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 evening, everyone. My name is Tim Wicks, and I live here at City Center. Welcome, everyone. Welcome, everyone in Zoom land. Thanks for tuning in tonight. I want to thank our former Tonto. Tonto means head of practice. Anna Thorne for inviting me to keep this talk and thank Marco Volkow, who's, I think, at a board meeting tonight. along with a bunch of other people. It's the abbot right now of City Center.

[01:07]

Thank you, Tova, who's standing in as Tonto. Tova Green, thank you so much for holding the space of Tonto Hood. Happy Summer Solstice. Today we celebrated the longest day in the year for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere with a celebration, a ritual out in the courtyard here. We like to mark the changing of the seasons out in the courtyard, if weather permits, with some poems and some songs. Tova sang a beautiful song. And so happy summer solstice to you all. In our Zen practice, we frown on speaking about the depth of our practice.

[02:16]

Silence for us is much more appropriate. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, which is a sutra about the layman Vimalakirti, and I'm studying it with my students right now, at the end of chapter 9, which is a chapter called Entering the Dharma Gate of Nonduality, longhand for awakening. The bodhisattvas who are gathered with Vimalakirti, and they're all expounding on what awakening means to them. And Vimalakirti's ask for him to please speak about it. And very famously, he's silent. And Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom who's leading the meeting, says right away, Excellent, sir, excellent.

[03:21]

No use for sounds, syllables, and ideas. So by uttering even a syllable about awakening is seen to compromise or limit the actual experience of awakening itself. Dainan Katagiri Roshi, who was Abbot here at San Francisco Zen Center for a couple of years back in the 80s, And he set up Minnesota Zen Center. Wrote a book once that was called Returning to Silence. And our lineage of ancestors that we celebrate from the Buddha to us began with the Buddha holding up a flower and Mahakashapa smiled and smiled.

[04:24]

The Buddha acknowledged his awakening, and he was our first ancestor. But Katagiri Roshi ended up writing another book, which is You Have to Say Something. That's what it was called. You Have to Say Something. So you have to say something. We would like to just be silent, but we have these Dharma talks, and we go forward and speak. very self-consciously fully aware of how it is that we are compromising the gateway to non-duality. So when we speak about the Dharma, we try to do so directly and simply, avoiding complicated explanations, if possible, or anything that could further cloud the already risky task of trying to describe elements of something that in the end is beyond words so it's with some regrets that i uh use a word that people have a reaction to even in the broader everyday non-zen worlds and the word is are you ready aesthetics aesthetics

[05:49]

The title of this talk is Zen Aesthetics. It's kind of funny how people have a reaction to the word. Part of it is it can seem pretentious and pompous, but there's a different kind of reaction, especially from people. I'm trained as a fine artist, and especially people in the arts have kind of a strong reaction to it, especially people in art studies. art history and art criticism. I have a strong reaction to it. And I suspect it's in part because the concept contains so very much that is unspoken. It attempts to explain something that is beyond words and which has to do with explaining beauty. In Zen we talk very prosaically about the forms.

[06:55]

And these are the things that we do and the way that we do them, the way we bow, the way we enter. We have a Wednesday night Dharma talk form where everyone stands up at a certain time. Did you all know when to stand up exactly? There's a little tiny bell right there and you've got to know it's just the right time to stand up. Everyone stands up and bows with the speaker. who's entered following a very specific form. And I nearly did it wrong today. I nearly walked up there. That's okay. And our Wednesday night form is different from our Saturday form, our Saturday Dharma talk form. Forms are how it is that we order the activities of our temple life throughout the day and throughout the week. And they are, for me, reminders that we're all alive and that each one of us, in all we do and all we are, is Buddha.

[08:08]

Now, I need a lot of reminders because I have a lot of desires and attachments that lead me to forget that my life is Buddha nature. We bow. There's some restrooms out there down the hallway, and there's a little altar out there. There's altars outside of all our restrooms in the temple. And we bow at the altar before going to the bathroom. And this is a reminder for us that even the most mundane of daily events has a sacred life for us to remember and engage in. and be present for. Aesthetics are an attempt to describe beauty. Basically, that's what aesthetics means. And I sometimes think in our spare Zen practice, we don't always recognize the delicious beauty of our practice.

[09:18]

In its Japanese form that we have inherited, often there's an interpretation that beauty means passion or indulgence, which means clinging, and therefore beauty is forbidden. But it's possible to comprehend and engage with the greatest of beauty without clinging. disciplined training in impermanence reminds us of the perils of attachments to anything, especially the beautiful. For in almost every form, from a flower to a person's body, beauty is short-lived. Now, I can't discuss beauty in Zen without mentioning wabi-sabi the japanese concepts of aesthetics that care that came out of uh and are derived from the buddhist three marks of existence which are impermanence suffering and non-self so these are what it is that are at the core of

[10:45]

both Buddhism and Wabi Sabi. Wabi means subdued, austere beauty. And Sabi means rustic, imperfect patina. And a patina is the mark of the passage of time and history, a discoloration through history. And I was interested to see that while I was looking more deeply at Wabi Sabi, that it's been incorporated into a number of Western disciplines, including physics, which cares about elegance. and psychology.

