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, bodhisattvas. Thank you. So, I say bodhisattvas, awakening beings. Because the desire to wake up to the present moment, to our real life, in accord with methods that help everyone, is one of the deepest motivations, probably the deepest motivation that any of us has in this life. And when it comes right down to us, when it comes right down to our deepest motivation, I would say that almost everyone I speak to has a deep motivation that is something like this.

[01:15]

To wake up, to be alive, to be a force for good in the world. And in many people it's covered over by habits of thought or by habits of thinking about what's cool or what's uncool or what's permissible among our peers. But in this method of practice and in this tradition, we create safety for that motivation by reflecting it for and with other people. by giving them the direct support of our presence and by offering the inspiration of people who have done this in the past and are doing this now, by holding hands and transmitting it warm hand to warm hand, both through time and through space.

[02:18]

And that's what we do here. And so I thought I would begin with this very brief statement. Okay, now that the lecture is over, I would like to ask, who is here for the first time? And welcome, welcome. And I imagine that you've come because there is something about Zen or concentration or... waking up that feels like it might be a possibility for you or that it might be something that you like to hear about. And this warmth towards awakening or towards being present is the first glimmer or the first stirring to what we call bodhicitta or the awakening mind, the awakening presence, which is what we all

[03:28]

cultivate. And I would like to also ask, who lives here or who has practiced here as a layperson for quite a while? Could you please raise your hand and let people see you? And there are people in the dining room who also have practiced for a long time. And so the people who have practiced here for a long time or who have practiced in for a long time or who have taken these vows. Part of taking these vows is that you receive them in public and you practice them in public, which means not just for yourself. The pure rules, the pure standards in talking about the director's position says that the director's position is established for the sake of the public, which means without acting on private inclinations.

[04:36]

And this whole concept of altruism, the altruistic intention, the abbots are said to abide and maintain. And they maintain the tradition for everyone, not just for themselves, not just to be a figurehead, but to make this a safe place, a place of refuge so that people can come. This is something we really need to keep alive in the world of today. And I've been thinking about these things for a couple of reasons. The first one is that tomorrow we're about to begin a Dharma transmission ceremony that my Dharma brother, Michael, is the teacher for. And the people who will be receiving Dharma Transmission are Rosalie Curtis, who's the head of practice here. The people in Saturday Sangha know Rosalie because she heads that small group.

[05:44]

Saturday Sangha is a group of lay practitioners who volunteer in the Saturday program and make the program and the practice accessible to people with their example. and with their direct welcoming. And Rosalie is in charge of that program, so many people here know her. For the residents, she's the head of the practice and exemplifies presence in the meditation hall and in this hall for service, which is the dedication of the teaching to all beings through voice, through breath. And the other person receiving Dharma transmission is Mark Lesser, who's a long-term practitioner in this tradition. I think he was ordained by Norman, right? By Norman Fisher, and he practices in the world.

[06:44]

He had a greeting card company for a long time, and now he's an author and a consultant who works... bringing meditation into the business world. And Michael, as you know, is a long-term presence at San Francisco Zen Center, and he ran our publishing for a long time. He's an artist, painter, and an author, a poet, and an all-around good guy, maker up of silly songs. My Dharma brother. So we're starting Dharma transmission, which is an example of, for most of us, of the vertical transmission from teacher to student throughout the years. And there's also horizontal transmission that's part of our line.

[07:45]

See you. Take care. And... There are also secular transmission or cultural transmission going on this week in that people are gearing up to be Santa. Actually, I'm interested in Santa because Santa is a very widespread idea of generosity in our culture. that's not just an idea but is manifested in many ways. So I'm interested in how Santa gets transmitted and how Santa manifests in so many different ways. You know, how is it that all over the country people are buying red suits and presents and they're considering what to say to their kids?

[08:54]

You know, how is that, that that happens? It's mysterious, nobody really knows. You know, I googled Santa today. I was trying to find out whether there are instructions to be Santa. And I found out that there really aren't any instructions on being Santa online. The best I could find was a video called How to Act Like Santa. And it's on Videojug, if you want to see it. And I took some notes on this video. And so I just want to tell you how to act like Santa for a moment. Not because I think that you're going to personally be Santa, but because I think it's interesting that a lot of people share this idea. So the first thing that they say is that Santa lives in Lapland. And he can't be everywhere at once, so he needs your help.

