This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Morning. The sound okay? This new device? The frogs just don't know when to quit. So thank you everybody for coming, for being here this morning. Everybody here in the hall at Green Gulch and everybody online. My friends online, nice to have you here as always.

[01:02]

So last Sunday, our dear friend Wendy Johnson sat in the seat and gave an epic talk, as always. She remembered and reminded us of really the feeling, the flavor of the practice of her great departed teacher, one of her teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh. or the role of our practice of being peace in the world, of being and making peace in times of war and precariousness and great suffering, which of course is this time and maybe all times. She reminded us that fundamentally our practice is not to turn away. Thich Nhat Hanh's practice, certainly sitting in the middle of great suffering, was to not turn away.

[02:11]

And that's what we do too. We try at least. That's what we practice. To use the stability, the spaciousness of Zazen, to help us not turn away, but to include all of the suffering in ourselves, all of the suffering in the world. And we find that as we include all of that pain and anguish and suffering, we also include the great mystery and the great joy of the baby Buddha right there in the midst of that. So grounding and guiding our practice of not turning away or of being peace is the Bodhisattva precept. The precepts are the ethical principles for compassionate life and really are the basis, kind of the starting point, as Reb has often taught.

[03:22]

This compassion that the precepts describe is the starting point of our Zen practice and is the goal of our Zen practice, the whole thing. So Wendy shared Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts with us, so simple and kind and profound. And I wanted today continuing or following her offering to share some of the teachings or maybe the flavor of precept practice as taught by San Francisco Zen Center founder, Suzuki Roshi. But like Thich Nhat Hanh, Suzuki Roshi was one of the great teachers of our time. Like him, he entered monastic life very young and was formed in war and founded a lasting community of authentic and warm-hearted practice.

[04:32]

So I took up the study of Suzuki Roshi's teachings on precepts. As such, you know, really looking at, well, what did Suzuki Roshi say about precepts? A few years ago, when I started to work with Mal Weitzman, my late teacher, on editing some of Suzuki Roshi's Dharma talks, one of our first thoughts was to collect, compile Suzuki Roshi's talks on precepts. And so we spent, even though where we ended up landing is broader than that, we did spend a lot of time with Suzuki Roshi's precept teachings. And when we first started, Mel said, and I wish I could do a good Mel. Anyway, he said in his inimitable way, you know, Suzuki Roshi had an unusual perspective on precepts.

[05:37]

It's not the ordinary perspective. And it's important that practitioners understand it. We really should understand this kind of unusual way that Suzuki Roshi talked about precepts. I feel now that I'm starting to understand what Mel meant and to get a little bit of that flavor. So I wanted to share my current understanding or practices of this with you. Of the things Suzuki Roshi said about precepts, and it's really a lot, this one, which some of us have been reading lately, I'm finding really very beautiful and succinct and speaks right to my heart of practice. So Suzuki Roshi said in 1970, when you do something just through your skill, or just by your thought, you will not be supported by people, and so it will not help others.

[06:42]

Only when you do it with Zazen mind can you help others, and you will be naturally supported by people. So, if the precepts are just some moral code which you have in your mind, those precepts will not work at all. So to understand this statement of Suzuki Roshi, only when you do it with Zaza in mind can you help others, and you will be naturally supported by people. To understand that it may be helpful, and to say a little bit about the background teaching in this statement, the background teaching of Buddha nature, this understanding or teaching our faith in our own innate wisdom and compassion. So a basic teaching for us in Mahayana is that what we basically are, what we are, what you are, is awake and in harmony with everything.

[08:04]

So based on that, at the core, at the base of each of us, is innate compassion and wisdom. That's one of the things that we say that the Buddha said on awakening. The Buddha said, all beings are Buddha. All beings are Buddha. Only because of their confusion, they've lost touch with that. So the Buddha in this... awakening filled with wisdom and compassion and sees, well, this is that thing that everybody has. This is that thing that everybody has. I wish they knew. I wish they could touch it and live from that. So the direction of our practice in Mahayana Buddhism and especially in Zen is never towards becoming something we're not, becoming some Buddha that we're not, but it's always about revealing, connecting with the awakened, loving nature that is already here.

