This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Can everyone hear me? Nice to see you all this morning. It's a beautiful day. Is this a first-time visit to Green Gulch for anybody? Welcome. We're really happy to see you. I had some things that I planned to talk with you today, and I am going to, but I got kind of involved in thinking about a very beautiful ceremony I attended last night.

[01:07]

And as I was thinking about it, I realized how much it had to do with what I wanted to talk about. So I have a kind of a long preface to what might be a short talk. And so for those of you who are newer to our community and our practice, I want to let you know that we are a very ceremonial tradition. You might even say it's just one ceremony after another. And last night was a particularly important ceremony in our tradition. Last night, five people who have practiced with us for varying lengths of time, but all of them for a while, received the Bodhisattva precepts as lay people. So we have two kinds of ordination in our tradition. We have a lay practice with precepts, and then we have priest ordination, and those are called home leavers, with precepts.

[02:18]

And except for the number of things you get in the ceremony, they're pretty much the same ceremony, and the precepts are the same ceremony, the same precepts. And I've attended quite a few now in my years living here and practicing. And basically, the ceremony is pretty scripted. It has its little moments of subtle variation, but I kind of know it, and we're very faithful in our doing of it, as is appropriate for ceremonies. But I always forget how moved I am. And I was thinking about, what is it that's so powerful for me? So let me just describe the ceremony a little bit for you first, though, and then I'll tell you about the moving part of it. So in our tradition, when one has practiced for a while and has studied, one may request of a teacher to receive the precepts

[03:29]

So the bodhisattva precepts in our tradition are 16. We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. We practice the three pure precepts, which are to avoid evil, to do all good, and to embrace and sustain all beings. That's our formulation of them. Sometimes the third one is formulated as purify the mind. In other traditions, it might be the same thing. And then we receive what we call the Ten Grave Precepts. And in my mind, I always kind of equate these to the Ten Commandments because I grew up in a Catholic tradition. So Ten Commandments, Ten Precepts, they're kind of similar a little bit and not similar at all in other ways. But our Ten Precepts are, in a kind of shorthand version, not to harm or not to kill, not to steal or...

[04:30]

not to take what's not given, not to misuse sexuality, not to lie, not to intoxicate the mind or the body of ourselves or others, not to slander, not to praise ourselves and blame others, not to be avaricious, not to harbor ill will, and not to defile the three treasures, which are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So in this ceremony, in order to receive these precepts, a number of things have to happen. So first of all, someone will approach a teacher at a time that feels right to them and request to receive these precepts. And if the teacher feels good about it, will say yes. And then... the person who wishes to receive the precepts, embarks on a sewing project.

[05:34]

And I'll say more about that in a minute, but they sew a rakasu. And then when that rakasu is finished, it's given to the teacher, and then a ceremony is held. And usually there's a number of people involved in receiving the precepts and many, many people involved in making it all happen. And in this ceremony, the recipients of the precepts are kind of embracing a new way of life, and it's kind of a starting-over point, I think, for many people. It was for me. And so as you join this sangha by taking the precepts, you are given a kind of a family, and it's your family of practice or your sangha. And so you're given a name, a special name in this family, which is a common tradition. When I was confirmed as a young Catholic, I was given a name.

[06:38]

Babies, when they're baptized, are given a name. You know, the giving of a name is kind of an important moment. So our five people last night each received a new name, and they were given their raucosu, which is... word for Buddha's robe, and it's their clothing, their family clothing. And if you are wondering what one looks like, probably you'll see some around here. When I first came to Zen Center and was coming here on Sundays as a layperson, I was very interested in Zen, but I kind of didn't notice the rakasu part. But I did notice people had these kind of square things that look a little bit like bibs on, and But I didn't know much more about it, and I didn't hear much about it at that time. So that is a smaller version of the ocasa, which is what I'm wearing and what priests wear.

