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. Thank you for coming. Fellow travelers, Thank you for being born to illuminate the world in only the way that you can, which will not be repeated. I am relishing in the newness of everything this morning, all new faces,

[01:03]

All new, but mostly all new. A very tight parking garage, which felt really precarious. The newness is invigorating, exciting, nerve-wracking, and what more could I hope for? My name is Gyokuden Steph Blanc, and I'm I am a resident priest at Green Gulch Farm, Green Dragon Temple. I also consider myself a lay practitioner. And one of the most significant practices for me at this time in my life is parenting two wonderful people. So I have much appreciation for the practice of my fellow parents. Thank you, Tim, for inviting me to be a guest here today.

[02:06]

It really makes me happy to walk into the building. I found myself kind of expecting to see Blanche and Lou and Bernd and other friends, Steve, David, Cody. I feel many people's practice present here. so I feel that they have arrived as well. This morning I would like to share a story that has touched me deeply for a long time. It is a story of this season, and it's well known to many people. Although not typically categorized as a Zen story, I think it does a beautiful job of pointing to the heart of awakening. of our awakening opportunity. It's called A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens.

[03:13]

Familiar? It was written by Charles Dickens in 1843 while he was 31 years old. And today I would like to consider this story from my perspective as a Zen practitioner. First, I want to acknowledge that the subject of Christmas impacts us differently. I grew up in rural Minnesota, and my parents offered my three older brothers and I an environment of a Catholic upbringing. So I am intimately familiar with some of its wonderful forms. For me, Christmas still holds a character of reverence, tenderness, and goodwill toward others. I would like to invoke these qualities this morning. Is that okay with you? If we invoke together reverence, tenderness, and goodwill toward others.

[04:17]

And I dedicate this talk to the well-being of my father, who died on March 2, 2025, earlier this year. Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, England. Is that how you say Portsmouth? Portsmouth, England. I'm not a Dickens scholar, but I do want to share one thing I encountered about his life that impacted his writing. He left school at age 12. I have a 12-year-old son. He left school at age 12 to go and work at a boot-blacking factory because his father was incarcerated in what's called debtor's prison. A debtor's prison. He couldn't pay his debts, and so he was incarcerated. So 12-year-old Charles Dickens went to a boot-blocking factory to earn very little money to try to support his family.

[05:31]

I should say he was sent to a boot-blocking factory. to support his family. There he experienced very difficult working conditions while earning very little on his family's behalf. And later when he became a writer, he had much to write about. And Charles Dickens became renowned as a Victorian novelist, known for giving a voice to the poor and working classes. This story, A Christmas Carol, is a story of reclamation. Reclamation. The process of claiming something back. The thing that is lost and gets reclaimed in this story is the welfare of a man whose heart has closed to the welfare of all beings. By actively closing his heart to the welfare of others, he is bound to live in misery. This is lawful

[06:34]

because actively closing one's heart to all beings is like inventing a false reality. The characters in the story are these. Ebenezer Scrooge is the cold-hearted and callous man whose reclamation is sought. When we meet him, he cares for no one, not even himself, really. He has a stockpile of money, profit from the hardships of others, but he doesn't use it to benefit anybody. He is a man of business. Jacob Marley is Scrooge's deceased business partner who was the same. Jacob died seven years ago and comes to haunt Scrooge, to warn him that he is forging his own eternal hell by turning his back on the welfare of all beings. This is Jacob's own fate, forged by his own hands while he was living.

[07:36]

Next, the three spirits, or bodhisattvas, who visit Scrooge in succession to present reality for the possibility of his reclamation. Reclamation of what? Reclamation of the bodhisattva vow. The concern for the well-being of everybody. to live for the love of all beings. We love all beings. I'm experiencing still like strangers, strangers, surrounding my strangers, and yet there is also this kind of natural camaraderie that I'm aware of. My care for you. There are other wonderful characters in this story, but I want to primarily consider the role of the three spirits and their effect on Scrooge.