[09:58]

And then they say, you need a jolly demeanor, quick thinking, and Christmas spirit. I was actually brought up Jewish, so we didn't do this, but it was definitely part of my world in school and among my friends. And then there's a whole section in the video on ho, ho, ho. Ho. How to say ho, ho, ho. It says kids can spot a fake immediately. So don't be fake with ho, ho, ho. That a real ho, ho, ho comes from the diaphragm. It has to be physically expressed and don't force the sound either. So if you say ho, ho, ho, the kid will think that there's something wrong and be scared. So it has to be a wholehearted expression of kindness, this ho, ho, ho.

[11:01]

Actually, ho is a very important word in Buddhism. It means dharma. So if you happen to say ho, ho, ho, you can be wholehearted. Anyone in this room can use both meanings of the word, and that'll be an interesting... multicultural experience this December 25th. It says, physicalize your ho-ho-ho and don't forget to smile. It also says that no part of your face is visible except for your eyes, if you're Santa. It says, be welcoming and don't disappoint by making phony promises. It says, don't be afraid to feel difficult questions. And do your research. Know what's hip. Anyway, I thought it was a very interesting video. And it has a lot in common with Dharma transmission.

[12:04]

Particularly horizontal Dharma transmission. And I also saw another article called When Your Child Asks, Is Santa Real? Because Santa is an archetype or a an image that a lot of people have. But Santa, you know, pretty soon your kid might notice. Somebody quoted their grandchild as saying when they were four, Santa sounds like grandpa. And so he didn't know if he was going to be able to keep this up. So what to do when a child asks, is Santa real? And I think that this kind of issue is an important way for us to think about some of the issues of Dharma transmission because lots of people know about Santa and fewer people know about Dharma transmission.

[13:11]

So the information about Dharma transmission, you can look up Dharma transmission in the library or on Wikipedia, and it'll say that it's the mind to mind passing on from teacher to student of the essence of Buddha's mind. That the teacher and the student both manifest Buddha's mind. And you can also see online that there are a lot of skeptics and questioners about Dharma transmission. particularly in recent years with all the stories about clergy misconduct in many traditions. And yet we do this, and we work with people to pass on the lineage and to make sure that it doesn't die. Grace Shearson, who's the teacher at Empty Nest Zendo in North Fork, she's my Dharma sister, said, she said not to confuse the license or the authorization with the conduct.

[14:18]

So, for instance, if someone has a driver's license, they can get into an accident without damaging the reputation of the licensing process. And somebody else said, no, that's not so, because Dharma transmission, as we do it in the West, is both a license and and authorization to teach. So what does it mean? So I think it's important when we have a teacher-student situation, as we do here in Zen Center, to have a lot of lay people around to keep it real, to provide checks and balances, and to... to be like the kid in the emperor's new clothes. Because if a teacher's behavior doesn't inspire your own sense of awakening and doesn't provide you with tools to realize it, it should be questioned.

[15:33]

It may be that they're passing on the tradition in a way that's not understood by you. That's a possibility. But it also might be that they just made a mistake or need some help. Teachers are human. So there is both vertical transmission, which is that a teacher has experience and understanding and authorization and presumably an awakening that they can pass on. But there's also horizontal transmission, which means that all of us can be awake and take refuge in awakening. Any one of us can do this. It's not the same. I'm not saying that from the moment you walk in that you understand everything. But I am saying that you have good common sense and a sense of what inspires you and what doesn't. And I hope that you can always take refuge in your own sense of awakening and your own sense of proportions and be open to what a teacher says.

[16:48]

So... The great Zen teacher Bodhidharma talked about transmission. He talked about the essence of transmission in our way. Bodhidharma was the founder of Zen in China. Some sources say that he was Persian, and some sources say that he was Chinese, that he was Indian, I'm sorry, and studied with... Prajnatara in India, and walked to China. In any event, his teaching was simple and direct, direct enough to survive to the present day. He said, a special transmission without words or letters.

[17:53]

See directly into the mind and become awake. and how to do this. He talked about facing the wall. In this tradition, we said facing the wall. But listen to how he talked about facing the wall. Without relying on external objects. Without falling into internal objects. Mind like a wall. No coughing or sighing of the mind. Mind like a wall. Thus we enter the way. So without getting lost in projections or the external world, without getting lost or becoming attached to the internal world, we drop any reactivity of

[18:59]

the mind, and face the wall. Thus we enter the way. Facing the wall means facing our habits of mind, our conditioned existence, the conditioned existent that brought all the way to its end. We know... quite a bit about Bodhidharma because he gave some pretty extensive oral teachings. But we also know that he had, we also know something about his meditation history. We know that one of his students was a great lay disciple, Emperor Wu of Liang, who built a lot of temples and created a lot of the built form of Buddhism in China.

