Good morning. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center. My name is Tim Wicks, and... I'm going to be speaking to you this morning. I'm a priest, and I've been practicing here for 17 years, nearly. And it just seems like yesterday. How many of you are new to Zen Center? Great, a very warm welcome to you. Thank you very much for coming today. Today's a little unusual in that this is the residence retreat week, so our schedule's a little different, and it's an opportunity for people who actually live here to have a slightly different schedule and different activities, and it's a chance to sort of turn inward as a community, but to still, you know,

[01:26]

not to be exclusive, to invite people in. So you're all part of that retreat right now. And the Tanto, the head of practice, asked me today to talk about spiritual friends, or Kalyanamita is what it is in Pali, Kalyanamitra in Sanskrit. It means noble friend, noble friend. So I'm very happy to do that. I remember when I first came into this room. It was 2001, and I didn't like it in this room at all. It was too many statues and foreign things, things I was not familiar with. And I could just feel, even though I just came from... the front door into this room, I could feel there was something going on in the rest of the building that was formal and scary.

[02:30]

But I kept coming. Even though I felt uncomfortable, I had a lot of problems. I was fresh in substance abuse recovery. And so I was sort of like reborn as a limping, terrified little child. And somebody handed me Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki Roshi founded this temple. And he wrote or had a book of his talks published called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And it was actually my drug counselor. who had given me that book and I read it and found out this was sort of where he had started an institution. So I kind of came here just once a week and didn't like all this business, the robes and the bowing and the mats and the candles and the attendants.

[03:40]

And look at me now. LAUGHTER Things change. Things change. Things change. Yeah, I kept coming because there was a compulsion to come. And I didn't like it at all. And I kept coming because... You're trained here to meditate. You're taught how to meditate. And the kind of meditation that we do in Soto Zen, which is what this temple is, the Soto Zen temple, is very simple, but it's very hard, as probably almost all of you know. But I was compelled to keep coming because even though it was difficult for me to do, it was painful for me to learn how to meditate, to sit and be with myself, really for the first time in my life. And I didn't like it and I was fidgeting. But very quickly, because of the instruction that I got, I was able to sit for sort of longer and longer periods of time.

[04:50]

So starting out at three minutes and then, you know, working my way up to five. Quite quickly, I was able to start sitting for a longer period of time. Can you help me with this? I can't get my watch off. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, I love the attendance now. Thank you. My wrist, my hand was going to explode there. So thank you, attendant Brent. And... Yes, so even though it was very difficult to learn how to meditate, it was very important. I could tell that it was something that I needed to do in order to move to whatever the next level was. I wasn't even trying to be happy at that stage.

[05:51]

I didn't really know what it was, but I was just trying to move in a vaguely positive direction. because I had been going in an increasingly clearly negative direction in my life for a really long time. So it just kind of kept coming. And so we do many things in this room right here. Of course, we have our Saturday Dharma talk in here. But every day in the morning, Monday through Saturday, we have our services in here first thing in the morning. You're welcome to join us for all of these things. We have service after two periods of zazen downstairs in the meditation hall. And we chant sutras in here and do a lot of bowing and a lot of incense offering and a lot of things that I felt very uncomfortable with in the beginning. But I love now. I absolutely love.

[06:52]

And we have Jukai's in here, which Jukai is a lay ordination. So you'll see some people around, like Brent has a blue robe on. And that's Jukai, that's lay ordination. And then people who have black ones on, we wear black clothes. So I'm a priest, and the ones who are priests have black raksus on. And then there's brown ones around, which are sort of very senior teachers who've received what's called dharma transmission. So we do a lot of things in this room. And one of the things that we do in here is on Monday nights, there's a meeting for people in recovery who are interested in Zen Buddhism. And that's where it is I started coming. And, you know, I would just go from the front door into this hall for really, you know, about a year. And I really started to connect with meditation.

[07:57]

So I ended up having another practice in another tradition called Vipassana, which means insights. And it's just a different sort of... of meditation with a different focus it's still trying to get to the same place but it's the Sangha the community that I was involved in is based at Spirit Rock out in Marin County and basically back in the 70's when the people who started Spirit Rock brought their form of Buddhism the United States they dropped all of this stuff they let go of all of the robes and the statues all the things that made me feel uncomfortable they dropped all this stuff because they thought oh you know what this is not going to be inviting for Americans so we've got to let go of all this business and I was very happy to hear that because that gave me a really very deep practice for about my first four years of practicing Buddhism

[09:06]

But I would still come here on Mondays. And so through that process, I slowly began to obviously feel a little bit more comfortable. And on Monday nights here, we meet and we talk about addiction. We talk about craving, intense craving, which is at the center of the Buddha's teachings. It's where it is that our suffering is based in our lives as human beings. And so as addicts, we're really specialists on craving. Especially if we're in some kind of recovery and we're studying with a sober mind, craving, grasping, thirst for... then we are really looking at it in a very deep and intense way.