[07:39]

And it's called Buddha's robe, and it's our family clothing. And then finally, we are given papers. They're called lineage papers, and they tell us who our forebearers were. What is our lineage? Where do we come from? And then given all that, we confess the way it is in life for all of us. I don't want to characterize it, but we call it confession and repentance, but it's not really confessing sin. We don't have that kind of tone to it. It's, I guess, confessing karma. But it's saying, this is who I am. This is how I am. And now, and this is what touches me. This is what I aspire to. And so these precepts are aspirational. When I first heard about them, again, like I said, I kind of connected them up with the Ten Commandments.

[08:43]

And the way I was raised, it was like, well, you really should succeed. You know, it's not just an aspiration. You're actually expected to keep the Ten Commandments, and if you don't, it's a sin, and then you go confess. So we have a little bit of the confession part, too, but not the sense of sin. And what I've learned over the years is that our precepts are aspirational, and the deeper you go and the more you practice, you realize how completely you will never completely be able to do them. You'll never completely get it. You're not going to master this. This is not a mastery realm. So this is where the sincerity of the aspiration comes in. And that's what really touched me last night and what I connected up to because I wanted to talk a little bit today about sincerity and sincerity in our lives and our relationships and

[09:49]

So these five people and every group of people I've ever seen receive precepts, whether priest or lay, are marked. I've never seen a single person who I didn't feel was completely sincere. They are asked during the ceremony, will you receive this precept? Yes, I will. Even after today, will you practice this precept? Yes, I will. over and over they express their sincere aspiration to take on this impossible practice, this impossible embodiment of this amazing way of being with the world. Because this is really kind of a description of an ideal way of living and being in the world. I'm using a term bodhisattva and I realize Maybe some of you are not familiar with that term.

[10:53]

So in our tradition, we aspire to be beings, wise beings. It literally means wise beings. Sattva is a being and bodhi is wisdom. And there's a lot more to it, and that's not the subject of my talk today, but that's what the term relates to. It's part of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, and it's an important part of Zen. And so our precepts are called bodhisattva precepts, meaning this is how beings who aspire to embody wisdom and compassion try to behave. This is how we try to be in the world for the benefit of everyone. not just ourselves. So that's why we have ceremonies. It's not kind of a private little thing or even a private thing with your teacher. It's a ceremony where friends and family are there and they witness. And I remember when I received the precepts as a lay person, a lot of my friends came and I, really sincere, I was really sincere.

[12:05]

I said, now you have to tell me if I'm not keeping these precepts, you know. And they smiled at me. Probably, I don't know, I don't think any of them ever told me. Probably knew better. But there's that kind of feeling that we are doing this practice together. And with this, another word for sincere that we use a lot is wholehearted. So I see these terms as being the same. kind of just talked through all my notes. First part of my notes anyway. So sincerity is more than just an idea or a kind of a look. People ask you actually to prove your sincerity in this practice. And there's some really almost kind of gruesome stories about that in our early Chinese literature, which I won't go into.

[13:07]

But for instance, in our practice, tradition today, when you go to practice at our monastery and it's the first time, you are asked to do something called sitting tangario. And even here at Green Gulch, too, we ask our practice period students to sit tangario. So that comes from the tradition of, I guess, in China and Japan, too, when someone approached a monastery and requested to practice their They didn't just open the gates and say, come on in, you know, there's your seat. They said, sit outside the gates. And I think they didn't tell you how long you had to sit there. We're really kind. We tell our Tongario students how long they're going to have to sit there. But we, yeah, it could be any amount of time, and it could be a really long time. And it was outside the gates, so it was outside in some instances. And the weather might not be so good, but you...

[14:09]

proved your sincerity by sitting down and waiting. And eventually the gates would open and you would be brought in and given a seat and a name and all of that. So that's one way that we have asked our aspirants, those who have aspiration, to show their sincerity. In our bodhisattva ceremony, Now I get to the sewing. We ask people to do this really amazing thing. Like I said, when I first came here, I saw people wear these kind of things that look kind of like bibs, but I didn't know too much, and I didn't think about it. And I never heard about it until one Sunday in this room. The speaker talked about... a bodhisattva ceremony, which we call Jukai, that happened the day before, and that there were some people who had received the precepts.

