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. Welcome, all of you who are coming in on what we call our online Zendo or the Great Assembly. Welcome to you. What we are today... comes from our thoughts of yesterday. Our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. This is a very old verse, one of the earliest teachings of the Buddha, and a really good summary of how he instructed his monks and how he instructed us in our search for our liberation.

[01:00]

He told us to look at our thoughts. Or as we say in Zen, to turn the light around. And in order for us to recognize how those thoughts are connected to thoughts we've had before. And how the thoughts we're having now are going to create our life to come. So this chain reaction is what he called karma or volition. Karma, most simply put, is the way things work, how things work. And the way things work is the basis of the Buddha's ethical teaching. Unkind thoughts lead to unkind actions. Kind thoughts lead to kind actions. And within this pattern of how things work, we all have choices to make. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. And our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow.

[02:03]

Our life is a creation of our mind. So there's a thought that I have been having quite a lot lately. And it's a very painful thought. And it connects back to one of my very earliest childhood memories. The thought is that there is something wrong. Something is terribly wrong. The first time I noticed that thought, which is always accompanied by very strong emotions, I was probably eight or nine years of age. And I had gone into my older brother's room where I knew he was hiding something that I wasn't supposed to see. So I looked around and finally I found what I imagined it was that he was hiding. It was a stack of Playboy magazines. So I don't remember the foldouts being particularly impactful at the time.

[03:07]

Mostly they seemed rather strange. But what was impactful there at the pile of his magazines was another magazine, a life magazine. It was a large format edition in black and white, and it was filled with photographs from the Second World War. A war that had ended a few years before I was born, or so I thought. So I don't need to tell you what those pictures, what those images were. I think all of you have seen them. And you've probably seen images from the many wars that have happened since then. Almost one continuous war, including the one going on right now. But what I do want to tell you is how that thought and how those emotions from my childhood seem to have determined the course of my life. course that was set by the conviction that there is something terribly wrong.

[04:09]

And that conviction was accompanied by a wish to do something, anything about it. A wish that I know all of us share. So I am, it's now 65 years later, and when I reflect back on the underlying motivation, I It brought me into this room and into this practice of what we call the Buddha way. The way of awakening to how our thoughts, when taken all together, result in a world in which something is terribly wrong. I found it really encouraging years ago when I first came to hear the Buddha's teaching, how the Buddha had found in this world, this very same world, a rather profound, And lasting peace. Right there in the center of it all. And then he taught what he had found to others. So that's what I want to share with you today.

[05:14]

Finding peace within a world where something is terribly wrong. And then sharing the way of peace with others. The Buddha's search for peace also began at a very young age. When the news of the world. had broken through the imaginary safety that he felt inside of his family home. In his case, a palace. His story continues as he runs away from the palace in search of relief from his suffering. An overwhelming suffering that came from the thought that aging, sickness, and death, what I like to call the facts of life, would someday overwhelm him. The young prince later reported that his first encounter with the facts of life had taken place when he was a little boy, when he and his family had arrived at an agricultural festival, a spring planting festival, where the people of his village were joyfully clapping and singing as the oxen began plowing the field.

[06:21]

What he saw next, however, was only horror. He saw the animals being whipped, the field mice being driven from their nests to be quickly eaten by the hungry birds that were circling overhead. And so he slipped away from his family to sit in a quiet spot under a rose apple tree, where, as he later said, I found myself suddenly free from distress and from the thoughts of unwholesome things, with a happiness and pleasure born from seclusion and meditation. So following up on that memory from his childhood, the prince, who is now a grown man, said to himself, might this be the way to enlightenment? And then he answered himself, declaring, this is the way to enlightenment. So with the rose apple meditation in mind, he again sat under a tree with a great resolve to find that sweet taste of liberation that he had once known as a child.

[07:32]

And I think that's what we're all looking for as well, I would imagine, that sweet taste of liberation. As the Buddha later said to his disciples, O monks, just as the ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, my teaching has one taste, the taste of liberation. I can remember when I heard this teaching some time ago, finding it encouraging and kind of a relieving and spacious way. When I first came to Zen Center and learned about the practice and study of Zen, I had a thought that there was some particular understanding that I could come to understand and a particular practice that I could do and a particular result that would make everything perfectly clear. And by everything, I mean my entire life, who I am, where I am, and what I'm supposed to do. kind of tidied up and clarified version of myself.

