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. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple for the Wednesday Evening Dharma Talk. My name is Shundo. I want to say hello to everybody in the room in this special... room that we're in this year, and those of you in the big Zoom room, I was just thinking today that you're not stuck to inside, outside, or in between, but you are part of the Great Assembly, bless you. And thank you very much to Tim, the Tanto, for inviting me to Abbot David, Abbot Mako, Teacher Zachary, the teachers who have helped me down the years, who are not in the room, Paul and Galen, it's N.K. Blanche, and me again, Steve. And before I start, just to acknowledge that there has been a recent death in the community, and there is sadness, as those of you here last week will remember, and hoping that we can all hold ourselves and each other with kindness.

[01:16]

May all beings be happy and free from suffering. So we can start with a story. A story by Sekito Kisen, or involving Sekito Kisen, or Shitu, as he is in Chinese. When Wu-Zhi was with Shitu, he said, if you can say something useful, I will stay. If not, I'm leaving. Shitu started to sit down, and Wu-Zhi started to leave. Shitu called out to him. Wu-Zhi turned around. Shitu said, from birth to death, just this. Why do you keep searching? So these days I don't live in the building. I lived probably in this building for about 10 years, and I was a Tenzo and Yino and the director, and now I live just up the street, so I have to come a little further to give Dharma talks, but it was nice to walk down the road without an umbrella today, see the moon shining high above.

[02:19]

But I do appear to be somewhat of a historian of Zen Center these days. And the first time I came to an event in the Zendo here this year was the recent Jukai. And David made a comment about it being the first Jukai in the Zendo. And I thought, no, wait a minute, that's not right. And so I went back and looked at the old historical photographs we have. And in fact, there was a Jukai here in 1970, I believe, with Suzuki Roshi. And that also made me think of going back to look at the windbell. And for those of you who are too young to remember, Zen Center had a magazine for many years. From the very first year it was incorporated as a non-profit in 1962 until, I don't know when the last issue was printed, actually. But it lasted a very long time. And thanks to David Chadwick, who is a disciple of Suzuki Roshi, we have scans of all the windbells available on his website, cube.com. And there's two wind bells I've read, especially recently.

[03:25]

One was from 1967, which was a huge issue, chronicling the first months of Tassajara, like the first monastic practice periods of summer, how everything was. That first Zen training monastery outside of Asia was established. And the other one was just a couple of years later. sometime after Zen Center moved into this building in 1969. And it's very interesting, and so I encourage you to go back and look for this particular issue, because it's all about city practice. So, obviously, originally, you know, Suzuki Roshi was the chief priest at, totally blanking, at Sakoji, totally blanking on the name for a moment, up in Japantown. And so the Zen students who came to sit with him, you know, could only sit with him for an hour to a day, and, you know, attend lectures. But otherwise, Sukoji was for the Japanese community. And Suzuki Roshi had a great determination to found a training monastery, so after much searching, Tassahara was found and established, and thankfully is still running, still turning out wonderful monks.

[04:36]

And then a couple of years later, this place became available. And, you know, there was a question, like, are we trying to be Tassahara in the city? What are we trying to do here? And it seemed that almost by happenstance, you know, there was a recognition. There would be an influx of new people coming in, but that the place would be guided by those who had already practiced at Tassahara and had a little seniority. And that was one of the reasons for the Jukai ceremony, in fact, that Suzuki Roshi wanted some of the slightly more senior students, people who had been there for two or three years, to be available to guide those who were coming to the building. And so just thinking about, you know, the years, you know, those of you who know this building know that the dedication stone is from 1922, and Zen Center moved in in 1969, so that's more than half of its 102 years. I was also embarrassed to think that I've been associated with Zen Center for 24 years now, so that's almost half of that time.

[05:40]

But when you look in that edition of the Wind Bell, there are very familiar names. some who are still with us and some who have recently died, like Yvonne Rand and Sojin Mel Weitzman. And we still have the people who were living at Zen Center around. And the questions they had then, I think, are not very different from the questions we have now about residential practice, living in community. And what does it mean to do that? And then Suzuki Roshi, in his very particular way, you know, kind of said, well, maybe it's going to be more difficult to practice in this beautiful building. And he said, when I say it's difficult to practice in such a beautiful building with a completely furnished zendo, I mean, rigid formal practice in a complete zendo is not always good practice. The practice then may tend to be dead. And this is 1969 he's saying, let's just remember. To have a strong practice in comfortable surroundings is difficult.

