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. This feels a little echoey, is it? Okay, I'm getting up. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. How many of you are here for the first time today? Would you raise your hands? Okay, a couple, a few. Good, welcome particularly to you. And how many of you were here last week for Abbas Cristina's Dharma Talk? Lots of people.

[01:02]

Okay, then I have a head start. Because last week, Christina talked about a retreat that we've been doing, that the residents of City Center have been doing this week. It began last Saturday, and it will end at lunchtime today. And I want to talk about that this morning. And I've debated whether to say this, but because of this retreat, I'm not as well prepared as usual for this talk. But on the other hand, for a while now, I've been wanting to move towards spending less time on the talks I give and being more spontaneous. So we can find out together this morning how that goes. And a while back, I asked Zenge Blanche Hartman, who is 87 and has been, was an abbot for seven years, so she's probably given many hundreds of Dharma talks, how she goes about preparing a talk.

[02:22]

And she said, well... I lie in bed and think about what I want to say. So I want to get to that point where that's how I prepare Dharma talks. And I remember being at Tassajara when Linda Ruth Cutts was leading a practice period. And she was giving the Dharma talk. And she said, this morning I was wondering if there was a Dharma talk today. And then I remembered I was giving it. So I think these are attitudes to aspire to. So I do want to talk about this retreat that we've been involved in and how it came to be and some of the issues around it. So as you know,

[03:24]

city center is an urban Zen temple in the heart of one of the great cities of the world, I happen to think. And this city, San Francisco, is located in the Bay Area, which is, I think, could be described as a kind of Buddha land. There is so much dharma practice offering in the Bay Area. And I know that it isn't like that in the rest of the United States, that this is something special. So being in a big city and easily accessible to people who live in that city or the Bay Area, It's a point of entry for many people who want to begin to practice.

[04:30]

If someone has read Zen Mind Beginner's Mind or has some curiosity about Buddhism or wants to begin to practice, they may well turn up here. And... A unique offering that we have is that we're a residential practice center. So it's possible to practice in a residential sangha. It's not quite a monastery. It's not exactly monastic, but it has some features of that. And we can talk more about that. So... We, at different times, have, say, 60 to 70 residents living in this building and a couple of buildings up the street. And we have, and also the locus of Zen Center's administration for all three practice places is here.

[05:40]

So the officers are housed here and have offices there. in San Francisco as part of this campus. And they have busy, important jobs, lots of work to do that sometimes keeps them from various parts of the schedule. And we have lots of programs. I really appreciate that as people come to talk to me and ask me what would be a good next step for them in their practice. There's no shortage of things to suggest. There are so many practice opportunities. And we do more programs than we used to. Some of that has happened organically because people come and want to practice in a variety of different ways.

[06:43]

And also, we have more mature teachers now who are ready to teach, so they create offerings. So in that way, the sheer number of programs that we offer is growing all the time. But in addition to that, we've intentionally decided to widen... the circle of participation in Zen Center, to create programs that appeal to more different kinds of people, to spread the Dharma farther and wider. So for example, we have a number of affinity groups now. The oldest one is Meditation and Recovery, and it's 13 years old.

[07:47]

And newer ones include Queer Dharma and Young Urban Zen, which I think was started in the summer of 2010 with about 25 people showing up on the first night, which was more than we expected. And I think now about 60 people are coming every week. And we're just getting off the ground a program called Good Old Zen for people 55 and older. I qualify for that one. And there's a smaller group called Ekha Sattvas that's creating presentations and having meetings for people interested in taking care of the environment. as a sangha. So all of these groups meet regularly and create a little sangha, and then they also have offerings.

[08:57]

They also have their own one-day sittings and their own workshops and various retreats and activities. So the reason I'm telling you all this is to point out that This is a very busy place, if you hadn't noticed. And to consider what the life of a resident might be. So this program and all of our programs are happening in their home. And we welcome you. We are happy that you are here. But part of the role... of a resident, and maybe I don't mean but, I mean and, and part of the role of a resident is to host people, to welcome people into the temple. And so for a number of years, there's been some request.

[10:01]

Could we have, could we residents have some time to spend together in a secluded way, with each other, to get to know each other more deeply, to connect with what we're doing here and with each other more deeply. And we've been listening to that request and trying to find a time and a place to make that happen. This was the week, and it was very experimental. It kind of happened at the last minute. I think it would have been better if it had happened, been planned further in advance. But last Saturday we began, I guess I said that, and we'll end today.

