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, everybody. Welcome. So, wow, I see someone who's come from Hawaii to be here today. And I see people who have come from upstairs or the rooms over here to be here today. And several people are at their computers watching and Marcus is helping make that happen today. And I look forward to questions and comments or feedback from anybody who's listening to this talk, okay? Today, as I was coming, to give the talk.

[01:02]

I took a shower because it's always good to prepare and purify oneself for the talk. But when I exited the shower, I couldn't find my glasses. And I realized that I needed my glasses to find my glasses. And without my glasses, I wouldn't be able to read or who knows, see you or whatever. And then I went to, I did find them. They were right where I had put them, of course. And then I went to put on my black robe, and it tore straight down from the shoulder all the way down to the waist. And then I thought, oh no. And so I found something else to wear. And then I went to find my kotsu, or the Zen stick that denotes the authority to speak, whether it's given by the temple or whether it's given by your teacher at Dharma Transmission.

[02:07]

And I realized that it had gotten stolen in a restaurant along with a large check for a workshop I taught. And I... was able to stop payment on the check and get a new one, but alas, I wasn't able to get that one. So I brought this one, which I believe you might have made, Leanne. Yeah, this is the one that you made. So thank you. So today's lecture has been just this way so far. And so I was reflecting on messing up on mistakes, on the imperfection or kind of inclined facets of life and how that side of life and the perfection of practice go together.

[03:14]

So... And that is part of what we've been studying here this practice period for the last several weeks. Abbott Ed has been leading a practice period themed on a wonderful poem from the 700s called The Merging of Difference and Equality, or The Harmony of Unity and Difference. And it's one of the core teachings of our school. Actually, this poem used to be a secret poem that was given to people on Dharma transmission. But print and the internet have changed that. It was even beginning to be not secret before we had media. It's been not secret for probably a thousand years when all the Zen monks who had received it And the ones who hadn't started getting in touch with each other saying, did you get it already?

[04:17]

I don't know, did you get it? I don't know. Yeah, I got it. You didn't get it. Well, here it is. So this is human life. And how do we blend that with the ideal, the radiance, the perfection of what we're aiming at in practice? So today I want to approach the subject of the merging of difference and equality through a series of stories and teachings given by other people, but the way of blending them is mine. So there will be some reading and some reflection in this talk. Maybe the very first place we meet difference is in our own bodies. And so, you know, everybody comes here thinking, oh, this is a silent place, and I should sit still for the whole 40 minutes of lecture.

[05:22]

Now, how many people in this lecture hall have ever experienced a physical problem that you're still feeling the results of today? Okay, you are not alone. Okay, did you notice how many hands went up? So what I want you to do today is to suspend your disbelief about being bad and about making mistakes. And just for today, think that maybe when you feel a pain that might be related to an actual condition that you have, that it might be a good idea to honor that by taking care of it. It doesn't mean flailing about. The whole direction of the 40 minutes or so of lecture needs to be towards concentration. But in the context of concentration, it's possible to include what's happening in your body right now.

[06:33]

So for instance, sitting on a chair. is all right, and you might be thinking, oh no, I should have sat on a chair, but I sat on a cushion instead. You might be thinking that, or I shouldn't have sat on a chair, I should have sat on a cushion. It doesn't matter. The place that you're in now is the place that we're going to be together for the next 40 minutes. So in whatever context you've established, in whatever form you've established, it's possible to take care of yourself. So if you need to lift your knees up for a minute to rest them or to adjust your weight on the seat of the chair so that you can feel what it is to sit upright from your buttock bones to the crown of your head, just do it. Do it in a way that honors the direction of this time that we're spending together. And you will be receiving an apprenticeship

[07:37]

in the harmony of difference and unity. The unity is the unity in this room. The difference is whatever differences you're bringing. And the apprenticeship is both of those when taken as a whole. Because this is not a practice that can be realized through print. This is a practice that's realized by us. together. So that's the preface. It's interesting, I'm going to talk about the subject without quoting the poem too much, if that's okay with you. But I do want to say that if you want to read about the poem that's reflected in this talk, I highly recommend a book by my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman, and my Dharma brother, Michael Wenger.