[15:19]

And it turned out I knew some of them because I'd been coming here. And I don't know why, but I suddenly got interested. And one of them was kind of a friend, so I went up to her in the muffin area, and I looked at her rakasu, and I asked her about it, and... She said, oh, yeah, you sew this. You come to sewing. And they have a teacher here and all of that. And I said, well, can't you get somebody else to sew it for you? Because it looked really hard. And I don't know how to sew. I mean, I'm just no good. I just don't have that dexterity in my hands. And she said, no, no, you can't get somebody else to sew it for you. Although I much later found out there are some traditions where you can go buy it in the store, had I known. But I didn't know. But she said, no, people will help you. And so I thought, hmm. So she said, sewing class means every Sunday afternoon. And I often hung out here on Sunday afternoon. So I decided I was going to check it out.

[16:22]

And I had something else I had to sew. It was part of my oryoki kit. When we have meditation retreats, we eat in the zendo. And we have some bowls. that we, ceremonial bowls, another ceremony that we use. And to clean them, we have something called a setsu. And on the end of it is a little kind of pad of cotton and, yeah, cotton padding. And you have to put new ones on occasionally because they get dirty. So I thought, I can sew my setsu tip. And then they, you know, that'll be okay. And I can check it out. So I went in to the library and I sewed my setsu tip, which I had learned to do. That was pretty easy. and I just fell in love with being there. There was 15 or 20 people in this sewing room, and there were a couple of sewing teachers, and everybody was very concentrated, and the atmosphere was so wonderful, so peaceful.

[17:23]

And I thought, well, I want to come back, but I can't keep sewing setsu tips. So I decided to ask my teacher if he would... Offer me the precepts. And he said yes. And then I went. And I did get a lot of help. So what you get help with is, I think this is the most amazing thing when I think about it. You are given a, I don't know how much fabric a sewing teacher could tell me, but a kind of a good size piece of fabric. And then you divide it up. In the most particular way, the measurements are like really crucial. You know, metrics, you know, all of that. And you draw these lines on it. And then you cut this beautiful piece of fabric into little tiny pieces. And then you have to sew all those little tiny pieces together with the tiniest stitches imaginable.

[18:27]

And each stitch... you say a mantra. Each time that needle enters the fabric, you say a mantra. So I go for refuge in Buddha. I go for refuge in Buddha. And a rakasu takes quite a few stitches. Now we do the same thing with the big okesa. It really takes a long time. It took me nine months of coming on Sundays once a week to do my rakasu. So that's a pretty long time. Most people, I think, are able to do it faster. But I didn't want to do it fast. I actually loved being in that room sewing that rakasu. And last night I was talking to one of the people who received the precepts yesterday. Let me say one more thing about the fabric. So you sew all these little pieces together with these little tiny stitches, and you sew a strap on.

[19:30]

But in the process, a piece of white silk is sewn onto the back. And when you're done and your teacher receives that, before the teacher gives it back, they write their name, your new name, and usually some dharma name. saying on the back. It's calligraphed, sometimes in Chinese, sometimes in English. I've even seen it in Sanskrit, probably many languages. So it's this beautiful, unblemished, pure white silk sewn into this piece, not removable once you've sewn it in. And so this person turned the silk around so we could see the calligraphy, and we noticed this little bit of blood on it. And he said, yes, I pierced my finger when I was sewing, and that was it. You know, there's nothing you can do, so there's a little bit of blood.

[20:32]

And it reminded me, because the same thing happened to me, because I was so clumsy with my hands, I'm not saying this person was, but I was, that I actually pierced my fingers, and there was blood on. And then one time I gave my rakasu to the sewing teacher, And there were a lot of people there that day. It was very hot. And he was a little bit stressed because there was so much going on and he had to pin things. And I sat there watching him pin my raka suit and dripping. He was dripping sweat onto my silk. And normally I'd be a little upset about that, but I wasn't because I thought, ah, my blood, his sweat. This is so great. And then, of course, sometimes friends put a little stitch in for you. So these rakasus contain this whole process, which I think is really a test of sincerity. If you start to sew a rakasu and you don't really feel like you want to do this, unless you're a whiz at sewing, it's something to think about.

