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. Happy New Year, this side of the room. Happy New Year, this side of the room. Happy New Year, this side of the room. Happy New Year. And welcome, welcome to our renewed City Center Beginner's Mind Temple. And I just saw people coming, walking down the stairs to the Zendo, walking down the main stairs. And the main stairs haven't been open in a year, you understand. They've been big piles of dust and stuff.

[01:01]

And now we have a floor. We have an elevator. We have an air and heating system. And we have the experience of having worked together and lived through this year in the service. accepting the difficulties and the changes, thank you, Director Sun, and Staff Sun, and Everyone Sun, in the service of welcome, in the service of making this place more welcoming so that more people can enjoy it, come through, and go out into the world to live our lives in peace. renewed and refreshed ways and that's what this place is for and so happy new year happy new temple and please let us know please let Abbott David know please let Tanto Tim know director Choku know any one any one of us um

[02:25]

you know, volunteer trainer Benjamin know, senior practitioners from the wider world, people on the chat, you know, our people leading the online Zendo, please let anyone know if you have an idea about how to make our place more welcoming as we come back. Okay, so we have this idea of renewal, and renewal is what I want to speak about today because it's the new year. How many people have New Year's resolutions? Close your eyes. How many people have New Year's resolutions? Okay, thank you for having a New Year's resolution. May it develop over the next 365 days. And often we have a point of view on renewal.

[03:30]

What is renewal? Well, New Year's resolutions are a form of renewal. The new year is starting. I have a beautiful new year on which to lay down the impressions of what I do. What am I going to do? But often there's a kind of a tinge of out with the old, in with the new. Like, have you seen those pictures of... an old 2024 leaving with a kind of a long beard and a new 2025 in diapers. Have you seen those pictures? There's kind of a traditional picture. Well, you know, as someone who's over 70 years old, I take exception to that, right? So I think that, you know, it's not like I'm moving to a better house out with the old, in with the new. Or out with the old, in with the new. Time to get the iPhone 15. I had 14. Not good enough.

[04:32]

15 is where it's at. Or let's get the young blood in here and forget about those old fogies. Right? So it's not like that. So in our Zen practice, what actually is renewal is is when we lay down our burdens and can meet the world in a fresh and refreshed way. That's what practice is for. So I want to read the last paragraph of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. The fourth is when we remember our founder, Suzuki Roshi. So I want to read the last words from Zen Mind. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which were his lectures at Haiku Zendo. So he said, I feel Americans, especially young Americans, have a great opportunity to find out the true way of life of human beings.

[05:38]

You're quite free from material things. You begin Zen practice with a very pure mind, a beginner's mind. You can understand Buddha's teaching exactly as he meant it. But we must not be attached to America or Buddhism or even to our practice. We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. In the east, I saw rhubarb already. In Japan, in the spring, we eat cucumbers. Okay, so those are the last words from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[06:43]

You get the gist, even if I don't read it again? Did you have the sense of what he meant? Or should I read it again? Okay. I feel Americans, especially young Americans, have a great opportunity to find out the true way of life of human beings. You're quite free from material things. you begin Zen practice with a very pure mind, a beginner's mind. You can understand Buddha's teaching exactly as he meant it, but we must not be attached to America or Buddhism or even our practice. We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything. Now this is the renewal part. A mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped.

[07:47]

Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow, we see snow drops and some new growth. In the east, I saw rhubarb already. In Japan, in the spring, we eat cucumbers. So when I read this again, you know, what was attractive to me in the, you know, when I was preparing for this lecture, I was thinking, you know, beginner's mind, renewal, renewal, beginner's mind. And a little kind of thread of dream thought came to me. Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow, we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the east, I saw rhubarb already. In Japan, in the spring, we eat cucumbers.

[08:52]

And I thought, wow, if I can say something about that, then maybe I've said really something about renewal. Because... You know, he was the kind of person or had the kind of practice where when he discovered he had stomach cancer, he said to Yvonne, now you can share my plate. I'm cancer. You know, because they had been concerned that he might have something communicable. But when he discovered he had cancer, what he said was, now we can share a plate. And he shared his dinner with her. And that's the kind of mind or the kind of practice that he showed to us. And so I was thinking, well, how did my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman, talk about this? And I remember that in 1988, he gave a lecture on a case by Yunman or Uman.