[20:03]

He was a great patron of Buddhism. And so once he asked Bodhidharma, I've built a lot of temples and I've done a lot of work. What is the meaning, highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma said, empty, not holy. The emperor didn't understand. Then emperor said, well, who are you? to say, empty, not holy. And Bodhidharma said, don't know. And then after that, Bodhidharma crossed the river and went to sit in a cave for nine years. And after he had sat in the cave for nine years, he felt in his body that he was ready to transmit the Dharma. And so he gathered his four disciples. This is called the, this story has an epithet, it's called The Five Petals of Zen.

[21:09]

So he had four senior students, three men and a woman, three monks and a nun. And so he said, he thought to himself, I'm going to return to India and there I'm going to quietly practice. and pass away. So he gathered his disciples to him and said, the time has come. How do you understand what I've taught? And Dalfu said, the way transcends words, but it's not separate from words. And he said, you have my skin. And then the nun, Zongchur, said, it's like the joy of seeing paradise just once, and that never comes again.

[22:14]

And he said, you have my flesh. And then Daoyu said, well, the four elements are empty at the base. And the five aggregates are kind of baskets of experience. The five aggregates don't exist. I don't see any attainment at all. Bodhidharma said, you've got my bones. Finally, Hueca just bowed to the teacher and stood in silence. And Bodhidharma said, you've got my marrow. And that was their transmission. So, actually, in our lineage, we think of Hueca as Bodhidharma's successor. And so, in our thinking, Hueca had it right, and the others had it wrong.

[23:21]

But actually, in Shobha Genzo Kato, Twining Vines, a fascicle of the Shobagenza, a chapter of the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, that was written by Ehe Dogen, the founder of our school in Japan. Dogen takes great pains to say they're all true. Any one of them could have been the successor. So I'd like to focus a little bit on Zongchir's answer because It's the one that seems to be, it's the one that's been most maligned out of the four answers. So, again, what Zongshu said, the nun said, it's like the joy of seeing paradise just once and it doesn't come again. And the later commentaries say, well, clearly she just is repeating or parroting something that she's heard.

[24:25]

And so it's not real understanding. So this is a put-down of Dzongshir's understanding. And Bodhidharma said, you have my flesh. So what is this paradise that just comes once and not again? And why would Bodhidharma talk about it as flesh? What's important about flesh to Bodhidharma? Why would he say that? And so I think the answer to that is in... how women were thought of at that time. That women were thought of as creatures of the flesh. The woman's flesh was thought of as tainted. And women had to be reborn in the body of men, according to the understanding, before they could realize awakening. And this was a kind of common legend or understanding in the culture of that time. But Bodhidharma didn't say, you have a woman's flesh and have to be reborn.

[25:27]

He said, you have my flesh. And what is it about paradise, paradise of the flesh? What is that? So in the normal cultural understanding, a woman's paradise was considered to be the paradise of the passions. But Bodhidharma had a different idea And this is not, I'm just, this is just my interpretation. This isn't somebody else's. I've been trying to puzzle out this story for myself. I'm supposed to write something on it later. And so I feel like I have to understand it. So I'm sitting with the story. So what did flesh or the body mean to Bodhidharma? And why would he say, you have my flesh or my body to his woman disciple? and not to one of the others. So Bodhidharma said that Buddhas have three bodies.

[26:36]

And Buddhas have three bodies, a transformation body, a reward body, and a real body. So this is Dharmakaya. Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya, for people who know those terms. The transformation body is called the incarnation body, so it's born and died. So the historical Shakyamuni Buddha is the transformation body. The reward body is what's called the Sambhogakaya body. It's the body of bliss. And it happens when you nourish your practice. and find the results of practice. So when you concentrate in zazen, that's the reward body. When you practice wholeheartedly and someone is encouraged, that's the reward, that's the fruit. And the real body is the ultimate body.

[27:44]

So the real body, Bodhidharma says, doesn't do or say anything. It remains perfectly still. Then he says, actually, which means really, there isn't even one Buddha body, much less three. Talk of three bodies is simply based on what's needed for human understanding. And so he says, the Buddha is is your real body, your original mind. This mind has no form, no characteristics, no cause, no effect, no tendons and no bones. It's like space, you can't hold it. It's not the mind of materialists or nihilists. Except for one who's fully realized, no one, no mortal, no deluded being can fathom it.