[06:44]

But when you practice with various difficulties, that practice has a lot of strength in it. To help others who may be in the midst of difficulties in this sense is to help them have good practice. When we practice in the midst of the difficulties of our neighbors and our own difficulties, then we will have good practice. Our practice will be actual. So for those of you who are in the building this year and finding it somewhat difficult, Remember, this is an opportunity to practice in a different way, not practice in this kind of smooth, easy way with everything kind of running in the way that it has for so many years. And what did this practice look like? And I was reminded that, you know, along with being called Zen Center and 300 Page Street, this building is also called the Maha Bodhisattva Zendo in the beginning, and that name has dropped out for a long time. But Suzuki Roshi is very clear about what our practice is.

[07:48]

Our practice is to help people. And how to help people is to practice our way in each moment. That is how to live in this world and how to practice Zazen. And this is how we should extend our practice to everyday life. So what does this helping look like? So I've been sitting with a small student group for almost 10 years now since I was transitioning out of Zen Center. And when we meet, which is mostly every other week, but during a pandemic was every week because of the difficult circumstances at the time, we have a check-in. And it's wonderful to hear people's check-ins and to follow people's lives. So in a recent check-in, One of the students is a new father. He became a father just at the end of last year. And one of his wonderful observations was about the miracle of life.

[08:53]

He said, we don't know enough about it as a society because we're not close enough to each other. At the same time, he is a CEO of a company that, when we did the check-in, was looking to be on his last legs. He's been struggling for funding. And since then, the company has actually closed. And he's closing it down right now. There was another student whose grandmother had just died peacefully in hospice. One person had just moved into a new house and was sad at the transition from the old housing situation they had, but also excited for the new place. And one person had their partner moving in with them. Another was dealing with various options and possibilities around work and dating. And it was explicitly mentioned that as a group we hold each other and we appreciate the holding and this ability to be open and vulnerable and to listen to each other. And this is what a community can do, a small community or a bigger community.

[10:00]

And there was one thing that particularly struck me in this check-in where the new father said that his daughter who is was five weeks old at the time he says she knows when i'm paying attention to her and i thought this is the great tragedy of our time that we are not paying attention to each other so much of the time there are so many things preventing us from paying attention to each other and what happens when we don't pay attention to each other and if we don't support each other and don't help each other through the difficult times. So even in the group, we had the great matter of birth and death. And in this community, we had the great matter of birth and death, as Kim was pointing out in her talk last week. And this recent death is one of many that I have been around for at Zen Center over the years. But Zen Center is a wonderful community

[11:05]

full of people who know how to pay attention and are able to pay attention. This is something I noticed over years of meeting with many teachers as a student. The modeling this kind, non-judgmental attention which allowed me to flourish in ways I did not necessarily think were possible. And it's not just meeting formally with the teacher. There's the ways that we see people paying attention as they do things together, at which point I'm going to invoke Lou Hartman for his many years in the building, as those of you old enough to remember. You know, he just took care of everything around the building that needed doing, with no fuss, no drawing attention to himself, no complaining. He just did them. And I think about how we know each other when we live at Tassahara together.

[12:08]

You might be standing at the drum on the Ingawa, the outside walkway, and you can see somebody's feet 50 feet, 50 yards away, or 50 feet away. And you know who it is just from the way their feet move. Or you see them in the dark. You know exactly who it is. You get to know somebody. And I think the important thing And it was interesting to see a quote by Sojourn Mel Weitzman in this issue of the wind bell from 1969 and 1970. You know, people in the building, you know, everyone should be sitting four periods a day. And they had four periods a day in those days. I don't know when the fourth one was. But, you know, sit every day. Sit together every day. And this sitting together, you know, people recognized how close it brought people, how much it brought them together. and how open it allowed people to be with each other. So it's cultivating that space of non-judgmental awareness, to have a community with Zazen at its heart.