[10:03]

called The World is Vast and Wide. And if you want to read this case, it's in the Mumon Khan. Mumon Khan, the gateless gate. Mumon Khan. And it's case number 16. Umon's The World is Vast and Wide. So it's a simple case. Simple doesn't mean easy, but it's simple. The world is vast and wide, Uman said. At the sound of the bell, why do we put on robes and go to the meditation hall? The world is vast and wide. So, you know, it's a nice day outside. It's a little bit cold, a little bit gray. Classic California winter stay. What made you come here? Put your shoes in the shoe rack and come and sit. in Zazen to hear a lecture when the beach is there, you know, the park is there, your friends are there.

[11:15]

There's so many other things you could be doing. Why are you doing this restricted thing of sitting and hearing a talk? And I think the answer is that usually we think freedom is just doing anything. But when we come here and do the forms, we realize something about what freedom really is. That the very restricted nature of the form means that we can go deep in our experience, even in the midst of the vast and wide reality. We're sitting in the midst of all beings. And because we're just sitting here, Thumb, thumb, [...] breath, breath, breath. You know, posture, posture, posture, breathing, breathing, breathing. You can renew the posture now if you want. Just find your buttock bones and sit up tall, right? Touch your thumbs to each other and make the circle of the mudra circle the energy of your lower body.

[12:21]

And suddenly the posture is completely fresh. And it's because in that repeated posture, It's like playing a piece of music again and again and again, and each time hearing or understanding something new about the music and about life. So that's, you know, we love music as human beings. Hozan, my Dharma brother who died last week, was a musician, a bluegrass musician. You could hear, look up Alan Sanaki if you have a chance, Bluegrass Intentions, and listen to some of their music. And you'll hear that the point of the music, they play the same tune again and again for years. And the point of the music is to realize something about life right now, about the harmony of playing together, about today.

[13:23]

So he was a Dharma teacher. Even more. No, it's not possible to say even more. But through the form of the music, he taught dharma. And so Mumman's commentary on the world is vast and wide. At the sound of the bell, why do we put on our robes and go to the zendo, the meditation hall? Mumman's commentary generally in practicing Zen, the point is not to pursue sounds or forms. You don't go after them. Yes, it's true, you might wake up randomly through sounds and forms, but that's just kind of ordinary life expressing itself. We're always having, I'm adding, me, shows on Victoria Austin, 2025, now adding. Yes, there are always random moments of awakening, but how do we make it intentional?

[14:29]

How do we wake up truly? And we don't usually realize, until we try to practice, that while we're writing sounds and becoming one with forms and colors, that if our practice is authentic, that everything renews. everything becomes clear and bright moment by moment and becomes full of wonder, like Hozon's music. You know? Thank you. So he says, when you hear a sound, tell me, does the sound come to the ear or does the ear go to the sound? So when we hear things with an ordinary mind, often the ear is reaching out or grasping after sound.

[15:35]

But when we let sounds and colors come to us, the feeling of the body come to us, and we act in response, it's a whole different feeling. You know what I'm talking about? Sometimes we can be almost startled by a baby's cry or the beauty of a flower or the very subtle sound of the HVAC system or the touch of the buttock bones to the cushion. And the body just rises up in response or becomes quiet because of the white noise. when we let the sound come to us and when we respond. So when we sense in this way and we respond in this way, it's like a big wow.

[16:47]

And the way we come to this is by laying down our burdens that prevent us from really hearing or really seeing and really responding. So Sojin commented on this case that for a Zen student, real freedom means we lay down our burden of partiality, our enslavement to thoughts, feelings, or emotions, our dependence on security. The point of practice is to be able to unburden ourselves and return to what is moment by moment. And to do this, we don't have to know everything because life is constantly giving us cues. So, for instance, you know, the case is when the bell rings, the monks put on their robes, go to the meditation hall and sit.

