This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I'm happy to see all of you here this morning. In fact, there are a good many more of you than I imagined there would be. For some reason, I thought there might just be the practice period and my friends who work with me in the kitchen and some of my fellow priests. But there's actually quite a number of visitors here today. I'm very happy to see you. If some of you were here, are longtime visitors to Green Gulch, or have practiced at practice periods, or Sashin's here, you might know me from some time back.

[01:06]

But I fairly recently, less than two months ago, came back to live again after not living here for a number of years. And straight into the thickness of a... or the busyness of a very demanding job, which is taking care of the kitchen and the food and the many people who work to prepare the food and the many people who help me help the people who work to prepare the food, prepare the food, and so on. And all of you who've been in that situation, whether for a day, a week, or a month, know that that's one of the great responsibilities here And it's a joy, and sometimes it's exhausting. So when I was told I would be, well, I was invited to give a talk, which is a lovely invitation, and I said, well, maybe it will be just a little too soon, having more or less recently arrived.

[02:09]

And so I thought someone else had been invited. And about two weeks ago, I found out, no, actually not. And so at that moment, it was very clear to me that the topic that I would want to speak on or speak to or reflect on for a period of time was finding stillness in the midst of the hurly-burly of activity. So that concept or that idea has organized my thoughts over the last couple of weeks as I prepare to meet you here today. And the first way it came to me was as a newly returning staff member, I had the opportunity to sit what we call tangario, which is a day of silent sitting in the zendo. And there was a group of about 20 participants in this current practice period sitting that day and also quite a number of returning staff members. So I discovered...

[03:11]

by being given that invitation to sit Tongario, which is what you do when you come to live in the monastery for either a practice period or for extended stay on staff. I realized it was possible to organize the work of my responsibilities in such a way as to take a full day away from my work in the kitchen. And this was kind of a revelation to me. I still haven't succeeded in doing it on other occasions, but it was very clear to me that it was possible, and my sense that it was not possible was completely something I had manufactured. So that was a real gift. One way of recognizing both the need and the possibility of finding stillness in the midst of great activity and great responsibility is to stop and pause and see that one can do it. just in the most practical way. But the invitation to sit here is also a recognition or an opening to the possibility of finding stillness in the midst of activity.

[04:28]

This is the teaching seat or the Dharma seat, but it's also the reality seat. I think of it as... from this place to speak from the reality of this body, this life, and this moment. And in truth, we're asked to do that all the time, every moment. But often we're caught up in making the soup or making the salad or getting the ordering done, which is what I'm usually doing on Sunday morning for the next week's food, or taking care of the children or the grandparents or... whatever our worldly responsibilities seem to be, and we lose track right in the midst of all that activity. I certainly do, and I know the people who work with me have seen the difference between losing track of that place of stillness, even in motion, and being in that place of stillness, even in motion.

[05:31]

And there's a difference, and we can feel it, and we can renew our commitment to that stillness. So I have felt that sitting at this seat also, like many of our forms, invites us to do this again and again and again. And we don't need the form to do it, but the form supports us to do it. So we're very happy to have these forms that, even coming to the zendo from whatever busy life everyone has come from, and giving yourself an hour or a half an hour or two hours of peace and quiet in this beautiful valley. Or giving yourself a corner in your apartment or your home where you can give yourself that quiet. But finally, or again and again finally, it comes back to not a special place or a special time, but in this exact moment when

[06:34]

a tray has fallen in the walk-in, and there's ketchup and mustard all over the floor, right in that moment, and broken glass, right in that moment, can I find the stillness that can respond to that disaster? Probably there's a moment of stillness there, just the shock of seeing what has happened is a kind of moment of stillness right then. in the midst of all of this, when there's pressure or the unknown or the unexpected or five things coming at once, is there stillness right there? And when there isn't, can I notice that there isn't and find it again? That's the challenge. It's not that necessarily that stillness is a constant. It's that it's always available if I am able to receive it. but I distract myself from that receiving.

[07:38]

So that's kind of the frame of what I had in mind for talking about today. And then I noticed that there's an old Zen story that comes up around this very quickly for me, and it may have already occurred to some of you if you've heard it before. Yun Yan was sweeping, and Dao Wu came by, his Dharma friend of many years. apparently, came by and said, too busy. And Yunnan said, you should know there is one who is not busy. And Da Wu said, if so, then there are two moons. And... I don't have a broom, I only have Kayum's watch. But then Da Wu held up his, I mean, Yuan Yan held up his broom and said, which moon is this? And Da Wu ended the conversation.

