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. This is nice. I think I've said that before. This is the best seat in the house. Here you are, here we are. I work as a hospice chaplain. Today I visited one of my favorite patients. We do have favorites. a man I've been visiting for a long time.

[01:00]

He said many months ago, he put forth the proposition that life is sad because everybody dies. And we've been talking about that. I've been trying to see the hole in the argument. So I bring it up from time to time. We talk about it again. Today I understood him to be saying that that death is sad because life is so wonderful. So I'm so happy that that's true for him and I hope it's true for all of us and I hope that we can know how wonderful life is before we're bedridden on hospice. This has been the challenge of my life and this has been one of the primary questions of my practice. How can I see how wonderful life is?

[02:03]

It hasn't been easy. In a famous statement years ago, I heard Mel say, you know the way everything is all sparkly and crystal beautiful on day four of Sashin? Well, it's always that way. So there's a wonderful... and to cut through the anxiety and depression and see how everything is sparkly and wonderful. So that's my invitation. The story I meant to start with is last Saturday when you were having your very quiet one day sitting. I'm a sewing teacher here thanks to Blanche. Blanche managed to, she's managed to clone a few of us And I'm certainly one of those. And it's one of the joys of my life to be a sewing teacher. So I teach sewing every other Saturday afternoon.

[03:06]

So although there was a one-day sitting, we were having sewing class. And it happened that I was on the line for the bathroom when you were on break. So I saw some of you. But I was good, man. I was quiet. But the guy in line in front of me, as you can see, I'm wearing a new robe. It's... It's so new because Myogen Roshi was kind enough to give me Dharma transmission at Tassahara last April. April 21st, 22nd, something like that. So the man who was on the bathroom line in front of me had been at Tassahara during that week. And he'd seen me in the bliss realm. And I'd seen him since I was back and he's like, how's that bliss realm going? still here. So when I saw him on the bathroom line, he's still in the bliss realm. I'm like, no. So, yeah, so he laughed too.

[04:09]

Like, it's funny. He laughed, and of course he said to me, everything changes. So this is one of the greatest, one of my favorite Suzuki Roshi stories. that in the zendo at Tassahara, David Chadwick asked Suzuki Roshi, you know, excuse me, teacher, but could you kind of sum it all up for me? I've really been trying to understand what you're talking about, and I know you're a great teacher, but what is Buddhism? Could you help me here? And everyone laughed except Suzuki Roshi, who took it seriously. And Suzuki Roshi's answer was, everything changes. So there's my friend in the line in the bathroom. Everything changes. I love that story because it sums up my whole dharma life. First, the bliss realm. Nothing wrong with being in the bliss realm. Very important to have time in the bliss realm.

[05:12]

But the problem is when clinging arises. And after I'd been back for a while and I was still in the bliss realm, even with my co-workers and stuff, I forgot and I thought I had it. I thought I'd found a place to stand. I thought I wasn't going to suffer anymore. This is great! But then when I found myself in that familiar state, restless, irritable discontent, Most of the people I met, you know, I was not in that state of I love everybody anymore. Why are you so stupid? But what I found when I felt myself in that old familiar anxiety state was I saw my mind darting around like a silverfish in a box looking for, not for an out, but a place to hide.

[06:13]

I could go to a movie. I could read a book. I could call somebody. I thought that was so interesting. And I stopped and I said to myself, I think what you've been told is to not turn away. I know. That's what I've been told repeatedly. Return to the breath a thousand times a day and don't turn away from what's going on. So we've had clinging and then we've had suffering. Suffering is the gap between the way things are and the way I think they should be. And the way things were in that story was I was human. The way I thought they should be was I was an Arhat. Rolling around heaven all day, looking down, being kind, but...