[11:49]

I was very interested to see that wabi-sabi has been used in psychology and that psychology uses it because the ideas of wabi-sabi are used as a treatment for perfectionism, that great vehicle for so much of our anxiety and suffering in the West. There's a beauty in imperfection because it's with nature, and it's how things are and why Visabi asks us to not just accept this but delve deeply into it. We have an anxiety. I had an anxiety anyway. When I first came here, I noticed a lot of other people do, about completing the forms properly, doing them perfectly. rituals can be very difficult to execute perfectly so we try to encourage people to just do the best you can but to engage your heart mind as deeply as possible because that's what it means to be present which is what is the central action of our awakening process

[13:11]

The rituals we have actually use beauty to draw us into remembering our Buddha nature. Zazen, which is our main ritual. Zah means sitting. Zen means concentration. So our sitting meditation, which is our main ritual that we do, begins with two gorgeous instruments. The taiko drum. great big drum. It's downstairs if you haven't seen it. I hope you have a chance to go down and have a look at it. It's a huge drum and it's on a stand. And the dencho, which is a great big bell. We have a beautiful one downstairs. And they play together like a heartbeat and a pulse to begin our zazen. And this central ritual that we partake in ends with the same instruments.

[14:18]

The last instrument that we hear is the densho, the grape bell, which reaches a crescendo as we put Buddha's robe, the robes that we make, on our heads. Kind of strange the first time you see it, but it becomes beautiful very quickly. We put the robes on our head, and the very first things that we say in a day is, To begin the day is the robe chant. We put our hands in gasho, the robe in our head, the densho is reaching a crescendo. And that's how we begin our days. There's a composition to this ritual. Just as there's a composition for a painting or a piece of choreography. We take refuge in Buddha. Dharma and Sangha. Sangha is us. We are Sangha tonight. Sangha is community of practitioners.

[15:23]

And our refuges are the enactment of beauty. We take refuge in Sangha. There's a beauty in us practicing together. As David mentioned to me recently, our practice really is about relationships. It's about how we care for each other. We treat each other in an upright manner. We also care for things, inanimate objects. Awakening for us in the Mahayana tradition is not just about sentient beings. It's about all phenomena, including the space that is between us. Great care, not just of an altar and what we put on it, but of a teacup, which we hold with both hands, giving it our complete attention.

[16:26]

I just did that with the water and I'm going to do it again. Show and tell. I've mentioned before, and I'm going to mention it again just because it's such a powerful teaching. When we make our robes, I'm the sewing teacher here, and when we make our robes, both the little rakasus and the full-size robes, they're made out of strips that have a long piece and a short piece in them. The rakasus have one short piece, one long piece. The ocasas have two long pieces and one short piece. And the long pieces are the sexy wisdom that we all come to Buddhism for. The short pieces are the ignorance, delusion pieces. And we sew them together.

[17:29]

We're not banishing the ignorance and the delusion from our awakening. We include everything in our awakening. wisdom but also to the ignorance and the delusion that marks awakening for us we take everything as it is and that's where the beauty is in things as it is as suzuki roshi said so uh i woke up uh very early this morning really really early we always get up very early but i was especially early this morning uh last night in the slow and in our sewing class a big mistake was uncovered made apparent to me a big mistake that i had made and so i didn't sleep that well and i wasn't feeling that great um mistakes uh

[18:42]

happen over time. Even Blanche Hartman, who was my teacher in sewing, made mistakes, even at the very end of her career. So it happens. Anyway, I didn't sleep well. So I went up. This is just an incredible building that we get to live in. Julia Morgan designed it. It turned 100 a year ago. And we're getting ready to... do some remodeling over the next year. And we've got a roof area. It's not really a garden. Well, it is technically a garden. We do grow some things up there. But it's beautiful up there. I mean, we're basically in downtown San Francisco. And at 4.30 in the morning, it's quite a place to be. So I was up there. and uh i hadn't noticed before uh how there's i had noticed this there's a building over there a big tall office building that i have with bright lights on it that i have uh associated with development and inequity and the unhoused uh and uh people having to leave san francisco

[20:11]

But I hadn't noticed about the lights, that these lights go right up the side. It's not the Salesforce building. It's another building much closer. The lights go right up the side. Really, I thought before this morning arrogantly, I was very judgmental about this building. But I had noticed before that they change very subtly, these lights. They go from red to blue to white. And I also had noticed that, I don't know, a couple blocks away from this building is another big glass building that I'd always thought of as ugly before and arrogant and had judgment towards. But this other building, it reflects the light from the lit building in a very, very subtle way. You barely can see it.

[21:12]

And so the light was changing on this other building. And I hadn't noticed any of this before. I've been up there. This is not the first time that I've had a poor night's sleep and gone up on the roof really early in the morning. But I hadn't noticed this interaction, this relationship between these two buildings that was going on. And... In turn, it had an effect on me. Fortunately, I was vulnerable because I was sleep-deprived. But something changed inside of me. Now, it didn't hurt that the summer solstice sunrise was happening behind these buildings. It was absolutely beautiful. But something softened inside of me, and this was the result of the relationship between these two wacky buildings and me. And this building that I live in, which is trying to remind me to be present with everything that is.

[22:18]

So I think I'm going to end, actually, with a proposition to use, and then a very short poem. And the proposition is the next time that you're presencing your presence, the next time that you're actively engaging in awakening by being aware and you remember, maybe it's outside the restroom when you bow to the altar, which you can do parathetically, insincerely. Or you can do it sincerely. You can bow to the altar before you go into the restroom. The next time you do that, just give yourself a little extra note as you're noting what's happening in your life.

[23:25]

That you're engaging in beauty. And see what happens. See if things change very subtly for you. Give yourself that. So... Here's a little poem that my friend Roger read this morning at the summer solstice ceremony that we had. It's by Pablo Neruda. Green was the silence. Wet was the light. The month of June trembled like a butterfly. Thank you all very much for your time and your efforts and your attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[24:30]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[24:46]

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