[17:50]

But when anger arises, our bell sounds. And we can take refuge in calmness and equanimity of mind and hear the trigger for our anger or see the trigger for our anger in a completely new way that's responsive instead of reactive or retaliatory, right? When confusion arises, the bell sounds and we can take refuge in study. seeing and hearing and registering what is going on. When greed arises, the bell sounds, and we can take refuge in appreciation of what we have or what already is. So life is constantly giving us cues by which we can renew ourselves in the fresh breeze of

[18:56]

What is? So what is the specific practice that allows us to do this? So, you know, again, I was looking around, and I had kind of a feeling that I had read it recently. And I went to the San Francisco Zen Center website and saw this. I saw... The artwork, I think it's by Betsy McCall. Correct me if I'm wrong. That beautiful kind of orangey artwork that's on the website. Does anybody know? It's from where? An artist in Austin. An artist in Austin, Texas. Okay. So you can look it up and let me know who it's by, okay? Jess? Jess? How do you pronounce it? How do you spell it?

[19:56]

I've been Jessica. Uh-huh. And then Engel. E-N-G-E-L? E-N-G-E-L-E. E-N-G-E-L-E. Jess Engel. So take a look at that. And then next to that artwork is written, awake, awake, each one. Don't waste this life. And that is what's written on the Han outside. That sound that you heard, thwup, ding, thwup. ding, [...] ding. That Thwap instrument is the Han, and it's made out of one block of wood. And on that Han outside is written by Zen K. Blanche Hartman, the verse, birth and death is the great matter. Everything changes, nothing remains. Awake, awake, each one, don't waste this life. So that abruptness of that sound is meant to return us to our true self, to our intention, to the sense of urgency or effort in practice.

[21:04]

And that sense of effort or energy is called viriya. And as I scanned down on the website page, that page continued. The many expressions of our Zen practice depend on an underlying element. Virya, also known as inspiration, motivation, persistence, vigor, or joyful enthusiasm. And then it continues with the pitch. For over 60 years, the wide community of San Francisco Zen Center has been a source of virya for each other and for the world. Your enthusiastic, joyful support is critical. to sustaining this precious sangha offering. And then there's the ask of, if you feel moved, please give a donation. And I want to repeat, if you feel moved, please give a donation, right? But that's not the point of this lecture or the main point of the presentation.

[22:09]

The main point of the presentation at San Francisco Zen Center is... What is this enthusiasm or inspiration? How do we practice it? How do we manifest it in the world? The main point isn't the ask. The main point is the presentation of the Dharma so it doesn't get cut off. Then if you feel inspired, of course you can support it. You can support it with your volunteer effort by ringing the bell or being at the door. You can support it by helping get the building ready, you know, by cleaning the kitchen or whatever is being asked, right? You can support it by practicing at home and asking questions of teachers or by treating the resources of the community as precious, as a precious shared gift that we have from the past and from all beings, specifically to help us.

[23:13]

So we can support it in so many different ways. And the sense of enthusiasm or energy with which we do it is called virya. And virya is the fourth of the six perfections. So the first three, of course, are Dana, Sheila, and Shanti. So generosity, ethics. or alignment with our deepest intention and patience or tolerance. So those are the first three. And those are really easy to practice. Not easy in the sense they're easy to do, but easy in the sense that the bell of singiness, the bell of fudging our morality, and the bell of impatience or annoyance are always sounding and giving us an opportunity to practice giving and alignment with our deep intention and patience or tolerance.

[24:35]

Those are always sounding. I mean, consider... political discussions at holiday events, right? Isn't that bell ringing in that discussion? Don't you sit there thinking, can I just enjoy my food? Right? I do. You know, depending on who we invite and what they say. I'm sitting there going, you know, breathe, Vicki, breathe. Okay. Respond. And then sometimes I can, and sometimes I just have to kind of, okay, now I'm going to put my nose down and kind of smell the mashed potatoes, right? Because my skill is not yet that advanced. So we have these practices, virya, or energy. The temple gives us an opportunity to actually

[25:39]

really focus on energy and really refine that practice. It's almost one of the central pieces of residential practice or even the practice of the wider Sangha, coming in and getting a taste of it and then going back out and trying to practice it at home. So, you know, so here are some specific temple practices of Virya that residents can do. And I encourage you sometime in your life, whether you're a resident already or whether you want to come for a one-day sitting or seven-day sashim or a 90-day practice period or, you know, a four-week practice period or whatever, to actually experience this because it's really something important to our culture, to be able to bring to our culture. So the Sangha practice, like sharing a space and resources and practice insights with people, which are some of the prerequisites for Sangha practice, really requires a very high degree of selflessness and exposure.

