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. That's not, yeah, better. Did you hear me say thank you for coming? I'll just say it again. Thank you so much. Very early in the Buddhist teaching career, he said to his students, I teach only two things. I teach suffering and I teach the end of suffering. I don't think there's anyone in this room right now who doesn't know about the first of these two things. Doesn't know about suffering. You know, whether it's the suffering of those minor daily irritations or further along the spectrum,

[01:01]

the grief and despair that comes from catastrophic disasters, such as is happening right now in Ukraine, in Turkey, and in Syria. Along with personal injury or loss of loved ones, there is also the ferocity of the daily news, the ongoing humiliation and murder of black people, indigenous people, and people of color. The ongoing humiliation and murder of Muslims and Jews and Christians and Hindus, men and women, animals, and so on and on and on. And even though the news isn't new, it's the story of our species in its time on this planet. It is the news of how we have each come to suffer here today. So suffering was named by the Buddha in his first sermon. in very simple language that is still easy for us to understand.

[02:02]

And it was named in three categories that are part of how he understood a pathway to freedom from all forms of suffering. The first category is the suffering of aging, illness, and death, including all of the sadness and fear, the grief and the sorrow that comes with the ending of our own life, and the lives of those that we love. The second category of suffering is the suffering of change, also known as the law of impermanence. When we do get what we want, we can't hold onto it. Even the richest, most beautiful, and powerful people in the world will eventually lose it all. And the third category of suffering is called all-pervasive suffering. This is the type of suffering that we are most likely to ignore. And yet, it is the illuminating aspect of our human life when we pay attention to it.

[03:09]

All pervasive suffering is the general background of anxiety and insecurity that colors even our happiest moments. Deep down, we fear that life doesn't offer us solid ground and that our very existence is in question. So from a Buddha's point of view, these doubts are well-founded. And exploring them offers us some glimpse of compassion and wisdom, both for ourselves and for others. Compassion and wisdom are the pathway of freedom from anxiety and fear about the facts of life. So I think it's pretty clear there are two kinds of experiences that we associate with the word suffering. There's our own personal experience, and then there's the suffering that we hear about that is happening to others. So I'd like to invite all of you to consider just for a few moments of one of each of these, one at a time.

[04:12]

First to notice what comes to your mind when you think of your own personal suffering. And then take a moment to notice what arises when you consider the suffering of the world. I think for me, as for many people in this country right now, it's the unjust and unrelenting suffering of BIPOC people, meaning non-white people. As a white person, I have heard loud and clear that this country is failing to protect not only its people of color, but the land and the water, the animals, the plants, and the very air that all of its people depend on for their survival.

[05:18]

In recent meetings with very sincere members of the Zen Center community, the leadership has been told that we are not sufficiently reflecting the hurt and injustice as it is arising in our society, or even worse, in our own Zen community. And we've been asked to commit ourselves as teachers and as practitioners of the Buddhist teaching to speak of these horrors as they occur, what one of our senior students called the horror du jour, the horror of the day. And they asked us to speak the name of Tyre Nichols, and the communities of Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park, among others, to speak of the senseless killings that have torn through our nation since its founding, which in my lifetime began shortly after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which continued with the murder of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, John Lennon,

[06:28]

and the multitudes of unnamed Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, and Afghans who have been killed by the weaponry of America at war. In trying to reflect the pain and anguish of a world possessed by violence, we are honoring the Buddha's teaching of the first noble truth. There is suffering and the second noble truth. Suffering has a cause. The cause of suffering is hatred, greed, and ignorance. Causes which we can all find within our own hearts and minds, and therefore within the hearts and minds of humans everywhere. So although the causes of suffering are not something new, still we do call it news, current news, and together we grieve as we scroll past the horrors of the day. So this week alone, I viewed the horror of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria destroying thousands of buildings and killing or injuring hundreds of thousands of people.

[07:40]

Maybe not that many yet, but thousands of people. There also came a momentary relief as I watched the military and the medical personnel of nations from all over the world mobilizing to help and rescue operations. Miles and miles of military vehicles carrying food and blankets and sleeping bags and medicine. And I found myself, as I'm about to right now, start to cry at the thought of how the world could be different in just that way. So what is it? How could we turn these armies and navies into bodhisattvas' armies and navies? on missions to rescue suffering beings, whoever and wherever they may be. You know, giant helium balloons circling the globe looking for ways to help. So what is it that would turn our armies away from violence and toward wisdom and compassion? And what is it that could turn our own grief and rage toward kindness and generosity and peace?

