This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Hello. Hi, everybody. Welcome to San Francisco's Zen Center, to City Center. My name is Jordan Thorne. student here, a resident at the Zen Center. I work for the Zen Center, too. About a few days ago, I was in front of this building, walking up the street, going to 340 Page, when Rose, who's the head cook here, she's at Tenzo, came up the sidewalk and we walked together up to 340, where I stopped and she continued.

[01:03]

But when we stopped, as I stopped to turn into the building, she said to me, she said, well, Jordan, what are you going to talk about on Saturday? And I said, I'm going to talk about Buddhism. So I'm stuck. I'm going to talk about Buddhism. And how should I start? That's the next step. First the topic and then the beginning. I guess I've begun. Maybe the beginning has begun. Buddhism is potentially a whole lot of things. A whole lot of teachings and ways of practice. But what I want to start with is saying that I think for everyone that actually I've ever met in my life, I think for everybody that I've ever met, and this includes myself, that there is a benefit to making the effort to understand who we are and to understand how to be with other people.

[02:14]

And to understand how it is that we can be with other people in a way that's helpful to them and to us, to ourselves. There is a Japanese Zen teacher who's connected to the Zen center in the early days, named Katakuri Roshi. And he has a poem called Peaceful Life that has in it a few lines. Knowing how to live, knowing how to walk with people, demonstrating and teaching, this is the Buddha way. And... I'm for sure certain that making this effort to know how to walk with people is not part of the property of Buddhism or Zen. This is a kind of common instinct, common human instinct, healthy human instinct.

[03:24]

But for me... Some of the time, and actually over years and years, lots of the time, for me, Buddhism has been helpful in this effort. It's been a way for me to understand myself. And in understanding myself, knowing helps me to find a way to be with other people. I hope. I try. So, in my personal life, Zen practice, then Buddhist practice has been helpful. So here I am, I'm going to talk about Buddhism. There are many reasons to make this effort to understand ourself. And one amongst the many reasons is that sometimes we're not happy. And happy is kind of like maybe not the right word, but it's code or something.

[04:40]

And I have myself had the experience of when I think that everything is solid and going well, that things don't. I turn a corner and I find that things are shakier than I expected. or the thing that I was counting on actually didn't happen. And then I've had a reaction. Of course, there are drastic examples of how things don't happen according to plan. There are tens of thousands of people in the states who every year die in an auto accident and I think none of them woke up expecting that to come around the corner. But that's a drastic example.

[05:47]

There are many, much, many smaller and more petite moments that can still seem really big to us. Things change. We have the experience of this change sometimes as suffering or pain. And this is the first truth of Buddhism. In some ways, this is the first noble truth of dukkha, impermanence. This is the source spring of so much of what Buddha's teaching and Zen practice is about. beautiful bouquet of flowers like I'm looking at right back there. It sits on a table and in a few days it wilts. Things change. We see with the faculty of our eyes a sunset that is exquisite, but then almost very soon it becomes dark.

[06:55]

The day turns dark. Things are constantly changing. One way we... become familiar with this always changing stuff is in Zen we sit down and stop or we practice something called Zazen or meditation and I say we sit down and stop but one of the things we realize is our life continues the river of our life keeps flowing even when we try to seem to some external observer as though we are motionless and still. Actually, in our heart, we're bubbling. Sometimes it's like a waterfall in our heart. Rasha, I didn't bring a watch. Do you have such a thing? Maybe someone has? Because I want to keep track of time and not bore you excessively.

[08:02]

Just a little bit of boredom. The right amount. The middle way of boredom. You know, one of the things, so we go, we, for some reason or other, have the thought we'd like to meditate, and we go, and we sit down in the zendo and stop. And one of the things that we might notice is how strongly we put ourselves in the middle of everything that happens in this world. We make our whatever modest or heroic effort, and the way we remember this is almost like a small lie. We're the hero of the discussion. We were wronged by someone's review.

[09:08]

We filter the story of our life so that we're in the middle. And I guess, of course, there's sensible reasons for that. But is this the way to live a useful life? I think... One way, and not the way, but one way, is to understand that disappointment is just another form of joy. That disappointment is another way we experience happiness. And to understand that our happiness and our sadness are both things that arise out of causes and conditions. Out of causes and conditions. When we understand, or maybe when we work at understanding, that our present experience in this world, in this life, in our life, arises from conditions, then we also know that we don't have to be a victim.

[10:28]

That we can become, or we can maybe try to be an architect. of our future. And, you know, sometimes we think that we're alone in this journey, in the journey of our life. I want to say we're not. We're doing this together in ways that are mysterious. We're doing this together. Causes and conditions might seem kind of mathematical, like input and output. Create these causes and this thing will follow. But there is something profoundly mysterious about being alive, about the things that have shaped us. I'm going to describe what for me was a mysterious event some years ago.