[08:55]

Okay? And that book is branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. Isn't that the name of the book? Yeah, thanks. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. And it's a commentary on the verses of the Sandokai that's based on 12 lectures that Suzuki Roshi gave at Tassahara after he already knew that he was gravely ill. And so... he realized that this was an important subject that he wanted to transmit to all of us. And so he gave those talks, which were somewhat different. It's more of a vertical transmission than Zen Mind Beginner's Mind talks, which were more of a horizontal transmission. So both are necessary as part of practice. The verticality of it means that he was trying to be true to the tradition that he had received from his teacher.

[09:58]

And so he was trying to say what the meaning of those words were because the poem is by one of our ancestors, Sekito Kisen. And it's an important poem. As Michael points out, that this poem is chanted every day in Soto Zen temples around the world. And it's chanted during almost every memorial service for the founder of a temple because it's one of the core teachings of the school. And the poem often follows a pattern, he says, of distinguishing first discontinuity, then continuity, and finally complementarity. So he notices that the poem forms kind of a dialectic. And this is what we often do with difference when we want to integrate it. We often find one side, then we find the other side. And then we find a view that includes both one side and the other side.

[11:04]

So let's say we're having an argument that we haven't been able to resolve with someone. We would want to thoroughly listen to one side. and thoroughly listen to the other side. And then we would want to develop a worldview that included the concerns of both sides. And that solution, it would not be a compromise. It would actually be a union of what we had heard. And so, however, I don't really think that that's the message of this poem, the Sandokai, or of the teaching, although it's a very important teaching about harmony in the relative world. Now, how did I come to that conclusion? Well, I hope it's okay if I read one of the questions that inspired this talk, and I'll tell you.

[12:05]

So it was one of the teachers had asked their students if they had questions about the Sandokai. which I might address in this talk. And someone said, as you can see from above, so I don't have their permission to say what was above, although it will inform this talk, but this is a general statement that they made, so I feel okay about divulging this. The person said, as you can see from above, My key takeaway from this practice period will be the interconnectedness and interdependency of opposites. It is debatable whether that's what the Sandokai was about. So I was wondering, well, is that what the Sandokai is about or is it not? Is that what the merging of difference and unity in our school is about or isn't it?

[13:06]

What's the truth here? So first I went to Suzuki Roshi's very accessible teachings in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And I want to paraphrase one of the chapters there, which is called No Dualism. You can find this. He's talking about what to do when you're sitting, what to do with the differences you feel in your body. And a lot of people have heard that In zazen, we're supposed to stop our mind. And so we sit in zazen trying to stop our thoughts. But Suzuki Roshi responds, To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind pervades your whole body. Your mind follows your breathing. With your full mind, you form the mudra in your hands.

[14:08]

With your whole mind, you sit with painful legs without being disturbed by them. So to find your own way under some restriction is the way of practice. Okay, so he says, you can do everything, whether it's good or bad, without disturbance, without being annoyed by your feeling. Know that your life is short and enjoy it moment after moment. Welcome everything. there is no gain. So that's the paraphrase of that chapter. So it means that we don't ignore that we have thoughts or differences that come up. Thoughts come from difference. They come from a difference between what's being thought of and what's not being thought of. And so what's being thought of is conditioned by what's not being thought of. And that interdependence, is the union of equality and difference.

[15:14]

More about that later. But when we sit, what actually happens, when he said mudra, what it means is the whole posture is called a mudra, and it's a mudra of awakening. So in this posture, you put your legs into a stable position. You adjust your weight so it's equal on your buttock bones, and then you sit up tall. And the sense of height is the axis around which all the pieces of the body are organized. And it's a tall axis. It's a wide axis as well. So there's an openness of experience that includes everything that comes up in that period of time in which you're sitting. But it's also a deep axis that includes your entire breath. And as a matter of fact, one of my teachers for a long time states that where there is breath, there is consciousness.

[16:24]

And where there is no breath, there is no consciousness. And that's BKS Iyengar, who taught me the yogic form of sitting. And so the mudra is the whole posture that includes all of consciousness, not just thoughts or no thoughts. And then there's a hand mudra in which you place your right hand, palm up, and then you put your left hand with the two joints of the middle finger on top of the same two joints of the right hand. You lightly touch your thumb tips together. And then with the circle of the mudra, which is interesting because the circles, not your hands, but with the circle of the mudra, you find a place, some place between your belly button and your pubic bone that has more energy or life. And you encircle that place with your hands and you firmly put the little finger to your belly.