[13:12]

I was just reading an article in The Guardian about a commune that had been set up in England. And as with all these things, ups and downs and struggles over the years, But I remember every time I've read about, you know, communities and communes and various other gatherings, like, how do people keep it together if they're not sitting zazen together? And I remember going down to Esalen once and asking that question, and somebody said, we do a lot of processing. And I was like, okay, we do a lot of zazen, and I think maybe that's a little easier. So recently I... taught a class on the Genjo Koan, Dogen's foundational text. And the Genjo Koan isn't actually about Zazen, or it's not explicitly about Zazen, because he wrote it for a lay follower. But it is also the touchstone of just about everything that he wrote. And it's also fundamental, I think, to how we understand the world through our Zen lens here, and our practice here, because Suzuki Roshi, as you read him,

[14:19]

was channeling Dogen more or less explicitly in his talks. For people who maybe had never heard of Dogen or would not have necessarily been able to understand it directly, Suzuki Roshi did a fantastic job in his second language of getting to explain the Genjo Koan. And I always like to tell this story that with the same student group a few years ago, I introduced them to the Genjo Koan. And one of my students said, Shunda, this is great, but how is it going to help me in my life? And I had three answers that came up in that moment, which I still think are pretty good answers. And the first one was, we can become fearless, like the Heart Sutra suggests. We find ease around the true nature of reality and human existence. And that's what studying Buddhism, I think, can imbue us with. And we can be like a mirror. We reflect reality and simply let go when the reflection is done.

[15:23]

And then, even though this always makes me think of a fridge, we become more energy efficient. Because when we have this understanding in our bodies of how life is, reflecting and letting go is a lot less exhausting than holding the amount of stress and anxiety that we usually deal with. And I would happily talk about any sentence from the Genjo Koan, but I thought I'd focus on two sections tonight. And the first one is what I call Dogen's five-part harmony. And these are perhaps the most well-known lines in the text, although I'd hate to say that. But often we only hear the first one or two. And so he starts, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. So we hear that quite often. To study the self is to forget the self. We also hear that one a fair amount. But he goes on. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.

[16:27]

When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. And the fifth part. No trace of realization remains. And this no trace continues endlessly. So when we forget the self, there is room, there is so much room for other things to happen. When I think of it in terms of my own life, I know that I can be caught up in self-concern very often. And the visual I have for that is wearing blinkers like a horse, like, nope, not wanting to deal with that. I'm dealing with this stuff in here. I'm dealing with my own personal crises and dramas, whatever they are. So when we forget the self, there is a chance to take those blinkers off and meet what is happening around us. And some time ago when my dear friends Gene and Richard got married here, I repurposed the line, you know, to forget the self is to allow love to grow.

[17:39]

Because there is room for love to grow when we forget the self. And let's keep practicing to make ourselves available. to others in the moment without any thought of attainment or realization. Then the second section, which I particularly enjoy, is a little later in the text. And again, Dogen is using very concrete analogies, which I think is one of the things about him writing to a layperson, but it's also very helpful in terms of allowing us to see on one level exactly what he's talking about. He says, a fish swims in the ocean. No matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air. However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements. When their activity is large, their field is large.

[18:41]

When their need is small, their field is small. Thus, each of them totally covers its full range and each of them totally experiences its realm. If the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once. Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish. It's possible to illustrate this with more analogies. Practice enlightenment and people are like this. Now, if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place. When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. And I remember, I think I was up in the Buddha hall one morning when this occurred to me, when he says it's possible to illustrate this with more analogies, and certainly in this translation, practice enlightenment and people are like this.

[19:53]

I thought, wait a minute. He's saying that people are swimming in enlightenment. Enlightenment is the element you are moving in. You don't have to reach the end of your element to move in the enlightenment that you're swimming in. And this enlightenment becomes evident to you when you get actualized by the myriad things. The myriad things all around us are already expressing their enlightenment. And the only reason we don't join in is because we think enlightenment is off over there somewhere and we have to go and get it. So even if it doesn't appear to be so, because usually it does not appear to us like this, to use another translation, we do not fail to cover our ground completely. And this is what is meant by no attainment.