[08:38]

But what I encountered instead, shortly after arriving at the gateway of the Great Assembly, was a bewildering assortment of teachers and teachings, traditions, schools, practices, statuary, and clothing options. And so I was very grateful, and as I said, relieved, to hear this simple statement by the world-honored one. My teaching has one taste. The taste of liberation. So what is that? What is that taste of liberation? How will we recognize it? How will we know it? Where do we look? And maybe more importantly, how will we restrain ourselves from trying to take a hold of it? To get another taste. And yet another taste. Like golem with the ring. My impression. my precious insight, my precious liberation. You know, it's not so obvious for us as the acquisitive creatures we are that one of the first lessons we are taught in Zen for that reason, our acquisitiveness, is that grabbing a hold of things is a sure way to lose whatever morsel of liberation or understanding may come to us in the first place or might even arrive later, later today.

[10:04]

as it did for Ananda, the Buddha's cousin, who became enlightened as he leapt into bed. Grabbing a hold of liberation is like grabbing a hold of an elephant's tail, or of a marvel that is a butterfly. You know, poor things and poor us. So self and objects have to learn, have to be taught, have to practice how to work together to make a better outcome. for the team, and for the safety of all living things. Our best hope, the Buddha said, is to keep our hands, our minds, and our hearts wide open like a monk's begging bowl, and then to wait patiently to see what amazing things may come to reside in that openness. And yet, being that our minds and our hearts are open, whatever comes is also free to go. And go at will.

[11:05]

As will we all. As it says in the ending verses of the Heart Sutra. Gone. Gone. Completely gone. Completely gone beyond. Bodhi. Awakening. Svaha. Hallelujah. The taste of liberation is very hard. And that's because it's our imagination that's the very thing not allowing us to see clearly. And even so, here we are, right now, drawn toward the inconceivable source of our life. And of our death. And of everything that seems to be happening in between. Drawn like the James Webb telescope to the limitless space. by an abiding wish to find out what happened before the birth of the stars, or drawn like the bodhicitta, the wish for awakening, the wish to become an awakened being, limitless, like space.

[12:17]

So how do we get there from here? The Buddhas and the ancestors have given us a great many maps, star maps and other kinds of maps written in a great many languages. Pali and Sanskrit and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish, French, Russian, English. So how do we discern the taste of liberation? And most importantly, how do we realize that we are already there? In the following passage from a fascicle of the Shobo Genzo entitled Shinjin Gakudo, Body and Mind Study of the Way, Our Japanese founder, Dogen Zenji, offers us a technique for tasting liberation called binding the self with no rope. Binding the self with no rope. The very opposite of our usual experience of ourself as being all tied up with a rope. The rope of our own delusions, of our own thinking, which ironically includes the very struggle we're making to set ourselves free.

[13:27]

I often think of those woven delusions Finger puzzles we played with as kids. Maybe some of you have no one. I mean, the harder you pull, the tighter they squeeze. So here's Dogen's effort to help us to break free. Mind is walls, tiles, and pebbles put together before the Tang Dynasty and taken apart after the Tang Dynasty, splattered with mud and soaking wet. Binding the self with no rope, the mind has the power to attract a pearl and the ability to be a pearl in water. Some days the pearl is melted. Sometimes it is crushed. There are times when this pearl is reduced to extremely fine powder. In this manner, the mind studies the way running barefoot. Who can get a glimpse of it? The mind... studies the way turning somersaults.

[14:29]

All things tumble over with it. At this time, a wall crumbling away allows you to study the ten directions, and the gateless gate allows you to study the four quarters. I think what Dogen is saying here is that in order to recognize who we truly are, that we need to calm our minds, to relax our pull, and to draw back. From our amazement at creation. And then like the Buddha under the rose apple tree. To invite a closer look at that luminous pearl of our own imagination. The very mind itself. The mind is the mistress of our dreams. And then we need to study the patterns of the mind. As they float and melt and are reduced to fine powder. Until we begin to see at last. how those tricks of the mind are being made, how the self is already free.

[15:31]

There is no rope. The first pattern of appearances that the Buddha taught us to see is called impermanence. Arise, abide, and cease. Arise, abide, and cease. So as students of awakening, impermanence is the taste of liberation. Liberation from a permanent sense of self and from a permanent idea about things. Arise, abide, and cease. Like clouds in an empty sky or like the gentle waves on the fathomless sea. For the human mind, relaxed and at peace, that's how reality seems. Gentle waves on the fathomless sea. Soothing. And for some of us, soothing might just be good enough. And all that we ever want or need.

