I'm cherishing you standing in my arms. I'm cherishing you. Thank you.

[05:17]

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to all of you who are in the room here tonight. My name is Tim Wicks and I'm a priest here at San Francisco Zen Center. I serve currently as Tanto or Head of Practice. I'd like to thank Central Abbott David Zimmerman for inviting me to co-lead The practice period with my two Dharma brother and sister, Tova Green and Eli Brown Stevenson. What is a practice period? A practice period basically at San Francisco Zen Center, all three of our temples, Green Gulch Farm here at City Center and our monastery at Tassajara, the year is split up into three. So there's usually two practice periods. that last anywhere from six weeks to three months. One is sort of right now in the fall.

[06:26]

The other one is in the spring, the late winter, springtime. And then the summer period where various things happen. We have intensives or guests season, depending on which temple it is. And during... practice periods we have what's called Wayseeking Mind Talks. We're going to have one here tomorrow. Hunter's going to be our speaker. And Wayseeking Mind Talks are basically stories of how it is the person who's telling the story came to practice. It's a look at how the path unfolds. Oftentimes, what brings people to practice is a desire for peace of mind, for calmness, for a sense of community.

[07:30]

I know those are the reasons why it is that I came here. Many people are attracted to the idea of spiritual wisdom, a way to look at the passage of a life in a calm place. measured way, and how to make life decisions that are wholesome and beneficial to the world. In the practice period that we're in now, that I'm leading with Tova and Eli, we're studying, amongst other things, the 10 ox herding pictures. And I'm sorry I can't show them to you right now. They're very available. Just Google 10 ox herding pictures and you'll be able to see them. And they're illustrations of the way and our pilgrimage on the path to awakening to the true self. Along the way, there's an uncovering that happens, an uncovering of what it is that makes a human being, an uncovering of difficulties in childhood and with our families.

[08:44]

and habit patterns that often started out as survival mechanisms that helped us just to get by. In the book, Welcoming Beginner's Mind, Galen Ferguson, that's the book that we're using for the practice period, and the author Galen Ferguson helps us learn how to slow down and observe closely what our internal experience is. He talks about the path that leads us to practice and how we identify suffering in the world in general and in ourselves in particular. In welcoming exercises, he teaches us to look at everything that arises in our consciousness, no matter what it is. Welcome everything that comes up. boredom, the mundane, but also that which is painful.

[09:53]

We see that it arises, comes into being, and eventually fades away. Welcoming has been kind of a theme for us here at City Center. as I mentioned, I'm leading the practice period of Eli and Tova, and for quite some time, Eli has been trying to help the community to investigate welcoming, to look at ways that Zen Center has not been quite as welcoming as we would like to be or intended to be, to encourage the broad Sangha, Sangha means spiritual community. So actually you all, even if this is your first and last time here, you're in the Sangha tonight, the spiritual community. To help the community to think about ways that we can be, for instance, more outward looking toward the whole Sangha, including newcomers and established members of the Sangha who live outside the temple.

[10:58]

there have been others who've joined Eli in this effort to be welcoming. And when Tova suggested that we use Galen's book, Welcoming Beginner's Mind, it was easy to say that, of course, that's what it is that we should do. And much of this is in preparation for us to move... back into our renovated building, which this is sort of the basement of. We haven't been able to use the whole rest of the building for 10 months now. We've been renovating it to make it more accessible and more welcoming to more people. We've put in an elevator and there will actually be something called a welcome center that you come into as soon as you come in the door. The temple itself is called Beginner's Mind Temple. So this book was very fitting for us to do this kind of work.

[12:04]

So for nearly a year now, the pared-down numbers in the community has had to be very flexible. We're incredibly lucky to have kind neighbors who've let us use space for our retreats and Dharma talks. so that we could continue to offer the practice of Zen. And people have had to adjust to choreographing ceremonies and rituals in new spaces. And this has not been easy all the time. Our rituals are often said never to change, even though they change a little bit every now and then, and to provide stability in action for practitioners. Many residents have had to move both their work and their living spaces. The Sangha is made up of residents and non-residents alike, and all of us have had to live with uncertainty and newness, change and not knowing. And it's been an inspiration to me to see people's resilience and flexibility.

[13:11]

Everyone, residents and members of the larger Sangha, have jumped right in, rolling their sleeves up and doing whatever it is that needed to be done. We have just two months left before we have to change everything again and move back into the building. Granted, of course, we'll be moving into a familiar space. What I've seen is that a group of practitioners of the Buddha way have had everything that they need to continue to offer the basic practices of a Buddhist temple. We've continued to offer daily meditation and service in the morning and in the evening, zazen instruction and dharma talks, practice periods and classes, and all while Dan Gujal and the online department have expanded our online offerings that were started more or less during COVID. We are, of course, very lucky that those who came before us made the decisions that they did when they did.