[26:56]

So it's not that easy to practice it when circumstances are constantly changing. But if we have a form, like an enclosed building with a kitchen and a zendo that are supposed to be both manifesting the practice, then we begin to rub up against each other and have to deal with our differences. So that enclosure gives us freedom for our everyday experience to be magnified in a way that we can see and respond to with generosity and ethics and patience so it's a kind of a tougher practice in a way because it requires a high degree of selflessness and then also a lot of the rewards of energy training you know so when we commit to a schedule or kind of the sameness which we can sometimes experience this monotony of daily life that has the same schedule again and again again again

[28:07]

Or the form, which, oh, ugh, do I really want to sit? Do I really want to bow? You know, ugh, I'm tired, you know? It's hard. It has issues that we have to deal with. And those issues are the training. That's like the bell, our discomfort is the bell ringing and telling us to practice. And virya, energy, Sustained enthusiasm is what's being built. It's the same with recovery practices. You know, again and again and again, recovery has to be done. You don't just recover just because you think I should recover, right? You have to actually do the recovery. And there are things you need to do. And the discipline of the recovery produces the long-term effect of recovery. not that you're ever recovered. It's not that it's ever done.

[29:09]

It needs to be renewed again and again and again. And in a way, these practices, these temple practices, like, feel how you are sitting right now. Okay, you've been sitting here for a while, and the body's kind of... Right? So you have to renew it. You have to, okay, where are my buttock bones? Where's the earth? Where's the uplift? Where's the openness? Where's the depth? Where are those spinal muscles? How do I fill my lungs? You have to keep doing this again and again and again. And so that gives then a deeper sense of the first three qualities of giving. I'm giving myself to gravity. I'm allowing gravity to create the response of uplift. I'm giving myself to my sense of vow. I'm trying to realize it body and mind. I'm giving myself to alignment with that vow.

[30:16]

I'm giving myself to patience with the unattractive things that come up, like fatigue, boredom, resentment, whatever it is. And it works. And when you do this for some time in the temple, residential practice allows us to re-enter the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands. But it's not just temple practice. It's world practice. Temple practice is like breathing in. World practice is like breathing out. They're inseparable. One is meaningless without the other. Okay? So... I could talk about this more and remind me to give another lecture sometime on Keizan Zenji's teaching for the entire future, about how he wanted lay people and residential practitioners to work together to uplift and uphold the teaching, his teaching, and the sense of the pure land or the practice place that he had built up over time.

[31:30]

It's enough to say that that will be the subject of a future talk, because it needs its own talk, right? But right now, what I want to do instead is to look at a real-life bodhisattva who embodied renewal, who embodied how to realize Suzuki Roshi's teachings in everyday life. And that, of course... was my teacher, one of my teachers, Mrs. Mitsu Suzuki, Suzuki Sensei. And she taught me sewing, not rakasu and okesa sewing, but grandma sewing, like how to make kimono, jubon, and tea clothing. And then she taught me tea ceremony and a lot of other things. And so how did Mrs. Suzuki express renewal? Okay, so the first thing was she had an ecosystem of how she cleaned the house and did the shopping and did the laundry and so on.

[32:40]

And part of her ecosystem, invisible ecosystem, was that she would charge us 50 cents for each T class. So when you came into the T class, it had to be quarters because our machines only took quarters. She had to give her two quarters and put it in the little special box that she had for the quarters. And she used those quarters for her laundry. So that was her invisible renewal every week. She mended her clothes after she washed her clothes. And she ironed her clothes after she mended them. And then she shopped and she prepped. And then at the end of the week, she socialized. And she did this every week. And she also had a daily routine where she would get up early in the morning, particularly after she got a little older. She'd get up early in the morning and she'd make an offering to Suzuki Roshi.

[33:42]

So she'd put out water and food and she'd ring the bell three times. And then she might wash her hair or she might just comb it out. Long, long hair. And she would go to the courtyard, which will be open in a month or so, and she would walk around the courtyard and say hello to each bird and each flower. And I'd ask her about it, and she'd say, those are my friends. So those were the birds and the flowers were kind of her bells that allowed her a feeling of renewal. in everyday life. But she also closely observed the 72 micro-seasons of about five days that are part of classical Japanese culture. So every 15 days, about every two weeks, a little more, she'd have a different color scheme for the tea room.

