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 morning and welcome to Green Gulch. How many is the first time? Welcome. Welcome to those who are online. So welcome to everyone. far and near, low realms and high realms, whatever, wherever any living being is going to reach this metta, will reach their welcome to engage. I also want to recognize the number of people that come every weekend. I feel like they are Maha Sangha, so I welcome them. I do... recognize some of the folks that keep coming, and I see you as part of our sangha.

[01:01]

This is right in front of you, huh? I can't see you either. There's a mic right in the middle. Anyway, there's a seat on the other side, though. Yeah. Okay. I first want to... give gratitude to all of my ancestors and all of those teachers and those who have inspired me and brought inspiration for me to be in this seat at this time, and also to those who support me here at Green Gulch to be here to speak with you. If you haven't heard me before, I usually try to share the practice from how it has affected me or how I practice. So I share the teachings, and I like to integrate those teachings with the way it has affected my practice.

[02:09]

I really feel very special. Not everyone gets a chance to take the seat, but many do. constantly inviting me to do things I've never done before. So it feels every time as something new. And that part is scary, but it also is what keeps me on the path. Because I'm always thinking I get there and then I have to do something. And I go, well, not quite. Even as something as simple as offering the incense. So today I want to share something. I'm always, as many know, very touched by chanting in sutras. And I want everyone, I'd like to bring the teachings into the room.

[03:16]

And so I'd like everyone just for a moment to share to first send it out to your ancestors, to your family, your friends and community, and to the world where there's so much grace suffering in so many ways. And so we want to take a moment for that first. And then to consider that what we're doing is not just for ourselves or a way of gaining something that no one else has a chance to. Maybe where they live, it's not allowed to gather. So we're doing that for others. So I want you, again, to think about how you suffer.

[04:21]

I want you to actually, maybe there's a story in your mind that will help you as we go through this talk, is to think of what has been a place of suffering. And I'm sure you might come up with 10 stories. Right now you could probably come up with quite a few. But maybe the one that you like to tell, the story that you tend to tell, so that people understand you or a way of... getting to know people or to connect. And so don't go through the entire story. Just pick a story, have a title on it. And remember it as a kind of a point of place in which you connect, where you notice a story arising, arising, arising. And I'm hoping that what I offer will help you maybe see what is happening and why this story's been going on for a month, two months, five years, 10 years, 20.

[05:24]

How many have 20 years that continue to come? Come on, it's all right, it's all right, it's all right, I got it too. We're all human beings, we're all human beings. One of my favorite sutras is the Heart Sutra. And I love just the first line. There's a lot of teaching in that. Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering. Avalokiteshvara. Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.

[06:31]

Okay, that's all you need to know. Wow. Relieved all suffering. That's something, isn't it? Can you hear that? That's amazing to me. That there could be something like that that could actually transform. one's spirit, one's soul, one's mind, one's body, and a teaching that probably took decades to come through the Buddha. Avalokiteshvada is another name for kuan-yen or kuan-yam or kuan-zeon, many names for the one who hears the cries of the world. And a bodhisattva is the one who also hears the cries of the world. And I'm assuming if not everyone in here is probably a bodhisattva. And we have gathered together again to at least look at and listen to the cries of the world together. So the five aggregates that is mentioned in that first line, I want to speak on that because they were the exact teaching that helped me to...

[07:42]

expand that suffering story I had and carried most of my life. So, they also, before they speak of the five aggregates, there's a prajnaparamita, and we can't get all the way into it, but it's wisdom. So, when deeply practicing prajnaparamita, So this is a very important part in that relieved of all suffering. So we kind of got relieved of all suffering. And oh yeah, the five aggregates, if you know what those are. Or you studied them before. And it became very much a study for me for many years. And as the librarian at Tassajara Zen Center, I studied it over and over from different traditions. It's very interesting to study it from Tibetan, Theravada, these different Buddhist traditions, and it still comes to that core of the heart.

[08:45]

And it made sense that we chanted all the time and that we would begin practice all the time with the heart. And that heart includes body and mind. And so I took it very deeply when I first heard the chant without knowing what five aggregates meant. I You know, aggregates sounded more mathematical to me. And it kind of turned me off that word, aggregate. Although I did like math. But I wasn't good at it until I got, I don't know, when it got more complicated. I'm not good at arithmetic, but I'm really good at calculus and trigonometry and things like that. But I couldn't do arithmetic and still have trouble with it. So I don't know what that is. But I wanted to share the five aggregates quickly. so that we can see maybe how they may affect and how they hold that story and how that story affects how you see the world and how you see each other or different people in your family, your community, and how you see what is happening now, you know, and how you're responding based on some of this teaching.