[14:19]

We have a lovely building and we're very grateful. And without the privilege of other properties on the block, we might not have been able to continue the practice while the renovation was taking place. This is the work of our most recent ancestors. We venerate our ancestors And by doing so, we bring them here with us in our daily practice. All the ancestors. The seven Buddhas before Buddha. Maha Kasyapa. Bodhidharma, our first ancestor in China. Dogen, our first ancestor in Japan. Our founder, Suzuki Roshi. Mel Weitzman and Blanche Hartman, both ancestors from my lifetime here. They're with us daily, encouraging us to continue what they taught us, how to be in the world, how to be on this pilgrimage towards awakening as the Oxfordian pictures illustrate.

[15:25]

Along the way, it's luxurious to have a beautiful temple like the one we have. Most smaller sanghas make do with much humbler abodes. Wherever we find ourselves, We're encouraged to practice. There's a koan about this teaching. Koans are writings that help us to understand the way. They might not seem to be direct at first. The idea is you just let them sit for a little while. Here's the koan. It's case four from the Book of Serenity. As the world-honored one, that's the Buddha, As the World Honored One was walking with the congregation, he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, this spot is good to build a sanctuary. Indra, emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said, the sanctuary is built.

[16:32]

The Honored One smiled. This, of course, is the teaching of everywhere is a temple. You practice wherever it is that you find yourself. You bring what you learn at the monastery and the temple to whatever conditions you find yourself in. I used to like the idea when I was a little boy of wherever he laid his hat was his home. Do you remember the Papa was a Rolling Stone song? I know the song was really about an absentee father, something I also had when I was little, despite my father's attempts to be present. But I like the idea of finding your home wherever you are. The concept is an entryway into the teaching that the temple is wherever you are. So we have a lot of accoutrements in our practice. People say we're minimalist in our Zen practice and we are in many ways and we are in our central teachings.

[17:41]

But we have a lot of things. We have these robes. The robes which we have are very special and we have a very special way of making them. You have to go to a sewing class and sew it in a ceremonial fashion. They're quite precious to us because we say that they're not our robe. They're Buddha's robe. And we have our eating bowls. We have a ceremonial kind of eating that's called oryoki. It's a formal way of eating, ritually, and it's highly structured. We have many ways of simply being around each other. As most of you know, there's a very particular way of entering the zendo and then proceeding to your seat, bowing not once but twice, and sitting on the cushion. All of this is training us to find our home wherever it is that we are, to be at peace no matter what it is that's happening around us, to be completely alive at all times.

[18:51]

Here's a quote from Suzuki Roshi who founded this temple and had a book of his teachings called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. When you do something, he says, you should do it with your whole body and mind. You should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. Oftentimes, during a practice period, we have what is called a shuso. A shuso is first monk. We say that they share the abbot's seat. The shuso leads the practice period with the abbot.

[19:58]

This is a person who's been practicing for a long time and is being recognized as a senior practitioner. someone who can begin to give Dharma talks and practice discussion with students. It's a great honor to be Shuso. One of the main jobs that Shuso has is to clean the toilets with their assistant, the Benji. Cleaning the toilets is a revered practice in Zen temples. Suzuki Roshi got up early to do it when he was in the monastery. We say... to do what it is that you are doing with your whole being, your whole body and mind, as Suzuki Roshi said. This includes cleaning toilets. If you clean the toilets with your whole being, you will come to know your true self. It takes some getting used to. Hopefully by the time you're Shuso, you've gained a lot of experience in cleaning toilets with this practice.

[21:05]

It's a training. Do it slowly. Do it completely with your whole being. The training is that cleaning the toilet is sitting zazen. Sitting zazen is cleaning the toilet. Zazen is our training to live our lives as completely as possible. Understanding this moment in this body as completely as possible. is understanding that the blade of grass that's stuck in the ground is already a temple. So it's a little cruel, but I'm going to give you a reading from Dogen. Dogen, our 13th century founder in Japan, Dogen Zenji. And this is from one of his most difficult articles. but one of my favorites. It's called Uji or Time Being.

[22:06]

And it's staying with the subject of grasses. There are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth. And yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. The study of this is the beginning of practice. When you are at this place, there is just one grass. There is just one form. There is understanding of form and no understanding of form. There is understanding of grass and no understanding of grass. Since there is nothing but just this moment, the time being is all the time there is. Grass being form being, are both time. Each moment is all being, is the entire world.

[23:13]

Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. With Dogen, just like with koans, you've got to kind of let it sit just a little bit. So we're having a discussion in the practice period about whether the welcoming exercises that we're learning and the zazen practice that we have are any different or whether they're just the same thing. The exercises are basically to notice what it is that comes up in your mind and in your body and welcome it. The instruction for zazen might arguably be described as notice everything that comes up in your mind and your body and be present with it. I'm not sure that it really matters too much about whether or not they're the same. Welcoming everything that comes up in the body and mind may be difficult to do at first when what is coming up is painful.