[11:04]

So we started last Saturday with a movie night. Well, wait, I'm going to tell you something else first. Actually, before we get into the details of the retreat, I want to talk a little bit about sangha in general. So when we were thinking about what activities would be part of this retreat, we did this in the practice committee. And some of the members said, well, what's the purpose of the retreat? And Blanche said, sangha building. And I think that's exactly right. That's what we wanted to do. We wanted to create a bond to strengthen the core residential sangha here. And

[12:06]

to find activities that would be nourishing for that group of people. So I do want to talk a little bit about sangha and what a sangha is. So sangha is a Sanskrit word that means an association or union of people, so a community. And I think the first Buddhist Sangha was probably the five ascetics that practiced with Siddhartha Gautama before he became the Buddha, before he was enlightened. So he practiced with these five monks, and they all practiced severe austerities. And at some point,

[13:07]

Buddha realized, if I keep this up, I'm just going to die. I'm no more enlightened than I was when I began, and I'm just going to die, and that will be the end of it. So he made the decision to start eating, and he remembered an incident from his childhood. that suggested to him that sitting meditation was the answer. And he vowed that he would sit until he became enlightened. And he did. So this is the short, somewhat traditional story of things. And after he became enlightened, he went back to the five ascetics. And they weren't so happy to receive him. They wanted nothing to do with him because they felt that he had abandoned pursuing the truth by giving up the austerities they had been practicing together.

[14:21]

But he convinced them that he was awake. And they asked him to be their teacher. So now they were a small sangha of five people and a teacher, a core sangha. And then Buddha spent the next 45 years of his life wandering around India, settling in different locations during the rainy season and leading retreats. And monks who heard of him and wanted to practice with him would come and attend the retreat. So by the end of his life, I have no idea how large his sangha was. We know the names of some of his main disciples. And we have lots of stories about incidents and challenges.

[15:26]

that occurred within the Sangha that help us when we think about our own Sangha. The first time Buddha ordained someone, he said that it is sufficient for ordination that the prospective monk take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha before his teacher. So that was the crux of the ordination ceremony. Here, for either lay or priest ordination, we take what are called the 16 Bodhisattva precepts. And These three refuges are the first three of the sixteen.

[16:27]

I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. So Sangha was viewed as monastic. Buddha... is the historical Buddha who is an example to us of how to practice and how to awaken. Dharma is the Buddha's teachings and also its reality. It's how things are. This is Dharma. The truth of right now is Dharma. And sangha is the community of practitioners that brings it all alive. If there weren't people practicing Buddha's teachings, they wouldn't matter.

[17:32]

They wouldn't be important. They're important because we live them. And one of the best and easiest places to practice living them is in sangha. So when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, we're vowing to live according to Buddha's example and teachings in harmony with other people in a community of practitioners or a community of we'll get to that. there are other kinds of communities. You don't have to belong to a Sangha, residential or otherwise, but it's really helpful. So taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is also called taking refuge in the triple treasure or the three treasures.

[18:37]

So Sangha is regarded as a treasure. because it enables monks to be supported to practice Buddha's way without the distraction of earning a living or taking care of a family or any of the other worldly pursuits that we have to get involved in, usually. And... The various members of a sangha hold each other accountable and mirror each other and encourage each other to practice. They're invaluable in that way. They offer friendship and companionship to each other. So our last practice period was about dharma friendship, how to be a dharma friend. to your companions.

[19:40]

We have the opportunity here to hear and study the teachings and practice together. There's a story about Buddha and Ananda. Ananda was Buddha's long-time personal attendant and a disciple of Buddha. And one day he asked Buddha, Lord, is it true what has been said that good spiritual friends are fully half of the holy life? And Buddha replied, No, Ananda. Good spiritual friends are the whole of the holy life. find refuge in the Sangha community.

[20:43]

So I think we need a more modern definition now of what Sangha is. It no longer, this is no longer India, and it... It doesn't work to have that definition be just about monastic life or residential practice life. It could be, I think, any community that comes together with the intention to do something good. That's a definition I like. Stephen Batchelor said, a Buddhist community, a Sangha, is not something one is merely born into or chooses to join, but something one is challenged to create.

