This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I was thinking over my room before coming over here that it would be nice to tell some Tassajara story, but I couldn't think of one. But then as I was... sitting there for a while, I thought of the work period and how grateful I am for all of you, all of you, all of those of you who stay from the practice period and those of you who come to be here for the summer and those of you who come just for the work period. And I was thinking how grateful I am. I remembered why I'm so grateful. So my first summer at Tassajara, I had already done three practice periods, and so I was head of cabins my first summer.

[01:04]

And back in those days, we didn't have any work period. And we also, we moved all the furniture out of the cabins every winter. We moved it to the loft of the lower barn. So we'd move it all out, and then we'd move it all back in, totally trashing it, of course, as we moved it in and out of the cabins, scratching the furniture. threatening to knock down the cabins. And it was just us doing this. Us, whatever that means, meant, for instance, me being head of cabins who knew nothing and some people on my crew who, it appeared to me, didn't know any more than I did. So we spent, it was probably two, maybe three weeks that we had to move the furniture in, get the cabins set up, and try to do any kind of, you know, fruitifying, making it nicer here. So one thing I remember is me and my crew, we tried to paint the bathroom of stone four, and it just got worse and worse and worse.

[02:15]

It was every day worse things would happen in that bathroom. It would get messier and messier. I don't even remember. I think I've blocked it all. So That's why I am so grateful that you are here. I hope to never paint another bathroom. All you painters. Last week, Greg gave a lecture on taking refuge. Every night after evening zazen, we take refuge. We do a chant. He gave a wonderful lecture. If you weren't here for it, I... Really recommend that you listen to it. I don't know if it's in the library. It might be. But it will be online eventually. Anyway, it was a great lecture. And he talked about taking refuge, especially in Buddha. I mean, we take refuge in Buddha.

[03:16]

We take refuge in Dharma. We take refuge in Sangha. And Greg talked particularly, he talked a little bit in general, but also particularly about taking refuge in Buddha, you know, especially... in Zazen, in Buddha, as a seated person, and the possibility of being awake. So I wanted to talk a little bit about taking refuge in general. I think that the idea of taking refuge can sometimes be a little troubling for us. It might seem too religious or too dependent. Sometimes it's kind of counter to what some of us might have thought of as Zen, where I'm going to come and just sit and finally stop being so dependent. So that's part of the point, actually. Part of why Buddhism teaches taking refuge is because we do.

[04:19]

We, as human beings, we're looking for something to take refuge in. That's kind of our normal state. You know, we all have our favorite and most dreaded way of taking refuge that we do, right? So a lot of us tend to want to find somebody or something to take refuge in. You know, we want to find the perfect teacher. We want to find the perfect lover. We want to find someone who will convince us that we're okay. and convince us that we're special. And we spend a tremendous amount of energy looking for that person or ideology or something, something that will give our life meaning. You're cutting me off. You don't want to hear what I had to say.

[05:22]

I can speak loud enough without this, actually. You won't be able to. You'll have to plug your ears. Taking refuge is disturbing to some people. But not to John. I know it's not disturbing to John. So we often catch ourselves doing that, and we know how vulnerable that makes us. And partly we know how vulnerable it makes us because it hasn't worked very well for most of us, probably everybody. Nobody can withstand the weight of our need for refuge. As a mother, I realize it's like a totally unfair situation. I am the basis I was when they were little, the basis of these people, young people, little people's lives. And I can't do it. Your mother couldn't do it. How good or how bad she was, your father couldn't do it.

[06:26]

They couldn't be the basis for a human being feeling secure and loved and coming out enlightened. I tried. It didn't work. It worked pretty close. My daughters are close to enlightenment, as you know. So whether they, you know, whether they were there for us, that's wonderful. It actually helps, right, if our parents were there for us. But still, it couldn't be enough. And especially, you know, once we get to be teenagers, it's really not enough. I remember when my daughters turned to teenagers, it was like when I would say, oh, you look great. They're like, right. No, I don't. I look terrible. I no longer count. I mean, I count, but not on a... It's still important to us.

[07:27]

It's still important to me what my mother thinks of me. She's 90, and I'm 60-something, and I still care what she thinks. But still, it's not enough. I need other people to tell me that I'm special. We want to find that special somebody. And they keep betraying us. They keep... abandoning us, they keep not being there at the moment that we need them to say you're the most important thing in the world, they wanna like read the newspaper or something. And that's if we're lucky, you know? If we're unlucky, they are thinking somebody else is the most wonderful person, then we're really in trouble, right? So when we see that, when we experience that, how vulnerable that is and painful it is, Often what we feel is, I've got to be able to stand on my own two feet. I have to rely on myself. I can't be so dependent on somebody else.

