warmth, breathing into your hands and keeping your hands close to your belly, your mudra right up against, touching your hara, I give you permission, I hope it's something that's not different than usual, but to wrap your hands with your rope sleeve. I think it's usually head and hands are uncovered, But this is adjusting and responding to conditions.

[35:36]

So those are two things I wanted to mention about the cold. And another thing is we get colder and can't get warm when we're tense and contracted and bracing against the cold. It's not a trick. It's another art of life. If you can relax, relax your belly in the cold, you actually are able to warm your body through your own circulation and the heat of your body. If you're contracted and hunched and pulled in, no matter how many layers you put on, how much long underwear, you will still... have trouble warming up. And I proved that to myself with 12 layers of... That was Steve Weitraub wore 12 or 15. I think I had less than that.

[36:39]

But anyway, many, many layers of clothing and underwear and haramakis. And still, I couldn't get... It was like there was nothing that could warm me because I was tense, contracted, and very afraid. and fearful of the cold. So that, if you notice there's a lot of fear about getting cold, we have the capacity to be in lots of different temperatures and if you can relax your belly and relax your mind, what I've experienced is it's kind of like a kid playing in the snow. You know, it's like, it's bracing and energizing and, you know, and you'll have to call me in to supper because I'm having fun out there, you know.

[37:42]

So I grew up in Minnesota, by the way, so, you know, being out in the snow and getting cold but having fun was, you know, daily rice and tea of living. And I think it's similar here, even though we're older and maybe don't have a kid's enthusiasm for the cold still, the relaxed, playful feeling is what is warming. And we're not too old for that. I wanted to say a few words about what we're going to be studying. And then our first class will be the day after the personal day. So I chose a fascicle from Dogen's great masterwork, Shobo Genzo.

[38:54]

Treasury of the True Dharma Eye or Dharma Eye Treasury. It's Shobo Genzo is translated different ways. And I chose Mountains and Waters Sutra partially because I've been very moved by this essay or this fascicle for many years and have also felt a kind of impenetrable, not exactly locked out, but What is it? What's it about? What is he saying? And I know that to take a practice period, the time in a practice period to go into a text or a teaching in depth with others and study together in this kind of a focused way that we're able to do here and study it together where the sutra or whatever we're studying becomes of the realm, it becomes the kind of language of the practice period, what people are thinking about, what people bring up in doksan, what comes up in lecture, what people write poems about and draw pictures, it just, it enters in a deep way, in a deeper way than can be done in, for example, a weekly class where people come together and then go off.

[40:23]

their own situations. The fact that we're all together in the mountains, in the valley, by the river, by the water, this seemed like a perfect place to really take this up and study it. So I am studying it with you and I have full confidence again that it will give forth and give us we will unlock together, with the help of teachers who have commented on it before, it will be unlocked in its compassionate meanings for our life and will become our life. One of the ways I wanted to practice with it was not only reading it, for you to read it, and we have copies of one of the translations available.

[41:30]

Are they available yet? Yes? Are they in the study hall? Anyway, they can be put out in the study hall for people to get a copy of. So reading it, you're welcome to write it out. and memorize and recite passages. And then we'll also do a kind of contemplative study of certain passages in a particular way in small groups. And also, I'd like you to study the mountains and rivers. It's sometimes translated mountains and rivers, but it's mountains and water sutra in your own bodies by being in the mountains. in or by the waters, actually going out into nature. The mountains and waters of the sutra are not necessarily the physical mountains and waters of our life, but it is not different from the physical mountains and waters of our Tasahara Valley.

[42:40]

So to go into the mountains now, I know we can spend an entire practice period never going for a walk, which that was one of my practice periods. Every day off was spent by a fire with my three sandwiches and a book. And that was kind of an unhappy practice period. Yeah, so... That was my first practice period. I never went for a walk. I think, oh, I went to Suzuki Roshi Memorial. So I really entreat you and implore you to walk. And actually, we do have in the schedule exercise. So exercise can be either yoga or walking or something else that you check out with yoga.

[43:42]

practice leader, me or the tanto, what will your exercise be? So everyone, exercise bath isn't just a super long bath. Exercise is part of the schedule and this is one way of taking good care of yourself and taking good care of others. When we are moving and exercising and stretching and so forth, we are more alive and more aware, and it also works with our emotional life and depression, all sorts of things, as well as, you know, heart and... That silence without our heating system is so lovely. So, yes, exercise is in the schedule, and it's always been in the schedule. In the Buddhist time, there was walking meditation as part of their practice. So, but please avail yourselves of these mountains and waters.

[44:51]

And then come back and report, you know, maybe in poetry. We'll see how we'll include that in our classes. So reading, reciting, memorizing, writing out, and together... My understanding of this fascicle, this Sutra of Mountains and Water Sutra, is that it is pure wisdom and compassion in these word packages that we will unfold and receive together. It's none other than Dogen's compassion in teaching us and helping us wake up. Also, so the Mountains and Water Sutra, and then working with posture and zazen, and we'll be having yoga classes that will be led by the shuso-to-be, which we'll be talking about after she enters.

[46:04]

So I really encourage everyone who would like to to participate in yoga. And then I think the last emphasis is, it's not even an emphasis, it's what I understand as our practice period and which you understand too, is following the schedule completely. And the following of the forms and the schedule and the shingi all are skillful means to work with our own karmic consciousness and to awaken to our... our shared reality of our life together. And we can't just do that with some intellectual way. We have to do it through working with our tendencies, our propensities, our habits of mind, our karma. And that will come up very strongly in relationship to the guidelines and the forms.

[47:13]

That's where we... That's where the rubber meets the road. That's where we'll be able to really see what it is we're clinging to. So these are not, as I've said, ways of crowd control or some kind of disciplined, fancy way of making people do things all together, like synchronized swimming, which is very beautiful. The shingi, this is to help us to wake up in the most intimate and refined way. And if it's not that, then we might as well pack it up and head on down the road. So this is something else I have full confidence in. how our own karmic tendencies and ways of greed, hate, delusion mind meet peaceful abiding, the yango.

[48:26]

So I wanted to end with a poem from Rilke and I'll be bringing poetry about mountains and waters and rivers which many, many people have written about. But this one, someone sent me. And it has the word God in there. This is Rilke. And, you know, some, you know, however you understand that, or Buddha nature, or, you know, the inconceivable nature of all being, whatever you want to put there, but Rilke uses God. When gold is in the mountain and we've ravaged the depths till we've given up digging, it will be brought forth into day by the river that mines the intense — excuse me, I don't have my glasses — that mines the silence

[49:36]

silences of stone even when we don't desire it God is ripening I'll read it again when gold is in the mountain and we've ravaged the depths till we've given up digging it will be brought forth in today by the river that minds the silences of stone even when we don't desire it God is ripening. So there's gold in the mountain and you know we try and try and dig and make effort until at some point we have to just we can't do it that way anymore the way we've always done it. And we give up digging in that way, trying to get something.

[50:45]

And then we might find, we will find, it will be brought forth in today by the river that mines the silences of stone, this ongoing flowing water of life. And even if we don't desire it, ripening happens. God is ripening. The reality of being is ripening. We are ripening. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[52:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.92