[17:31]

And so when you sit, You're kind of a semaphore for that energy that comes from everywhere into this moment and back again through you. So that's called a mudra. And this is called the cosmic mudra because everything and you come together in this shape. So you create a body that's tall enough to be upright when meeting this, wide enough. to accept it and deep enough to meet it. So Zazen is an emotional practice that includes all moments and all responses equally. You make the safe framework with body and mind. So I want to now talk about some of the things that can happen in a period of zazen.

[18:37]

So when one comes face to face with one's own pain and difference and accepts it with an upright, open and deep body and mind, it can be transformative even of generations or thousands of years of pain and suffering. It's actually one of the most radical peace practices that we can do because peace starts right here. So I want to read from the book of someone I know very well, and that's Zenju Earthlin Manuel. She wrote a book called The Way of Tenderness. And I want to read about one of the Zazen experiences that inspired her all the way back through beginningless time and all the way out through every situation she might meet.

[19:41]

So this is a story from her book, The Way of Tenderness. And you can find it in the chapter called Tracking the Footprints of Invisible Monsters. So here it goes. So get comfortable, get ready. Sit up tall, wide, deep, and let's see what happens in this story. Which I picked because it's not about her. It's about everyone. But it's also about something very specific and profound. We must come through the fire of our lives to experience awakening. So, Zenju's full name is Ekai Zenju, the wisdom ocean, complete tenderness. And I helped Zenke Roshi, Zenju's teacher, to give her that name.

[20:47]

So Zenju, of course, was wondering, well, what does that name mean? And she realized that... She wasn't tender. She had been hardened by being targeted for race hatred when she was growing up. And she lived with the constant pain of that experience. So then she talked about how when she came here and other places to study Zen, that her mostly white teachers talked in ways that... were a little bit disturbing for her or fundamentally disturbing for her because they seem to ignore or discount or minimize the importance of self. So she says, although my teachers taught us the absolute truths of Zen practice, they seem to negate identity without considering the implications that identity can have for oppressed groups of people.

[21:56]

The critique of identity overlooks the emotional, empowering, and positive effects of identity on those who are socially and politically objectified. My own powerful sense of identity, of connection with my ancestors, she says, developed in the civil rights and pan-African movements of the 70s, and it came through identifying with black people. Dogen Zenji, said, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. In order to forget the self, we must study it. We must look at the identities that the self is emotionally attached to. This is a lifelong practice. So to do this, Zenju was sitting in a seven-day seshin. Seven-day seshin is a time when we gather our whole differentiated life. and explore the deeper meaning of it through sitting in the midst of it.

[23:02]

And we're about to start a seven-day Sashin called Rohatsu Sashin tonight. And it commemorates the sitting of Buddha when he became enlightened. And his enlightenment can be paraphrased. I now see that all beings from the very first are fully endowed with the virtuous characteristics of the fully enlightened ones. But because of their habits and preconceptions, they do not realize it. So Zenju was sitting in our story so far. And she was trying to do this, to look at the identities that she was emotionally attached to, and to understand what they were, and to do this she picked the practice of when a thought came up, she would find what it was attached to, and she would say goodbye.

[24:05]

She would actually bid that goodbye. And then, and she thought, she was trying to say goodbye to everything that she could say, do, or be. But then, an image of her deceased mother came up. And Zenju says, It was as if she had come to silently sit with me. I could not tell her to leave. I immediately began to cry. In that moment, I couldn't tell the reason for the tears. It was an upsurge of old pain harbored from the time of our difficult relationship. I was not like them. I was a volcano.

[25:23]

waiting to erupt. I recognized in that moment that old wounds had kept me from fully engaging with folks my entire life. I could be polite or kind to others, but I was afraid to experience the wounded tenderness that would have eventually opened into a complete and liberated tenderness. I was unwilling to allow others completely into my heart. I cried more as the room seemed to darken, and I fused with that darkness. We were all in the dark. In the darkness, I was part of everyone and everything, whether I accepted it or not. Everyone else in the room was as invisible as I was. I am invisible, I whispered to myself. In the dark, I recognized life without all of the things we impose upon it and upon each other.

[26:26]

As I continued to breathe, I felt a warm breeze near my face, but it was cold and raining outside, and there were no open windows or doors. I thought perhaps it was the spirit of my mother, and then I thought, no. Perhaps this is how complete tenderness feels when it arrives. Having sloughed off, rage. When I turned towards the hurt in the silence, I entered a kind of tenderness that was not sore, not wounded, but rather powerfully present. I sat up straight. The silence had tilled hard ground into soft soil. And then I dare to say it, I was completely tender. So that was her name, her path. To ease below the surface of my embodiment, my face, my flesh, my skin, my name.