[11:30]

I was ordained in this room in 1977. I was a kid, relatively. Early 20s. I appreciated the opportunity. I was grateful for it, and also, in some ways, also, I didn't know what I'd gotten myself into. Time passed. I became somewhat... disappointed with myself and with my practice. And I stopped practice. I put it on the back shelf. I moved over to Berkeley, had a family, kids, spent a decade over there. And at a time in 1990, when my life was in transition, I went to Green Gulch Farm to be a guest student. and to talk to Reb about some things.

[12:34]

I was a guest student there. And when I was there as a guest student, which I was really in transition, I didn't know for sure if it made sense after my years away to kind of come back and dive into this. And I really was on a kind of cusp of what was next for me. And on a day off, I went to the Green Apple Books on Clement Street. I went up to the second floor where they have used Buddhist books, browsed around. I didn't just look at the Buddhist books, kind of hung out up there. I was about to go downstairs when, on some whim, I turned around because I had noticed that there was a bulletin board up there on that second floor. And I went over to the bulletin board and looked at it and pinned in the middle of the board was a photograph of me on my ordination day in 1977.

[13:40]

A row of people coming into the room, and I was kind of in the center of that row on the photo. This is one of those, like, Kodak, no instant print thing, you know, the way pictures are printed. Now this was someone's, some printed photo of me, and it was, almost looked new. And it was right underneath a sign that said, all postings must be dated or they'll be removed. So I removed it. And I took it to the front desk. I said, how did this get here? The clerk had no interest in that question. I wasn't buying a book. I don't think he realized that picture was me. And he meets me. And I said, okay. I took that picture with me. I thought, what causes and conditions led me to that instant where that photo was on that bulletin board?

[14:50]

Life is mysterious. And we find encouragement sometimes that's very unexpected. knowing how to live, and knowing how to walk with people. Demonstrating and teaching this is the Buddha way. Understanding how to live our life appropriately is something that in Buddhism, well, there's maybe various words for it, but the word I'm going to use is wisdom, is prajna. And prajna is actually an important word in Zen training, in Zen practice. The meditation hall downstairs and the meditation hall of any Zen center, just about, maybe exceptions, has a statue in the center of it of Manjushri, who is the bodhisattva of wisdom, of prajna.

[16:04]

And iconographically, this statue of... Manjushri nearly always includes this great teacher holding a sword. A sword that cuts through delusions. It's a peacemaking sword. It's not a sword of war. It's a sword that cuts through delusions. And... The sharpness of our intention to practice cuts through a lot of things in our life. It cuts through a lot of stuff that we need to let go of. Instead of maybe being content with a superficial kind of easy understanding of what causes and conditions mean or what we believe and think is true, we might ask ourselves, what do I really understand?

[17:09]

Does any of this make sense? Am I doing the right thing here? Am I fooling myself? In Buddhism, and especially, I think, well, in Buddhism, this great question, this great doubt, asking yourself this question of how am I going along, is important. For practice to be real, it needs to be authentic personal experience, not hearsay, not written words that seem inspiring but that are other than your own knowledge. So in Zen, we, or we might, try to continue to dig deeper and get underneath, get underneath Get underneath. You know, this metaphor, this Vajra sword, this Prajna sword is, of course, something that can slice, but also it has a sharp tip and it can puncture.

[18:26]

And sometimes what happens in practice is that we become punctured in an instant. Puncturing is something that happens like And in that moment of puncturing, it's possible maybe we see through how we've been putting ourselves in the center so much. We see through our ego, which is a complicated word, ego. This puncturing quality is abrupt and immediate, and it catches us by surprise. Usually we might think that being knowledgeable means you have the answers, have an answer. But there's another way of being knowledgeable, which means that you understand how to ask the right question.

[19:32]

Here's a story about a question. It's a story from the Zen archives. Years ago, there was a student in China named... I won't pronounce the Chinese name correctly, but I'll try to be consistent in my mispronunciation. Zhang Yang. He was really smart. At least that's what the record says. He... was versed in the scriptures. He was a student of really one of the most important teachers in the foundation of Zen. He was a student of someone named Bai Cheng. And upon the death of his teacher, he was still a student. He was unripe. And so he began study with Bai Cheng's successor, one of his successors, named Guishan. And this story involves a conversation Guishan and Zhang Yang had.

[20:44]

In a meeting this student of Zen had with his teacher, he was asked a question. The teacher said, I understand that you're known for your intelligence. When you were with our late teacher, you would have ten answers for every question. This shows your intelligence, your ingenuity. Now, this is my question for you. The matter of birth and death is the most fundamental of all. I'm not going to ask you about what's recorded in the scriptures or what can be learned through reading and study. Please tell me about who you were before you were born. before you could distinguish objects? That's a tough question, actually.