[21:43]

First of all, you think about it because it's so slow. And then it's quite an effort. And not only is it your effort, it's everybody's effort. You know, the sewing teacher, the other people in the room, your teacher. You know, I felt really like I can't let all these people down. They're making such an effort on my behalf. So all of that comes into this ceremony. And all of that is part of the expression of sincerity. That's what touches me about this ceremony is it's a kind of unpolluted purity like that white silk of sincere aspiration, knowing that that silk is going to get some sweat and some blood and some dirt. All kinds of things wind up on the purity of that silk, but it still holds that aspiration

[22:46]

And how many times in life do we have this opportunity given to us in such an embodied and public way to show that part of ourselves? So the ordinands always have this wonderful, no matter what age they are, and I was almost 50 when I received the precepts the first time, they look like children. They look like children. They have this kind of glow and innocence. And then last night, I also, in the ceremony, noticed a line, and it always gets me. But last night, I kind of understood why, because it was about this sincerity thing. After the precepts, what happens is the preceptor, the teacher giving the precepts, recites each precept, and then those receiving them repeat after. the preceptor, the precept.

[23:48]

So when that's all done, the preceptor says something like, and this isn't an exact quote, yeah, this is how you practice precepts. It's a little bit more nicely stated, but, and I thought last night, well, how is what you, you know, how is this, what is this, what is this how that you practice the precepts? I, you know, I didn't see what it referred to. Does that mean, you know, you just repeat them over and over? And then I realized, no, no, no, no. It's that sincere aspiration that was expressed verbally and physically. Many prostrations. They do many prostrations in the process. Offer incense. You know, there's this physicalization of their sincere aspiration. And that's how the precepts are practiced, because they're not mastered. It's not about, well, now I've really got number one down. And, you know, I'll go on to number two. That's how they're practiced.

[24:48]

So that was really a happy moment for me to understand that and think about that. And also kind of helps me completely let go of any residue I have of this more Christian idea that I grew up with, which is, well, I actually have to. Now, not maybe everybody got that from their Christian tradition, but I did. that I actually have to be really good. I actually have to succeed. And if I fail, it's hell time for me. So it just kind of broke that. So I want to talk about sincerity. And I've been thinking about sincerity for a long time, a few years now. And I'm not really sure why it came up. I think it's because in kind of Asian traditions, Buddhist traditions, in traditional literature, the word sincere comes up a lot.

[25:50]

A sincere practitioner. I'm just going to check my time here. Good thing I did. A sincere practitioner is brought up a lot. And I have some value for that, but I don't think it's a word that's highly valued in our culture. And so I remember I went to my dictionary on my computer and I looked it up and read about it. And it gave me a lot of definitions of sincere. So, you know, just to pick up the most important part. Sincere comes from the Latin, sinceris, which means clean, pure sound.

[26:53]

So that's one derivation, etymological derivation. Another goes back further to Indo-European languages where sem, which is the root for sin, sincere, the sin and sincere, means one, And cur means to grow. So it means one growth, not many sprouts coming off, but one continuous growth, not mixed, which I think is really different than the way many of us might think of sincere, even if you think of it positively. But I think it has a kind of a negative connotation now. And what I noticed is that What's replaced it is authentic. And then I, somewhere in my reading, came across a book that Lionel Trilling wrote. So I don't know if you all know Lionel Trilling, but he's still alive.

[27:55]

But he's a scholar and a literary critic. And he wrote a book called Sincerity and Authenticity, in which he really goes into these two and the way they... show the culture that they come up and how sincerity in Western culture was quite a high moral value until about 200 years ago or so. And then it kind of, as philosophical traditions changed and they got more into deconstruction and Freud came to be and all of that, sincerity became more suspicious, and people began to look for authenticity or wanting to be authentic. So I think that most people, if you ask them, would you like to be sincere, would you like to be authentic? I think a lot of people would say, I want to be authentic. And what's the difference?

[28:55]

So I've been sort of parsing that out. But let me say something more about sincere. From this feeling of the sincerity of aspiration in the ceremony I saw, I began to see that that's kind of the foundation or beginning place for spiritual practice. That actually our tradition and all spiritual traditions that I found seem to value that quality as the entry level. Like you don't get into the monastery until you've shown your sincerity. You don't receive the precepts. you've shown your sincerity. So it's a kind of entry-level quality, moral value, but it's also ongoing. So at every level there's sincerity. I think of sincerity as being related to the fourth precept. So you're in accord verbally and physically, and in terms of your thought, it's of one growth.