[09:16]

Images of that include the jewel, you know, the jewel buried in your yard, the gold sewn into your coat, you know, it's right there. It may be hard to trust or hard to, you know, are you sure? Or maybe you don't really know me or I know I am. Whatever comes up for you. You know, we enter this practice as a way to reconnect the practices, the teachings, give us a way to touch that nature, to sense it, to grow our faith in it so that we can trust that that's here.

[10:22]

that that is what we are, even when it feels remote. So for the precept element, the ethical or the moral dimension of our practice, we have this feeling or the understanding that compassion or harmony with all beings isn't something that we need to generate. Become compassionate. You, uncompassionate person, become compassionate. It's not so much our teaching. Recover the compassion. Open to the compassion that you are. So our Zen activity, our Zen precept life, isn't based on rules to get us to be some way, but on this kind of ongoing, maintaining, refreshing, this alive connection with our with our own heart. So instead of a lot of thou shalt not, we have an appropriate response, an appropriate response, which in Yunman's phrase, an appropriate response, is that activity which unfolds naturally in harmony with our environment on the basis of that compassion.

[11:48]

on the basis of that innate awake nature. So when we relax our various views and habits and, you know, slip the net of our delusion and grasping, allow ourselves to come into harmony with the situation and into harmony with ourselves, then an appropriate response emerges. And that appropriate response lines up with precepts. Because it's coming from the same source that the precepts come from. So the precepts aren't about controlling our behavior. They're like a description of the kinds of action that come from our own connection with our compassionate heart. So to study the precepts isn't to better manage the surface of our behavior so much as it is to encourage us, show us the stakes, really, in connecting with this basic nature.

[13:04]

So Suzuki Roshi says, when you do something just through your skill or just by your thought, you will not be supported by people who and so it will not help others. Only when you do it with Zazen mind can you help others, and you will be naturally supported by people. When you do something just through your skill or just by your thought, you will not be supported by people, and so it will not help others. I find this really wonderful. So I want to use my skill and my ideas to do something, but my skill or my ideas aren't really connected to others. So this kind of posture doesn't allow others in, and so it doesn't really help others in the dharmic sense.

[14:10]

You could say maybe it's better than nothing, but I think we find a lot of times it's actually not. Nothing would have been better. than my skill and my thought being the basis of the action. Certainly it won't be bodhisattva activity because bodhisattva activity comes only from connection. So for example, I can give a Dharma talk. I can do the Jiryu show and give you all a Dharma talk using my education and my privilege and some preacher genes. I can do something with my skill. Give a Dharma talk. But if I'm not letting myself be supported by you, using my skill and my thought and not letting myself be supported by you, then I'm not really still connected to you. And then Dharma talk won't really help. It's just me doing something or me doing something to you. Maybe you have that feeling now, in fact.

[15:11]

Or maybe you've had that feeling before. I think this Dharma talk is being done to me. So I'm sorry if it's so. That would be using my skill and my thought and missing that I'm supported by people and allowing that I'm supported by people to be the way that I help. Or if I use my excellent soup-making skills and my honed soup-making thoughts, to make a soup in the kitchen, it's quite likely that I won't be bringing everybody along. I'm already separate from everybody in the kitchen and from the ingredients and the pots and the pans because I'm being driven by my skill and my thought. It's something I'm bringing, not something that's arising from the connection in the present. So we do make soups like that now and then.

[16:13]

But that's not our practice. And I'd like to think that we could taste the difference. I don't know if that's true. I taste the Dharma. I taste that this soup was made with everybody together, all beings. So if I'm going forward by myself and not letting myself be supported, then I'm not really helping because I'm not really helped. So Suzuki Roshi, as you know, Zen practice is, in a word, to share the feeling we have with everything and everyone around us and to share in the feeling, to share in the feeling of the frogs and the walls and the barn and each other. So first we harmonize.