[34:54]

with different flowers and a haiku or scroll that she would put up. And this is part of culture. So, for instance, right now, we would be ending the 15 days of toji, which is winter solstice, and today's ko or mini micro-season is wheat sprouts under snow. So she would be putting out like the the tea bowl that wasn't quite as thick as the one before, and it would be kind of a wheat color. Or she might use flowers that express that sense of renewal just for this time. Tomorrow will begin shokhan, which is the lesser cold. And the mini or micro season is parsley flourishes. So she might add a sprig of green. that arrangement. And she would do this, and she would write haiku.

[36:01]

So when Suzuki Roshi died, when he was dying, he asked her to study tea, to teach tea to us. And she did, and to be able to teach tea, she would do four kinds of exercises, and and keep her daily practices and keep to the year. And she would write haiku for that little micro-season. So I'd like to just end with some of Mrs. Suzuki's haiku, each one of which was a kind of testament to renewal of the season. And Hira-san, if I get the pronunciation or the meaning wrong, could you please Correct me so that, you know, so that we don't have this embarrassing wrong record on the Internet. Thank you. So here's one.

[37:03]

And this is a translation by Kate McCandless, who's a teacher in Vancouver and a student of Norman Fishers. So that's her translation of Mrs. Suzuki's poem. So here it goes. The year's first brushwork again I write Beginner's Mind. So that was the equivalent of today many years ago. And then these next few are by Kaz Tanahashi and Greg Wood, the translations. Greg was a student here for a long time, and he has a bookstore in Japantown.

[38:08]

And you can talk about Mrs. Suzuki with him any time. It's on the right side in the mall as you walk from the the pagoda, across the street. His bookstore is in the middle of the block on the right side. So go visit him sometime and ask him about Mrs. Suzuki. Forest Books, thank you. So here's one. Tobidase Rugoma no, no, Tobidase Rugoma no Hitotsubu Fuyunukushi. Roasting sesame seeds, one pops out, warm winter. Here's one from this time of year in 1977. Zen temple.

[39:15]

The sound of brooms becomes wintry. you hear that there's always a season and sometimes a micro-season in her poems. And there's always an emotional part that gives her a memory or a taste of life that she's communicating to us. And I wish I could show you her handwriting. It's beautiful. Just very, very elegant and natural. So it was the product of practice. And so she could do it in an instant. And everything she did was like that. She had a very sharp sense of humor. I could tell you more about it, but I won't. But here's another one. This is from New Year's Morning in 1981. So, like that.

[40:16]

So this one goes... By ten years older than my mother, a New Year's morning. She's looking in the mirror, she said, seeing her mother's face and her face. And then, but it didn't mean that she just threw away the world. She didn't throw away everyday life. So here's another one. Thousands of people jolting cold. Anti-war demonstration. 1991. And then finally, another one translated by Kate.

[41:17]

to be of benefit to others, my heart's firm vow, cold winter morning. So I'd like to close with that one and say, again, there's a temple practice, which we do on full moons, of renewing our vows. And we also, every morning in morning service, whether it's online or whether it's in the zendo, we end zazen where we sat and our lives came up in magnified ways for resolution, for settling. Then we get up and the world is new. We bow to the seat on which we have sat, just like the Buddha. Then we bow to the world and it's new, right? And then... We stand and face the Buddha, our teacher, and we renew our vows every morning and every month.

[42:30]

This is the practice. And whether you do it every day or whether you don't do it every day, know that it's being done. Know that repetition, repetition without monotony, is renewal. repetition without burden, the repetition of the sun coming up and going down, of the seasons passing, of all the seasons of our life, minus the burden, with the appreciation, with the rhubarb, you know, with the frogs, you know, with that, living out of that vow with response. That is renewal. So to be of benefit to others. My heart's firm vow. Cold winter morning. Thank you for your resolutions.

[43:31]

Your heart's firm vows. Renewed on this day of remembrance of our teacher. And this time of renewal for welcome of our whole community. Thank you for being in the Zendo. 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 Dormer.

[44:19]

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