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 by people like you. Ahoy! Avast ye Bodhisattvas! I took some time this afternoon to check my emails and someone sent me an email that said today is international talk like a pirate day and I learned that ahoy means listen up And avast means pay attention.

[01:04]

And I thought, well, bodhisattvas, also there's a term bilge rat. And bilge is the bottom of the boat. And so the rats in the bottom of the boat would be actually referred to the lowest level of the pirates, the bilge rats. And I thought, actually, Our bodhisattva vows would include being willing to be a bilgerat. We have Jizo Bodhisattva in the zendo, at the far end of the zendo. And Jizo Bodhisattva is holding a staff with six rings. And the six rings refer to six realms of beings in Buddhist kind of conception of various states of beings.

[02:11]

And so many of you know those refer to the humans and the gods and the assurers or the titans or fierce, say, guardian spirits in the upper realms and in the lower realms are the animals and the hungry ghosts are unsatisfied spirits and the beings who live in hell and live in a hell realm and Jizo Bodhisattva's vow is to include all those beings be willing to be present with all those beings and not leave the path of the bodhisattva and arrive at full Buddhahood until the last hell being matures and becomes who they really are.

[03:25]

So I thought, okay. Even being willing to be present with someone who's barbaric, like a pirate, with some lightness, carry on a conversation with pirates, learn pirate language. It was part of Jesus Bodhisattva's vow. So I see that's actually the expression of how to live your true life. How to live your true life is being willing to be wherever you are, being willing to be present with whoever shows up in front of you and whoever shows up within you, your own bilge rats of the mind.

[04:29]

Someone this morning said they had woke up thinking about the, having dark thoughts about the, say, the deconstruction of postmodern culture, postmodern society. I thought, well, why not have luminous thoughts about the deconstruction of postmodern society? what is it that you depend on? So, I thought I would reflect a little bit this evening just rather casually here in our casual Wheelwright Center setting. Zen Center and Green Gulch and my own time here as Abbot for seven months.

[05:36]

I came in the winter, and it's almost fall. And in fact, we're going to do the ceremony tomorrow, is that right? Yes. For the fall equinox. Yes. Which actually happens on Sunday this year. but we're going to celebrate it tomorrow. So be ready with your autumn words. And actually I had some autumn words from, autumn words from Mary Oliver. The trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment.

[06:51]

The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds. And every pond no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this. The fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know To live in this world, you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal. To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

[07:56]

Everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this. The fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. Ah, the black river of loss. Are you willing to cross it? You might think you can take something with you we have the word paramita. Paramita means crossing over, and it's crossing over to the other side, moving from the life of this delusion, the life where we think we know what's going on, and that we can have some security by holding onto what we know.

[09:07]

So this is actually time, every moment, every moment we have this chance to, as she says, enter the fire and cross this river of loss, which means actually being willing to experience loss every moment, to actually grieve what you think you have, and even to grieve what you think you might have or could have. It's actually quite interesting, isn't it, that we are often grieving what we never even had, grieving the loss of what we never even had. I've been here seven months now, and during that time I've been learning some of the local customs.

[10:22]

There are some things that we talk about and some things that we don't talk about. We had a big meeting here last week or the week before, talking about that we never talk about sexuality and relationship in a certain way and intimacy. And I wonder, I think actually that meeting may have just reminded us it's good to sometimes talk. because it helps us acknowledge actually what are those realms that we carry inside us. What part of you is living, say, in a hell realm? What part of you is suffering excruciating pain that you may not even quite know yourself?

[11:36]

I find that Zen practice continues to deepen week after week and year after year. And there are layers of pain, say, inside myself that I'm still discovering. And I'm happier now discovering. I used to be more afraid of discovering the pain pain inside myself or the unpleasant you know the anger but I have discovered that actually all those realms that exist are say workable they already exist, why not wake up to them?