[17:16]

connect with our own breath and body and heart, open our senses, become fully embodied. And then in our practice of Shikantaza, we open that and open our eyes and include the light and the sound in each other. Suzuki Roshi was not afraid to say, We become one with our surroundings. We join with, we harmonize with our surroundings. And then we're supported. We're sharing the feeling and we're sharing in the feeling. And so we're supported and supporting. And then some action unfolds from there. Some action, something unfolds from that basis. That's precept practice. That's an appropriate response. So we can't cut off from ourselves and our surroundings, take refuge in our skill and our thought, and then expect that we could somehow help.

[18:30]

This, I think, if we think about rule-based morality, that seems to imply or indicate that we could cut ourselves off from ourselves and our surroundings, and as long as we follow these 16 or 250 or 500 rules, we'll be helping. And I think this is why Suzuki Roshi rejects that kind of rules-based morality so strongly. It won't be bodhisattva activity if it's following rules. It's bodhisattva activity if it's emerging from connection. So only when you do it with Zaza in mind can you help others. And you will be naturally supported by people. And frogs too. We knew. So remembering Zazen mind. Practicing the precepts as again and again remembering Zazen mind.

[19:40]

Trusting some action that unfolds from Zazen mind. And then checking it out. You know, if the action... turns out, as it often does, to not be so beneficial, and we get some input about that, like, that was not beneficial, says the world, then that doesn't mean, oh, see, I need to follow the rule better. We don't hold on tighter or try to run our action through the mill, you know, of the rules. We just notice that we've caused harm, and we let the feeling of that harm and the... study of that harm, the awareness of that harm, to support us to go more deeply into Zazen mind. What was missing is not that I wasn't holding to the rule tight enough. What was missing is Zazen mind. So the more we fail at precepts practice, the more we can deepen the roots, really. Every time we fail, I need to practice Zazen better, more sincerely, more thoroughly connect before I act, before I speak, before I think.

[20:45]

So Suzuki Roshi uses an example, the example of the makugyo. And to say that if we, well, just read what he says. For instance, while chanting, when you strike the makugyo or wooden drum, if you try to control the chanting, you think, this is too fast, so I must make the chanting slower. Or this is too slow, I must make it a little bit faster. and you try to do it by way of your hand or your thinking, it doesn't work. I'm going to use this mallet to make everyone go faster, or I'm going to use my thought to make everyone go slower. It doesn't work. The students will not follow your rhythm. Only when you do it with your Zazen power can you control it. He talks about the belly.

[21:56]

You can do it with your belly, the sazan power of your belly. That brings everybody along. You're controlling the chant. You're leading the rhythm by being supported, not by separating. It's not coming from your skill. but coming from the connection. It's supporting by being supported. And it's again and again, recovering that connection again and again. It says, so only when you do it with Zaz in mind can you help others, and you will be naturally supported by people.

[23:08]

So, if the precepts are just some moral code which you have in your mind, those precepts will not work at all. The precepts are... just some moral code which you have in your mind, those precepts will not work at all. I'm going to read a little more about what he says about this, elsewhere about this moral code. He says, if you think I have to observe the 10 precepts one by one, that is wrong practice. For a long time, many Buddhists tried to observe our precepts with great effort. but that kind of practice violates the precepts. Because observed in that way, precepts become dualistic, something outside ourselves. I have to observe. That is not the way we practice zazen. For Mahayana Buddhists, dualistic practice is a violation of precepts.

[24:13]

Why? because when we observe rigidly, we are caught by precepts. There are precepts, but precepts should be observed without any idea of observing. That is how to practice, how to observe the precepts. In short, when you observe precepts in the same way as you practice Azen, that is perfectly transmitted precepts from Buddha to us. So as Mahayana Buddhists, Whether or not we know each of the 16 precepts or the 250 precepts, we should still be able to observe precepts. So this is like a, there are rules that seem to describe the morality, but even if you didn't know any of the rules, you would still be following the rules. Because it's coming from Zazen. So in this view that I've been describing, and maybe you're relating to or feeling that difference between following precepts or rules as an external norm as opposed to a way of connecting with your own loving heart.