[09:58]

So one is form. And I'm not going to go into the Pali words for them or Sanskrit words. There are Sanskrit words. So form. So we can just say you and me right there. You kind of get that idea. There's feeling that feeling of you and me. And the aggregates do give you that feeling that you, it is you and me because we're in these bodies and you have a name. I have a name. You came from someplace. I came from someplace. I had a mother and father, which I give thanks to right now too, for bringing me into this life. And that's not to say they were perfect, but they did bring me here. And so they were the portals for me. And so I kind of see them out there, mom and dad. And then when I see them in me, I just go, oh, no. We're going to keep that over there. No. I don't like form. I don't think I like that one.

[11:00]

As an aggregate, as something to hold on to. And then there's feeling, and that is... You know, having our emotions usually beginning maybe sometimes in the body, a sensation. Sometimes we don't notice that. And so maybe when you came into the Zendo, you had some and you just kept walking to your seat with your hundred sensations. And then when I came out, you had some more. And it just keeps going on and on and on. And so I think this is a wonderful thing in being alive. You're alive. That's what they used to tell me when I was suffering. Congratulations. I was like, mm, you know. Not quite what I'm expecting here. And so the other one is perception, and it's how you see or how you might see the world with your senses or your mind, your eyes, your nose, your...

[12:05]

All of these things get involved in how you perceive the world. And so this perception is also a way we confrontize that you and me and the sensations and emotions. I want you to stop a minute and see in your story, if you have one, and maybe your suffering is right now in the moment, but if you have one, just how it's formed, you and me, sensations, emotions, and how you're seeing yourself here in the moment, yourself here with everyone sitting together. How is that happening for you? And just be honest. You don't have to share this. It's personal. for you right now. It's private. It's practicing right now in the moment. And I do this so that my words, part of them or some of them can become something that you can use rather than you can think about.

[13:06]

So don't go home and think about it. Just see what happens right now. And then see what happens later without having thought about it. You'll be surprised. The other one is mental formations, and that is saying thoughts, things that come to our minds too. And then consciousness, again, emphasizing the I, mind, that's really promoted by what we see, hear, think, taste, touch, you know, all of these things. So there's a part that... When I heard this part, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, and no realm of sight, and no realm of mind consciousness.

[14:13]

There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance, neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death. No suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path, no knowledge and no attainment. Okay, we can go home on that one too. Okay, there's nothing. Okay, I feel all of those things, don't you? All of those things are very real. So why would we have a teaching like that? What is that when we're trying to grasp it with our form, our feelings, our perception, our mental formations, and our consciousness? Right here in this moment, we're trying to grasp that with this human being that's made up of these aggregates. What is that about? When I first heard that and enchanted it, I felt immediate relief And I didn't know why. Suddenly I felt I was off the hook.

[15:17]

I didn't have to live. I didn't have to live in such, you know, what I see, what I saw, what I heard, you know, what I was trying to do with my life. No longer needed to be attended to in that way. I think that's what I felt. I just remember really feeling the relief and asking for a copy right away. of the suture because I wanted to relieve that suffering that it said in the first. Just give it to me because I think I'm feeling it right now, and I'm going to take it home and do some more of this, you know, relief. And they immediately said no. So at the time, in the old days of Zen, you did not get a copy of nothing. It just did not come to you. And I was just so shocked, you know, like maybe six or seven years later to see the sutra book in the bookstore. I was like, what has happened here?

[16:21]

This could have been easily done years ago. But I'm glad I didn't get a copy because I just lingered with the feeling. I had the words until I chanted it again the next morning and the next morning and the next morning and the next morning. I wanted to memorize it, and I realized there was no memorizing, and plus I'm not very good at that anyway. It never happens, not old age. It's just, I mean, my mind's not into it. And so I would hear that over and over, the know this, the know that, the know that, and feel the same relief. And I didn't really understand why that was there. And then I said, oh, it's a translation problem, I know. You know, they just can't quite find another word for no. And that might be true, but when I read all the other versions of the chant from different traditions, it was still there, that idea of this emptiness of things.