[20:55]

It's already here. And so even if we don't believe it, which I imagine most of us don't, How is it to start practicing and living from that place where we are swimming in the ocean of enlightenment? So I think this practice of zazen and this awakening to or cultivating this sense of being awakened, actualized by the myriad things, with the myriad things, It reminds us of our basic okayness. And this needs to be drilled into us, because I think our society does not instill a sense of our basic okayness. And so instead of coming from a place of lack, a place of, I have to attain this somewhere else, can we keep practicing?

[22:01]

as we practice in Zazen, this non-judgmental awareness, this meeting of every moment and every person, making ourselves available to the experience of every moment. And I think we tackle our life from this view of lack so often. So how is it to let it go? I think this trusting in this complete okayness just frees up so much time and energy for us to be face-to-face with the rest of the world, whatever that looks like. And that doesn't mean that I'm always good or I'm always right, but I trust that when I get feedback, and I have had feedback for the times when I've messed up, That feedback is coming from a place of love and compassion rather than judgment.

[23:03]

And so back to my student's daughter. At five weeks old, she knows when someone is paying attention to her. So when we can pay attention, we allow each other to flourish. And I think the antidote to our kind of atomized culture is to build community in this way. Reminders of our interdependency. Somebody in the class asked me about loneliness. And we've just been talking about interdependency. And I said, how can you be lonely when everyone has brought you to this moment? feel lack or when we feel powerless can we put down the burden of past and future and the burden of the self and just be present as it arises and since the watchword of the day in the city seems to be AI as an antidote to whatever this might bring can we just be authentic and honest with each other

[24:31]

Can we be authentic, honest, and vulnerable with each other? Can we speak honestly and listen fully? And of course, we do this imperfectly. But I think this is good to allow us to get used to imperfection. So when Wu-Zhi was with Shitu, he said, if you can say something useful, I'll stay. If not, I'm leaving. Shitu started to sit down. Or another translation, he said nothing. And Wu-Zhi started to leave. In one translation, he flips his sleeve. Sleeves is a sign of, ah, this is not it. Shitu called out to him. Wu-Zhi turned around. Shitu said, from birth to death, just this. Why do you keep searching?

[25:37]

And this phrase, from birth to death, just this, came up. I was thinking about it the other day, so I looked for the story. And in fact, there's another story from the same time, exactly the same generation, with Master Ma, Matsu. And again, there are different translations of this, but lecturer Liang of Mount Ji studied with Matsu, who asked him, what sutra do you teach? Liang said, the Heart Sutra. Matsu said, how do you teach it? Liang said, I teach it with the heart. Or another translation says, with the mind, but then we remember they're the same character. And Matsu said, the heart is an actor, and the will and the consciousness are just the supporting actors and company. How do they understand your teaching at the sutra? Liang says, if the heart doesn't understand it, does emptiness understand it? Or, If the mind cannot lecture, is it that empty space can lecture?

[26:43]

Matsu said, yes, it does. Liang also flipped his sleeves. He wasn't happy and started to walk away. Matsu called, lecturer. Liang turned his head around. Matsu said, just this from birth till death. At this moment, Liang had great realization. He hid himself at Mount Jit. and no one heard about him any longer. And I was going to say, don't go and hide on the mountain. We're here to help others. But perhaps he was helping others, and we just didn't get to hear about it. So these stories are not about knowing all the answers. They're about the precise response at the precise moment that is necessary. We don't have to know audiences, but can we respond in the moment in a way that makes a difference?

[27:45]

And just to go back to Suzuki Roshi for a moment, in one of his talks on the Genjo Kahn, he said, the secret of all the teaching of Buddhism is how to live on each moment. Moment after moment, we have to obtain the absolute freedom. And moment after moment, we exist in interdependency to past and future and other existence. So both of these things happen at the same time. We are completely free. In Zazen, we are completely free. And everyone has brought us to this moment. We cannot be lonely because we're not separate from that. how to live on each moment, or as he also says, make your best effort on each moment. So these days we don't have Suzuki Roshi's help and guidance.

[28:51]

In person, we have his words. And unlike 1969, we're not the only game in town. Zen Center was quite a novelty in those days. But my trust and faith is that if we hold to these practices, If we practice with this understanding, then the community will thrive in good circumstances and difficult circumstances. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[29:48]

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