[12:45]

So I wanna be careful, you know, we're working on doing some planning here. We're planning how to actually, we say, restore, one of the words we've been using is restore. Green Gulch, restore the creek. We've been having a theme of, say, social awareness, but I think a very local form of social awareness is how to take care of the immediate environment. Do we need a plan to take care of the immediate environment? I think it's really good to have a plan and at the same time not to be attached to it. It's pretty tricky actually.

[13:56]

We're putting a lot of time and energy. Someone said at the board meeting we had yesterday, that they estimated we put 10,000 hours of our best attentive effort into the vision for Green Gulch, which is a kind of conceptual plan and a program plan, which is turning Zen Center as a whole more towards an idea of training. that is not, say, dwelling on the idea that we know what Zen Center is, and that we can come here and, say, have some sanctuary here forever, but that actually we would come to Zen Center for a period of time, and during that time we would find out how to, with confidence in our own deep nature, re-enter,

[15:08]

and help the healing of the world. And I notice there's a tendency when we make a plan to believe it. It's a challenge of our practice to put complete effort into something without attachment to the results. I've been training and letting go of plans for years. As some of you know, I had a business of landscape design, and I was just remembering one of the times I learned about planning was I'd been meeting with this couple in San Rafael for weeks and weeks and we were working on their plan and we agreed on the plan and then I had a crew that was to come in and start tearing up what was there and putting in something new and so we had trucks and materials and we arrived and it was kind of quiet, the house was kind of quiet and the

[16:34]

But the fellow came out and he said, there's a problem. I said, oh. He said, we're getting a divorce. So I had to explain to all the people that I'd organized that, oh. I guess we're not going to do this job after all. And then I had to go out and look for work. I had planned for a couple of months to be working on that job. And it really taught me a lesson that the planning is planning, but what happens one day is not necessarily what happens the next day. You always have to be ready to be flexible and to learn something new.

[17:39]

So in that case I learned that sometimes planning a big project can drive people to divorce. And also I learned that I really didn't like the feeling. of being all set to do something and then have it taken away. I learned that I really had a tendency to get caught on that, to be attached to that. Having a good project to do is almost like enlightenment. It's all bright and shiny and you know what you're going to do. Some of you had that experience. I just saw Mick come in a little while ago and we... Where are you, Mick? Ah, there you are.

[18:40]

We had that experience with the bakery a bit, right? And now we got the approval. I heard drums beating. So we should do three cheers for the bakery, right? Okay, hip hip. Hip, hip. So every once in a while, something we plan, you know, actually works. If you're willing to wait. And persist. And stay in relationship with all of the causes and conditions, you know. A very simple idea of karma is that you have a seed, like a pumpkin seed, and you plant it, and then the result is the pumpkin. But it's also said that you need fertilizer, or you need soil, and you need water, and you need sunlight, and time, and the soil with all the nutrients that it has.

[20:01]

And then some people say you also need the gardener, the farmer. The best shadow is the, the best fertilizer is the farmer's shadow, it's someone paying attention. So we had this meeting of the board of directors San Francisco board of directors met all day at Green's yesterday, Green's restaurant. Who in this room was there? Arlene was there. I guess that's the only other board member here. And we acknowledge that this is actually something new, that Zen Center is at a level of planning, and getting ready to do a major fundraising campaign that we've never done in our, say, 40 years of history.

[21:11]

We haven't done this before. And President Robert Thomas began by reminding us of a Gary Larson cartoon, which is, you can picture, if you know Gary Larson, a very simple drawing with a line across, which is a tight rope, strung between two buildings across the street, high wire. And there's this little dog on the high wire, a little tutu, and a balance beam. And the thought bubbles are going up above the little dog's head. And it says, I'm an old dog. And this is a new trick. So we feel a little bit like that. So how to recognize that all the plans in the future are actually this moment.