[25:46]

So in this view, the precepts The list of precepts, the 16 and the 48 and whatever else, are not a rigid moral code in any way. I have like a wire pressing against the back of my head. I can't shake it. So I think the precepts aren't... a moral code, and there's certainly not a moral code to have in your mind. Instead, they point to general areas of life in which we need to take extra care to make sure we're connected to Zazen and having Zazen mind, finding Zazen mind. So our precepts describe these areas of great possible harm, as Fu has often taught us. The zone of killing, the zone of lying and truth-telling, the zone of how we speak and think about each other, the zone of sexuality, the zone of grasping and possessing.

[27:03]

And the precepts say, these are very important. These are very important areas. If you find yourself in one of these zones, be very sure that you are contacting Zazen mind. These are like... Non-optional Zazen mind zones. The precepts describe the areas of our life where Zazen mind is non-optional. So I think, you know, Zazen, of course, is optional. Unless, you know, depending on your place in the expectations chart of, you know, residential agreements. But, you know, generally speaking, Zazen is optional. When you're washing dishes, Zazen mind is a total delight and is totally pretty easy when you're washing dishes. So by all means, have Zazen mind when you're washing dishes, but it's optional. And when you're walking in the garden and listening to the frogs and the birds, you could or could not have Zazen mind.

[28:08]

But when you're in the zone of killing, it's non-optional. I vow that I will... cultivate Zazen mind in the zone of killing, in the zone of lying and truth-telling. This is where the Zazen mind is high stakes, non-optional Zazen mind. So that's sort of the feeling I have when I take the precept. I vow not to kill is like I vow that whenever I'm in the zone of killing, I'm going to make an extra effort to contact Zazen mind. to connect with that, which is to connect with myself and my surroundings, to try to touch my deepest heart of innate compassion and wisdom. So some people say that precept practice, if you don't have rules, you're being lazy or something. If we're not doing precepts in this kind of rule-bound way,

[29:11]

then it's because we're not taking our morality seriously or we're not serious enough about ethics or precepts. I see it as kind of the opposite. We're so serious, so important to not harm that how could you leave the not harming to like a mental moral code? You need to call the deepest part, you know, the deepest caretaker. You need Buddha there with you to help with ethical action. especially when the stakes are high. So it's so important to practice the precepts that we can't just entrust them to our self-centeredness and our skill and our thought and our mind or some list. We have to entrust them to the deep caretaker, to Zazen mind. So we don't just, sometimes, you know, this kind of practice can sound like or is characterized as just like brush away the precepts and just blindly assume that Zazen, I'll be fine.

[30:23]

I'm practicing Zazen. Everything will be in accord with the Dharma and supporting beings. It's a little more diligent maybe than that. We do study our action. We do study the results of our actions. And the effort that we make is continually the effort to deepen the root, to get back in touch with ourselves and our surroundings. And then again, the harm we cause and the difficulties we have in our life aren't so much problems anymore as much as encouragement or calls for us to deepen in our practice. The Suzuki Roshi says in the same talk, when you think about how to cope with the problems you have in your everyday life, oh my God, think about how to cope with the problems you have in your everyday life. How will we cope with the problems we have in our everyday life? He says, you will realize then how important it is to practice Zazen.

[31:26]

So when I think about my problems, I just, you know, this is my emoji, you know, this is the emoji. I'm so glad they have that emoji. It's like, That is my emoji. And that's like me coping, me thinking, how am I going to cope with the problems? And so when you think about how to cope with the problems you have in your everyday life, you will realize how important it is to practice Zazen. If that, every time I see a problem in my life, I say, wow, it is pretty important to practice Zazen like now. This problem needs Zazen. That's what's needed. It says the power of practice will help you in a true sense. So when I can do this or appreciate this, then the problems are all just helping me. They're just reminding me to do zazen in the moment-by-moment sense. So I just wanted to say a little bit about what that zazen means.