[24:25]

After the election yesterday, there may be feelings of elation, there may be feelings of anger, frustration, despair and sadness for some people. These are legitimate responses to the world, and it's important to feel these feelings fully. It's important for me, as I note the feelings that come up, to understand that they're not permanent feelings, and that I can take a break from them by being completely present with my feet on the ground, standing firm on this earth, remembering that most of the time I'm safe at this moment. Thank you all very much. I believe we have some time for questions and answers and comments. If you have a question or a comment, please raise your hands.

[25:39]

I'll bring the microphone over. Your Eminence, in the course of your practice, do you come to a point of stilling the mind and don't have to worry about it anymore? No. Are you asking if it's permanent? Yes. No, I haven't. Next. Next question or comment? Can you speak a bit about the being with, of being with whatever comes up in our bodies and mind and experiences?

[27:01]

Sure. And if I could just add a small comment to it is... It's a different quality every time, in a sense. Well, it is. Yeah. It is, but what I found sitting, starting my practice, was that there still was a familiarity to what was coming up. So there was a bouquet of different experiences that were coming up that I could start to recognize from And begin to locate in my body was the instruction that I received, and that's what it is that I've been doing. To locate it in my body and see how it is that it changes and is slightly different each time. There's parts of what come up that are in my mind only and not really felt so much in the body.

[28:08]

And then there's other things like anxiety, which I feel at different places. different places in my body. And so to go to those places in my body and experience what the experience is, to see how it is that it changes each time, to see how each experience actually changes each second that I experience it. Nothing stays permanently. even really strong emotions like anger. I've worked a lot with anger. And I used to think before I started practicing that I was just like permanently angry. And by looking at it, by being with it, by being with the anger, I see that it's actually changing from second to second.

[29:11]

And so being with the internal experience of all of my experiences, looking at them, studying them, Dogen said, study this, investigate, investigate, he's always saying. And what we're really doing is seeing that everything is impermanent. Even the strongest feelings and the most entrenched depression is changing all the time. Does that get anywhere near an answer for you? I have a feel for the experiences, as in feeling thought. I suppose what I'm curious about is

[30:12]

how I'm being with something. Even that shifts. Sometimes I'm a little tight with how I'm being with something. Sometimes I'm a little bit more... I can welcome indiscrimination or I can welcome in something much more open way. even the filter of how I'm being with something changes does that I'm curious about just the being with that sounds to me like you're doing a great job talk about not talking about it because it's almost impossible to talk about and so how you talk about it is going to be a little bit different for everyone and how I talk about it is not going to be really how it is that other people necessarily feel comfortable talking about it we talk a lot about not talking about it

[31:42]

If you Google, I love to state this, if you Google Zen writings, Zen Buddhist writings, and then Google Theravadan Buddhist writings or Tibetan Buddhist writings, the number for Zen Buddhist writings is like astronomical compared to the other writings. So we talk a lot about not talking about it, and we really talk a lot about that. So we're trying not to try, but we can't help it. Another question? Anybody else? Yeah. Would you find it advisable to identify the things that are causing you stress in your life? Let's say too much political news or your fear of heights.

[32:46]

And once you've identified the things that are causing stress, to avoid those things because they're a distraction from the practice. Or do you feel like maybe it's a challenge and it's worth facing those stresses? I would say talk to a teacher. So we really stress doing things as a group. We talk about face-to-face transmission of the practice. And how it is that you do it, it's really important not to do it on your own. So do it in conjunction with someone who is on the path with you, who might be a little bit more, been doing it a little bit more experienced. Because the answer to these questions of whether or not you sit with things that are distractions or that are difficult, the answer is different for every person and it's different at different times in your life. Sometimes it's very important to sit with things that are distractions.

[33:50]

Sometimes it's very important to avoid them. Sometimes it's helpful to sit with things that are difficult and painful. Sometimes it's a mistake to do that. It's important to do it in community, not to go off and do it on your own. what I found is that most of the things that were distractions for me, in fact, all of the things that were distractions for me, that were challenges for me, I found other people who'd had to practice with them almost exactly the same things. And what they had to say was helpful to me. So... I'm sorry I'm not really giving you a straight answer, but I'm trying to get you to see the importance of practicing in community. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Another question?

[34:56]

Thank you, everyone. Oh, I just have one thing that I want to say. It's pretty intense right now. So please look after yourselves. Focus on eating and sleeping. If you already started sitting zazen, sit zazen. Try, if you can, to look after others as well. and be in community. Thank you.

[36:42]

Thank you very much for coming. If you have a few moments to help us put the Zendo back together, that would be appreciated. This first row of shares can stay.

[39:13]

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