[07:15]

Suffering lies in the gap between the way things are and the way I think that they should be. So we have clinging and we have suffering. And the funny thing in that story is I instinctively did something that I was taught to do in my first week of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I reached out and helped somebody. I thought of a patient who'd been discharged from our service because she's too healthy. Get her out of here. She's too healthy. But she still was alone. She still was suffering. She still had nobody stuck in a bed. So it just entered my mind. Oh, you have a little extra time. Why don't you go see her? And I, you know, I came out of there and the suffering, my suffering, was resolved. So that's the story I bring. I haven't been a person who finds Zazen particularly easy.

[08:24]

I am a person who responded to the teachings the first time I heard them, and I came and sat a lot of Zazen to hear more of the teachings. But I have to say that Zazen, what Zazen teaches us, what it's taught me about myself, who I am, I like to say, I'm this little petri dish. And if I sit in zazen and I watch this mind and I watch this body, I watch these reactions, and I get that quiet and I watch some more, I'm learning what it is to be human, and that's what I need to know. And, oh boy, here is, this is the best. This is Kodo Sawaki. being glared at by Zazen, being scolded by Zazen, being obstructed by Zazen, being pulled around by Zazen, weeping the whole time away. This has got to be the happiest way of life.

[09:27]

I think Greg Fane has that embroidered on a jacket. So I believe in Zazen for getting me out of these pickles. Many of you, of course, since I came back from this fabulous, fabulous Dharma transmission event, everybody wants to know, how was it? How are you? So here's some stories about that, how it was. The problem in talking about some of these things, of course, is that words can't touch them. So... The invitation is really, keep sitting, and the next thing you know, you'll be at Tassahara getting Dharma Transmission. I mean, that's how it works. And then you'll experience this bliss realm. Put in your hours on the Zafu. Dharma Transmission is, this is about vow. So we come here, we're going to take some vows at the end of this talk.

[10:33]

We're going to take the four vows. And whether you've been here for 40 years or whether you're brand new, it's the same vow. It's always the same vow. And we're going to do it together. My experience is that the vow becomes more demanding as we move through these ceremonies and continue to take it. In Jukai, in lay ordination, we take our vow then. And that ceremony is called homecoming. And I resonate with that as a as a very lonely person, a person who's been looking for home. When I came here and I found you, I did find family. That has happened. So Jukai is the ceremony. And in the ceremony, we stand up in front of the world and we say, I'm really going for this. In fact, I was kind of surprised. I made Jukai with Myogun Roshi in 96 at the... Old Fig Zendo in San Rafael, and I was a little surprised after to learn that that meant I was a Buddhist.

[11:34]

But I got with it. Okay, I'll be a Buddhist. Then many of us get the idea, I'd like to ordain. I'm really getting serious about this. I'd like to ordain. I really want to devote my life to this. I want to wear a Buddhist robe. That is called, that ceremony is called home leaving. Now, whoa, that just got a lot more serious. Because again, you know, maybe wearing the blue raka suit, finding all of you, learning the forms, falling in love with being scolded by zazen, how maybe things have become sort of comfortable. And now it's time for home leaving, for truly learning what it means to have no place to stand. for learning about a life of service. Because when I say vow, the vow that I'm talking about, the vow that all of our promises and vows boil down to, is helping others, being of service.

[12:40]

So we'll hear it as saving all beings, serving all beings. That's the vow. So when you put on a priest's okesa, I received ordination from Blanche. It was Tova and me. And we were sitting back alone in the dining room listening to Blanche's Dharma talk that morning. And I heard Blanche say to a room full of people, and if anybody sees one of these women doing something that's not priest-like, you should point it out to her. I was ready to run in here and say, wait a minute. But it's true. This is a gift that we give each other. So you have homecoming, and then you have home leaving, and then you have dharma transmission. So dharma transmission, Brown, received dharma transmission.

[13:42]

Dharma transmission means that my teacher has said that I'm a teacher. That's the simplest expression of what it means. preparing for Dharma transmission, I would come up and read Dogen with Myogen every few weeks. And this was wonderful. This was wonderful. But true to my nature, at some point in that process, I stopped and I said to him, why do I have to do this? You know, this is really, we're going to a lot of trouble here. And it's really... it was dawning on me the amount of responsibility that I was agreeing to. Why do I have to do this? I always stop before anything wonderful and say, why are you making me do this? So his answer was, so you can become one of the ancestors. So that sounded pretty good.