[17:23]

And when I felt the emptiness of it just for a moment, I didn't know what the feeling was. And I surely didn't know how to empty myself again unless I heard the chant. I only had to hear the chant in order to feel it again. And I still kind of would hear the note. So I wanted to tell you like maybe two experiences that I had to help you. Wondering does any of that help with the suffering stories you have or does it give you a big blank How many have a big blank? That's okay. You have a big blank page around. Great. Thank you. Yeah, of what that all means in relationship to the story I asked you to hold. So it really takes, I want to say, time and a lot of practice. And that means a lot of zazen, a lot of stillness, if you're not doing zazen, stillness and silence to allow prajna, paramita, to arise in you.

[18:29]

to have wisdom to arise in you and compassion to arise in you over years around what it means. So I'm giving you a peak preview through my life of what may help in your life so it's not guaranteed. Nothing's guaranteed. There's no 30-day trials and you can't give it back. You already bought it. Nope. No returns or refunds. So when I was being ready to be ordained, and I was only interested in being a novice priest quiet in the back, in the dark, forever, for the rest of my practice period. And you see that didn't happen. And so I was told by my teacher as she was, you know, bringing me into this priesthood.

[19:31]

Now, you know what I want you to do with this. And I'm like, what is it? What is she talking about? She said, I want you to go out and share the Dharma. I want you to share it with everyone. And I especially want you to share it with your people. He said, I'm picking you in particular. And I was like, how come this keeps landing him? You know, it's very heavy weight. You know, it felt like that, you know. And I knew this was the way Zenke Blanche Hartman did her work and her practice. And she did ordained three priests of color, the first three priests of color in the Suzuki Roshi lineage. There was another person, but they stepped aside way long ago before I showed up at Zen center. And there were many at different Zen centers, but by the time Blanche came to ordain and Dharma transmit, people, there were few, and I was one of the few. I believe I went out and did what she wanted me to do, and that was share it with my family and friends and people who were around me, not proselytizing.

[20:43]

I never said a word. I never said a word about what I was doing, where I was going, and that I was Buddhist or chanting or anything. My hope was that it would arise in my body and people would see something different of me. And it happened. They did. I could feel they would ask me, what are you doing? Where are you going? And so I still didn't share it in that way. But I think to this day, I'm thinking of Zinke Blanche Hartman. And I think she would be pleased. She was, I consider, not only my teacher, but my dharma mama. You know, you do things for your mother. And I did see every year the effects of just staying in the gateway.

[21:49]

I had everything in my mind. I had a lot of negativity. You know, I was moving with, oh, we need to do this. We need to change Zen. We need to change the Sangha. We need to change, change. That would be in my mind, but I knew I only had one way to do it. One way. And that was with this life. With this body was the only way I could do it. And if I couldn't do it through that, then what good was it for me to do? talk everybody into it. And so I talk myself into it. And so there was a post on Facebook. And yes, I'm on Facebook. And my family's on there, so I'm not going nowhere. That's how I find out who's getting married, who has a baby. It's odd. But there was a post about the lineage of black Dharma teachers in Zen. And they were trying to figure it out.

[22:51]

And there is a lineage. There is an ancestral lineage that exists. And I wanted to make sure that it's spoken into the room and to talk about those pioneers. And the first to be Dharma transmitted was Merle Koto Boyd, who has now passed and practiced in the Maizumi Roshi lineage of Los Angeles, the Zen Center in Los Angeles. And I remember meeting her. I'm so glad. I went all the way to L.A. I live in L.A., but I went to meet her in the garden, and I said, Merle, what are we to do? What are we to do? You know, Blanche told me to do this and do that. Bring the people into it. And I said, like that cab driver right there, should we talk to you? And she's like, you know, she's kind of like, she looks at me directly in my eye. She says, I want you to know. that Dharma will is already turning without you saying anything.

[23:52]

And I said, it is? We haven't done any work yet. And she said, well, that's the reason you and I are sitting here. And I was like, wow. Because I had never really met a black Dharma teacher transmitted in a brown robe. And it was a big moment to stop and be with that, to be in that moment. And so... I still kind of went around a bit with some negativity inside of me. And I knew it was around form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. I learned that later. That's why I studied it so much. I said, oh, this is me. This is me. So, you know, if I can let go of some of this or I could understand it a little more, I wouldn't feel so stuck in the place that I am with this story. about what goes on and what doesn't go on, you know, in spiritual communities or Zen communities. So this lineage, to me, is a powerful affirmation because it really let me know that there was something else.