[22:24]

There actually isn't some other future. is this moment. And not be too tense about it. I had a carpentry teacher. We built a couple of houses together. So walking the joists, or walking the beams, when you're framing, It can be kind of scary. It's kind of like the dog on the tightrope. You're out there and you're carrying lumber and you're carrying your tools. Some of you may have had that experience. But anyway, he said, he always reminded me, he said, just relax your ankles, which is really beautiful.

[23:29]

Just relax your ankles. Really bringing your awareness down. Not thinking up here, okay. If you think, then you're up here losing your balance. But if you just think, relax your ankles, that actually brings your awareness down. And it's amazing. Then it's just one step, another step, another step. Sometimes you're walking the edge of a two by 12 or something, and it's an inch and a half wide, but it actually is wide enough. So Zen Center's a little bit like that, feeling okay, we're on the edge of something that's new to us, and we're not sure how it's gonna go. And it'll go best if we relax our ankles.

[24:30]

By that I mean if we continue our practice, if we actually just sit down each day and establish again our confidence in Zazen, our confidence in everything that supports us, our true nature. So as Mary Oliver is saying, To love what is mortal. The first thing. Love what is mortal. Which means to actually be willing to connect with what is transient. To accept what is impermanent just as it is. Not try to make something absolute out of it. your enlightenment experience is impermanent.

[25:33]

If you hold onto it, you destroy it. You really realize that it's impermanent. So again and again, how to create awakening. Every time you sit down, every time you take a breath, you're actually learning again, you're reenacting Buddha's enlightenment. Whether it feels like it, it doesn't have to feel like anything special. Each time you're willing to be aware of your actual experience. So she says, and hold it against your bones, right? Knowing that your own life depends on it means knowing that there's no other life. That your life actually exists in this moment of your experience, not some other life.

[26:44]

So the plan that we think we're gonna do is actually this life. And we hold it and we let it go. So the third thing she says is let it go. There's a lot of wisdom in this epiphany, this autumn epiphany of Mary Oliver's. I'd say it just begins to touch the beginning of our practice of Bodhidharma's Zen, of Suzuki Roshi's Zen, of what is really meant by beginner's mind. that is bringing your entire capacity for compassion and awareness to whatever it is, not picking and choosing, not wishing that, oh, you had something else.

[27:48]

And when you've noticed yourself wishing you had something else, to accept that too. And when you notice that you're angry to hold that until you understand it clearly, investigate and let it go. So I'm very interested in how we actually conduct ourselves with this, I think we have with this whole process. Because it means that we can actually take good care of ourselves while we take good care of the environment. And I think if we can take good care of the environment here, we can help other people on the planet take good care of the environment wherever they are. This is something that I hope is contagious.

[28:56]

Because there is so much suffering. And it all comes from our tangled up karma. When Buddha was beginning to teach, there's a legend of the mythic god who came and said, you know, there is an inner tangle and an outer tangle. Who untangles the tangle? And... Chakyamuni sat with that. You can't untangle the tangle until you actually see the space in it. So that means being willing to be very close, noticing the tension that you carry in your own body dissolve as you discover that you can actually exist on the tightrope, relaxing your ankles.

[30:15]

Or our technique, which is not really a technique, but it is the realization that with each breath, Even when you're in a state of, say, near panic with a breath, you have this wonderful practice. And so paying attention to the breath and returning your awareness to the breath is something that you can do even in the most extreme circumstances. And if you do it a lot, you'll remember. It'll be second nature. So even if you're under a lot of pressure, or as we say, stressed out, when you're feeling stressed out, if you notice your breath and you realize, well, two things can happen, right? When you let the breath go, two things can happen.

[31:20]

One, another breath will come. And then you can say, oh, surviving. or another breath doesn't come, and then you don't have to worry about it. So that's really the most essential confidence, this practice under the circumstances of a lot of pressure. So we have a chance, we have a wonderful environment here. I had tea with some of the farm people this week, farm apprentices, farm workers, and people were saying very appreciative things about Green Gulch, that it's actually a unique and wonderful place to be here, that it actually is transformative.