[14:46]

And I, okay, okay, let's keep sewing and studying and So the ceremony, when you make chukai or become priest ordained, all your friends come and you walk through the door and the ceremony is an hour or two long and it's wonderful and everybody is so happy and they all come and I take your photographs and then we have a cookie. Dharma transmission, when we were down at Tosahara, I was standing on the porch of my scriptorium and I a man walked up and he said, when's the ceremony? And I said, this is it. You're standing in it. There is no public, yes, I promise I will. The ceremony is actually three weeks long. For the first two weeks, I continued living in my apartment and doing my job, but I chanted the names of the Buddhas and ancestors.

[15:52]

including the women ancestors, every morning before I went to work. And the new thing was that instead of the way that we chant them during service, la-la-la-la-dayo-sho, la-la-la-la-dayo-sho, la-la. There's a lot of ceremony around each name, and there was enough time for me to understand that each of these people Each of these names is a person. It's not just foreign words on a piece of paper. It's a person just like me, and it's a person who has suffered like me and understands my suffering. And it's a person who's come to the Dharma on her knees begging for help and received that help just like me. So in that spirit, four of us went down to Tassajara Myogun, me, and Miyoki was his assistant.

[16:52]

I had a jisha for the week. I couldn't believe it. Her job is to do what you say. Yeah. For a week. And my jisha was Christine Palmer, my old Dharma sister from our old Zen center in San Rafael. And Greg Fane, the tanto at Tassajara, was with us about half time. And it was our full-time job to do this ceremony for a week. And we all worked very hard. One of my favorite memories and stories. The day I got there, I went down to the baths, of course. I fell in the courtyard the day before and had really injured my lower back, so... Mimi's gift of Arnica and the baths at Tassajara got me through. So I went to the baths, and these two naked young ladies who I didn't know came up to me and said, We're so excited about your ceremony.

[18:02]

I said, Oh, thank you, young ladies. And they said, We've been setting up the scriptorium all day. So it was like that. We were all really excited. The reason I needed a scriptorium is because there's a lot of lettering, the names of the Buddhas and ancestors, and some other things too, with Sumi ink on white silk and a little bit of whiteout. So for days, and really inadequately prepared, I was in my scriptorium and writing the names of the Buddhas and ancestors and other stuff. When we were studying up here, Myogen showed me a document that had the names of the women ancestors in a very nice form. And actually, in that event, I understood that transmission was just going to be the men. And as I have from time to time, I said, teacher, I don't think I can do that.

[19:07]

And as he has usually done, he said, okay, we'll figure something out. So I was chanting the names of the women ancestors. And in my scriptorium for days and days and days, I prepared my documents. And that was great. It was great. And there were a lot, it was work period at Tassahara, a lot of people from Saturday Sangha, a lot of people I knew. The support, the support is actually one of the things I have no words for. And it's the support from the people and it's the support from the planet. It's the support from Tassajara itself. So when I'd finished all of this, then it was time to do the sheet for the women ancestors. And I turned to him and he turned to me. And you do all this from a template. It's like, well, where's the template? And we didn't have one.

[20:08]

And by that time, gosh... You know, I was disappointed. But I was also kind of, I don't have to work in this scriptorium anymore. It's about 50-50. And Steve went into the abbot's cabin, and he came back out, I don't know how long it was, with a template for the women ancestors for me to do. All of these documents go into the little bag that you may have seen hanging on some teacher's walls. And so mine has this extra sheet with the women. And not only the women, and it's the women we chant in the morning. These are the ancestors we know. This is the best we can do. This is great. But he added Ruth Fuller.