[08:44]

He was done at that point. So there are different interpretations of this story, and I don't want to get into interpretations, because the interpretations point to different views, and then we get... caught in stories about stories about ideas, and that's not really where I want to go today. I invite you to investigate it, if you like. I have always felt the silence of that story, the reality of that moment, or not even that moment, that reality within busyness where there is stillness and silence right in the heart of the activity. And it is not beyond our ability to be aware of that and to sense that as long as we remember. So in a way, Yunnan was, I think, perhaps grateful to Da Wu for challenging him and saying, too busy. Yunnan had the opportunity to express the stillness in the midst of his effort to sweep the ground.

[09:47]

So Yunnan is one of our great ancestors, and I don't think I... that story together with our Soto Zen ancestry until rather recently, because you hear the various names and the various stories, and you don't necessarily connect them as a kind of narrative over time. They stand out as this individual story between these two monks, and maybe don't even think about which monk it was who said what. But in this case, Yunnan was later the ancestor or the master teacher of our lineage ancestor Dongshan. And this very question seems to run through both Yunnan's study before he was a master and Dongshan's study with him in later times. So I might find a way to tell a few stories about that. Let's see what else I wanted to bring up at the beginning.

[10:54]

When I first came to Green Gulch, it was a Sunday, rather like this one. It was in May, so there were a lot more flowers. Although I hear there are quite a few flowers now. I haven't been to see them. But it was May, and I was staying nearby here down in the Santa Cruz Mountains for a month, and a number of people from where I was staying were Zen practitioners, and someone said, let's go up to Green Gulch. And I had started sitting formally. where I lived in the East earlier that year. So I was ready to come and four of us came over. And I had never been in a big zendo like this or sat with more than half a dozen people at a time. So it was quite stunning to me. And then the person giving that talk was Tenshin Roshi. I didn't know who it was. It was just a person sitting here giving the talk. But in the talk, he talked about something that you may have heard him talk about at some point or other.

[12:00]

And it was a teaching involving a much more contemporary teaching than the one of Yunnan, that there are really only three things that ever have to be said. Thank you, I'm sorry, and I love you. And the talk that he gave that emphasized that point really spoke to what was going on with me right at that moment in time. In the place where I was staying, I had some conflict with one of the administrators, and I didn't know how to resolve it. I knew I owed her some amend, some apology, some effort to clear the difficulty. At the same time, I didn't know how to do that without getting caught in my story of judgment and self-justification. So I was really, I felt really at a loss. And then I heard this teaching and it was like, oh, I know exactly what to do.

[13:04]

And I bought her some flowers from Green Gulch and I got a nice card and I wrote a very simple note and I took it back to her and it was all it took. And I didn't have to get into the story of why it happened or what was her part that... That wasn't my business. My business was my part, and I was able to address that in a way that before then I hadn't. So I was quite struck by this ability that somehow this teaching transmitted, not just in the words of the teaching, in fact, not in the words of the teaching, but in the presence to the room and the sitting with 100 or 200 people, and the flowers and the sunshine. Something was transmitted that freed me, at least for that moment, from being stuck in my story and gave me an opportunity to respond to the situation more wholeheartedly and alleviated some of the distress in the situation.

[14:10]

And that really impressed me. I was pretty clear at that point that this, this is the words in my mind, this Soto Zen really is my practice. So I went back very wholeheartedly to the group that I had been sitting with. And instead of just going to sit with them in order to support my sitting, I found myself going in order to encourage and complete and develop more and more sitting skills. of the group as a whole. And it just changed my life completely to have come here on that day, as you see now, which this was not my intention, whatever that was, 18 years ago when I came to visit. And so I came back for things like practice period, like the one that has just recently begun, and Tangario. the day of sitting that I mentioned. There was a one-day sitting yesterday as well, which involved the practice period and an number of guests.

[15:15]

And out of that grew the intention to stay for longer and to be trained by my teacher, who still has a lot of work to do, I think. During his recent intensive, he was talking about, and this continues to teach about, a verse that we chant and study called the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which I think is attributed to Dongshan. And in the record of Dongshan, I read, as I was looking at Dongshan and Yan Yan, that Dongshan transmits this teaching to one of his students and introduces that recitation of the teaching by saying, that it was secretly transmitted to him by his teacher, Yuan Yan. So I like this because it brings me back to Yuan Yan, who said there's one who is not busy.

[16:18]

And I begin to see the connection of these different teachers and the through line in the questions and the way they respond to questions. Because there's a way in these... the stories of these two where a question is asked and a teaching is given, but an explanation is not given. And there's an illumination in the response, but there's not an explanation. And I see this in kind of story after story, and I really appreciate that, and I invite us all to appreciate that, because I think we tend, maybe naturally or maybe culturally or both, certainly I do as a verbally oriented person, to get into what are the words saying and what do the words mean and how do I interpret the words and what is the right way and what is not the right way to interpret, etc.