[10:07]

So I started to feel a little bit more comfortable in this room. You know, we tell our stories and this room is a very safe place for us working on these two intertwining disciplines of Buddhism and recovery. And, you know, after I've been coming here for about a year, I started to talk about what I was working on, which is what I called my shame practice, which is nothing more than really just, it sounds fancy, but it's just noticing throughout the day how much shame it is that I have. And this was a new realization to me. after about a year of recovery because I hadn't thought of myself as someone who was, uh, ashamed. I was just kind of a drug addict and an alcoholic. You don't go that deep as to start labeling things.

[11:07]

Um, but, uh, so I was doing my shame practice and, uh, it was just kind of noticing how much shame I had. And I was shocked to find out that I was ashamed almost all day long. Um, and, uh, uh, Sometimes we call it low self-esteem. It's a whole spectrum of negative self-based feelings. I prefer shame. It's a little bit more dramatic and therefore more serious. But anyway, I was talking about it a lot on Monday nights here and I could feel people were getting a little tired of it. There were some people who... I didn't find out until much later with me talking about my shame practice all the time. They really felt sorry for me. Poor Tim, he's got a lot of shame. But then, you know, a year, two years, and with one person five years later, they realized, oh my God, I had all this shame as well. But anyway, it was up for me, and I was comfortable, I felt safe talking about it in this room.

[12:11]

And afterwards, we were putting our shoes on out there, and someone who became my... great spiritual friend said to me, I wish you could see yourself as we all see you in this room. And he didn't need to say any more because I could tell by the way he was saying it and because of the length of time that I'd been coming and the meditation training that I'd been getting, what he meant was, we hear you talking about your shame, but we love you. We love you. And this is what we call in Buddhism, turning words, where you're struck by something and you're able to look at phenomena from a different perspective. So I was able to look at my shame as just a part of who it is that I am, rather than all of who it is that I am, which is what it had been throughout the period of discovery and investigation.

[13:15]

And it was just now a piece of who it is that I was. And here was someone who, for really maybe the first time in my life, I had a very open spiritual heart to. And I was able to see things the way it is that he meant them on a very deep level. And so with these turning words, something very deep inside of me changed. And I began a process of very full and whole healing. And what this was, was... the result of a slowly building trust that had happened through my telling stories, but also through my meditating, sitting, learning how to meditate. And what we're doing when we're meditating is we're trying to understand what is our internal experience and how does that relate to the rest of the world that we go and walk around in after we get up from the cushion.

[14:22]

So... By learning a little bit about what it was that was going inside of me and by telling my story in here and listening to other people's story and hearing some people feel sorry for me, but also a lot of people share the same experience of shame, I was able to begin to build what we call intimacy, which is basically on a very basic level, which is why I said basically, is two or more people getting together and telling what is the truth for them without being judged. And trust is, of course, really the door to intimacy. Trust is really... It's like, for me, a little puppy. I needed to learn how to be aware of it when it arises inside of me, between myself and myself, or between myself and another person, to be really aware of it and to treat it kind of like a little puppy.

[15:36]

You know, you see a little puppy and it's very fragile and it really needs to be looked after and its skin is soft. it needs to be fed properly and cared for and nurtured. And so I tried to see trust as that way, something that really needs to be looked after. And when it's broken, what I found, because it does get broken, as you all know, trust is broken. When it's broken, if it can be rebuilt, that rebuilt trust is actually the strongest trust that there is. Trust has a feeling for me, in my body, a feeling of warmth. And that's how it is that I monitor its presence, the loss of it, and whether or not I am accurately and wholesomely rebuilding it.

[16:40]

Because that usually takes a lot of work from both sides of the broken trust. But it's a very important thing to do. And so I kept coming anyway to Zen Center. I started coming on Saturdays like you guys have done today. You know, I would come on after this transformation had happened. Started coming on Saturdays and I started coming in the mornings really early at 5.30 in the morning. You guys can do all of this stuff. We have a schedule. You can come at 5.30 or you can come at 6.00. Come at 6 if you want in the morning. There's two periods of Zazen. And then at 6.30, we come up here for service. And you can come for service. And it's fantastically confusing to get out of the Zendo. It's really easy to get in. Getting in is really not that complicated. But to get out is really confusing. And if you're lucky, like I wasn't...