[16:32]

Which might work just fine until we try to get a hold of it. To make it stay. And then once again, we are faced with the elephant and butterfly problem. Which is why the first and foremost training on the pathway to liberation is the practice of giving. Dana Parmita. Giving up. Giving up trying to get something for yourself out of this practice. In the Zen school, the most highly valued method for giving up is the one that we practiced almost every day. We stare at a wall for quite a long time until at last the wall crumbles away. And that is because the way things like walls, mountains, and people really are is liberated. most especially from us and from what we think of them. So our only job, providing we are willing to participate in reality itself, is to taste liberation passing in and passing away.

[17:41]

And then to taste it again. And again. And again. No two tastes are alike. No two tastes. There is simply no way to compare them. Just this taste. This one taste. The taste of liberation. Inhaling or exhaling. Standing or sitting. Awake or asleep. There is no life outside of this. The reoccurring patterns of our dream. Like waves on the fathomless sea. So taste is just one example of how we humans, through the power of our imagination, come to create magical worlds, like Greenville Charm. We make them out of the simplest of things, out of a taste, a sound, a thought, an odor, a feeling, a color.

[18:45]

And while those simplest of things are merely arising and passing away. We need to pay careful attention to simple things in our daily life. Pay attention to how they are rising and passing away. This is the gateway to liberation. So I've come to appreciate this word taste in a number of ways, not only for the obvious meanings like good taste or bitter taste or tasty, but for the way those meanings can help frame an approach to practice, a practical approach. that we can use every day. For example, in preparing and eating our meals. I think the first meaning of the word taste, and perhaps the most obvious one, is the sensation we have in our mouths as we eat. Eating food is a necessary and familiar connection that we all share. As living beings, in fact...

[19:47]

we humans must eat other living beings in order to sustain our own lives, something for which we are called on in the teachings to both feel very sorry about as well as deeply grateful for. And so we recite before eating. We venerate the three treasures and give thanks for this food, the work of many people, and the suffering of other forms of life. That sensation goes way back to the very first moments of our life, when we were newborns. We were separated from our mothers, first by a gulp of air, and then by the taste of warm milk. So it's right there in the moment of birth that each of our stories begins, the story of our separation, which according to the Buddha is at the very heart of our suffering, as well as at our effort to heal. Parents feel that suffering as their child starts to leave.

[20:50]

The child feels that suffering as they undertake the prolonged and fateful task of finding a place for themselves and what they've been told is the real world. So for those of us who have found our way to the Zen Center, which may or may not be part of the real world, it's hard to tell. The Buddha's teaching is calling us back from the suffering of separation by means of an awkward truth, that separation itself is an illusion, a story, a mere trick of the human mind. And yet, as we all know, stories have great power over the course of our lives. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. Our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. is a creation of our mind. And yet we can, and we do, tell stories.

[21:51]

We tell lots of stories around here. We tell stories about planting seeds, growing food, and how those nutrients arrive into the cells of our living bodies. We can and do imagine that it will soon be time for us to eat again here at Green Gulch Farm, along with the great effort that's being made. to bring us fresh and nourishing food. We can imagine the preparation that began days and even weeks ago with menu planning, cutting sheets, and the complex ordering of all of the ingredients from the markets and from the farm, how those orders are delivered and dated and carefully stored away. We can imagine the effort by the Tenzo, the Fukutan, the crew to wash, chop, Peel, dice, measure, and eventually combine all of it together. As Dogen says, taking care of those ingredients as if they were their own eyes.

[22:53]

And we can imagine sitting here quietly in the Zendo while the kitchen workers are creating breakfast and lunch and dinner over and over and over again for over 50 years now at the San Francisco Zen Center. as if it will never end, staying one step ahead of our still hungry mouths. And although we will never find out how food is really made or where those kitchen crews have gone, making food is the practice offering of the kitchen. Receiving food is the practice offering of us all, giver, receiver, and gift. empty of any and all inherent existence. Arise, abide, and seek. Gone, gone. Completely gone. Bodhisattva. While there is no choice but to go on telling our stories, no choice but to go on cooking and taking this fragile and conventional world seriously, we mustn't forget to run barefoot, to somersault,

