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The Three Minds of the Tenzo
8/11/2007, Jeffrey Schneider dharma talk at City Center.
The talk explores teachings of Dogen Zenji, focusing on the Tenzo Kyokun and the concepts of joyful mind, kind mind, and great mind. It discusses the practice as both a spiritual and practical endeavor, emphasizing inner transformation and the capacity for awakening. There is an exploration of the nature of freedom within Zen practice, the integration of great insights into daily life, and the concept of grandmotherly heart, illustrating the importance of compassion and care for all beings and the earth. The talk concludes by discussing the essence of practice and the bodhisattva vow.
Texts and References:
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Dogen Zenji's "Tenzo Kyokun": Explains practical instructions for the head cook in a Zen monastery and emphasizes the integration of spiritual practice in daily tasks through joyful, kind, and great mind.
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The Six Realms of Buddhist Cosmology: Compares the benefits and challenges of the human realm in contrast to other realms, highlighting its potential for awakening.
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Bodhisattva Vow: A commitment to compassionately save and learn to love all beings, as an underlying motivation for practice.
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"Shobogenzo" by Dogen Zenji: Contains discussions on the essence of life and practice, including an emphasis on cultivating grandmotherly heart.
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Teachings of Suzuki Roshi: Stresses that practice, including Zazen, should not lead to excessive busyness or stress but should be balanced and integrated into life.
AI Suggested Title: Awakening Through Compassionate Practice
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 by people like you. All right. So good morning, everybody, and thank you for coming. My name is Jeffrey Schneider and I'll be giving the talk today. I introduce myself because oftentimes people come for the first time or what have you and have no idea who the speaker is. So some of us have been doing for the past few days a retreat where we've been sitting together and studying the works of Dogen Zenji. Dogen Zenji was the founder of this particular stream of Zen in 13th century Japan. Before I say a little bit more about him, though, I'd like to say how grateful I am to have been given the opportunity to be part of this retreat and to lead it.
[01:10]
It always helps me if I have to teach because it means that I have to learn. And I was thinking this morning what a wonderful opportunity and how grateful I am for the possibility of doing this sort of thing. I think that in any life where we have the opportunity to practice, we have incredible riches. And so I particularly want to thank the practice committee for allowing me to lead the retreat, but also everybody who was part of it, and particularly the work leader, Colin, who did all the hard parts. So thank you all. So for those of you who don't know who Dogen is or was, he was a, as I said, 13th century Japanese monk who in his 20s went to China to study and came back after having studied in a monastery there and having had an enlightenment experience or an awakening experience and came back to share that with his countrymen in Japan.
[02:21]
which he did. At the time, his approach was pretty revolutionary. Dogen, for those of you who know him, will know that he has quite a reputation. And his reputation is somewhat mixed. He has the reputation of being a brilliant writer and poet, which he was, a religious thinker and philosopher, you know, right up there with very few people who have ever lived, a religious reformer, a founder, somebody who has a profound influence to this day. You know, here at Zen Center, he has a profound influence on us every day, I would say. He also has a less fortunate reputation of being somewhat dogmatic, humorless, and a bit of a grouch. And anybody who has read his writings will have to agree that indeed this was part of the whole man.
[03:28]
In his defense, it's worthwhile to say that he was trying to do something that nobody had ever done, and he was sort of bucking against the stream. So you have to fight a little harder and perhaps push your own ideas a little harder than you might have to do if you weren't trying to establish them. Whatever he was, he was a complete person, just as each of us is. So while his pricklier side is indisputable, we've been trying to look this past couple of days at some of the things that might be a little bit softer about him and might be a little bit more applicable to the layperson of the 21st century in this country. I mean, we're separated by a vast gulf of time and language and culture. So to find out what Dogen says, you know, so many years ago in a culture so different from ours, in a language that doesn't even share the same language family, is quite amazing.
[04:40]
And one of the things that I'd like to talk about today or to look at today is, comes from his writing called the Tenzo Kyokun. The Tenzo Kyokun is the instructions to the head cook. And Dogen was very concerned about how we do things on a day-to-day basis. Not just how we do things in the meditation hall or how we do things when we're doing specifically religious or spiritual activities, but how we actually do things in our... daily life. And so he wrote an extensive work on how the head cook should perform his or her duties. And I will read another short thing written by somebody else about him towards the end of Dogen's life.