[17:43]

On your first trip trying to get out, you'll be next to someone who's very, very helpful. There are increasingly more and more helpful people here at Zen Center who will help you to get out. But all of these forms that we have getting out of the Buddha Hall is called the Buddha Hall. It's no big deal. It's just no big deal. Suzuki Roshi, in fact, said that it's impossible to follow all of them. perfectly because they're way too complicated. They have a very important role, but you don't need to worry about them. And you can join us for all of these things. You're all very welcome to come and join us. But there's also evening meditation at 525. And I came to that. And then slowly over time, I started taking on one of the roles. Like Brent is my GICO right now. And I first was GICO. for the evening service, and that's just a great way to sort of understand why are these things uncomfortable, just like I did with meditation.

[18:52]

Why is this uncomfortable? Still keep doing it, and it began to be comfortable, and now it's actually vital in my life. So I started coming to this building more and coming into this room in a... more open way, you know, just not coming from the front door to the Buddha hole, but having a relationship with the whole, the whole building and everything that goes on here and starting to meet other people and doing a couple of one day sits and then a seven day sit and then starting to build more relationships rather than with this one, one person. And it, it's, just becomes comfortable on a very deep level that I had never really experienced before and now I feel very very comfortable in this room despite the fact that it's a big deal to do the Saturday Dharma talk and this is my first one which doesn't totally feel comfortable but underneath there's a very deep comfort that I have a sense of being

[20:06]

And I feel so comfortable that I don't mind telling you all today that I come to this talk about spiritual friends with a broken heart. The heart that is broken. And I don't need to tell you, you know, the specifics of why it is. You know, there's a lot of different things. Someone in my family died. But as Buddhists... we're always aware of the great pain and difficulty that there is just simply in being a human being and being aware of the world and the great suffering that there is. And we pair that with freedom from suffering. And that freedom from suffering doesn't mean forgetting about all the suffering that's happening. It means fully being aware of it and seeing it for what it is, which is that it is profoundly heartbreaking and that it's possible to pass through it.

[21:18]

So we see things as they are, including the great suffering that there is in the world. I don't need to tell you about the details because I am completely and utterly convinced that each one of you has had a broken heart. And I know this to be true. So by my saying that, feeling comfortable enough to say that with my heart as openly as possible, I can easily feel the connection with all of you that I have on a very deep level. And so, in effect, all of you in this room, some of you I will never see again. Some of you I've become very close with. Some of you I'm already close with. You are all my Kalyana Mitras, my spiritual friends. So it's true that in Zazen, Zazen is what we call meditation, Zazen.

[22:25]

Zah means sitting. Zen means meditation or concentration. In Zazen, we study our internal experience. But our form in Soto Zen, the kind of Zen that we practice here, is to sit down in the meditation hall with, in our meditation halls in Soto Zen, we have a statue on the altar with Manjushri, with a sword. in Manjushri's hand. And, you know, we're trying to cultivate a warm heart in our meditation. So, you know, a statue with someone with a sword might not be something you would associate with a warm heart, but welcome to Zen. We really do. We really, really associate it with a warm heart. But we also focus on sitting in a group.

[23:31]

And this is very important to us. We begin our sittings at the same time. We end our sitting at the same time. In Vipassana, the Vipassana practice I had, the main thing is just to sit. You know, sit every day. Sit every day, no matter what it is that you do. And sit at home. Don't worry about getting a group together. Just sit. just meditate. For us, we really want you to come and sit with us. And if you're sitting at home, to try and have some awareness of how it is that you're sitting with other people. This is very, very important to us. So we're trained to have association with others as we're sitting. And we've got kind of rules down there in the meditation hall. You can go and learn on Saturdays. We're going to have a very brief orientation today from Shundo. But Every Saturday we'll show you how to enter and we always turn clockwise whenever we're turning because there's a lot of turning down there.

[24:32]

And we do that just basically so we don't hit the person next to us with our feet or our head. And so that's all about learning how to be in association mindfully with other people. And this is very, very important. for us even in our silence which we practice a lot of here just in our everyday interaction but also especially during our sessions or our concentrated periods of concentrated heart mind we have one day sits we have seven day sits here and they are very silent but even within our silence we're actually speaking to each other you can you can really tell a lot about someone when you spend seven days in silence sitting next to them. And some of the things that you can tell about them, you don't really want to know at first, but you find out later on that this is very deep information about them.