[08:27]

So then we try a whole other thing, you know, be independent, be my end. Mostly what we're doing there is we're trying to rely on our mind. We're trying to rely on our thinking. We're trying to figure out. Who should I be? How should I be independent? What should I do to give my life meaning? And we might also be relying on something we might call our intuition, something like that. All of which is not quite satisfying either and not reliable. Just to be an island unto ourselves and not dependent. It doesn't quite work. probably most of us have experienced both of these things so that's the human situation that the refuges are addressing they're saying you are looking for refuge admit it and here's a suggestion about where you should look for it so I want to talk a little bit about Dharma taking refuge in Dharma and

[09:40]

you know, for, I think it's for all of, I mean, Buddha said this, so it should be for all of Buddhism, that the teaching, so Dharma is the teaching, and the teaching, or the way the teaching is presented in Buddhism is not so much, here's the truth, you believe it. Here it is, take care of you, Janet. It's more Buddha, Buddha, And other teachers and practitioners saying, this is what's worked for me. Try this and see if it works for you. So that's the spirit that I want to speak in, but it's also the spirit that the whole Dharma teaching is given in. And as Greg said last week, we have a library full of wonderful Dharma books. And they're very helpful. Please... look at them to the extent that that's your inclination and maybe a little, if it's really not your inclination, you might still try it sometime because there are some very helpful things.

[10:52]

And a lot of the, one way that the Dharma comes is in words. It doesn't always come in words. The teaching is really embedded. What the teaching is about is the nature of things. You know, like how does this world work? How, how is it possible to take refuge in something? What does that mean to take refuge in something? How do we live in the world in a way that is, or is it possible to live in the world in a way that's freeing to myself and others? So the teaching is really, the Dharma is really embodied, is embedded in the universe, you know, the way things are. And then... the Dharma as a spoken thing or as words is kind of extrapolated from that. It's somebody saying, this way of seeing it, this way of living with it, has helped me, has been freeing for me. So it's said in many different ways because many different people have said it.

[12:04]

And also because we're different and different ways of expressing it are effective for different people in different ways. So what you're going to get from me tonight is very simple. Very simple taste of the Dharma as I understand it. I actually want to talk about three different teachings that have been very helpful to me. that I have found it useful to take refuge in or rely on. One of them, I would say, is I don't think I ever would have thought of this on my own. I don't think it would have come to me as a possibility of being the truth if I hadn't heard it from teachers. which is that everything is Buddha, or everything is... I mean, what is Buddha, right?

[13:13]

Everything fits. Everything is the way it's supposed to be. That would not have occurred to me, and it especially would not have occurred to me about myself. It wouldn't have occurred to me about the parts of myself that caused me some pain or discomfort or... or that I see cause other people discomfort. I don't think I would have had that thought. And yet, there it is in the teaching, everything is Buddha. Everything is Buddha. So there's this, in a way, challenge. What could that possibly mean that this part of me that I'm having trouble with right now, let's say dependency, since we were just talking about that, this needing to lean on somebody, wanting somebody to convince me that I'm okay, somebody else or myself to not just convince me but make it so, that dependency.

[14:21]

How could that be Buddha? And how would I rely on that? How would I take refuge in that teaching? How would I find out whether that teaching is right or not? So, you know, one way to find it out is if there's... First of all, if you notice that there's some part of yourself or your life that you really don't like, that you think shouldn't be there. I mean, mostly we don't even notice it. Mostly we're just... trying to get rid of it or feeling guilty about it or something like that, feeling disgusted with it, thinking it's a mistake, either blaming ourselves or blaming somebody else for doing that thing which made us act that way again. So if we actually notice that that's how we're responding, like this part of me or of this situation should not be here.

[15:30]

That's what I'm thinking and feeling. Notice that and then notice, oh, that's not what the teaching said. The teaching said this part belongs. So that's the first step, you know, to actually be there enough to notice that. And then to just have that as a question. Just like stop our frantic activity to get rid of it or... If not get rid of it, at least get away from it by blaming something for it. To just be there with it, with this question. Is there some way that this could belong? So I recommend you try that. It's been very surprising for me over and over again to see, oh, this actually fit in somehow. This was an accurate response. Accurate, you know, it came from the... Anyway, so that gets to the other two teachings that I wanted to mention, the other two Dharma, simple Dharma things.