[08:57]

For this telling, I propose that each one of us is Scrooge, as when we are hurt and close our hearts. So this is the story of our reclamation, our reclamation of our Bodhisattva vow. The story opens with Scrooge identifying the body of his business partner, Jacob. And after he confirms that it is Jacob's body, he complains that the fee of the undertaker is unfair. Our thoughts create our consciousness. Seven years later, on the anniversary of Jacob's death, we see Scrooge counting his profits while underpaying his kind and financially struggling employee, withholding any comforts that cost money, like heating the cold room.

[10:01]

Scrooge's words are cynical and cruel. When Scrooge's nephew comes to invite him for Christmas dinner, he doesn't just decline the invitation, he makes a spectacle of his hateful response and disposition toward Christmas, toward happiness, toward marriage, and toward Christmas carolers. Bah! Humbug! He slams the door in everybody's face. His nephew is the enlightened witness, like Jizo. standing by, unaffected by his uncle's battery. Like Avalokiteshvara, witnessing the suffering of the world with unperturbed calm. Like a loving mother holds her crying baby.

[11:03]

His nephew even chuckles at Scrooge a little, like a dad might chuckle at his toddler's spectacular tantrum or his teenager's witty insult. He loves him. The nephew loves his uncle, despite the scary appearance. That night, Scrooge is haunted by Jacob's ghost who is wrapped in the long chains that he forged in life by his stinginess, by his cold-heartedness, and by his cruelty. He warns Scrooge that his chains will be even longer if he does not heed his opportunity to participate in goodwill for his fellow travelers he warns him that he is creating his own eternal hell by turning his back on his fellows heaven and hell are always right at hand depending on our actions and our thoughts and our dispositions

[12:13]

Jacob offers that three more ghosts will visit Scrooge in succession and commands him to look willingly at what they have to show or be doomed to walk in hell for eternity. Not a hell deep under the earth which is filled with fire, but simply the eternal estrangement that he has already created. Jacob departs into an abyss of suffering spirits. Scrooge is rattled for a moment, then tries to deny Jacob's warning. He blames his encounter on indigestion. The first spirit. The ghost of Christmas past is the great illuminator of what was. The strangest thing about it was that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright, clear jet of light by which all this was visible and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap which is now held under its arm.

[13:43]

Light emanating from its head and he has a cap under his arm. There are moments when Things aren't so clear. Things appear more dimly to us. Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness, being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, and now a head without a body, of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again, distinct and clear as ever. The illuminating light of reflection, consideration, understanding, healing,

[14:51]

the illuminating light of our learning, growing, expanding. The ghost of Christmas past is zazen. When we look back with eyes of compassion, not with scrutiny, not with severity, we can see our past selves honestly, our hurts, our faults, and we can reach back and pull ourselves into our own warm lap. We can tend to our own injuries more precisely than anybody else possibly could. We can witness our joys and grace more fully, even if we were not able to experience them previously. As Scrooge travels to his own past with this spirit, he observes the place of his childhood. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts and hopes and joys and cares long, long forgotten.

[16:00]

Your lip is trembling, said the ghost. And what is that upon your cheek? Scrooge muttered with an unusual catching in his voice that it was a pimple and begged the ghost to lead him where he would. You recollect the way, inquired the spirit. Remember it, cried Scrooge with fervor. I could walk it blindfolded. Strange to have forgotten it for so many years, observed the ghost. Scrooge has helped to touch different moments of his past with the light of illumination, the light of understanding. Next, he sees his young self suffering from loneliness left behind at boarding school at Christmas time, unwanted by his father and separated from his beloved sister.

[17:01]

The reflective power of the past helps us to touch our vulnerability and to manifest ourselves more clearly in the present. He travels on to other Christmases from his past and observes himself as a happy young man. Yes, he was once happy. an apprentice of a wonderful boss that knows when to stop working and celebrate his cherished, treasured employees. The employer throws a jubilant Christmas party, and there Scrooge sees his younger self dancing with joy and falling in love. Scrooge observes, riveted, his heart astir. He has moved to witness. He has moved. He has moved to witness and remember the feeling of happiness. Then, a change.

