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. Wow, it's wonderful to see the Zendo with so many people. It's been a very, very long time, so very grateful to have you here, all of you. So I'd like to begin this morning by offering a few moments to reflect on our own lives and on the lives of all living beings who are wishing for freedom from suffering. And if you'd like, please say aloud the names of loved ones who you are holding in your hearts at this time. Jordan Montgomery. This story is from the Book of Serenity, 100s and Dialogues, and the case is number 25, Yan Xuan's Rhinoceros Fan.

[01:49]

Oceans of lands without bounds are not apart from right here. The events of infinite eons past are in the immediate present. Try to make her present it face to face and she won't be able to bring it out on the wind. But tell me, where is the fault? The case. One day, Yan Quan called to his attendant. Bring me the rhinoceros fan. The attendant said, the fan is broken. Yan Quan said, well then bring me back the rhinoceros. The attendant had no reply. Zifu, who was standing nearby, drew a circle and wrote the word rhino inside. A few days ago, I was sitting at my desk here at Green Gulch looking out into the garden on yet another day of rain that was sprinkling down on what was once very, very parched earth.

[03:01]

And there are so many things in our life on this planet that we simply do not control. And weather, of course, is one of them. And so too are aging and sickness. death, and as of this week, taxes. Another set of human experiences that we do not control are what the Buddha called the five clinging aggregates, or in Sanskrit, pancha upadana skandhas. These five aggregates, coming from a Latin word for herding together, herding, like sheep, are what in the Buddha's teaching make up the self. We do not control the self. We are the self. And knowing the parts and how they work together is what Zen practice is all about. So for those of you who are not familiar with the aggregates, I think they're most easily remembered by visualizing a small boat on the open ocean under a bright blue sky.

[04:09]

The ocean and the sky are the aggregate of conscious awareness. what Suzuki Roshi called big mind. The boat is the aggregate of form, our body with its five senses, that are busily attending to the condition of the waves and the clouds and the arrival of underwater creatures. Inside the boat are three rather nervous passengers. The aggregate of feeling, the aggregate of thought, and the aggregate of impulses to take action on those thoughts and those feelings and taken all together we call it myself so our life is basically a kind of perilous journey on the great ocean of reality in our tiny boats that we have filled to the brim with ideas and preferences with wishes objections and fears

[05:12]

The duration and the destination of our voyage is unknown, and the desire for safe passage is paramount. Of the many feelings that determine the direction of our boat, fear is most likely the boss. So that's the one I'm going to talk about this morning. I asked a room full of Zen students the other day how many of them were not particularly dominated by fear. And nobody, as I recall, raised their hand. So I'm kind of wondering about all of you here right now. Is there anyone here who is not dominated particularly by fear? Great. I want to talk to you later. See what your secrets might be. So it could be a surprise or not that the word fear itself is from an old English word for danger, based in a belief that something unwelcome is going to happen.

[06:20]

The top triggers for fear here in America, according to a Gallup poll in 2008, were flying, driving, height, death, people, intimacy or rejection by those same people, snakes, And clowns. An updated poll that was done in 2021, not surprisingly, focuses on viral infection, pollution, civil unrest, hate crimes, nuclear war, financial ruin, and terrorism. A little bit of a shift. So thinking about fear often reminds me of a little jingle that my grandmother used to say to me when I was a child that sounds a lot like certain Zen teachings, and in particular the mind-only teachings. I saw a man upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there.

[07:23]

He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away. Fear. So fear, being one of the most amazing and powerful drivers that tend to determine the course of our lives, manages to pop up with great regularity, even in such beautiful and well-managed places as Green Gulch Farm or Tassajara, for no apparent reason at all. I'm pretty sure it does that for you as well. The little man who wasn't there. So this little man or woman or non-binary person who isn't there is very much like the person that isn't there in the Buddhist teaching of the five skandhas or aggregates that I just mentioned. A teaching whose primary purpose is to break the idea of a self down into parts.