[16:41]

One is... And these other two, I probably would have thought of because they're, you know, like with science today, they're kind of common knowledge. The only problem is... I think we all believe them, but we don't really believe them about ourself. So it's that everything, anything, is not permanent, also meaning it's not stuck. It will go away completely, death and all, eventually, but also it's moving. And it goes with the other one, which is that everything is... dependently co-arisen, or everything comes from other things and is made up of many things. So those two things are pretty common scientific thought today, which is lucky for us because it didn't used to be that way, but now that's pretty common. So I think we pretty much all believe, oh, it's not permanent and it's dependently co-arisen.

[17:48]

Things have an effect on each other. change in that process but as I say emotionally about ourself and our life that's not how we feel you know when something happens when we go if we go into a depression or a bad mood it feels like it's going to be forever right it's like oh no and we remember that it came back Because mostly we've had those feelings before. So we remember that, oh, if we start to think about it, that I didn't have it for a while, but now I'm back in it and I'll never get out of it. And if I do get out of it for a minute, it'll be back again. So that's our feeling about it. And on the dependently co-arisen part, we also have some feeling like I could get away from the things that make this. I could...

[18:49]

if this were different, if that were different, if I were different, and it says, it feels very close by, like if I were just a little different, then this would never happen again. So to actually deeply accept to take refuge in, strangely enough, the fact that things are not stuck and that they are made by other things that And one way that made by other things, made by, is that everything we do has an impact. Everything we do helps to make the next moment of our life. But the fact that it isn't just made by us, that it's made by other people and other things and, you know, not having an earthquake right now and many things that by their existence and their non-existence make this moment. means that we never know exactly how to make it just the way we want it to make it.

[19:53]

So it can't be like, oh, I'll get my vision, you know, and then I'll make it. Especially, and the main thing that we want to make, of course, is ourself. We want to get a vision of me and then make myself into it. This is not the way to take refuge in the Dharma, in the teaching of... things are not stuck, and things are made, are dependently co-arisen, and they are already, they already fit. They fit, but they're not stuck. So I wanted to tell you, you know, Zen has these stories called koans in them, and there's a book of Soto-Zen, that's the kind we do here, koans, the Book of Serenity, and this is the fourth book koan in that book it's just a little short story which is the world honored one was walking with the congregation and he pointed at the ground and said this is a good place to build a sanctuary and in this congregation indra the emperor of the gods happened to be there and he took a blade of grass and he stuck it in the ground and he said the sanctuary is built

[21:15]

And the world-honored one smiled. So the world-honored one was walking with the congregation at Tassajara. And we were the congregation. And he was walking down the path, and he said, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. And each one of you, the emperor of the gods, picked up a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground and said, The sanctuary is built. And the world honored one smiled. So I think this is another clue about how to take refuge. Sanctuary is such an interesting word. It means a safe place. And it also means a holy place, which maybe those two things go together. when it's this kind of story where he's just walking and he says, here, right here is a place to build it.

[22:20]

It's a little surprising to it. Like, here's a safe place? Here's a holy place? I don't know about that. It doesn't feel so safe to me. I've noticed that a number of people have come to Tassajara. It's so hard to come here without some. vision of what it's going to be like. Of course you have a vision of what it's going to be like. And usually it's a good one, right? It's a wonderful place. Otherwise, why would you come? So if you come for not too long, that vision may be maintained. But if you stay for a little while, the problem with that vision is you came with it. The same old you who always goes everywhere with you. And it gets a lot more complicated than just a wonderful place, right?

[23:23]

And some people are figuring that out now. They're kind of the precocious ones. They've already, like, oh, no. You know, this is really crazy. crazy here, or I'm really crazy here, or all that old stuff is coming up again. Sometimes it's coming up more intensely than not here. And that happens here. I think it partly happens here because it's safe enough that it can come up. Safe enough both in that we're pretty easygoing with each other. We're not totally easygoing with each other, but we're pretty easygoing with each other. pretty accepting. You know, we're not, any of us while we're here, having to run around, you know, looking for a place to live or something to eat. We're also not having to dodge traffic or keep up with our email, except for a couple of us. So sad. So there's the safety for things to come up.

[24:29]

And also, I think one of the big issues effects of zazen is that it increases our capacity to be with ourselves i don't know how this happens but somehow it does and as our capacity to be with ourselves is increased we notice oh there's and usually again it's a familiar thing but perhaps the thing that sometimes we are able to avoid on a daily basis but there it is again that fear that so uh So here's, you know, a blade of grass stuck in the ground. This is like a sanctuary. This is a safe place. In the commentary, some of you have heard this many times, but in the commentary to this koan where it says he stuck a blade of grass in the ground and said the sanctuary is built, the commentary says repairs will not be easy.

