The admiration is simply the direction of the light and the light and the power of [...] the power This is... [...] Thank you.

[01:35]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. The journey of a man, nor faith, was our man.

[18:22]

It is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, [...] very. Good morning. And good morning to you who are online. I was just watching myself coming into the Buddha Hall. For those of you who don't know, we've had a gap of 13, 14 months since we had a talk just in this room. I was watching myself.

[19:26]

I was watching how I'm feeling. A little bit apprehensive. And then I got to the altar. And there used to be, on that little last piece of the fireplace, there was a number of ihais, you know, little plaques. to the people who had donated in the past, most of which were in Japanese and were mysterious to me. But when I got there and they weren't there, I thought, oh, but our beginningless past, they represented it. then, for me, something wonderful.

[20:31]

You know, like, ah, the good old days have returned. But not so much like a cognitive thing, but just a sensibility. Oh, yeah. I know the routine here. And so as we start, for those of you who've been here many times, I would suggest you just tick in what you're noticing, what's notable for you. If you wish, you can admire our new tatami. Or the absence of ihais. resurrection of this fashion apart of meet the statue or this odd Chinese looking piece of furniture someone gave us that long time ago and we couldn't think of what to do with it so we put it right there

[21:57]

All these years later, it would seem like a sacrilege to move it. It belongs there. And for those of you who are here for the first time, welcome you. The temple's name is Beginner's Mind. you've got the advantage over those like myself who have been here many times. Although I've often thought when the lecturer would say, and who's here for the first time, that I would put my hand up. How can you not be here for the first time? This is the first time this moment has occurred. Yeah. I was musing over the notion of... The word that came to mind was refurbished.

[23:15]

When you talk about a piece of machinery or an iPhone, when it's refurbished, it's sort of cleaned up. It's made to function like new. The Buddha hall has been refurbished. And for the last week, we've been scrambling, and Dan in particular, to get the internet connection set up so that it would work smoothly. But who knows? Maybe it'll be perfect, and maybe it will have some quirks that surprise Dan and the rest of us. You know, in many spiritual traditions, the place where...

[24:37]

occurs is considered... I was going to use the word sacred and I thought, I won't use that. And then the next word came into mind was special. And I thought, no. That often when you practice in a place there's a kind of a two-way transmission. Like this space teaches you something and then by being in this space you contribute something. And I think certainly for myself and for those of us who've practiced, come into this Buddha hall many times.

[25:44]

There is something of that back and forth. Like when I enter here, I see the Buddha statues. They have a deep familiarity. How they came to be here is a kind of... It has a wonderful serendipity to it. It's not a linear logic, you know, okay, we thought we have to have a Tara statue. No. someone called us up and said, you should buy this statue. And we said, we don't have the money. He said, we'll get it. And so there we did, and there it is.

[26:53]

Maybe the sacred... is the expression, the manifestation of that part of each of us and all of us that trusts practice. The person who was selling it to us, Rudy, It was his name. I'm not even sure if he's still alive. He would sell it. If he thought it was a notable piece, he would sell it to us at cost, or even below cost, just because he would have this strong notion, this

[28:02]

having this statue in your premises is exactly right. And can each of us consider that being here, some of that exactly rightness rubs off on us? Sometimes it's palpable. come in, sit down, and something in you relaxes. Sometimes practice is described as coming home. And that can be a space Or it can just be an internal recalibration.

[29:09]

And of course, Zen practice turns everything on its head. There's a koan. Quite straightforward and simple. Shakyamuni Buddha is walking with his senior student, Manjushri Mahakashapa. And he says, this, Shakyamuni says, this would be a good place to build a sanctuary. Manjushri takes a blade of grass, plants it in the ground, and says... This sanctuary is built. That each moment offers us a resting place. Each moment offers us the opportunity to be present. Each moment offers an intimacy of interbeing.

[30:32]

So you should feel free to rebuke us for our thoughts of the past. Was there any need to refurbish? And then these two notions, the potency of a sacred place, and the availability of everything and anything to be sacred. Nothing special, but sacred. Quite a while ago, I was at Tassajara and leading a practice period there. a three-month session, and I was walking from the baths to the practice period leader's cabin, and I was marveling at how wonderful it felt to be a tasar, our formal monastery.