[08:26]

To help overcome this strong tendency that we have to imagine the self as a singular, defensible, Upon his awakening, the Buddha attributed all of his own suffering as a human being to the fantasy he had had of being who he was, a handsome young prince, and what he desperately needed, which in his case was to be exempted from aging, sickness, and death. But how he was going to get that exemption? He did not know. But those were the fears that drove his spiritual quest. Among the three types of fears that drive our human life, fear is a form of aversion or hatred. The other two types of feelings are greed, which includes attraction, lust, and pleasure, and delusion, which includes indecisiveness and confusion.

[09:31]

So that's the big three. I know you've heard them many times before. Greed, hate, and delusion. I like it. I don't like it. And I'm not sure yet if I like it or not. When Zen Master Dogen recommended to us to study fear, he says, study these forces that are making up your imaginary self all the time. And that by that effort to bring the imaginary self into focus, it will lose its hypnotic power. The little man who wasn't there really wasn't there. To study the Buddha way is to study the self, as Dogen said. And to study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drops away.

[10:36]

No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. Undertaking an exploration of the role of fear in the formation of what we call the self is done with as much fearlessness as we can muster. And fearlessness, I have decided, is not being without fear, but rather having less fear, fearlessness. It's also about the courage to face our fear as we continue our study throughout each and every day. So here's a story about my own fear, which includes the case that I just read at the beginning of my talk, Case 25, Yan Quan's Rhinoceros Fan. I've told this story on myself a few times, and maybe the last time was a huge number of years ago now. I'm not really sure. When I was the Eno here at Green Gulch Farm.

[11:42]

And among my other responsibilities, I was charged with finding a lecturer for what at that time were our regular Wednesday night Dharma talks over in the Wheelwright Center. The teachers at Green Gulch in those days, Norman Fisher, Blanche Hartman, Linda Ruth Cutts and Reb Anderson were all away that week. So I started to get a little nervous about finding a speaker, and therefore I called over to the Berkley Zen Center to speak with our dear, beloved Abbott, Mel Weitzman. I said, Mel, we need a teacher to come give the talk on Wednesday night. He was quiet for a few moments, and then he said, You do it. I said, I don't give Dharma talks. He said, you do now. I am pretty sure that all of you have had moments like that that change your life as the world turns upside down.

[12:53]

Very strange moments because nothing had moved. There was no sound. And yet suddenly the insides of my body were thick and my mind was racing and very loud. All the classical symptoms of fear. Accelerated breathing rate, heart rate, muscle tension, and those proverbial butterflies forging around in my stomach. Until that day, my life had been going rather well. I had lived at Zen Center for nearly 10 years. Sat Zazen most of those days, did my job and my house chores, enjoyed both my solitude and my community relations, and each year I took a very nice long vacation in what I still call the real world. It was perfect. And then suddenly, thanks to Mel, I am staring into the darkened chamber of my imagination, where among other scary things, I have sequestered my fear of public speaking.

[13:56]

And as it turns out, the fear of public speaking appears in Buddhist teaching among the five great fears. Number one, death. Number two, losing one's reputation. Number three, losing one's livelihood. Number four, losing one's mind. Number five, speaking in public. Well, at least I knew I wasn't alone in that, that this is a basic characteristic of our species. Someone once said about Zen students, introverts and mystics, which I think is reasonably true. You know, what kind of a person would go to a monastery who enjoys public speaking? Anyway, I think I must have been in some kind of shock as I hung up the phone. is going to the library and pulling books off the shelves and carrying them back to my house.

[15:03]

I stared at the pile for a while. I don't know what I was imagining, that somehow all that information would enter me by osmosis, but clearly it wasn't working, and so I opened one of the books, the one with the best title, The Book of Serenity, which seemed like a very good place to start. So the way I opened the book was the way one might consult the I Ching. I was looking for a sign. And there it was on page 108. Itself, an auspicious number, being the number of beads on a mala, representing the number of mental defilements that plague the human species, including fear. And then I read the koan, Yang Xuan's Rhinoceros Fan. And right away, I knew this is it. My story exactly. Yangshan says to his attendant, bring me the rhinoceros fan.