[05:43]
At the end of the Tenzo Kyokun, these instructions to the head cook, Dogen says this. In performing your duties along with the other officers and staff, you should maintain joyful mind, kind mind, and great mind. So I'd like to look at what he says about joyful mind, kind mind, and great mind one at a time. I'll just read them. as they come. So he says, joyful mind is the mind that rejoices. You should think, if I were born in the realm of the gods, I would be attached to pleasure, and would not arouse the aspiration for enlightenment, nor have the opportunity to practice, then how could I cook food to offer to the three treasures? The three treasures are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The most excellent of all things are the three treasures, Even Indra's virtue cannot be compared to them, nor can that of a wheel-turning king, Indra being the head of the gods and a wheel-turning king being a universal monarch.
[06:52]
Regulations for Zen monasteries state, respected in the world, quiet and secluded from daily affairs, pure and unconditioned, these qualities belong most of all to the community of monks. We are fortunate to be born in the human realm, and even beyond this we have the fortune of the good fortune of cooking meals to be offered to the three treasures. Is this not a great causal relationship? We should be most grateful for this. You should also think, if I were born in hell, in the realms of the hungry ghosts, beasts or demons, or if I were born in the eight difficult situations, I could not with my own hands cook pure meals to offer to the three treasures, even if I were to use amongst miraculous powers. This is so because it would be my destiny to be a vessel of suffering, with body and mind bound up. But since you are cooking pure meals in this lifetime, this is a life of rejoicing and a body of rejoicing. It is a wholesome cause from limitless eons. It is merit that does not erode.
[07:56]
I hope you will do your work and cook the meal this very day, at this very moment, with this body, the fruit of myriad births and thousands of lifetimes, thereby creating merit for myriad beings. To penetrate this is joyful mind. Even if you become a wheel-turning king, there will be no merit if the meal you cook is not an offering to the three treasures. Your effort will be like bubbles or vanishing flames. So I like this a lot. I like the fact that he emphasizes the idea of joy in our lives and joy in our work. And he talks about how fortunate we are to be born in the human realm. Well, in the Buddhist cosmography... Cosmology? Whatever. Beings are said to go through six realms. There's the various realms of the gods. There's the realm of the minor gods, sometimes called the Ashuras or the angry or jealous gods. There's the human realm.
[08:57]
There's the realm of animals. There's the realm of the hungry ghosts. And then there are the various hell realms. Now, they all have their own characteristics, but the human realm is characterized by two things. It is characterized in being the realm of work, and it is also characterized by being the realm in which beings can attain to awakening. So the lower realms are, as he says, too full of suffering to allow most beings to concentrate on the Dharma, and the upper realms are too... too bombarded with pleasures of every kind. So we have a nice mix here. It may not seem like it, but we do. And so he also says the work is joy when it is offered to the three treasures. So as I said, the three treasures are Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And let's look at that a little bit more closely. The Buddha is, of course, the Buddha. But the Buddha is also, I think, the capacity for awakening.
[10:00]
in each of us and by each of us. So when we sit down to do meditation, we sit down in the faith that we have everything we already need, that we don't have to go looking for it someplace else. That is our basic faith, I think, when we practice zazen, when we practice meditation. So this is Buddha. This is our faith in Buddha. And we offer and receive to Buddha from Buddha nourishment, food, practice. So, you know, when you're, you know, whether you're making a dinner for your friends or whether you're working in the Zen Center kitchen here or, you know, when you're making food, you're offering and receiving from Buddha to Buddha. And of course, you know, food is both real and also a metaphor. You know, everything we do where our work is an offering is food, is nourishment for others from Buddha to Buddha, Buddha giving and Buddha receiving.
[11:10]
The Dharma is the teaching of Buddhism specifically in this context, but it's also the things as it is, as Suzuki Goshi would say, things as they are. And things as they are, are conditioned by cause and effect. So... There's a chant that we do before meals. And frankly, I'm going to quote the earlier translation, which I like better because I think it works better in this context. But the earlier translation that we used was innumerable labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us. And there's a short version that you can use that I use like at home, which goes, we venerate the three treasures and give thanks for this food. the work of many people and the suffering of other forms of life. So whatever comes to us, and let's just stay with food. It can be anything. It can be the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, whatever.
[12:14]
But since we started, since we're looking at the Tenzo Kyokan, whatever comes to us in the form of food, of nourishment, comes to us through the labor and the suffering of innumerable beings. I was thinking about it this morning when we had semolina in the zendo for breakfast. And it is my least favorite cereal. And so I was thinking, but, you know, even semolina, you know, I was thinking of some, for some reason I had this vision of the wheat fields of Kansas, right? And people laboring in the sun to, you know, till the fields and plant the seeds and reap the wheat. And the wheat is, you know, taken to... mills to be ground. And, you know, innumerable labors. And not just the labors of the people, of course, who did the work, but the labor of all the people who did the work, you know, for however many centuries it takes to create something that ends up in my bowl.