[08:48]

So as with the daily news of the world, these are not new questions being asked of humankind. However, for me personally, it was the answers that the Buddha gave to those questions that really did seem new when I first encountered these teachings over 50 years ago. One of the things I first appreciated about how the Buddha taught was the simplicity of his message, as if he was speaking to much-loved children. which in fact he often was. Of those who came to hear the Buddha speak, many were children, orphans and refugees, and lone seekers living in isolation from one another, living in isolation from society. The Buddha, on the other hand, had been raised as a prince in a royal household and was well-trained in the social forms of his day. He was well-trained in the arts of war and of lovemaking. training that had been tailor-made for centuries to serve the human proclivity for greed, hatred, and ignorance.

[09:56]

The human proclivity to dominate others. And yet he chose instead to leave the royal palace and follow the path of his tender heart, which from its earliest years had heard the cries of suffering beings, to the great disappointment of his father, the king. Motivated by a wish to bring an end to suffering, the prince worked very hard to recondition himself from a warrior king to a king of hearts. He did so by understanding, developing, and practicing a six-point bodhisattva training program called the Six Paramitas, or the Six Perfections, a program which begins with generosity, in other words, giving oneself to others. And then he practiced ethics based in honesty and self-reflection. And then patience, with the slow pace of his own recovery from selfishness.

[10:59]

After patience, enthusiasm, getting back on the horse of his physical prowess and intelligence for the benefit of others. And then the gift of a daily concentrated meditation practice, which we call Zazen. For the very good reason that we too sit quietly each and every day. And finally, he discovered right there at the end of the training program, the very thing that he had discovered at the beginning. He found wisdom. Wisdom that is born of compassion. For the compassion to train himself away from hatred and greed and ignorance by means of this six-fold pathway of liberation. a wisdom that brings an end to needless suffering, and perhaps most importantly, the wisdom that turned away from liberation for himself alone and toward the world from which he came. In turning toward the suffering of others, he quickly realized that they were not in any way separate from himself.

[12:07]

Their suffering was his too. It was in him. And there would be no final liberation until everyone was free. What was true for him is true for us as well. We teach only two things. We teach suffering and the end of suffering. I'm pretty sure that most of us have little trouble finding bits and pieces of suffering throughout the day. What's more difficult is finding the ending of suffering. And yet the Buddha did find it and he did direct us to look to look for it right in the very place where suffering appears. That place, the Buddha said, is in your mind. A mind that is not even the tiniest bit separate from the world that has given you life. The word Buddha means awake, awake to what is appearing before our very eyes.

[13:08]

And if not before our eyes, then into our ears, on our skin. on our tongues and into our noses, all by virtue of our mind, our awakened consciousness, by virtue of our being alive. When the mind is confused, it thinks it knows what is happening and tells us just what we should do. In some cases, it tells us to get closer to what has happened. In other cases, to get away fast. Greed, I want it. Hate, I don't want it. And delusion, I don't know yet if I want it or not. So these three powerful urges the Buddha called toxins or poisons, the three poisons which are found at the very center of a 12-fold wheel of suffering, also called the wheel of birth and death. When the poisons are activated, they drive the wheel around and around and around.

[14:12]

I want it. I don't want it. I'm not sure. So I'm going to try it again. I want it, I don't want it, and I'm not sure. Although we didn't consciously ask to be born on a wheel of suffering, since we do find ourselves there, it's a good place, a good idea to see how it works and to see, as the Buddha saw, where its weaknesses lie. So this is the first step toward ending suffering, watching our minds, as they spin from this to that, from loving to hating, from inside to outside, past to present, present to future, from confusion to silence. By studying closely the workings of his own mind, the Buddha saw that the 12-fold chain that was determining the actions of his daily life was weak in two places.