[16:07]

Mel says to me, you give the lecture. The attendant says the fan is broken. I say, I don't give lectures. Yangshan says to the attendant, then bring me back the rhinoceros. Mel says to me, you do now. north. So in effect, what Mel had done in his lighthearted Zen masterly way was first of all to scare the wits out of me, and then to knock on the door and invite me to come out and play, bringing my fear along with me, which of course one always does. He knew I'd been hiding for many years, and he also knew he couldn't force me to come out, nor could he force me to give a lecture. He was simply letting me know that it was something I was going to be doing now. And some part of me knew it too, despite the fear.

[17:08]

It was time to come out from hiding or to risk never coming out at all. The famous image of Zen training is of a mother hen pecking at an egg. The baby chick has to peck back or it will fail to be born. And I am pretty sure that wanting to be born, is much stronger than being afraid. And yet it's the mother hen's job to remind us of that fact. I have come to think of Zen training as Zen learning, since we are each truly the ones who must find our own way out and who must learn to respond when we're called on. I can also remember some years later saying to my therapist and explaining to him my anxiety on that particular day, I have to give the lecture on Sunday. And he said, you have to give the lecture. Do you want to give the lecture?

[18:09]

I had to think about it for a while, and then I answered, yes, it's just that I'm afraid. And then he said, ships are safe in the harbor, but that is not what they're built for. So this is a very important point. important point for me is to ask myself again and again, do I want to teach and practice? Do I want to sit Zazen or learn how to draw? And yes, I do. And I'm afraid. Sometimes, but that's okay. That's part of the deal that comes along with being human. In fact, we can't get home without it, you know, without all of it. Without our fear and our boredom and our lust, they're like tin cans tied to a cat. Highly motivational. And it's those very forces that drove the young prince to take his seat under the Bodhi tree. And then look what happened to him.

[19:14]

He woke up. You know, could it be worth all the trouble after all? And although Mel had been kind enough to knock, it was this story of the rhinoceros fan. that allowed the door to open. These teachings have been given to us by generations of like-hearted seekers who somehow found the very thing they thought was holding them back, things which I'm sure each of us could name, those paths not taken, which fill us with regret. I was talking with a student the other day, and they started reimagining how their life might have been if they hadn't been afraid to take up residency at the Zen center and then follow the path of their own way seeking heart. If only, if only. So those demons of regret live inside the unconscious aspect of our mind, which is a giant storehouse of conditioning, of memories and talents and toxic tendencies.

[20:23]

The storehouse is called a storehouse consciousness. And it's part of the mind-only school of Buddhism. And yet another significant aspect of our life that is not in our control. We do not control the unconscious mind. And yet the unconscious mind is feeding us almost continuously tantalizing bites of greed, hate, and delusion. Tiny bites that tempt us to take action. either running away or marching toward as though our safety truly lies in self-defense. Even as we come to know the illusory nature of these tidbits, it takes time, deep time, for lasting transformations to take place in our lives. And yet, once this process of opening begins, the process itself knows the way. just like the buds of the flowering trees that are opening up in early spring.

[21:26]

Having the world turn upside down again and again can help us to come out of the darkness of self-concern and into a life that's a benefit to others, just as the Buddha did. I'm here for you, and you're here for me. And what could be better than that? And yet turning the world upside down is not something that we can do on our own, and that's because we are not on our own. We are in a relationship with everything and everybody. Even when we hide, we are hiding from someone else. I see you there under the bed. When one of our beloved cats died many years ago, her name was Aya, a beautiful cat. My daughter, Sabrina, who's probably five years old at the time, disappeared literally under her bed. And I really didn't know what to do. So I put on my robes.

[22:30]

I picked up a bell. And I wrapped the cat in a white silk cloth. While Sabrina's other mom, Grace, went into the yard and dug a hole. And then we walked around the yard carrying the cat and ringing the bell and chanting to Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion. Around and around we went. After a while, Sabrina came out to see what we were doing. I took her hand and we walked over to the hole, set the cat down and covered her with earth and flowers. Sabrina then went back into the house to play. Somehow our simple ritual of respect and love for our dear cat allowed my daughter to overcome the fear of death at that moment and to join us in a celebration of her life. We are all just magicians, really, just telling our stories and co-creating the world as we pass on through, hopefully in a wise and loving way.