[17:21]

And that's a kind of spinning of language that takes me away from what the language is actually pointing to. So these things work more like poetry and ask us to find the silence. in the heart of the language, which to me is much like the one who is not busy in the midst of activity, and is the place where I can hear, can I hear myself while I speak? Can I hear what's not myself speaking while I speak? Can you hear in the silences, can we all hear something that's not in the words themselves? And do the words help us hear, or do the words distract us from hearing? And there's not an answer, but I would say that's the question over and over.

[18:28]

People who, a few of you have heard me speak before, and I like to offer this teaching of Bajang, which some of you may know now, having heard me say it before. Bajang was one of the slightly earlier ancestors. Yunnan studied with him for 20 years before Bajang's death, and then Yunnan went to another teacher where he succeeded in completing his training, I guess we could say. But in his 20 years with Bajang, he must have heard this teaching, I suspect. True words cure sickness. If the cure manages to heal, then all are true words. If they can't effectively cure sickness, all are false words. True words are false words insofar as they give rise to views. False words are true words.

[19:31]

insofar as they cut off the delusions of sentient beings. So there's a set of stories in the Blue Cliff Record in which Bai Zhang questions a number of his students. One of them is Guishan, who was, I think it's the same Guishan, who was later a... distinguished venerable Tenzo. So one has some feeling for Guishun. One is Wu Feng, I think, and I'm not sure what his later story is. And then the third was Yuan Yan. And they all three get asked the same question and they all give different answers and the Blue Cliff Record commentaries evaluate these answers in different ways and so on and so on. But the question was, I'm not going to worry about the answers, but the question was, if your mouth and throat and teeth are shut, how will you speak?

[20:38]

And each of the students answers in a different way. Yunnan's answer, according to the Blue Cliff Record, was really pathetic and not really very mature. Although the Blue Cliff Record does acknowledge that later he had greater realization. The problem with Yunyan's answer is just that he asks the question back to the teacher, well, how do you do it? Do you have something to say or not? So I'm not sure if that question was a problem, but it's taken to be a problem there. And later Yunyan is very concerned Oh, wait a minute. I'm getting beyond myself. I'm demonstrating what we don't want words to do. They carry us beyond where we... There's a lovely quote I have in here somewhere from Madame Bovary, in which Flaubert uses the image of a rolling pin.

[21:50]

He says, language is like a rolling press that always extends our emotions. So you can get this image of, like, you start to talk and... So that just started to happen. I rein it in a little bit. So Yunnan and Da Wu, the one who later asks him about being too... suggests that he's too busy. When Bai Zhang dies, they go to Yao Shan. And with Yao Shan... Yun Yan finds his true teacher. And then later, Yun Yan is living off in, it sounds palatial to me, it's a series of linked caves, and if you've ever seen any of these caves, they are kind of palatial, so I think of him as in a palace of caves, but he's living off somewhere alone as a hermit in meditation in caves.

[22:52]

But he's not unknown, and Dengshan is a perhaps young student, goes to the master Guishang, who was also one of these students of Bajang, that was asked that question, and asks a question about the teaching of insentient beings expounding the Dharma. So there is this teaching that was being expressed and contended about, a series of perhaps conflicting views as to whether only sentient beings, beings that are conscious and capable of feeling and thought, could expound the dharma, or whether insentient beings, insentient things, everything expounds the dharma. So we may dispute as to whether trees and plants and animals are sentient. I personally think of them as sentient, but... we generally think of walls and tiles and pebbles as not sentient.

[23:56]

So when they say, do insentient beings expound the Dharma, the question is whether these things that appear to be only material, whether they too express the Buddha's teaching, or whether it's just the expressions of beings capable of some kind of realization expressing in a conscious way. expressing the teaching. So there's a philosophical debate going on in the culture at the time, and there are expressions of this teaching. Dongshan is studying this teaching and looking for some clarification of it, and goes to Guishan and asks him. Guishan says, well, tell me what you know about it, and he expounds what he knows about it, the student does, and Guishan sends him off to see Yunyan. He says, Yunyan is the one you should go see. So he goes to see Yunnan in his cave, and they have more or less the same conversation, only this time he's illuminated by what he hears.

[24:58]

The words are not that different, and yet this time what he hears goes straight to his understanding, and he recognizes that Yunnan is his teacher, and he stays with him for some period of time. And then when he's getting ready to leave Yunnan, He asks him, and pardon me if I get some of the narrative not exactly accurate. You know, these are stories, and so they might be a little shuffled, but I think I've got this more or less accurate. When Dengshan is getting ready to leave Yanyan, he asks... If I'm asked about what your essential teaching was or what I learned most, the primary thing I learned from you, what shall I say? How would you summarize it? And the teacher reflects, perhaps for a long time, who knows.