[32:05]

And even that notion is interesting, because like many others, Maybe everybody. There have been times when I thought, no, that's the wake-up bell. It's way too soon to get up. Sometimes it's too hot. Sometimes it's too cold. Sometimes you feel lonely. Sometimes you feel deeply appreciative. for the connection the intimacy of being in the valley together and just staying in that place and having all of this flow through and often not always by any means but often it brings forth a feeling of gratitude

[33:09]

And as I was walking from the baths to the cabin, I was thinking, this is lovely, but it's kind of an elite group that get to live like this. What would it take to bring the spirit, the intimacy, of Tassahara back to the city. And so I'm mused on that. One thing I've learned from practicing is that often the difficulties, the challenges or the treasure.

[34:11]

Zen center, or in particular city center, in many ways all of Zen center has had to rediscover itself through the process of years of COVID and then a year of renovation. Okay, well how we usually do it is not available So what shall we do? And then, how shall we do it? How shall we replicate the Buddha Hall in the conference room next to or up? And we learned a lot. How to create a relationship with that space. how to create the sanctuary that we can practice in.

[35:18]

And so there I was, at Tassara, thinking, how do we take this sanctuary and make it a kind of movable feast? How can that happen at city center? And I came up with the notion of... At Tassajara, we're taking refuge. One of the most obvious things at Tassajara is that we sort of shift from me to we. We eat together, we sit together, we work together, we bathe together, We go to sleep together, all in the same rhythm. And it just generates an intimacy that goes beyond me as a separate individual.

[36:33]

And somehow The hat opens us. I remember once someone from Eastern Europe, one of their parents took ill. And so spontaneously we took up a collection for them to go back and be with their ailing parents. It just happened. And the person said to me, I'm so grateful, it's almost painful. I feel like I'm connected to a goodness that I don't deserve. That kind of intimacy.

[37:44]

How do we create it? And in Buddhist terms, it's we discover how to be sangha. So I created a course. And we offered it many times. And then two things happened. COVID struck. And Zoom became an everyday event. And now I'm thinking, and I hope others will think this way too, that it's time to recreate. The name I gave it was the path of practice, establishing the path of practice. And that notion of a path, we can think of practice this way.

[38:55]

There are fundamental principles about practice that we're challenged by to take in, to embody, to have them guide how we relate to reality, how we relate to the details of life. So there's those principles. And then each situation presents a calling. Like, okay, what's the appropriate, given the principles, what's the appropriate response in this situation? And as we take up that process, we both take up the heritage of the path of practice

[40:09]

as something that's handed down to us from previous generations, but it's also something we're making up in the moment. How do we make sangha, given this set of conditions? One of the thoughts I came up with that I got from, not personally, but through reading about an evangelical minister in South California, Rick Warren. Rick Warren started something called Saddleback Ministries. I think I got that right. And he's a very popular evangelical minister.

[41:17]

And the congregation is about 10,000 people. And what he did was, he divided the 10,000 into 1,000 groups, each group with 10 people. And then, so... intimacy of sangha. If you bring 10,000 people into a room, most of them are overwhelmed and feel anonymous in such a large group. So I was very struck by that notion and thought, we could do that. We could have small groups. And then we can offer teachings on how to cultivate the principles of practice.

[42:32]

Then in small groups, we can talk to each other. We can talk to each other about What's it like for you when you try to do this? One of the mindfulness exercises that became relevant in the course was if you put on your jacket, your blouse, your shirt with your right arm first, try putting your left arm first. Or if you tie your shoelaces right foot forward first, do your left foot. Shift your routine and see what it makes available. Just taking a series of exercises

[43:40]

mindfulness exercises in discovering how to make them part of your day. And then to share with your small group how that is. And to listen how it is for others. Not because such a special thing which arm you put into your jacket first. It's not. But something in the spark of awareness, there's something in becoming present in that moment. It starts to reveal the sacredness of each moment, the potency of each moment. And we start to develop a trust.