[18:04]

The next scene from his past shows his young self working late on Christmas. He has become stressed and irritated and unapologetic for not showing up to meet his fiancée, Belle. After waiting alone, she notes that he has changed. and expresses her doubt that he would still choose her, a girl without money, as he seems to only treasure wealth. Another idol has displaced me, and if it can cheer and comfort you in times to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve. What idol has replaced you, his younger self asks her. A golden one. As Scrooge observes this turning moment in his past, he shouts out in agony as she removes the ring from her finger and gives it back to the bewildered young man that is forced to witness. Don't go.

[19:07]

But she lives in the distant past and cannot hear him. As Scrooge observes this turning point, Excuse me, Scrooge cannot bear to see anymore. So what does he do? He lashes out at the spirit. Show me no more. Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me? Sounds like the third day of Sashin, doesn't it? the spirit replies steadily, I told you these were shadows of the things that have been, that they are what they are, do not blame me. Scrooge turned upon the ghost and seeing that it looked upon him with a face in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.

[20:16]

In this struggle, if that can be called a struggle, in which the ghost's with no visible resistance on its own part, was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary. With appreciation for Charles Dickens. And with appreciation for the responders to the urgency of the moment. And the sitting peacefully. which is our contribution, manifesting peace at this moment. Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright, and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the extinguisher cap. He grabbed the cap. And by a sudden action, pressed it down upon its head.

[21:20]

You can't bear to see the illuminating light. The spirit dropped beneath it so that the extinguisher covered its whole form. But though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it in an unbroken flood upon the ground. The ghost of Christmas past is the inextinguishable light of illumination. The second spirit. Scrooge finds himself wrestling with empty sheets in his bed. Now he is really rattled. He has observed a lot and his heart is awakening, which is quite uncomfortable. It can be quite uncomfortable when you begin to see the source of your own suffering. Scrooge is on the watch for the next spirit.

[22:27]

He established a sharp lookout all around the bed, for he wished to challenge the spirit on the moment of its appearance and did not wish to be taken by surprise. Have you ever come to Dokusan or a therapy meeting or into your own house with that readiness? We know that readiness. But Scrooge could not get ahead of the second ghost. The ghost of Christmas present was already there, waiting for him in the adjacent room, waiting for him to notice. Scrooge enters the room timidly and is utterly stunned by the abundance of radiant light, food, bounty, and greenery. He is disarmed by awe. Come in, exclaimed the ghost, and know me better, man.

[23:33]

This is our invitation. This is our invitation. Know me better. This is the turning point of our story. This. The abundance. The crushed flowers floating in the water. the company of Dharma companions sitting together peacefully. Let's notice that, you know, internally we may have many different feelings happening and yet collectively and externally you could say there's peacefulness happening in the room. This is the bounty of the moment. This is our bounty. I am the ghost of Christmas present, said the Scrooge.

[24:39]

Look upon me. The ghost of Christmas present is intimacy. Look upon me. Scrooge reverently did so. Do we dare to look upon the ghost of Christmas present? This spirit is fully saturated, bountiful, boundless. Do we dare to look? Or is it easier to avert our eyes? Its dark brown curls were long and free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard, but no sword was in it.

[25:40]

And the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust. I love that. There's a scabbard and no sword, and the sheath is rusted. There is hope. This spirit commands reverence because reverence is to the point. Like taking a newborn baby into your arms, like taking yourself into your arms. The ghost of Christmas present brings Scrooge to witness many scenes that are happening in the present. He sees his nephew's joyous Christmas party that he refused to attend and witnesses the coarse jokes that are made at his expense. But he notices that they are made with love. The party-goers roast Scrooge, and then they toast to his well-being.