[15:12]

The first was ignorance, and the second, desire. So ignorance, which is at the very beginning of the wheel, is the primary characteristic of human beings prior to awakening. What we are ignoring is the most basic of all true things, that we are not separate from one another or from the world, and yet that is not how it seems. There is an illusion. Right now and through all of our waking hours of being separate. There's a me over here. And there's you. You know, lots of you over there. That feeling of separation from one another is the most pervasive form of human suffering. Because of the suffering of separation starting at our birth, I am compelled to make contact with you. And when I do, when I have contact, there is most certainly going to be feelings.

[16:17]

Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, and some are neutral. Once we've identified our feelings, then things move very quickly. So I made up a story about how all of this works. A story, as with all stories, begins with a me that is separate from you. When the me makes contact with you, and that contact is pleasant, you become an object of my desire. If my desire for you intensifies, I may want continuous contact with you. And so I ask you to marry me. And you say, no. Now my feelings are unpleasant, and I want to get rid of you. You are no longer desirable to me. In fact, I hate you. and I wish to rid myself of you completely. Or, I am totally confused.

[17:19]

I can't stop thinking about you, and I spend the rest of my days in an attic wearing a yellowing wedding dress beside a petrified cake, hoping that you will return my call. Some of you may recognize this as the story of Miss Havisham, the tragic character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectation, based on a true character. a woman who spent her life in the attic after the groom failed to arrive for the wedding. Ending this cycle of suffering, the second of the two things the Buddha taught is, as we know, not as easy as any of us would like. And like all truly good things, it takes a lot of work, the kind of work we have not likely been trained to do, the work of doing nothing at all, at least every now and then. The work of sitting still and letting the mind do its thing while we learn how not to be bothered by it, how not to take orders from the realms of our fantasies.

[18:23]

I can remember years ago sitting Zazen for a short time with a class of seventh graders right here in this room. After about 10 or 15 minutes during most time, a lot of them were just wiggling and some giggling. I asked them how it was. How was that for you? And one boy, who had been quite still almost the entire time, raised his hand and he said, no one has ever asked me not to do anything before. And it was really nice. And I remember thinking, I hope he comes back. Maybe he has. Maybe he's here right now. So this kind of work that we do here at Green Gulch and the city center, Tassajara, as a daily activity, is called sitting still, accomplishing nothing. And the other of our daily activity is called working hard, accomplishing nothing. And these two together are complete expressions of Zen practice.

[19:27]

On one side, doing. And on the other side, not doing. And on both sides, accomplishing nothing. Realizing nothing. Except the complete freedom from being driven. by that burning desire to accomplish something, to get something or someone out of all of this for ourselves. Learning to appreciate doing nothing and getting nothing is for some an acquired taste. Not too many of us started our adult life having learned seated meditation or silent work, nor were we taught how to turn the light of our attention onto ourselves, onto our thoughts and the actions that are arising from those thoughts. This model of training that we practice here at Green Gulch is taken as closely as we can from the example of the Buddha himself. At the end of his quest for the end of suffering, he sat quietly and still for seven days, as the light of his awareness naturally turned onto the workings of his own mind.

[20:34]

What he saw and understood at the end of those seven days became the foundation of what he taught to others. the 12 links on the wheel of birth and death, being driven by ignorance, hatred, and desire, suffering and its cause. And he saw the end of suffering when the drivers at the center of the wheel were themselves silent and still. And although there are many methods for quieting the forces of greed, hatred, and confusion, in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition, there is just one instruction. we need to recall just sitting what are we doing just sitting just sitting is an invitation from ours and ancestors to withdraw from focusing on a particular sensory or mental object such as the example i gave of a me obsessively focusing my attention on you

[21:39]

Just sitting, also known in Soto Zen as silent illumination, is a form of meditation in which we allow our awareness to simply rest on what is already so, already spacious and whole, like the star-filled sky, lots of stars and one whole sky. Silent illumination allows us to release our grip on the illusion of separation that is estranging us. from our actual experience, and from the natural fact of our belonging. I know for myself that when I feel I don't belong, when my mind is agitated, as it often is, especially when reading the news, I can't really rely on my responses to be compassionate, generous, or even coherent. Or if I am in a disagreement with another community member or with my dear partner, I need to calm down. and to breathe and relax before I let careless speech cause damage in the very place I least wish to cause harm, you know, my own home.