[25:37]

And deep information you're finding out about yourself in relationship with them. These are our spiritual friends. Even though there's silence, it's not our traditional way of getting together with buddies and hanging out. After a concentrated period of silence, working with a whole group of other fellow meditators, your perception becomes very fine-tuned. So you're actually able to see very deeply into yourself and into others and into this relationship that begins to break down the barriers that we have. As we look very closely at ourselves and in relationship to others, we see that we're supported by many others. If you do a seven-day retreat here, you will see how important what's called the Tenzo is.

[26:39]

The Tenzo is the person who runs the kitchen. And this is a very, very important spiritual position here in the temple. because that's how it is that you get fed, which still has to happen, even on your way to awareness and being awake. And so you begin to have a relationship with everyone who works in the kitchen, and this cultivates a great feeling of gratitude because there are sacrifices being made. People can't come down to the Zendo because they're up cutting vegetables in the kitchen for you. you begin to develop a feeling of gratitude to the Eno, who is the person who is in charge of the meditation hall. That's Kim right here. And she's sitting next to who's going to soon be our new Eno, Diego. And so you begin to be very grateful because they're keeping order down there.

[27:41]

Our Tanto is David right here. He is in charge of practice. So he acts as a pillar for all of us, a silent, mostly silent pillar, except when you get in trouble, when his silence is broken, kindly, with kindness, very much with kindness. But he is a pillar for us to investigate the anarchy and mayhem of our internal experiences He's the pillar for us to organize that mayhem around. He makes sure everything goes smooth and things externally don't begin to reflect the internal disorder that many of us are experiencing. You start to have this deep sense of gratitude for the people who are helping you in your practice and this gratitude becomes very deep and you get to exercise it for actually a lot of people who are long dead.

[28:47]

You begin to realize, I think, I began to realize in a very deep way how it is that you actually continue to have a relationship with people Just because they're dead doesn't mean that the relationship is over. It actually can become very intense because guess what? You're in charge of the relationship now. Which is great. So you get to actually call them up when you want to call them up. Call up the good parts of them when you want to call up the good parts of them. Never totally suppressing the parts that maybe weren't so good. But focusing on the wholeness. of how it is that they are supporting you in your practice. And so this is very true for Suzuki Roshi, who started this temple, and who... There's two books of his writings. That first one I mentioned, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And he spoke about what I get with trust,

[29:54]

And what I get with deep gratitude for not just the living, but even those who we call ancestors who brought this practice to us. He talks about having a warm heart. And I want to just read a little bit. I'll try to read slowly. Sarah. In a section called Be Kind with Yourself. He talks about, we put emphasis on a warm heart, warm zazen. The warm feeling we have in our practice is, in other words, enlightenment or Buddha's mind. So just when you have that feeling, Suzuki Roshi just said to us all, you have enlightenment. You don't have to be convinced at first. And so he goes on. If we do not have some warm, big satisfaction in our practice, that is not true practice. Even though you sit trying to have... the right posture and counting your breath, it may still be lifeless zazen.

[30:59]

Because you are just following instructions, you are not kind enough with yourself. You think that if you follow the instructions given by some teacher, then you will have good zazen. But the purpose of instruction is to encourage you to be kind with yourself. Do not count your breaths just to avoid your thinking, but to take the best care of your breathing. If you are very kind with your breathing, one breath after another, you will have a refreshed, warm feeling in your zazen. When you have a warm feeling for your body and your breath, then you can take care of your practice and you will be fully satisfied. When you are kind with yourself, naturally you will feel like this. So I mentioned earlier Manjushri, who has the sword, who's in our meditation hall, who we sit with as we sit in a group, we sit with Manjushri, this sword that cuts through delusion.

[32:11]

So I see Manjushri's sword as cutting through the delusion that I have around my heart. My heart, which suffers from death and from regret and from pain and mistakes and injustice. With each of these things that I just mentioned, it has like a new coating that's put around my heart. And my heart eventually has a bulletproof vest on and becomes impenetrable. So Manjushri is cutting through this with this sword. And this is opening up my heart, hopefully bringing access to this warm feeling. So he says, when you do something with a warm-hearted feeling, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, is there. And there is the true you. You don't have to wonder where Manjushri is or what he is doing.