[27:31]

I needed to first see it reflected back at me. I had to look at it long enough to see the soft patches, the openings, the soft, tender ground. So she continues to talk about the value. of understanding and appreciating our difference as it is. So this was a peak experience that Zenju writes about in her book. And everybody's is different. Everybody's is what it is. But hers included all the pain of the differences that society imposes. And I want to read someone else's take on union in diversity while being black. And this is W.E.B. Dubois. This is from a lecture that he gave in June 1926, which was published in a volume called The Crisis, that came about after the NAACP annual conference

[28:48]

in June 1926. So it was simultaneous, it was like my grandparents' generation. So that places it for me in my mind. So he's talking about a journey that minoritized people take in this country. He said, You and I have been breasting hills. We have been climbing upward. There has been progress and we can see it day by day, looking back along blood-filled paths. When gradually the vista widens and you begin to see the world at your feet and at the far horizon, then it is time to know more precisely whether you are going and what you really want. What do we want? What is the thing we are after?

[29:50]

We want to be Americans, full-fledged Americans, with all the rights of other American citizens. But is that all? Do we want simply to be Americans? We who are dark can see America in a way that white Americans cannot. And seeing our country thus, are we satisfied with its present goals and ideals? So this is what I think of as relative conversation. But then he takes a right angle turn. If you suddenly should become full-fledged Americans, if your color faded or the color line here in Chicago was miraculously forgotten, suppose to you became at the same time rich and powerful, what is it that you would want? what you immediately seek. Would you buy the most powerful motor car?

[30:54]

Would you buy the most elaborate estate? Would you wear the most striking clothes, give the richest dinners, and buy the longest press notices? Even as you visualize such ideals, you know in your heart that these are not the things that you really want. You realize this sooner than the average white American, because pushed aside, as we have been in America, there has come to us not only a certain distaste for the tawdry and flamboyant, but a vision of what the world could be if it were really a beautiful world, if we had the true spirit, if we had the seeing eye, the cunning hand, the feeling heart. If we had, to be sure, not perfect happiness, but plenty of good hard work, the inevitable suffering that always comes with life, sacrifice, waiting, all that, but nevertheless lived in a world where, he said men, men know, where men create, where they realize themselves and where they enjoy life.

[32:11]

It is that sort of a world we want to create for ourselves and for all of America. And this is actually a conversation about art that he was having. So he goes on to the ideal of art. Who shall describe beauty? Its variety is infinite. Its possibility is endless. In normal life, all may have it and have it yet again. The world is full, and yet today the mass of human beings are choked away from it and their lives distorted and made ugly. This is not only wrong, it is silly. Who shall right this well-nigh universal failing? Who shall let this world be beautiful? Who shall restore to men the glory of sunsets and the peace of quiet sleep? Okay, so now we're getting a little bit closer to to what the beauty of human life is.

[33:16]

Why we should study the merging of difference and equality, the harmony of sameness and variety. Why should we study that? What is our motivation? What are we after? What do we really want? Or as Suzuki Roshi says, what is our inmost request? which we all sit in a row as different people wearing and doing the same thing, our differences are what comes to light. And through those gates, we can realize oneness and do something like this lecture or like a seven-day retreat together. Now, how am I doing on time? Does anyone tell me, Diego? 1053, okay. So I'm reading about 50 times more than I usually read in a lecture.

[34:18]

I hope it's okay with you. But I feel like it's important to hear a variety of voices and not just me as some sort of weird authority figure who knows more. Everyone in this room carries an equal share of awakening. This is a tradition of how to understand and express it. And it's not a tradition of just being good. It's a tradition of entering the gates that our life opens for us, but which we usually turn away from. And that is the harmony in equality, that simple practice of turning towards the what would otherwise be suffering and going right through that gate. Sojin, Mel Weitzman, my teacher, wrote in the introduction to the Branching Streams book about how Suzuki Roshi was when he gave these lectures.