[21:51]

And Zhang Yang tried and reflected and took it as a serious request of his teacher. But he wasn't coming forth with an answer. He couldn't kind of wrap his mind around it. Who were you before you were born? And in some ways, I spoke earlier about causes and conditions, causes and conditions. This is a question about... Well, this is a question about causes and conditions and also prior to causes and conditions. Who are we? Finally, with some sense of shame, he went to his teacher and said, I do not know the answer to your question. So respectfully, I ask, could you tell me?

[22:57]

Who was I before I was born? And Grishon, great teacher, really great teacher, a lot of stories about this man that are impressive. Grishon said, I could easily give you an answer. but later you would reproach me if I did so. And then Zhang Yan said, ah, I understand. A painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. A painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. After this, he withdrew from the training temple with the certainty that... Well, I don't know what certainty he had. I do know. The record says he withdrew from the training temple and moved somewhere on the mountain to a hermitage where he led a very simple life.

[24:07]

And it's said that in order to keep himself company, he planted a stand of bamboo. Time passed, and then time passed, and then some more time went by. And one day he was sweeping the ground in front of his modest home. When the broom he was using picked up a pebble that flew in the air and made a little noise when it hit the bamboo. And at the moment of that noise, he was punctured by Prajna's sword tip. He had an experience that was strong.

[25:12]

And he broke out laughing, it said, we're told. He broke out with laughing, and he went into his hut, put on his formal sitting robes, his Buddhist robes, and came out and did bows in the direction of Guishan's temple. And then he wrote a poem about his experience. which he presented to Guishan as a kind of answer to the question. Finally, the answer to that question had been asked years before. And the poems went, One sound dissolves knowledge, Struggle no longer needed, Noble conduct beyond sound and form, No trace anywhere. And he traveled to Guishan, presented this poem, and who... replied to the assembly that this fellow has gone through.

[26:20]

This fellow has gone through. And I'm pretty sure, actually, that that affirmation wasn't about the literary merits of the poem, but it was about the experience that Guishan felt standing in front of Zhang Yung. It was about the way, the quality of their meeting. that he was speaking to. The Zhang Yang that couldn't answer his teacher's question was maybe like some of us, or a lot of us, maybe precocious at some point in our life. Ten answers to every question. Six would be pretty good too. All of us, self-included, in this room were born on account of causes and conditions.

[27:46]

When I was a youngster, I thought that things were just going to get better and better. Outside of causes and conditions, I thought things were just naturally going to get better. Some things did and other things didn't. Life passed. Life passes. We grow up. Our experience changes. Instead of having birthday parties, we reflect as they approach. What's this mean? How's this going? When I was a youngster, when I was a baby, my father changed my diapers and wiped the food off of my mouth. And later, in his life, he became a child. And in the hospital, I wiped the food off of his face that somehow missed where it was going. The river of life is always like this.

[28:57]

We're so often looking for something to help us, to make us happy, to give us fulfillment. That thing we're looking for might even be, oh, well, the Zen Center, I'm going to go there. That'll help me. Or this new job, or my old job, the one that I love and want to keep, this is what I need. We're looking and looking and we're seeking. And really what I think we are is we are Buddha looking for Buddha. And this might be like a painting of a rice cake, but I want to say that... Until we appreciate that originally we are Buddha, we won't be able to meet ourselves.

[30:31]

Everything, everything that we've ever wanted is insignificant. The secret, it's not a secret if I say it, and it's really not a secret anyway, it's common sense. The secret to whatever peace might be available to us is to want others to do well and to flourish. and to especially want others to do well who do no harm to others. We have a special place in our heart for that sort of person, that person who makes an effort to not harm others. And whatever you might think about this, or whatever, you don't have to know that you're doing this effort to be changed by it.

[31:51]

So one day, maybe when we least expect it, when we're in the middle of some road, we might be asked a question. A question that can shipwreck us or can right the ship, that can puncture our painful heart in a way that opens us to the world. The question might be like a Zen sort of thing that I just described. Or it might be the look in the face of your lover. It's not just one question. There is not one question that we're all going to be asked. We're all going to be asked our questions

[33:04]

And once we answer it, well, you know, we'll have to find it. We'll have to answer it again. That answer, we can't take that answer to the bank. Put it in the safe deposit box and go back and check on it occasionally. How are we going to live? How are we going to walk with people? How are we going to pay back? I say pay back the debt we owe for this marvelous human life opportunity. That's my question. So, thank you, everybody. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[34:07]

For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[34:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.19