[25:31]

On the other hand, you just get another blade of grass to get in the ground. So that's how to meet our life, our very present life, meaning our very present body and mind, with the possibility that it might be the place to take refuge. that it might be the actual place to reside instead of dreaming up another one and trying to make it happen or lamenting that it isn't happening or to just actually be here. I'm quite convinced that most of the pain we cause comes from our way of getting away from what's happening. So if, you know, if we had a blackboard in here and somebody scraped their fingers on the blackboard, it would make a sound that probably most of us would not like.

[26:45]

But the hard part for us is what happens inside of us when that sound gets made. It's like inside we cringe and we tighten up. It's the same with almost everything. Actually, I think with everything, people do things, you know, things happen that are very hard for us, but the hardest part of them is what we do to ourselves, in ourselves, when we experience those things. Even if we didn't do that, there might be some pain there, but the hard part is what we do inside and then how we, or the hardest part, anyway, And then how we try to get away from that. How we feel like, I can't be around you if you're going to make me feel like this. And eventually, you know, I have to kill you because you're scaring me. You might take all my food, you know.

[27:47]

So, goodbye you. So, yeah, yeah. Except that it's not funny, right? Yeah. But we do it in all those little ways, right? So if we can stay, if we can find our sanctuary here, right here, with this body and mind, there's the chance to be free in that. That's the Dharma. That's the Dharma. Everything is Buddha. You're Buddha. All of you is Buddha. It doesn't mean that you should start defending all of yourself. all the things you do. It means you should just be open-hearted with them. And take refuge. Take refuge in being Buddha, in the possibility of awakening. Take refuge in the Dharma that says it's okay to be you.

[28:50]

Stay there and see how that could possibly be the case. take refuge in the Sangha, which we might talk about a different night, but in the meantime, that's what we're living. We're taking refuge in each other, being here at Tassajara, and the world actually works the same here as out there. It's not quite as evident sometimes, but it's the same world. It's the same impermanence. It's the same dependant co-arising. It's the same... actually fit so I encourage you to see what you think about that to look at it carefully and see whether you think that's true or not and we have time for a couple of comments or questions if you have any if anybody has a yes Ron well that's one way of thinking of it

[29:55]

Well, the Buddha, I mean, there's different ways of thinking of Buddha. Buddha is the person who lived a long time ago, was a regular person, and by sitting down and being open-hearted, by being present and being open-hearted, he discovered complete freedom. That's one way of describing Buddha. There also is something we call Buddha nature, which is the nature of things. And one way of thinking about Buddha is the universe. It's like how everything works together. So Buddha being everything means the universe? Well, somebody else might say something different, but that's what I say. Let me just try to clarify this in my mind, because... nature of things and everything, something happens in the universe affects another part of the universe.

[31:12]

It affects another part of the universe and it affects another part and it's a vicious thing. Could be vicious, yeah. It's a thing. To me it is. It's vicious. Oh, go ahead. So see it's how everything affects everything. It gets back to its original source. Yeah, well, it never went away from its original source. No. Oh, okay. Anybody else have anything? You're happy? Good. Anybody else? Yes. Melinda? You can talk to Ron later. He's got it. Good. Good. It never went away. Yeah, didn't come back. It will come back, but it never went away. Yeah. Melinda. I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about what you mean by taking refuge in.

[32:24]

If you say taking refuge in, can you talk a little bit more about what that means to you? Well, if I'm in a situation where I don't like my response, You know, like somebody's done something and I've gotten upset or angry or hurt. I don't like my response. And if I notice that I don't like it, I mean, a lot of times then just things happen, right? But if I notice, oh, I don't like that I'm feeling this way, then there's the chance at that point to do something that I could call taking refuge in it. which is to make a space for it and let it be as it is. Or it could be called feel what I'm feeling, but as a feeling, not as the description of the situation, which is much more complicated and maybe even much more simple than my description.

[33:27]

But to actually come back you know plant my little blade of grass in that upset stomach that and then and see does that and and my experience has been when I've been able to do that it's actually very freeing that I don't have to figure out how to fix this thing I don't have to myself for the situation or the other person or whatever just just be there. And it's not static. It's moving. It may not be moving as fast as I want it to at that point if I don't like it, but it is moving. And if I stay with it, that it's a free space to be maybe not pleasant at that time. Thank you. Anything else? Yes? You vow not to be avaricious.

[34:30]

What is the name of avaricious? Avaricious is stingy. Greedy. Greedy. Greedy. Does that make sense? You know greedy? Yeah. It means I vow not to be greedy. Great. Okay, it's time. Thank you all very much. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[35:13]

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