[22:49]

I think for many of us, after all these years practicing together in the Zen-centered community, Suzuki Roshi's lineage is our own home. A lineage, as he would say, in which no one and no thing is left out. In the Zen tradition, we practice calming down through this seemingly simple act of sitting quietly together here in a room. And yet this pathway and these practices are entirely personal, even as we undertake to do them together. I walk alone. I sit alone. I stand alone. With others. I was recently remembering being here as a young student and wondering about so a great many things, including what am I doing here? Questions like that one, you know, what and how, who and when are at the heart of our practice. Making our best effort to answer those questions as well as finding the new ones is what we talk about throughout our life of practice, questions and answers.

[24:00]

The most important question for our purposes, as practitioners of the Buddhist teaching is how, how to sit and to walk, how to speak carefully, to think clearly and to feel wholeheartedly in such a way that healing is possible, not only for ourselves, but for each other and by and by for the entire world. In Soto Zen, we often look to the Buddha ancestors like Dogen Zenji for help with questions like how. I think many of you are familiar by now with his declaration in the Genjo Koan that to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And again, how? The word study in Japanese, Dogen's language, is narao, which means to become intimate with. become intimate with, like the household chores that are done mindfully.

[25:03]

You know, when we make cookies or clean or garden, repair a fence or sit quietly. Studying the self is not studying some idea of yourself as an object. It's to become intimate with yourself through all of your actions throughout the day. The more we become intimate with ourselves, the more we become intimate with the most fundamental of our affliction. the affliction of ignorance, by which we split the world into a billion pieces, me and everything else. I study myself is actually a pretty funny idea, like trying to see your own eyeball. And yet it's funny ideas that have gotten us into such terrible trouble to begin with. And so Dogen gives us even funnier ideas to help heal the split. When we study ourself, we will come to forget ourself, he says, just as the Buddha did, and as he did, and as some of you may already have done.

[26:06]

By forgetting ourselves, we are brought vividly to life by many, many things, like the smell of a dog, the river of stars, or the swarming of ants in my kitchen around the jar of honey. Dogen then says that once we are truly brought to life, what he calls actualized by the myriad things, our body and mind drops off, as do the bodies and minds of others. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. In this way, Dogen uses words and phrases to show us how to become more intimate with ourselves, with our minds, and with our notions that there is something more to it than just sitting. As we go deeper into the mechanism of thinking and believing what we think, we begin to see how we are creating this suffering world from our dreams. Awakening is awakening from our dreams.

[27:09]

So here is one of my favorite Dogen poems about that very thing. This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful. What dream walkers we humans have become. Awaken. I hear the one true thing, black rain on the roof of Fukakusa Temple. This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful. What dream walkers we humans have become. Awakened, I hear the one true thing, black rain on the roof of Fukakusa Temple. So to end this morning, I want to read two short teachings by a monk named Hongzhu Zhengwei. who was a great inspiration to our founding ancestor, Dogen Zenji. Dogen said of Hongzhi that he is the only person his own teacher, Ru Jing, ever called an ancient Buddha. And it's Hongzhi who named our form of Zen meditation, silent illumination.

[28:13]

The same form that Dogen refers to as Shikantaza, or just sitting. For all of our Soto Zen ancestors, just sitting is as a radical renunciation of worldly activities which grasp after tangible results. Hongzhi encourages the practice of non-grasping when he says, Stay with that just as that. Stay with this just as this. There is no place else to look. People who sincerely meditate and authentically arrive trust that nothing is external to this luminous present mind. So here's a final teaching by Hong Zhur from a collection of his work by our dear Dharma friend, Taigen Leighton, a book called Cultivating the Empty Field. This teaching is dropping off your skin and accepting your function. In daytime the sun, at night the moon, each in turn does not blind the other.

[29:19]

This is how a patch-rope monk steadily practices, naturally without edges or seams. To gain such steadiness, you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin and the sense dust will be purified, the eye readily discerning the brightness. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied. In the entire place, you are not restricted. The whole time, you still mutually respond. Right in light, there is darkness. Right in darkness, there is light. A solitary boat carries the moon. At night, it lodges amid reed flowers. gently swaying in total brilliance.

[30:26]

How about that? Thank you all 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[30:55]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.22