[21:09]

Very important, yep. Turn of the century woman, Buddhist. Maureen Stewart, Roshi. Joshin San is there. And Jishu Kenet is there. And Blanche is there. So I always think I'm trailblazing, but I think it's important to tell this story because others are coming up to transmission too, and I want to talk about this. possibility. I also offer that story as a demonstration of how we are doing something that is ancient and we're also doing something that's brand new. This is us. This is us. The Buddhas and ancestors are us. And we can, we can, it can mold to who we are. So we have... I mean, it's wonderful.

[22:17]

We have zazen glaring at us. We have precepts. We're given precepts. We're given a moral compass. We take the precepts in the ceremonies. We have ritual, ancient and modern. There is some secret stuff that happens in the week at Tassajara that was... just mind-blowing. And we did one little ceremony late at night. It's really cool. It's like we wait till everybody goes to bed and then we sneak into the red room and do this ceremony. And after we all have a cup of tea because we're so tired from all this ceremony-ing. And I said to Steve, I wonder how old that ceremony is. And Steve said, well, it's about two hours. So it's like that too. For me, everything that I've been talking about is connection. Sometimes I find the best dharma on my refrigerator.

[23:25]

I don't know how long it's been up there. This is Joko Beck. The underlying attitude or knowledge that we're not separate creates a fundamental shift in our emotional life. That knowledge means that whatever happens, we're not especially disturbed by it. Having the knowledge doesn't mean we don't take care of problems as they arise. We're really not our hots rolling around in heaven. However, we no longer inwardly say, Oh, this is awful. Nobody else has the troubles I have. It's as if our understanding cancels out such reactions. So again, the underlying attitude or knowledge that we're not separate creates a fundamental shift in our emotional life. But it's really hard to know that we're not separate, isn't it? I've been hearing this for a long time, but it's really hard to know it. But once we know it, we have an opportunity to live it, to live this way, to live like my friend who's dying, who says...

[24:36]

that it's not that life is sad because everybody dies, it's that death is sad because we are, because life is so wonderful and life is nothing but us being connected. I think that's what I have and I'm so happy because I, for once, have left time for questions and answers. So I hope that somebody has something that they'd like to talk about. because that's the most fun part. Please. Good, thank you.

[25:55]

You've busted me. Thank you very much. Did everybody hear the question? This is so important. She said that the way I put it forth is you start out as a lay person, and then when you get serious, you go ahead and ordain. Yes, and thank you, because the tradition of lay practitioners that's developing at San Francisco Zen Center, the tradition of lay people receiving dharma and trustment is so immense, and it's so important. I think the best answer that I... the best way I can defend myself, I'm so glad you brought that forth, is to say... we all take the same vow. The robes are a different color, and in some cases they're a different style, but we're all taking the same vow. We're all making the same promise.

[26:57]

My experience is increasingly that I think I'm taking a vow, but what's happening is the vow is taking me And I've likened it to being a little surfer on a tsunami wave. I'm the little surfer and the vow is the wave. I think I'm taking a vow and the vow takes me. My experience is that as I have left home, and it's too soon to say about transmission, I don't know. I just love my new brown robe, what can I tell you? My experience is that when I stepped forth in front of a large group of people and took the priest vows, that the vow took me bigger. People who choose not to priest ordain and who receive Dharma entrustment, I'll never know what it's like to be one of them, and I didn't hear that panel.

[28:03]

But thanks for bringing it forth. It's all the same vow. And it's, oh, please, it's not better than... And I actually, when I first priest ordained, I thought that wearing an okesa was like a badge of honor and that everyone would respect me or something. And no. No. Ordination is an invitation. Dharma transmission is an invitation. It's not a finish, it's a start. So thanks for reminding me to say those things. What's your name? It's nice to meet you, Abby. My name is Moran. I don't remember a struggle.

[29:14]

I remember always wanting it. But that's because I had the misconception that it was a reward. Serious misconception. Some time into my being ordained as a priest, when I would go into Dokusan with my teacher, Myogun Roshi, I realized I was trying to look weller than I am so that I could get dharma transmission. So when I understood what I was doing, I told him, we're not going to talk about dharma transmission when I realized I was trying to earn it. And then a few of my friends received transmission and I actually saw what it did to them. I was reminded of the way that these ceremonies transform us. And I want all the transformation I can get. Thank you.