[23:39]

Yang Xuan's attendant thought that he was a bystander, a prop for the Zen master. But there are no bystanders. Each and every one of us is the star of this show, the unique point of view from which the entire universe emerges moment after moment, out of the darkness and into the light, just as we are doing right now. A number of summers ago, back in 2014, I again chose this story of the rhinoceros van to share during a drawing workshop that I was co-leading at Tassahara. It was because of the last line in that story that I chose it, a line that I had ignored the first time that I studied this koan, mainly because I didn't understand it. So during the drawing workshop, however, it was this last line, that opened the heart of this story for me. Zifu drew a circle and wrote the word rhino inside.

[24:47]

So this is how I came to understand Zifu's seemingly silly response. Each of us is born, grows up, and learns a great many things. We mostly believe the things that we learn as children until we don't. And then, bravely or not, we head out into the world in search of ourselves, of a place to belong, and perhaps most importantly, in search of the truth, the one that we can believe. And although each of our journeys is utterly unique, some of us stay close to home, others wander off to the far and dusty shores of other lands, but either way, now and then, oops. the entire world turns upside down, and some amazing new thing suddenly appears, like being told you're going to give a lecture, or like the word rhino inside the circle.

[25:53]

So where did that come from? It came from Zifu, whether he was afraid or not, being willing to express himself through his love for his teacher, for the teacher's attendant, for Buddhist practice, and for his own creative energy. And therein lies our hope for transformation. If things didn't drastically change now and then, we'd really be stuck inside of our fears with no room at all for what is fresh, new, or creative. And without our fears, there would be no opportunity for us to be courageous. We would be forever imprisoned in our old habits and conditioning. As white people, imprisoned in a culture of privilege, destined to fail. As women, conditioned to a world of submission, destined to fail. As humans, conditioned to complete domination of the world itself, destined to fail.

[27:01]

Among the many ways the Buddha gave us to study our imprisonment is a teaching called the Four Inverted upside down views for those of you who are familiar with the heart sutra the four inverted views are down there near the bottom of the text where it says without hindrance there is no fear far beyond all inverted views one realizes nirvana realizes perfect freedom without hindrance there is no fear Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana. So this is a pretty important couple of sentences as a two-step path to liberation. Beginning with step one, ridding the mind of hindrances. And then step two, turning our minds right side up so that our views of the world are in alignment with the Buddha's own.

[28:05]

So in step one, the Buddha teaches that hindrances are, as one teacher called them, mind flies. That tell us that we can't, we shouldn't, we dare not, we aren't ready or worthy, we aren't smart enough or rich enough, strong enough or loved enough. Or perhaps we're not even loved at all. The hindrances in classical Buddhism, the Nivarana, are of five types. The first is sensual desires. The second is ill will or hatred. The third is laziness or drowsiness. The fourth is the extremes of excitement and depression, also known as worry and flurry. And the fifth is corrosive doubt, the kind of doubt that sends us back to bed. When the mind is disturbed by these hindrances, in the same way that sediment in a glass of water blocks the clarity of the water, the mind is not able to see the true nature of reality.

[29:17]

Even knowing that it's just sediment blocking our view, it takes persistence and a fair amount of time for lasting transformations to take place in our lives. Yet once we begin pecking, at the protective shell of self-clinging and self-belief, reality shows us the way out of the darkness of delusion and into the light of awakening, as it did for the newborn baby chick blinking in the sunlight, and as it did for Shakyamuni Buddha. Once our practice has allowed the mind to settle itself for a time, we will then be able to look quietly and deeply at the underlying system of beliefs and conditioning that supported the arising of the delusions in the first place. This is what the Buddha himself came to realize as he sat under the tree of awakening, that his mind had been unclear, unsettled, and confused, an upside-down world as he came to see it.