[25:04]

There wasn't just what I saw, what I thought, what I, you know, it was more. There was this whole lineage that was being formed without my hands and I had nothing to do with it. You know, I didn't manipulate it into being. And so the Jules Susan Harris, another Dharma, Black Dharma transmitted teacher who also passed, I think, in 2023. And he's number two. And, well, he's number one in his lineage of his teacher, which was... a New York village, Zendo, Pat Inkyo. And so he's number one in his. We have all these lineages. And then there was, I think in there, Angel Coda Williams, for those who might know. Her or them.

[26:08]

And then not long after that was Riamo Ilda. Gutierrez Badikin. She was actually the first one of African descent to be Dharma transmitted in the Suzuki Roshi lineage. Know that name. Know that name. And then came, I always include Kieru Lien Schutt, although she's not of African descent, she's just, we're just all together in that movement, and she's Vietnamese. And then there was me. And so I say that to know that there is this very kind of quiet turning of the wheel lineage, which for me was an expansion from my form, the way I thought, the way I felt, the way I perceived things. And so then I go, okay, there's this other thing.

[27:08]

So did I go to, oh, now I'm going to start thinking positive of these things. I'm going to go negative, no negativity, just positive. No, I didn't. That's not what sometimes the teachings feel like this. Instead of being negative, you can be positive and think like this. You know, you could have no mental formations and you'll not suffer. No, that's not what happened. Or a lot of times you're hearing this and that, it's this and that. And one time someone said, oh, yes, it's paradoxical. I said, no, it's not even that. It sounds like that. Oh, if you tell me this, then you're going to tell me it's that, because that's Zen. It's this, oh, then it's that. So what's happening there? It's this and that. It's no, no, no, no, no. What is it? What's happening there in those teachings? And I can say with this experience of watching this lineage evolve of teachers of African descent to say there is something else, and there still may be some negativity and trouble and suffering.

[28:16]

But it's all together. It's not just one. It's teaching us about expansion. So when we say no eyes, no ears, no nose, that's expansion of what we're thinking about. There's an expansion in your suffering story. You don't have to go look for it. There is an expansion. There's something else going on at the same time. Like there's something else going on in the world right now at the same time that we're in here. We have not left the world. We're still in the world. We're just sitting over here. in the world. So when I started to understand this and that, this paradoxical, this way of no, no, no, and this kind of emptying out was a chance to actually turn in and to see and to understand how the stories keep moving and how they keep us in the one place, at least myself, in the one place. And then as I practice more, because I feel that that practice of Zazen is a practice of expansion.

[29:20]

And so that's what we're experiencing when we're practicing. And that's what I experienced of the lineage that is expansive without me doing anything. I didn't do anything. I just show up. I do show up in the best way that I can. And the things that I offer in my... writings are the practice and not an interpretation of how I see things because of my culture or my skin or whatever. Those things, I am creating an expansion of what exists already. You're still you. You're going to be you. I'm still me and, not paradoxically, but in a wider place.

[30:25]

It makes no difference. So you can have both. You can have all of it. But which part of it causes the suffering? Which part of it? becomes that place in which you just can't get through, you can't think it out, I can't get out of how it feels to be alive in this world at this time. Can you offer yourself or consider in your life now the relief of suffering and also the continuation of it as one life. And someone saying congratulations when the bad things happen.

[31:31]

I think it's important in these times to not, I think, over use wisdom teachings. A lot of times I hear them and to overuse them as an excuse, overcompensate with things we haven't really quite experienced like compassion or wisdom. We just want to do them and hope that they have a result and not to say, you don't aspire to that. You can aspire to loving kindness. You can aspire to Compassion. And yet you can let those things go, especially when the bell rings. I love when things ring like that. What is it that you do?

[32:37]

What is it that you think you're doing? And how has that worked out? So we can only work here, and then we can work with people who are next to us. That's what I love about this practice. You can sit one here, one there, and be together in all the difference, all the trouble. Like, no, don't, no, no. Don't talk. but it's just the way it is. This is life. And I'm honored to have been brought into this part of my life, to be in the world in this part of the world. And not to say I'm not out there, because I am. In all the years that I've practiced. And to say I'm also,

[33:43]

concerned and worried, and there's much anguish inside of me. And I must come with that anguish and speak to you while anguished and also speak to you while not at the same time. It's all going on. How do you live a life like that? How do you live like that? I've done it all my life, so you can live like that, anguish and not. I think we all have lived a life like that in some way. 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.

[34:46]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:00]

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