[26:43]

A merry Christmas to the old man, whatever he is, said Scrooge's nephew. He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it nevertheless. We should take this to heart. As difficult as it seems, the prospect of meeting every being with love, I think we must realize that we have only one task here. Next, he is taken to see his employee, Bob Cratchit, whose large and loving family is sitting down to a very meager Christmas meal. Bob's young son is in poor health, and the eldest children are working to help the family survive. He witnesses this family also toasting to his health, despite their mixed feelings toward him. Bob's wife is angry that Scrooge treats Bob so poorly for all his hard work, but they all raise their glasses nonetheless, bestowing blessings upon him despite his ill treatment of them.

[27:54]

Scrooge feels ashamed. He sees that he has been neglecting many people. Regret begins its work. As they walk invisible through the marketplace, the ghost of Christmas present carries a torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch. For once or twice when there were angry words between some who had jostled each other, The spirit shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored directly. We could use such a torch watching over our roads and freeways. We Zen people also sometimes carry a torch. The torch, the Dharma staff, are very uncommon tools.

[29:02]

They have a great function. What is the function of the Dharma staff? They encourage, remind, the allowing, the welcoming, the full saturation, the earnest, vivid realization of life arising. We grown-ups inevitably get involved in the patterns of our culture, like counting our money or being excessively concerned with how we look. But the ghost of Christmas present is among us always, always, sprinkling from its torch. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. Sprinkle. And we pass the torch.

[30:03]

The torch goes on even after we take our turns dying. At the end of their encounter, the ghost of Christmas present becomes mournful. He pulls aside the folds of his robe and reveals a boy and a girl clinging to its skirts. Wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable, yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate, too, in their humility. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. He tried to pretend he didn't see. Everything's fine here. Spirit, are they yours?

[31:07]

Scrooge could say no more. They are man's, and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is ignorance. This girl is want. These are the children of our ancient twisted karma. These children represent what we at the Zen Center call the three poisons, greed, hate, and delusion. Charles Dickens called them want and ignorance. They are the offspring of our forgetting who we are. Beware them both and of all their degree. But most of all, beware this boy, ignorance, for on his brow I see that written which is doom unless the writing be erased. Deny it, cried the spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city.

[32:12]

Slander those who tell it yea. Admit it for your factious purposes and make it worse. Admit like let it in. Let it in for your factious purposes and make it worse and abide the end. The warning is clear and unnerving. Watch out for greed and watch out for ignorance, especially for ignorance. Deny the impulses of ignorance. If we allow it for our factious purposes, for our selfish purposes, then we pass it on. It will be our children, our successors, who will bear the burden of our ignorance. Hence, delusions are inexhaustible. We, having been born, have inherited the whole karmic situation of all the fellow travelers before us.

[33:14]

But Dharma gates are boundless. and the light of illumination is inexhaustible. Scrooge, of course, is quite rattled now. Something ominous has become palpable to him. He turns to the spirit for comfort, but the spirit has suddenly grown old before his eyes and begins laughing even as it starts to fade. Importantly, It doesn't grasp itself, but disintegrates into dust with boundless laughter. Earlier this year, I was in awe of the tremendous transformation that I was undergoing while witnessing my father dying. For five years, I had been involved in taking care of him while he had dementia and while his health was deteriorating, not to mention my entire lifetime of caring for him.

[34:27]

But now he was dying, his body was shutting down, and it was clearly time for letting go. But this was entirely new to me, and it was entirely new to him. So we were letting each other go because that is what was arising. I note now that what is arising is living. The Third Spirit. Finally, briefly, came the ominous ghost of Christmas future, Scrooge's future, if he carried on his callous ways. It simply points with his vaporous arms to the ill results of his missed opportunities.

[35:37]

Bob Cratchit's young boy is dead and the family is filled with grief, yet they don't close their hearts. With tears on their faces, they vow to remember him and remember the bounty of the present moment. They vow. They make their bodhisattva vow with tears on their faces while saying goodbye to the first among them who parted. Scrooge's heart aches for what he might have done differently for his employees' family. The spirit points to Scrooge's own dead body, left uncared for on his bed as impoverished individuals take what they can from his house to sell. Finally, it points to his own tombstone, abandoned, forgotten, in the darkest corner of the remotest cemetery.