[21:55]

A Sangha provides a matrix of communal support for for people to realize their commitment to a common vision or concern. So we gather here out of our common interest in practice to help and support each other. But we also have other communities that we're part of. in our family life, in our work life. And those are Sanghas too. And I think that the Sangha has concentric circles. So here at City Center, it might be the residents and then all of you in the wider Sangha. And then part of Buddhism in the Bay Area. Buddhism in America, Buddhism worldwide.

[23:00]

That's just one example. And in your family, you have your family, which exists in a community. It has a context in a certain culture, in a nation, in the world. So you're part of many different concentric circles that overlap. And I and you are in different circles within each one. So you may have a family circle that I'm not part of the core of, but I may be on one of the concentric rings of your family circle. And I may be in the core of the Buddhist circle here. So you put all those circles together, overlapping, and you see something about our interdependence. It's like another model of Indra's net. Do you know about Indra's net? So Indra's net is a net that at the juncture of each set of threads has a many-faceted jewel that reflects completely all the other jewels in the net.

[24:15]

So I think those are both good definitions of what a sangha is. So now I want to get back to our retreat. One of the features of my not having planned this talk is I don't know how long it is. So we wanted to know what would be nourishing for the residents, what would be refreshing, what would they enjoy, what would make them feel ready to carry on with life when it was over. and feel energetic. So we sent out a survey monkey. A survey monkey is an online survey that lets you poll people's opinions about things. And we dreamed up 15 different activities to ask people about whether they would like to do those activities.

[25:22]

And because the survey was created by our director, Shundo He, it had kind of an English-y slant. So we were asked about our enthusiasm for these activities to rate them as very keen, quite keen, don't mind, not so keen, Not at all, Keith. And it was very interesting to see the results. So this magical software tallied all the results for us and told us what people wanted to do. And then we designed a schedule to do that. So we began... last Saturday with a movie night.

[26:25]

And we sent out a much simpler survey monkey to decide which movie. And we landed on Departures. I don't know if you've seen that movie, but I love it. It's a wonderful movie, and I just really enjoyed the feeling in the room as we were all together in that activity. And Shindell mentioned later when I'll talk about how we were talking about connection, but he said, I feel connected when, like on that movie night, after it's over, everybody just automatically got up and put all the chairs and tables back where they belonged, put the projector away, cleaned up the room before we went to bed. So it had a very wonderful communal feeling. That's exactly what we were going for. The next day on Sunday, we all went to Angel Island.

[27:28]

Now, I say we all went to Angel Island. This is one of the sad things. We have a lot of people who don't work for Zen Center, who have jobs outside, or various life commitments, and not everyone could participate in this. So it was all quite wonderful, but it didn't include everybody, and there's some pain in that. But we took the ferry all together. Once we got there, it sort of organically broke up into little groups that hiked or biked to various locations on the island. And our retreats, our residence retreats for the last few years have been blessed with good weather. I'm not going to say it's our karma. So we enjoyed that trip a lot, came back here for pizza.

[28:36]

So this was, we dreamed up this retreat to have some fun together, among other things. And then Monday morning came and it got a little more serious. We had Zazen at 6.30 instead of 5.25. So... We got an extra hour of sleep. And then the day was very simple. We had simple meals so that the kitchen could participate as much as possible. One of the things that was highest rated on the Survey Monkey was study time. So we had an hour and 40 minute study hall in the dining room. People brought their Buddhist... and study materials, and we studied. And then we had an hour and a half period of zazen in the zendo during which you could get up and do kinhen whenever you wanted to. And it was small, but it was really powerful, and people were very settled.

[29:43]

A lot of people didn't do kinhen at all, not that there's anything wrong with doing kinhen. It was just a very unsettled time. Christina participated, Paul participated. It was very nice. So we had a yoga class in the afternoon, and then we took on the Tassajara tradition of having an afternoon bath time, which was not taken. Attendance was not taken. And we did just enough work to take care of the temple and prepare our meals. It was mostly so that we could eat, that we did some work during the day. On Thursday night, we went to the Asian Art Museum and saw the exhibits there after dinner. So this was semi-secluded.

[30:49]

I think it was secluded enough. to be satisfying to the residents, and yet it didn't keep people from coming to Zazen. So all the Zazen periods were open to anyone. Zazen service, we invited the staff, the employees who work here to come to Zazen and service and study. It was just meals and a private meeting that I'll talk about and the outings that were just for residents. So one event on the schedule that we really scratched our heads about what to do was this period of time when we wanted to do something in the way of having a discussion or training or something. in the afternoon at the time of zazen at 5.30. And we ended up having a council.