[33:18]

When you do things with your warm-hearted mind, that is actual practice. That is how to take care of things. That is how to communicate with people. Some of you are priests, and some of you are not priests. And each of you will go your own way. Those of you who are not married, and those of you who are married, each have your own way of extending practice out to your everyday lives. Although your situations are different, practice is the same. And we all meet Manjushri. Even though he is one, he is everywhere, with everyone and everything. Whatever you do, whatever your practice is, Manjushri is there. The secret is not to forget the true mercy of Buddha, who takes care of everything. If we lose this point, whatever we do doesn't make sense.

[34:20]

And this book was edited by Ed Brown, who is one of our leading teachers here and has worked a lot with food and various other things. And he was an important student. All of Suzuki Roshi's students were important. But anyway, he just has a very short bit right here that I want to read about the process of the experience of sitting with others in the zendo. One of the things that are done by the abbot or the tanto and... during special times, the Shuso, when the Shuso is being trained to do this, is posture correction. There'll be someone who'll walk around, either the Abba or the Tanto or the Shuso will walk around and just help you gently now. It used to be with a stick, but we don't use it anymore.

[35:24]

But this is what happened with Ed, just a brief paragraph here. Other times when I struggled to sit still, Suzuki Roshi's hand would rest motionlessly on my shoulders. touching me through and through. My breath would soften and lengthen. Tension would release and my shoulders would start to radiate with warmth and vitality. Once I asked him what he was doing when he had his hands on my shoulders and he said, I'm meditating with you. So as I mentioned, a shuso is first monk. And in a practice period, usually there will be someone who is brought in as the first monk. And so it's a very important training point in your Zen training. And I was fortunate enough to have been, at the beginning of this year, Shuso at Tassahara.

[36:33]

I actually was Shuso twice because some of us need a little more training than others. And so I was Shuso here at City Center at the end of last year. And it said that your main role as Shuso is to be a friend to everyone in the practice period. And that's actually not very easy. I'll tell you right now instead of pretending. You're brushing up against people with their hard edges. People are looking very deeply at themselves. They're seeing a lot of things like shame. And your vulnerabilities are magnified. Resentment can come up, especially with the people sitting on either side of you. You just, you know, start to not like how it is that they're breathing. Um... Uh... You have a lot of fear because, let's face it, you don't have to be an addict to run from the truth of your internal experiences.

[37:35]

We all do that a little bit. I tried to enter into being Shuso with this adage that I'd been given, which is, you don't need to like everyone, but you do need to love everyone. And that's actually pretty easy to do, to love everyone. Even people you might not like on the news. Liking everyone is something I'm still trying to do. But this is wisdom that Manjushri is bringing to us. How to enter into warmth and let warmth enter into you. The warmth of love. And it's that wisdom that helps to teach us how to look after ourselves. Sometimes... spiritual friendships need to be ended. And learning how to do that is very complicated and it's very important to have a bunch of spiritual friends and this can include a teacher and should include a teacher if you're entering into our way which really focuses on having a teacher because this is a very special spiritual friend.

[38:51]

Outside in the hall across the way is a little flyer with a bunch of pictures on it. And those are all the people here at City Center who are available to enter into deeper spiritual friendship with. And I strongly encourage those of you who have maybe been coming for a little while to start looking into having a relationship like that. So Manjushri and this process of learning how to meditate together and how to look after yourself and how to choose good people to be around. This was an incredible awakening for me. I don't have to just be with people who maybe are attracted to me or who I've fallen in with somehow. I actually have total control of who it is that I'm associated with out in the world, and I can choose to be around wholesome and healthy people.

[39:55]

And once I realized that, someone probably told me, and I was able to hear it, my life began to change. And I'll just end with this section from the Dhammapada, which is sutra in poem form. And... This section is called the sage. Like someone pointing to treasure is the wise person who sees your faults and points them out. Associate with such a sage. Yes. This is a part of Kalyanamitra. It's not all about what you might think of as love, but it's about truth. And these are true friends. Good will come of it. Not bad if you associate with such as this. Let one such as this advise you, instruct you, and restrain you from rude behavior. This happens.

[40:57]

No one was restraining me from my bad behavior before. It happens now. Not as much as I would like it, perhaps, but it happens. Such a person is pleasing to good people but displeasing to bad. I could do a whole talk on those two lines right there. Do not associate with evil friends. Do not associate with the lowest of people. Associate with virtuous friends. Associate with the best of people. One who drinks in the Dharma sleeps happily with a clear mind. The sage always delights in Dharma and taught by the noble ones. Thank you all very much. 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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[42:03]

For more information please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:13]

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