[30:02]

It's not I'm saying one thing, I'm doing another, and I'm thinking a third kind of thing. Trilling calls sincerity the congruence between avowed and actual feeling. So what you say you feel and what you are feeling. The Eastern tradition has a whole side to it that I think is really important and is not so much part of ours, and that is particularly Confucianism, which has affected Zen, talks about sincerity as a kind of relationship with the community. So it's different than authenticity in that way. I think one could think of authenticity as, well, I'm just being who I am, and I don't care what other people think. There's a kind of separation.

[31:04]

Whereas, at least in the Eastern relationship to sincerity, it's sincerity in relationship to the community. It's saying who you are truthfully in relationship to the people around you. So that's an important point of it, I think. I came across a Japanese word for it. makoto, and it's very important, as I've read, in Japanese martial arts. So judo, for instance, and I don't know if we have any Japanese martial artists here, but it sounds like it's kind of a basic principle. The word makoto consists, it's an ideograph, and so It means true heart or single heart. So there's another, again, that's one growth. And it's a Chinese pictograph that means to become your word, to speak from your heart with your word, fully in accord with your action, saying and doing the right thing at the right time, regardless of living or dying.

[32:21]

That last part's pretty strong. regardless of living or dying. That's within the martial arts world of Japan, that's sincerity. And so I found this little description of how it happens in martial arts, and I think it relates very much to our Zen practice. So excuse me, I'm going to read it to you, because the words are important. Anyone can go through the motions. Virtually anyone can master the physical components of the art, whatever art it is. But there is a deeper aspect to the arts that goes beyond technique. Each art must be fully done, must be done fully and completely with all your heart and spirit behind it. In short, the art must be sincere. You must make each art your own. It is not enough to do an art just because your sensei tells you to.

[33:26]

That may be sufficient for a beginner, but as you progress, you need to understand each art, accept it, make it part of yourself. Then when you do an art, it is truly you doing it and not just a series of motions you do to please someone else. It is when an art becomes a part of you that it will feel natural. Only then can your arts be sincere. Only then can heart and action be one. So that is a very good definition for wholehearted. Someone was asking about that in a class the other day. I thought of that. Check again. Good. So I think these days we like to be cool. And I think that sometimes it's seen like cool and sincere are kind of like opposites. Like if you're sincere, you're not cool.

[34:28]

And if you're cool, well, you're probably not sincere, you know? So I would like to be a part of reframing and reclaiming that word. The thing about authenticity is that solo part of it. And like, you know, the rest of the world, who cares? I'm who I am. And being who you are is important, but being who you are, particularly in the Buddhist tradition, does not mean being separate from your community or anything else. So you can't be who you are if you think that you're this separate being who's somehow different or somehow this way. And also, we are very changeable. The Buddha taught we're not permanent. So anything we grasp as a self, that this is the self. So this is where Freud comes in, was used as an example.

[35:30]

It was like there started to be this, Trilling talks about it, this pursuit of how do you find the true self? What is the true self? How do you find the core self? And so people were looking at it psychologically as though anybody could actually find that. And that would just be what it is, like never changing, this is it, this is who I am, and I'm being authentic. So I feel like there's some problems around that word and around our embrace of that word. So I'm a lobby for sincere. And now I want to connect to it really quickly. This is going to be the main subject of my talk, but... My teacher, Henshin Roshi, has been talking about enlightenment this year, but we don't use that word a lot in Zen. It has lots of problems and pitfalls. So sometimes we use realization.