[44:50]

These moments of awareness, they teach us something about how to live. They teach us something about who we are. So we could say, in the language of Buddhism, we could say, well, joining a small group is like taking refuge in Sangha. And then the teachings arise in the activities of mindfulness, and we learn they teach us how to practice, we take refuge in Dharma. And as we live this way, it influences us in a myriad of ways. It puts us in touch with something, from a Buddhist teaching, something innate in our being.

[46:09]

that we want to live. And in our karmic way, we connect living to getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want. But as we enter the moment, there's a kind of giving over. It's not so defined by what I want and what I don't want. It becomes the the energy of that relatedness sparks a kind of illumination. And as we continue to practice, this alchemy of discovering how to live

[47:14]

trusting how to live, of being skillful with the impulses of what we want and what we don't want. That's the challenge for us, is to be skillful with them and to see how we can get all caught up in them. And then also to see that when they're not rampant, they're they're actually inviting and enlivening way of being and in the language of Zen each situation is our current and so recklessly and foolishly I have a resurrected what we came to call EPP, Establishing the Path of Practice.

[48:22]

And we're about to start another session of it. And the last time we did it, and the previous times, the Internet was a possibility, but... It hadn't integrated. What's happened in the last five years or so is amazing. Having meetings over Zoom is like writing a letter. It's like making a phone call. And so the geographical emphasis on the Buddha Hall, on the corner of Page and Laguna, you know, It still has a magic, but it's not the only story in time. In offering this course, you're welcome to participate, and you can do it in person.

[49:44]

Or you can do it online. And we've figured out, I don't know if we figured them out or they just presented themselves to us, a process that brings forth the basic principles. And then, hopefully, just through talking with each other, we discover how that applies in the life you're living. Not to say, don't bother with going on retreat or sushin or practice period at Tassajara. No. This is just a compliment to that.

[50:50]

This is a way to bring the Buddha Dharma into your life. This is a way to find out what it's like to include everything that comes up for us. To include it in the vow of practice. You know, usually we segregate. Oh, here's me living my life, carrying forth the necessities that that entails. And then here's me over here, separate from that, trying to be spiritual. trying to discover what is it to live a life, trying to discover how do we relate to this extraordinarily complex coexistence.

[52:00]

You know, I suspect many of us, maybe all of us, are still... reeling from the election, the presidential elections we had quite recently, and feeling a certain trepidation around, what the heck is going to happen now? Can we meet it? Not so much with the notion that I should either fight against it or conform or just give up hope you know can this just be okay this is what's happening now this is what's there to practice with and what does that look like in the circumstances of my life and there's a way

[53:09]

When we bring forth the calling of life in that way, it stimulates something in us. A certain kind of ingenuity, a certain kind of trust in our own singular and collective ability to meet the challenges that we're facing right now. So this is the lofty notion of the path of practice. And maybe it would have been better if we'd have waited another three months, but we didn't. We're still, as you'll see as you wander through the building, we're still in the throes of putting things together. We're still in the throes

[54:13]

of learning how to be a location and to be an internet cloud. And certainly if you have skill in either of those, you're welcome to bring it forth and offer it. So if you'd like to engage, one more detail I'd like to add. is our collective relationship to the material world. In some ways, in terms of bringing forth the Dharma, we would like everything to be free, accessible, available. and not caught up in the material world.

[55:17]

But on the other side, we are intrinsically in the material world. And we're obliged, like everyone else, to pay our bills. to generate the income to cover our expenses. So we've tried to express that in how we're setting a fee, our fees on establishing the path of practice and on many things we offer now. We have a range of suggested costs from what we call, I think we call it sustaining, is that what we call it?

[56:30]

Yes. Dying to nothing. And as an act of trust, that each person can find their place in that fee structure. This is our attempt to hold true to our bodhisattva vow, to support everyone to awaken, and to cover the material costs of running an organization. So this was my notion and we're going to enact it. But also, you know, feel invited to ask yourself and respond to your asking, what is my path now?

[57:40]

Should I join this course or should I discover the path in a completely different way. This is not offered as the way. It's just a way. But I would add to that that doing it as a sangha is precious. There's a short story that I'll tell. Rick Warren, the evangelical minister, he wrote a book called A Purposeful Life. And then someone was kidnapped, and I don't remember the details of the kidnapping.