[28:51]

So when he says, you have my flesh, he means that this body, go ahead. This one, okay? Can't be fathomed. But, you know, when you do this, you feel your hand and your leg can't be in the same place at the same time. There's definitely, feels like there's something there, doesn't it? How can it have no, how can it not really be there? It feels like it's there. Anyway, this is what's called a great mystery. And when we sit zazen, we find reality. And we find this part of reality. in which the hand and the leg can't be in the same place at the same time because there's something solid.

[29:54]

We can feel that. And at the same time, we can feel that that's not ultimately so. That's what Zazen does. And because we can directly experience this in our meditation practice, we can help people, we can manifest the transformation body. So, for instance, thinking about a dental hygienist I knew named Kitty Armel. Kitty died yesterday of her illness. Kitty was a dental hygienist who worked at Dr. Holly Downs' office. and she brought in her dog, Shea, to help people, and people when they sat zazen, not sat zazen, people when they had their teeth cleaned, which is different from sitting zazen, would be able to pet Shea or to experience painless dentistry with the help of Kitty.

[31:13]

Kitty would know how to be very gentle, while cleaning one's teeth. And so sometimes I would feel these kind hands doing this work through these instruments and understand something about compassion through the touch of kitty while cleaning my teeth. And so People manifest in this way to help other people. In your own job, in your own work, you can manifest in a variety of different ways. That's why we have job rotation at San Francisco Zen Center so that you can be in a variety of situations and learn how to manifest kindness no matter where you're put.

[32:15]

Anyway, it's not that we have something that's called Buddha nature or awakened nature. The entire body, 100%, is Buddha nature. And when we sit, it manifests that aspect as well as its material aspect. You can call on either one as needed to help people. And this is the essence of the transmission, is that body and that mind, it comes up in the world, which is called horizontal transmission, and it is handed on from teacher to student, which is the vertical transmission. And all the rituals that we do, all the jobs that we do, all the activity of the temple is for nothing other than the transmission of awakeness.

[33:36]

And so I don't really want to belabor this point, but that's what I think Bodhidharma was saying. He was saying that Zhongchur, you're a woman, and in our society, women can't be awakened. But I'm going to ordain you, and I'm going to acknowledge your very flesh as the same as mine, as one body of awakening that manifests just like mine. It's a mystery how... You could be a woman and have these things, this story about you in this life. And I can be a man and a monk and have this other story about me. And yet, the transmission, although you manifest in the body of a woman and I manifest in the body of a man, I can imagine him saying...

[34:41]

Each of us manifests the truth 100%. So that's my message for the day. And I do want to say that during the course of the week, if you happen to be here, you may see processions and mysterious activity around the temple. That's part of the ceremony. Oh, there is one other thing I want to mention about this ceremony of Dharma transmission, that it's intimate, it's secret, it's not public, it's a private ceremony. But my experience of this ceremony is, it's very... I had a very unexpected experience. One day I was invited to... Zen Shuji in Los Angeles to participate in a Jukai ceremony, a lay initiation ceremony that was being given for about 100 lay people who had practiced for a while.

[35:52]

That ceremony lasts for about a week, and it has many parts. And what I was struck by during that ceremony is that of all the ceremonies I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot of different Zen ceremonies, that ceremony was the most like Dharma transmission of any ceremony I had seen. Now, isn't that interesting? Because the Jukai, or the lay initiation, supposedly is given towards the beginning of somebody's practice. The Dharma transmission, although people who have received Dharma transmission know that it's a beginning and not an end. We commonly think, oh, that's like a graduation or an end. And yet, of all the ceremonies, the Jukai ceremony was the most like the Dharma transmission ceremony of any ceremony I've ever seen. So think about that for a moment. What does that say about our tradition?

[36:55]

Suzuki Roshi said, Zen mind, beginner's mind. It doesn't mean that beginners and 40-year practitioners are exactly the same in understanding. but it does mean that the freshness of a beginner and the freshness of a truly realized person are fundamentally the same. And I think we really have to study this point. So while we honor and respect and hold up, yes, I'm going to say achievement in the way, or... experience in the way, while we respect old age in the way for its depth and its profundity, let's understand that the real profundity of the teaching can be expressed only by all beings, both in time and in space.

[38:10]

So that's what I have to say today, and I appreciate your patience. And please take care of yourself. Please take care of your awakening mind. Please nourish it with good food and with wholesome sensory experience. Please nourish your awakening mind by unearthing. and respecting and realizing your deepest intention. And I'll do my best. And I think we will all do our best to support each other on this path. Thank you very much. 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.

[39:18]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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