[32:36]

what that zazen practice is to me, and how that relates to precepts. So this morning, as often when I give Dharma talks, I'm wearing the robe of my first teacher, Lee Taberos, who passed away about three years ago, around this time. And... One of his regular teachings was to include everything. And he really did include everything. He sort of was everything included. A wonderful, loving being. Include everything. And I think of Zazen this way. To just include everything. Each thing. Anything. So I include the tension in my body and the wire on my head.

[33:44]

And I include, you know, the feelings and the sensation, the emotion, the thought, include the sound, include the light, include the room, include the feeling of all of that. And then keep making more and more room. Keep including more and more. This is my effort, at least. So in terms of the precept, if I'm operating on a mental moral code and I have hatred, what am I supposed to do? Mental moral code says don't have hatred, but here I have hatred. So I've got to get rid of the hatred because the moral code, you know? In this practice of including, as it relates to precepts, the feeling is I don't need to deny or reject the hatred. I can include the hatred. The hatred is included. But then I don't stop. And this is the key. Don't just include the hatred and then don't include anymore.

[34:48]

Include the hatred. Welcome hatred. And then keep including. Welcome hatred and welcome frogs and welcome breath and body and welcome that longing. to love and to be in harmony with everyone. That will be there as part of the faith. If I keep opening, keep including, that will be there too. And then when all of that is side by side, when there's like my deep innate wish to like love and be in harmony with everyone. And then there's my like, I'm so mad. I hate you. You know, it's so clear. All of that together included. It's so clear where the action can come from. Like. that the Buddha nature, the Buddha vow, just outshines that hatred. Not because I managed to get rid of it, but just because I kept including. We keep including. That makes sense? Keep making room. I feel like that's what Suzuki Roshi is pointing to for our precept practice. Just keep making room.

[35:49]

Just get wider and wider. And then you'll see your vow is there, and that can act. So I want to close with a koan that I think speaks to this. It's about our old friend, Laman Pong, asking our other old friend, Matsu, who is the one who does not accompany all things? And Matsu says, after you swallow all the water of the West River in one gulp, I will tell you. Who is the one who does not accompany all things? After you swallow all the water of the West River in one gulp, I will tell you. So today at least for me, accompanying all things is like helping everything.

[37:00]

It's using my thought and skill. I'm separate. I'm not supported by everyone, but I will accompany them. You're welcome for accompanying you. How nice of me. So Lehman Pong, I feel, understands this affliction of accompanying things. He sees that if he's using his thought and his skill, he's not being supported by people, and so it will not help others. So wanting to go beyond that, he says, who is truly connected beyond connection even? And then we say, connection is two separate. Who is the one who truly is not separate? Who's not with anyone, but just is the harmony of everything? Who is that? And Matsu says, swallow all the water of this vast river in one gulp, and I will tell you. I really like that line. Heard it long ago.

[38:05]

So just include everything all at once. The whole inside and the whole outside all at once. So I talk about, and sometimes I practice like, okay, here's the breath. Now include the body. Now open your eyes. Include some light. Now include some sound. Now include those knots in your heart. Now include that vow. You know, there's like gradually, and there's also just all of a sudden, just within one gulp, follow all the waters. And then some action will unfold. And our faith and experience is that the action that unfolds is in accord with the precept. So Matsu says, swallow all the water of this vast river in one gulp and I will tell you.

[39:12]

And Lehman Pong in one version says, I already have. Or maybe I just did. I just included everything in one moment. And then Matsu says, then I have already told you. to thank everybody here at home and here with us in the zendo for your practice and your kind attention. May our practice of precept as zazen and zazen as precept be our authentic way to make peace and to be peace in this world of great suffering.

[40:23]

May our practice of Zazen forever deepen. The more difficulty we have in ourselves, in the world, may our Zazen mind include it. May our Zazen mind include more and more, deepen and widen to embrace and then respond to all of it. And may this truthful and loving practice of our founder and each one of us be of benefit, be of benefit to all suffering beings. Thank you for your kind connection and wonderful, loving support of me this morning. 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.

[41:33]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:45]

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