[36:40]

The lost opportunity to love others is so frightening to him that he wakes up Suddenly. Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost. Yes, and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own. The room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own to make amends in. I will live in the past, the present, and the future, Scrooge repeated as he scrambled out of bed. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley, heaven and the Christmastime, be praised for this. I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees.

[37:46]

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the spirit. His face was wet with tears. His hands were busy with his garments all this time, turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance. I don't know what to do, cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath and making a perfect laocoon of himself with his stockings. I am as light as a feather. I am as happy as an angel. I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody. A happy new year to all the world. Hello there, whoop, hello. This is Scrooge waking up to having a human body and being alive, waking up to our situation.

[38:53]

He had frisked into the sitting room and was now standing there perfectly winded. There's the saucepan that the gruel was in, cried Scrooge, starting off again and going around the fireplace. There's the door by which the ghost of Jacob Marley entered. There's the corner where the ghost of Christmas present sat. There's the window where I saw the wandering spirits. It's all right. It's all true. It all happened. Ha ha ha. Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh, the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs. Would we not like to be the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs? I don't know what day of the month it is, said Scrooge. I don't know how long I've been among the spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hello. Whoop. Hello there. Forgive me for...

[40:12]

reading a very well-known story, and for pointing to the obvious. We are alive, for the time being, among wonderful friends who are interested in realizing peace together, in a room with so much history of people realizing peace together. sitting here recollecting our ancestors, perhaps, who have departed. I told you I dedicate this talk to my father. And even our invocation, even our remembering of our ancestors is a kind thing to offer them, I think. We have so much opportunity. And it's okay. Grudge made a lot of mistakes, and still his reclamation was available.

[41:18]

Our reclamation is available. Whatever uncomfortable things there are to grieve or to amend, it's okay, it's welcome. We did inherit a complicated karmic situation. But now we can do our part to care for it and pass on a brighter gift. A long lineage of joyful laughter. The Dharma gate of our reclamation stands wide. Hello, whoop, ha ha. We have the chance to fulfill our purpose. We have the chance to love each other, to dance and shout and sing. Fellow travelers, hello.

[42:20]

Whoop. Ha ha. With appreciation for Charles Dickens. I feel that I know Dickens less than I know this story. This story is dearly beloved to me over a long period of time. Thank you for being with me and considering it from a Zen perspective. And then perhaps I'll just share a story from my youth. that I wrote a little bit like a case, like a koan. So I called this case, Santa Claus Meets Herself. Why is it hard to stand in a long line at a register?

[43:26]

Because we know that buying silly things is indulgent. But look, as long as you have an in-breath, you can always find your way. The line, the clerk, and the items made abroad are all conspiring towards your awakening. Do not turn away. Several decades ago, I was working undercover at a retail store during the holidays as an undercover bodhisattva, of course. I was practicing Zen at that time, too. After a long wait, In the unhappy line, a man stepped up to the counter and began unloading his basket. And I asked him, how are you doing? And he said, terrible. And I said, oh. And he said, I'm Santa Claus. And people do not know their boundaries anymore. They ask for things that are impossible to grant, like cures for illnesses.

[44:31]

They have no respect, no boundaries. And he continued expressing his bewilderment. And I really wanted to say something helpful, but I couldn't think of what to say. Meanwhile, I was ringing up the things. So he kept on talking, and although I wanted to say something, I just kind of struggled until everything was rung up and bagged, and he turned and walked away. And I noticed that my heart was pulled after him. So he was almost at the door when he turned, or when he was almost at the door when I, in my last attempt, shouted, well, take care of yourself, Santa. And he stopped. And he turned. And we met eye to eye.

[45:32]

And I felt a chill from my head to my feet because I realized I was facing Santa. And so we had a sublime moment. I could say I met Santa. I could say Santa recognized himself. Or I could say that I recognized myself. And that is our lovely opportunity together. Always available. 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 Dorma.

[46:34]

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