[32:25]

It can actually transform I've heard people say that this practice saved them, saved their lives. And I've heard that enough and experienced it enough myself to know this is really a great value. So this place, cultivating a place to take care of that is worth having a plan for. And it requires then the recognition of that over and over and some confidence that the right thing will happen if we are careful and respectful. Something good will come of it. And then we have patience because

[33:32]

we're working with karmic conditions in this tangle that have been set up in the distant past. For us to turn it around is immense, actually. Immense project. So, you know, post-modern Western civilization has tremendous inertia. And we don't know, we actually don't know how things will play out. All we know is that we can, moment by moment, choose to awaken or choose to, say, shrink. shrink either into, say, a state of aversion or a state of desire or a state of confusion.

[34:45]

And we know we have those tendencies, and as we investigate that, it becomes clearer and clearer that we have a choice to wake up. And waking up then, we realize that We're all completely connected. We're all in it together. We're all in it with this Douglas fir tree turned into a table. We're in it with the Niels Holm. Niels Holm built these tables, 1972. And I can say that we used to have oryoki breakfast over in what's now the library on these tables. And as I say it now, that means that that's happening, that happens right now. This whole Green Gulch Valley is beautiful as it is still, it's say in a degraded state.

[36:02]

We know that for decades here, people have done things that they thought were the right thing, but actually were not so respectful of the environment. Spraying 2,4-D on the hillsides with a helicopter at one time seemed like a good idea. So we know a little bit better now but we have to accept that we don't know how things will actually play out. So it's pretty difficult actually to do what Mary Oliver says, to actually love all this, to love that we don't know.

[37:08]

take care of each other each day knowing that we don't know. And each day thinking that we know and each day learning something and then letting it go. All we can do is the best moment. I'm going to be going to Tassajara next week, and I won't see much of Green Gults for the next few months. So I really appreciate people who are here for work week.

[38:15]

Thank you for coming to help. take care of Green Gulch and I'll let Green Gulch help take care of you and those of you who are residents will continue and there'll be many people coming for a practice period here and so I'll be down at Tassajara mostly and will be taking care of Tassajara. There are other people taking care of City Center. And what we're learning is that all the people who pass through Green Gulch or City Center or Tassajara are part of our wider Sangha. So once you've been here a little bit and have some taste, you're indelibly marked. And wherever you go, you carry some connection.

[39:19]

And it's one of the tendencies of Zen people, I think, a kind of a misunderstanding, is to turn inward and [...] then not recognize all the relationships that support you to turn inward. So it's important to remember also that we get up and greet guests, and wherever you go, you're actually carrying the actual practice of awakening with you, and that will help the people you meet wherever you go. It'll help because you will actually have a more realistic connection with them if you don't panic. If you don't tighten up.

[40:25]

If you remember to relax your ankles and remember your breath. Remember to make friends with your own six realms inside yourself. Remember to make friends with your own bilge rats. That'll actually help. I think it's the only thing that will help the suffering world. And so I'm encouraged by that. I'm encouraged because everything is interconnected. And the beauty that we actually can see in each other can have a kind of a shimmering ripple effect. So we'll see what happens.

[41:32]

I plan to come back here in a few months and see a bunch of happy people. And I'm ready for what really happens. Or I'll be ready then. Okay. Yeah, I thought I would stop at eight o'clock so that people can get a good night's sleep. I know there have been some viruses going around. I think I shook one off yesterday myself. But I want to read Mary Oliver's poem one more time. I didn't say the title, it's called In Blackwater Woods. Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment.

[42:42]

The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away. over the blue shoulders of the ponds. And every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year, everything I ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this. The fires in the black river of loss, whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal. To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. Okay?

[43:46]

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 the practice of giving by offering your financial help. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May all beings be happy.

[44:09]

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