[30:21]

And with the sudden clearing of his mind, he saw the morning star, and he woke up. And then he said, I and all beings on earth together are enlightened at the same time. I and all beings on earth are enlightened at the same time. I and all beings are the light of the morning star, the grass and the trees, the birds and the elephants. And once we are able to see how hindrances too have no separate existence, just as our eyes, and the light of the stars have no separate existence, then the hindrances are no longer hindrances. When we can't find the hindrances, either outside or inside or somewhere in between, there is no thing left to fear. With a mind cleared of thingness and fearfulness, we are then able to turn our attention to what we humans, for a very long time,

[31:28]

have been taught to believe is true. What the Buddha called upside-down or inverted views. This is step two on the pathway of freedom from the prison of our own delusional thinking. The Buddha wanted more than anything to help get human beings out of their prisons and to never build them again, which is just what he had done at the moment of his own awakening, at which time he also said, Seeking but not finding the builder of this house, I traveled through rounds of countless births. Oh, how painful is birth over and over again. House builder, you have now been seen. You shall not build this house again. Your rafters have been broken down. Your ridge pole is demolished too. My mind has now attained the unformed nirvana and reached the end of every kind of clinging.

[32:28]

So when the Buddha said that my mind has now attained the unformed nirvana, he is telling us exactly where to look in order to demolish the walls of our prison. He is telling us to look at our mind. It's the mind that believes what it thinks and what it feels. The mind that designs protective devices for guarding our lives, our property, and our nation. For the Buddha, the underlying reason, the mind does this is called these four upside-down or inverted views, and that the four upside-down views are precisely those firm beliefs that are overturned upon awakening. Upside-down view number one is the firm belief in an independent self, a self that exists separately from the rest of reality, such as self-made person, as we say, Or as a child might say, I did this all by myself.

[33:33]

Upside down view number two is that the independent self firmly believes in the possibility of acquiring objects from out there, which are reliable, well-made, and designed to last forever. What we call ownership. My house, my car, my partner, my children, my life. The kind of ownership that will never end. In order to acquire those objects of our desires, the independent self takes whatever actions are needed in order to possess them, being convinced by upside-down view number three, that those objects will make them happy. And then finally, upside-down view number four, the firm belief that success in acquiring what we desire is the only true path. the everlasting joy and peace. I was wondering how these so-called upside-down views strike you as you hear them.

[34:39]

Don't they sound kind of normal in the world that we have been trained to live in? We have been taught a model of success that requires wealth, intelligence, or status. Failure is not an option. It's a fear. And yet once these views are turned right side up, which happens upon awakening, we begin to view reality as it truly is. Namely, right view number one, there is no self. Because all things are empty of independent existence, of being separate from everything else. There is no separate self. There is no separate anything. Right view number two, impermanence. Everything conditioned is impermanent. There are no reliable objects that will last forever. The polar ice caps are melting. The mountains are crumbling into the sea.

[35:44]

Right view number three, there is suffering. Everything produced by the pathological emotions of greed, hate, and delusion is suffering. There is no lasting happiness that can result from delusional or unwholesome acquisitions. And lastly, for the good news. Right view number four. Nirvana is true peace and freedom. Another name for Nirvana being utter contentment. Utter contentment. Freed from the obsessive desire to possess anything or anyone. So basically what all of this uprighting of views does is to help us to see how our suffering is arising from illusions, albeit at times very sad or very frightening illusions, and yet it is only by the dispelling of illusions, such as the four upside-down views, that we can ever become truly free.

[36:48]

Beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana. Nirvana being the experience of liberation itself in which the mind is no longer seen as separate from the body or from the earth, the water, or the sky. Where this place no longer is seen as separate from that place or from any place else. And most importantly, where your suffering is no longer seen as separate from mine. We are in this together. From the beginninglessness to the endlessness of time. The non-abiding nirvana of the Zen tradition is one in which the Buddha, through great wisdom, does not dwell in the suffering of sentient beings, and through great compassion does not dwell in the cessation of suffering for the sake of sentient beings. So where does the Buddha dwell? The Buddha dwells right here, in this place where we are and have always been.

[37:54]

the place of meeting and sharing our hearts with one another, the place where we can feel safe enough and strong enough and smart enough just to be ourselves. And even though we can't say or know what our self really is, we can say and know that we are here to help and to live the vow of the Bodhisattvas for the sake of all living beings. One day, Yan Shuang called to his assistant, bring me the rhinoceros fan. The assistant said, it's broken. Yan Shuang said, in that case, bring me the rhinoceros. Thank you very much. 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 received. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[38:55]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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