[35:32]

And around that time, There was a wonderful photo taken of him that I wish you could see, but I'll have to paint a picture of it in your mind. So in the photo, Suzuki Roshi is standing at Tassahara right before you go up to the Zendo. And at that time, the Zendo... That was not the Zendo we have now, but right between the kitchen... right close to the kitchen, there was a Han that said the verse that's printed on the Han or the wooden symbol, the signal system that we use to announce Sazen. And so it makes a very firm sound. It's deeper than that, but it's kind of that kind of sound like, pay attention. Okay, and the verse that's... painted on it and on his it was painted in Japanese.

[36:37]

On ours it's in English. It's birth and death or living and dying is the most important thing. Everything passes. Nothing stays. Awake, awake each one or each kind. Don't waste this life. So in front of that Suzuki Roshi is standing. So he's in front of the Han, turned sideways. And who he's facing is a boy who's about, Suzuki Roshi was about, oh, I don't know, no more than, certainly no more than five feet tall. And the little boy is like this on him. And the boy is going, ha, ha, ha, like that. And so... And it's clearly in response to something they're talking about or something the boy is trying to show him. The boy is actually Kelly Chadwick, who grew up... Kelly is David Chadwick's son.

[37:38]

David was one of Suzuki Roshi's students. And Kelly grew up to be this great human being. And I think it's because he was seen that way when he was a kid. And so the thing that's remarkable about the photo is Suzuki Roshi is standing completely straight, completely open, completely easy, completely listening, completely responsive, and Kelly is growing up in the photo right in front of Suzuki Roshi because he's being seen that way. I won't tell Kelly stories because they're private, but just... Anyway, just being looked at that way even once in one's life is amazing. And what would it be like to look at yourself in that way, moment after moment? And this was Suzuki Roshi. This was, I think that what's in the photo is the most important teaching that Suzuki Roshi ever gave about difference and equality.

[38:47]

So from the point of view of complete uprightness, to be able to receive all of who another human being and who this Sangha of young people were. So this is Mel writing about Suzuki Roshi and Mel was Suzuki Roshi's attendant at that time. So the job that you're doing now, Benjamin, is what Mel was doing. And you notice that Benjamin... when I was trying to bow and I have various disabilities, Benjamin just put out his hand. He was there for me. And that's part of the transmission or the teaching. He didn't ignore the form. He helped me do it. See what I mean? So Mel was that for Suzuki Roshi at that time. And he writes, although there was much to be done, Suzuki Roshi was never in a hurry. He was centered both in balance and in time.

[39:48]

He always gave me the feeling that he was completely within the activity of the moment. He would take the time to do everything thoroughly, and one day he showed me how to wash a kimono. He was inching around the entire perimeter using the part held in one hand to scrub the part held in the other until the whole thing was finished. And so he was talking about how these talks were received, what Tassahara Monastery was like while Suzuki Roshi was giving these talks. So I think in part that was the impact of this teaching of the harmony of difference and equality. Mel writes, in 1969, while Suzuki Roshi was... giving these lectures, there was a wonderful feeling of pioneering. Zen was sitting meditation, but it was also serving and work. The combination gave the practice a feeling of wholesomeness.

[40:53]

We were in the mountains building this monastery with our bare hands. We felt gratitude towards this place, towards each other, and towards our teacher, as well as towards all people who were supporting our effort. We felt we were doing something for others, not just for ourselves. Anyway, there's so much more I could talk about in relation to this, but it's 11 o'clock and I should close, but I want to close with another story, which is not a story, it's an American poet, poem. by a white American man of the last century, Robert Frost. This is a poem I memorized in junior high school and there was a modern version of it set to music which I sang with a group of people that went around singing in different places.

[42:05]

And so I remembered that poem, and it seems to talk about the differences, the light of seeing, the dark of undifferentiated life, and how we can use it in our lives. So this, I hope I can remember it. This is a poem about the star. O star, the fairest one in sight, We ask your loftiness the right to some uncertainty of cloud. It will not do to say of night since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud but to be holy test turn and your resolve is not allowed. Say something to us we can learn by heart and when alone repeat. Say something. And it says, I burn.

[43:09]

But say with what degree of heat. Talk Fahrenheit, talk centigrade. Use language we can comprehend. It gives us strangely little aid, but does say something in the end. And softly, as Keats' Eremite, not ever stooping from its lofty sphere. It asks of us a little here. It asks of us a certain height. So when at times the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far, we may choose something like a star to stay our minds on and be stayed. Thank you very much.

[44:35]

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