[26:01]

And then he says, just this person. And this is a very interesting expression because evidently the language, the language, literal expression in the Chinese was the same phrase used if you went to court and you were accused of a crime and you acknowledged your responsibility for your crime. So maybe not quite as strong as guilty as charged, but it's like, I am here, I am the one, this is me, just this person. So it has this association of owning, taking responsibility for all of my situation, for being right here, all of my karma, all of my action, all the consequences of my action, this body, this life, right here, just this person. So Deng Shan didn't know whether he understood that response or not, but he went away with it.

[27:06]

And then later he understood. Part of the story is he understood when he saw his reflection in a river or a stream. And once upon a time, some people from Zen Center went to that place. And some of them were bold enough to actually dance in the stream. I believe our dear Eugen Roshi danced in the stream. I was too timid to dance in the stream. I stood above and watched while many other brave souls danced in the stream. But it's the stream where Dengshan is said to have seen his reflection and in that moment understood what Yan Yan was attempting to tell him in that simple expression. And that place was the place where Dengshan founded his monastery and taught the students who became the heirs or the ancestors to this lineage.

[28:09]

So this is part of this sort of family of stories. There's so many Zen stories. You've probably all read or heard many of them. And some of them exist in this family. And these two, Yan Yan and Dongshan, are the sort of pillars of the Chinese part of our ancestry, I think. Now I'm looking at the clock. 10.50? 11? Is that my ending time, more or less? More or less. So I think I want to tell a couple more Dengshan stories that are about questions of speech. And then I'll pause and listen and see what my last words might want to be. So these I'm just going to read because I don't really know these stories so easily without just reading them. But one time Dengshan said, If you would experience that which transcends even the Buddha, you must first be capable of a bit of conversation.

[29:19]

A monk asked, what kind of conversation is that? When I am conversing, you don't hear it, said the master. Do you hear it or not? asked the monk. When I am not conversing, I hear it, replied the master. So this little story is very like the story that Dongshan first had, the exchange he first had with Yunyan about hearing the teaching of the insentient. But I like that it's focused on speech, on conversation, because this is our challenge. It's certainly the challenge of... sitting here, is to hear what's happening in the room, in my body, in this little microphone, in the words, and in the silence around the words.

[30:26]

Often what happens, and you may encounter this in many situations, but I'm most aware of it in one just like this, where there's an opportunity for something to speak that isn't exactly my conscious thought about what I'm going to say. It just is coming forth rather than something that I've thought through and planned or... recognize as something I've said many times before. But in this moment, it's coming right here, right now. I think we experience this at times when we go to meet the teacher. This is an important part of our practice also, the dynamic between the silent sitting, facing the wall without... active interaction, a very simplified situation, and then a more dynamic situation of going to meet another person, or in this case, going to meet a room full of people, or in the case of being in the kitchen, going to meet rice and bread and salad and soup, and I think all the people that are cooking have already gone to cook, but that...

[31:55]

That's a very dynamic situation, let alone whatever is going on in our daily life. And we have both of these parts in our practice life. And I feel the presence of both of these parts in this exchange. And another one that's very close. A monk asks Dengshan, what is proper questioning and answering? This will lead us into Q&A. When it doesn't come from the mouth, replied Dengshan. If someone were to question you, would you answer or not, asked the monk. I've never been questioned, replied Dengshan. And I also love how that points back to the question that Bajang asked in Dongshan's teacher, when he failed to answer well, when he said, how are you going to speak?

[32:58]

If you have no throat, no teeth, no tongue, how will you speak? This is the speaking of the insentient again. How do we speak without all our conscious apparatus? And yet we need our conscious apparatus. And this is just over and over and over the challenge of our practice, I think. to work with this equipment, this wonderful, marvelous equipment we have that at the same time distracts us and carries us away from right here and right now. That's what allows me to be right here, right now, alive, looking at you, being seen. The one who's looking is very different from the one who's being seen, I think. And yet all the same right here. And at the same time, that very same equipment that allows that gift of that miracle of our perception and our vision and our hearing and our thinking also completely takes us away and lands me in stories of whether happy stories or sad stories or stories of conflict or stories of opinions, stories of politics.

[34:20]

And we need both sides. It's cooking and being cooked at the same time. So I just want to look at my last little set of thoughts here, and then I think I can... Yeah. Well, I think that's it. We can do this. I think that's my... Without doing anything, we can... open again and again and again. And even someone who moves quickly, having lived in the East Coast a long time and coming from LA originally, not a slow, kind of quiet California person, but a busy, quick-moving transplant, multiple transplant, even I can slow down and can find the silence that it takes. to hear.

[35:23]

I think that's it. Okay. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:06]

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