[24:10]

And to leap. Because in the words of Zen Master Dogen, all of this is merely a moment or two of mind. A moment or two of mind is a moment or two of mountains, rivers, and earth. Or two moments of mountains, rivers, and earth. Because mountains, rivers, earth, and so forth, neither exist nor do not exist. They are not large or small. not attainable or unattainable, not knowable or unknowable, not penetrable or impenetrable, they neither change with realization nor change without realization. Just wholeheartedly accept and trust that to study the way with mind is this mountains, rivers, and earth mind itself thoroughly engaged in studying the way. Just wholeheartedly accept and trust that to study the way with mind is this mountains, rivers, and earth mind itself thoroughly engaged in studying the way.

[25:24]

With the mountains, rivers, and earth mind studying the way, it is hard to imagine any room for error. And yet it is pretty easy for mountains, rivers, and earth mind to study the way. to take the mountains, rivers, and earth for granted. And therefore it's no surprise how easy it is to take such things as food for granted, to become lost in the immediacy of the flavors and the odors, the colors and the quantities, and to become lost in the not-so-subtle glow of our own personal preferences. And that's another meaning we give to the word taste. whether or not something suits my taste, whether I like it or not. In the instructions for the Tenzo, Dogen offers this teaching about preferences. In the art of cooking, the essential consideration is to have a deeply sincere and respectful mind, regardless of the fineness or the coarseness of the materials.

[26:27]

A refined cream soup is not necessarily better than a broth of wild grasses. When you gather and prepare wild grasses, make it equal to a fine cream soup with your true mind, your sincere mind, your pure mind. This is because when you serve the assembly of your family and of your friends, the undefiled ocean of Buddha Dharma, you do not notice the taste of fine cream or the taste of wild grasses. The great ocean has only one taste. How much more so when you bring forth the buds of the way. and nourish the sacred body. And then even before we have a chance to evaluate the meal, there's an even longer version of the meal chant, which for many of us at times simply becomes routine. We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life. For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food. Really?

[27:30]

Is that true? Is it for the sake of enlightenment that I am eating and impatiently waiting for seconds? We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering. Every time I chant that verse, I really wonder. I wonder as I'm gazing at my bowl of food, and yet so far I have not passed up on the opportunity to eat it. So I don't know if I'm worthy or not. But today, at least, I want to invite all of us to consider the possibility that such things as making nutritious food, caring for guests, repairing tools, washing dishes and making beds, nourishes the invisible and sacred body of this great Dharma assembly for the benefit of the world and for all living beings. And that tending to our work in this world through acts of generosity and kindness is itself the Buddha's great vow, is the thought of enlightenment creating our life of tomorrow right now.

[28:42]

An offering we can make here today to all of those on both inside and outside of these Zendo walls, even as we watch them crumble. The mind studies the way, turning somersaults, all things tumble over with it. A wall crumbling away allows you to study the ten directions. By fully engaging our hearts and minds in an ever-widening circle of mutual respect and appreciation, we can easily reflect with kindness on the kitchen workers, the street cleaners, the garbage collectors, the tree trimmers, the parents and the teachers who have given us our life. And in doing so, we can bring all of our senses to the one taste of this precious life. Seeing and smelling, touching and listening, reflecting, 100% coming in and 100% going out.

[29:45]

Spiritri. And although it's possible to simply eat from our hand to our mouth, in the practice of the Buddha way, the whole body of the self and the whole body of the universe, are nourished together by each and every bite. Again, from Body and Mind's Study of the Way. Just now, the thought of enlightenment is aroused. The entire universe arouses the thought of enlightenment. Although the thought of enlightenment seems to create conditions, it actually does not encounter conditions. The thought of enlightenment and conditions together hold out a single hand. A single hand held out freely. A single hand held out in the midst of all being. Thus, the thought of enlightenment is aroused, even in the realm of health, of hungry ghosts, of animals, and of malevolent spirits. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how we do with whatever it is that's coming up next, if we don't forget.

[30:53]

We don't forget to pay attention and to help. each other in every way we can. And then the one taste will be received from the single hand, as all of us together fully realize the practice of the Buddha world. Through one word, or seven words, or three times five, even if you thoroughly investigate myriad forms, nothing can be dependent upon. Night advances, The moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel that you have been searching for is everywhere. 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

[31:55]

and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Domo.

[31:59]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.42