[30:17]

Valerie. Why do you think something died in the Red Room? I'm not the same person who got up this morning. I think the Red Room is a womb. I don't think it's a tomb. I think it's a womb. I think that something was born in the Red Room and it's too young for me to define it yet. But let's keep talking about it. I always enjoy your questions, Valerie. What's your name? My name is Miguel. Miguel, hi. I'm still struggling with the life and death and sadness part because I can't help but think that there are people whose lives are short and brutal and painful and there are more worsen people whose lives are just entirely pain.

[31:36]

It's like a contradiction to me. I'm not young enough to think that everybody gets to live full life, but I still don't understand. I don't understand why... Why does it have to be so hard? Yeah. Thank you. That's... Why do bad things happen to good people? So, sometimes we say, in Zen, we don't answer the why question. So I'm going to tell you another story. After I met with that patient, I had a conversation with someone who works in the facility. And she said, I need to vent. I said, wait, let me find a chair. And her venting was about her boss. We talked about that a bit.

[32:38]

And so I heard myself saying to her, the spiritual life means... that no matter what our circumstance is, we find a way of being comfortable with it. We find a way of first accepting it and then being comfortable with it. But another thing that I've been talking about with my patient was the suffering we see. People who are out of work, out of their homes, is an example that he likes. So while I was saying to her, no matter what our circumstance is, we accept it and find a way to be comfortable with it. Those people crossed my mind. And I was thinking, Ren, are you sure? Or is this really, is this the luxury of a person who has the physical realm pretty well under control?

[33:38]

Could be. As a hospice chaplain, I'm faced with an enormous amount of, wow. But the suffering that I see is lack of self-knowledge, is ignorance. It really is. It makes life so much harder. So once again, zazen. The key to self-knowledge, and anyone can do that. I was saying to the woman who works in the facility, really, you should try meditation. She's, no, no, no, it's not that serious. LAUGHTER Nobody wants to meditate. Meditation is for the desperate. So I appreciate your question and I struggle with it too. I hope... I hope that I'm not so tested. I hope I can just go on saying, well, I just accept. But that is an opportunity for another...

[34:43]

of Suzuki Roshi's explanations of what Buddhism is, and this was to his wife, his wife-to-be, when she said, what's Buddhism? He said, accepting what is as it is and helping it to be its best. So that comes back to that service piece It's not accepting, okay, that's the way things are. But there's a lot more vitality in accepting what is as it is and helping it to be its best. As there is in your perfect just as you are and there's room for improvement. We always get both sides of that coin. Thanks. One more? Yeah. Hi, Mimi. It's an extreme practice.

[36:05]

It's the silverfish in the box and letting the silverfish be the silverfish and bounce here and there. But I don't know what else there is to do because you and I have both tried, you and I have both really tried changing things to suit us and we know it doesn't work. And so what else is there to do but to continue to co-arise with the 10,000 things? and watch them and watch our minds. A continuous story in which I'm always either winning or losing, which is always creating separation. All this comparison, all this judgment, winning and losing. This is... I came to Zen Center truly desperate.

[37:33]

Last house on the block. The only thing I hadn't done was meditate. Because with a mind like mine, you wouldn't meditate either. And I came here and I thought, I'll be a temple priest forever. I've got it made. I'll be the Eno in no time. I ended up, I think I've been out about five years. When it was time for me to leave, it was like, well, I could live the vow of saving all beings working at Starbucks, or I could be a hospice chaplain. Let's see. So the life that I have now, this going around and talking to people, my job, I like to say, it gives me a front row seat on what it is to be human. Very, very precious. And sometimes helpful. I don't know what my hit rate is. Say three times a week, I'm helpful.

[38:34]

So this has been really fun. Really precious. Really, thank you for your attention. Many times I've sat in this room on a Wednesday night and pretended I was concentrating. So there are a lot of open eyes. I appreciate that. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:20]

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