[58:49]

I think they were just being held for ransom. the person who was reading it talks to the kidnapper about the book. And together they agreed that that person would let go the person who was kidnapped. And the person who was kidnapped wouldn't press charges against the person. And so after that, of course... that positive free publicity, the book became extraordinarily popular. When we hold the principles and the practice of liberation, who knows what can happen?

[59:55]

So may you hold your beginner's mind with a kind of softness and also a kind of sacredness. Thank you. We're here to live. What is true in the world goes to me? I don't know. [...] Thank you.

[61:19]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for coming today. For me, this is really a momentous day that we're back in the Buddha Hall for a Dharma talk. On one hand, it seems like it's been forever since we've been here, and on the other hand, it seems like no time has passed, and it was just like a little hiccup or something that we weren't in here, and now we're back. So for me, it's very joyous to be back here. A few announcements. As Paul had mentioned, the establishing the path of practice starts today at 1.30 here, I believe, here in the Buddha Hall. You can get more information on our website, sfcc.org, about it. You can sign up on the website for it as well. And so that starts today. As always, you are invited to come and practice with us. We love having you here with us, especially as we're getting more and more access to the building. and all of us are learning how to do things in the building again after such a long time. We have regular morning and evening Zazen at 5.40 in the morning and 5.40 in the evening. We thank you for your patience throughout this year as we refurbished City Center and made it a beautiful place to practice for the next hundred years.

[64:00]

Please consider supporting Zen Center with your donations and presents. There's a donation box out there in the lobby. Memberships are the lifeblood of Zen Center and help us create and sustain all that we do. I also wanted to mention that our format is now different. The Q&A will be with the speaker in the dining hall. And on the way to the dining hall, there will be tea and cookies in the hallway. So you can get tea and cookies and then go into the dining hall for the Q&A. There is no Dharma talk this Wednesday coming up. But the next Dharma Talk is one week from today, Saturday, February 1st, with Michael McCord. We have two more volunteer days for the garden. Is David here? David is here. Today and next Saturday are the last two garden volunteer days. There's a lot to do this winter to prepare for the spring bloom, especially now that the construction is done. So David, where would you like people to meet you? Okay, so if you're interested in helping in the garden today or next week, please meet David in front of the stairs.

[65:10]

We have another class series coming up that's very interesting and exciting, New Voices of the San Francisco Zen Center, Conversations on Difference and Equality, which will go from February 3rd to March 17th. And there's more information on the website, but let me say, in conventional reality, we perceive differences. In absolute reality, we perceive equality. How do we find harmony between these two realities? In this class series, five of the most recently authorized practice leaders at City Center will each propose a particular lens through which the apparent dualism of difference and equality can be seen and addressed and encourage conversations among all participants to explore aspects of difference and equality that arise in our daily lives. You can sign up for this course on our website, as I mentioned, sfcc.org. And that starts, as I said, February 3rd. We have a calligraphy class coming up next weekend. Yeah, next weekend with Tomoko Ibe, visiting Calligraphy Master.

[66:14]

February 1st and 2nd, 1 to 3 in the conference center. And Tomoko will guide you through the intricacies and the beauty of Japanese calligraphy. Urban Gate Sangha. helps us on Saturday mornings with the 925 Zazen, as well as the Dharma talk, if the urban folks can raise their hand. You, too, could be a person raising your hand next week. You don't have to come every Saturday, but they help ring the bells, they hit the Han, bells here, densho bell, all those kind of things. It's fun, exciting, there's a talk with the Tanto afterwards. so feel free to volunteer for Urban Gate Saga. So that's all that I have for you today. As I mentioned, tea and cookies are in the hallway, and the Q&A will be in the dining hall. And if a few people can stay behind and help us put the Buddha Hall back together, any of the chairs could go out back into the dining hall, and the soft foods can go back onto the shelves here.

[67:21]

So thank you so much for coming today. Welcome back to the Buddha Hall and enjoy your weekend.

[67:26]

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