[36:30]

That's a good word we use. And he's been using the word pivot, which has been very interesting for me because it reminds me of the word pirouette, and I'm a former ballet dancer. and I know what it is to pirouette. And so this pivot, like this capacity to turn on a dime, so to speak, is realization. You're not fixed. You're not held to one view. Your view can change in a moment. But there was a couple things bother me. One is, is that word has been used a lot in politics lately. And as I was hearing my teacher talk about it, I kept hearing it on the news. When is a certain person going to pivot? When are they going to start becoming appropriate and not inappropriate if you think they're being inappropriate? So this political pivoting has been in kind of the realm as well, as though somehow this person or any person is just going to suddenly change all on their own

[37:39]

without relationship to anything else. So while I really appreciate the pirouette of it, it bothered me a little. And so lately this word came to mind, conversation. And my teacher's also been talking about another important Zen concept, which is face-to-face transmission. So this is a very important... kind of iconic ceremony in our tradition of, you'll find it in the Japanese koan tradition, and it's in our ceremonies, but teacher and student meeting face to face. And I think what's meant by face to face there is not just face, but whole body. You're not turning your back, you're not turning your side, you're not looking out of the corner of your eye. Wholehearted, wholehearted meeting. And I asked my teacher, I said, is that the same as pivoting? And he said, yes. Oh.

[38:44]

Ta-da. So I looked up the word conversation and con. I took four years of high school Latin. I didn't have to look this up. But con means with. And vert comes from verterate would be turn. So a conversation is when two or more people turn together. And it's related to convert, which again has kind of gotten twisted a little bit, because that's kind of more hierarchical, like one person is going to make another person think a different way. I think this is the problem with our conversations these days, as we think we come together to make another person think another way. But actually the space where two people meet each other wholeheartedly, open completely to turning Together. Turning together. All of us are turning together. There's a pivot.

[39:46]

That's another little factoid I love. Pivot was originally a noun. It's the fulcrum. It's the point on which a turning happens. About 100 years ago, it became a verb. And we have some words right now. I can't think of one at the moment. Probably you can. Of nouns having become verbs. Oh, I know one. People are lawyering up these days. You know, lawyering up. Okay, so pivot became pivoting. So there was that sense of it turning into a verb, and now I've lost my train of thought. But in any case, it's not a single fulcrum. That's it. It's not a single fulcrum. There is no center. There is no single fulcrum. The world is full of conversation. We are all turning together, and there's not a single fulcrum.

[40:53]

So it's happening everywhere, all together. And my dancer side loves this because I never liked solo dancing. I like dancing with groups, and that's what happens. And that's what we all love. We like to go out dancing. if we go out dancing with people. So it's this kind of realization that comes all together in a conversation. So I formulated — just to finish this — yes, time to finish. So enlightenment, if you want to use that word, or realization, begins with sincerity and ends with sincerity and is filled with sincerity. And each moment, sincerity is renewed, wholeheartedness. If one wants to see realization from the viewpoint of a single individual, which, to be honest, we do see it that way, then pivot's a good word, that kind of flexibility.

[41:59]

And then you can see it in terms of a conversation between two people. And for us in Zen, that's our ceremony. That's our ceremony that represents us meeting with the whole world, is that conversation between two people. And that's still kind of caught up in the world of self and other. We have that ceremony with two people because we think there is another person there. And it's hard to meet a whole bunch of people, so we kind of make it kind of simple. And we have this face-to-face conversation, this face-to-face turning together. But I think ultimately it is a moment-by-moment turning with all beings, no single central fulcrum, no single point of view. And that is kind of the full realm of realization that is inconceivable.

[43:00]

But it's what's happening. all the time. So that's what I wanted to mention today in this room. It might look like I'm up here and you're out there. That kind of looks like to me. And it might look like there's a kind of a central thing going on here. But I'm reminding myself and I'm offering to you that we are actually doing something really different. And my hope is that I can remember this and we can all remember this each moment so that our conversations with each other can truly be conversations and not conversions. so that no matter how deeply we feel about anything — and I feel very deeply about a number of things — I can enter into a space with any person and dance with them.

[44:10]

We can turn together. And in our tradition we call that turning together, revealing the Dharma. We reveal the Dharma together. So, I'm going to end now, but in a little bit, I'll come back here. And I would like to have, I know it's called Q&A, but I would like it actually to be a conversation. So if you would like to come and converse with me and help me learn how to do that with you, I would really appreciate it. And I thank you for coming today. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[45:16]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:19]

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