[31:53]

So a council is you sit in a circle, and there is a talking object, maybe a talking stick that you pass around. In our case, it was a beautiful rock that I imagine Christina found. And, you know, a day later, I could still sort of feel the weight and texture of that rock in my hand. It was very powerful. And so when the rock came to you, it was your turn to speak, and you could speak for as long as you wanted. And at peak, there were maybe 40 people in the group. The number varied each day, and it took us four and a half, one-hour days to get around the circle once. So people spoke from their hearts. And the question... Excuse me.

[32:55]

getting late. The question that we asked people to address was what makes you feel connected to the sangha and what hinders your feeling connected to the sangha. And people had a lot to say and it was very moving and powerful to sit and listen to people. It became the highlight and focus of the retreat, even though we had planned a lot of things that people liked, this became the main thing. People were very engaged in speaking themselves and also in listening to everyone else. So, of course, we are connected. here's a quote from Shohaku Okamura about connectedness.

[34:14]

We are connected. Can't escape being connected. Waking up is realizing our connection. We offer ourselves to each other and live supported by all beings. In turn, we must support all other beings. We do not and cannot live independently as limited and conditioned individuals. So as I listened to people and their sharing in this circle, for me there was a sort of universal quality to it. And I don't by any means mean that people all said the same thing or had the same experience.

[35:19]

I just mean that whatever they said, I would find myself resonating. I would find myself feeling, oh, I've been there. I've had that experience. I've felt that way. And it made it feel very honest. connected. And I came away from the experience with the feeling that however much we may work on the institution, which we do need to do, we do have a responsibility to do everything possible to make it possible for people to connect. that this connection is a state of mind that lives in us. And we also connect from our own side. So connecting is an active verb.

[36:23]

You connect. You don't just sit and wait for connection. So I asked... I had to answer this question too and I asked myself what makes me feel connected. And here's some of what I came to or disconnected. If I'm feeling satisfied with my own life and comfortable about who I am then I feel at ease in the sangha, and I can relax and feel included. Alternatively, if I'm comparing myself or my life to the way it used to be, or the way I think it should be, or to someone else's, then I'm separate from others.

[37:32]

myself and my life, then it becomes this object that I'm looking at and comparing. And it's very painful. If I feel safe, that's a wonderful feeling. It's really a wonderful feeling to feel safe. And fear is a very painful feeling that separates us. If I feel accepted and loved and respected or alternatively feel rejected or not loved, that makes a big difference in my ability to offer myself and engage in whatever activity is going on in a group. I found I so much enjoyed this situation because it was one of mutual sharing.

[38:34]

When people tell me their intimate feelings and experiences, I feel very connected to them. I feel like one with them. And that's a wonderful experience to have. When my contributions are appreciated and I'm valued for what I bring to the situation, that gives me confidence. And I see that when people's contributions are not appreciated, it's very painful. When my needs are met in such a way that I can fully participate, I feel connected. One of the issues that comes up for us in this sangha is that people are not all the same. So they have different abilities, say, to follow the schedule.

[39:40]

So if you have insomnia and it's hard for you to get up every morning, it's hard to follow our schedule. and it becomes this big other thing that's very threatening or frightening. So whatever physical and mental and emotional abilities or hindrances we have can make it easier or harder to connect with the Sangha. And when I have energy, that helps too. If I'm too tired, I'm apt to tune out and disconnect. So that means that I try to take care of myself, go to bed at 9 o'clock, even if I don't want to, so that I can get up at 4 or 5. So those are just some of the things that occurred to me that helped me with connection.

[40:51]

In our recent practice periods, we have had an opening ceremony where we expressed an intention for the practice period. In the last couple of years, I've chosen as my intention to connect with people. And I have found it to be important a great practice in just the way I said, because actually, it's hard for me. I'm an introvert, so I choose this practice because it doesn't come easily or naturally. I tend to wait to find the situation of connection or to wait for people to connect with me. But I have... enjoyed exploring, connecting from my side, and it's very rewarding. I'm not going to have time to say more about ways of doing that.

[42:01]

I'll just say one, and that's smiling at people. Consciously. That may sound phony, but it's actually really helpful. Thich Nhat Hanh calls it face yoga. And like other forms of yoga, it will change your body and mind and life. So I wish we had more time, but it's 11 o'clock and we have to stop. So thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:02]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.84