[13:19]
All the men and women for centuries and centuries who tilled the earth and made grain come forth. helped grain to come forth. So that is the Dharma. We receive from the Dharma and we give to the Dharma. And in some ways, symbolically, we are offering to Buddha and Dharma. But with the Sangha, the community of those who practice, it's quite concrete. It's very direct. I can look out and I can see the Sangha because you're sitting in front of me and you can see around you, the people who are sitting all around you. So the question comes up, of course, who is Sangha and who shall we feed and what shall we have for dinner? Where do we draw the lines around our community to whom we are responsible and who is responsible to us? Who do we feed? Who do we feed?
[14:21]
Just our friends, just the people we know, just the people we like. Who do we nourish and how do we nourish them? In another writing by Dogen, he talks about the four methods of guidance, which are kind speech, beneficial action, identity action, seeing self and other as the same, and one other thing that's probably real important, but I've forgotten it. So there are many ways that we nourish each other. But it's a question. One of the things we were talking about during the... The retreat is, you know, we talked a little bit about wealth, money, stuff. And, you know, what is our relationship to nourishment, to wealth, to money, to the things that we have? And who gets some and who doesn't get some? We didn't come to any hard and fast conclusions, but, you know, it's...
[15:24]
We did, I think, agree that it's something of a question. It's like a koan that we have to be constantly asking ourselves. Who deserves to be nourished by me? Who doesn't deserve to be nourished by me? So in Buddhism, you know, we start by looking at suffering. So the first noble truth is about the nature of suffering in our lives. So it seems that we might skimp on the joy part a little bit, which is why I particularly wanted to talk about it today. joyful mind. But in the sutras, in other places in the sutras, it talks about the Buddhist disciples being known to their contemporaries by their joyful faces, by the look of joy about them. And I think that that's really important. If our practice does not inspire joy in us, then we need to look at it perhaps a little bit more closely and ask ourselves why. If it's a dour sort of thing, you know, we have to ask ourselves why that is, because it doesn't have to be.
[16:28]
And, you know, also when the Buddha talked about suffering, he said that the five skandhas, the five components of the human, form, feeling, perception, karmic formations, and consciousness, are suffering when they are... by clinging, when they're grasping. So he's not saying that everything in our lives is suffering and that every component of ourselves is suffering, but only when we mistake what is fleeting for what we can make permanent, when we try to cling to something. So if there is no clinging, there is no suffering. Most of us, when we see a beautiful sunset, are content to enjoy it and to let it go because we know that that's the nature of the sunset. When we see a beautiful flower and we have one in a vase, you know, we enjoy it, but we know that, you know, within a few days or a week, you know, it's going to be gone.
[17:32]
And perhaps we enjoy it more because of that. Or perhaps we wish it could stay just a little bit longer. But we know, we instinctively know that these are things to be let go of. And yet... we cling to so many other things that have exactly the same nature of that and thereby cause ourselves suffering. So what the Buddha is suggesting is that our suffering comes when we cling to things that cannot be clung to, when we try to make things permanent that are by their very nature temporary, and when we seek for an abiding state of affairs in something which is by its very nature non-abiding. letting go of this kind of clinging and these kind of expectations frees us to see the joy and the beauty in all things. And it's kind of like food, once again. You can only eat the meal once, unless you have acid reflux.
[18:37]
But over and over again, We're offering and being offered, receiving and giving over and over again. And we're transforming. We're transforming that which we are given into the stuff of our lives over and over again. And this can be a joyful process if we give, if we receive without expectation, without expecting it to be something other than it is. The next one in line is kind mind, but I want to save that for last and you'll see why. So first I'll read great mind. Great is sometimes translated as big mind or magnanimous mind in other translations. In this one here it's great mind. Great mind is a mind like a great mountain or a great ocean. It does not have any partiality or exclusivity. You should not regard a pound as light or a ton as heavy.
[19:41]
Do not be attracted by the sounds of spring or take pleasure in seeing a spring garden. When you see autumn colors, do not be partial to them. You should allow the four seasons to advance in one viewing and see an ounce and a pound with an equal eye. In this way, you should study and understand the meaning of great. If the Tenzo of Mount Jia had not studied the word great, he would not have awakened senior foo by laughing at him. If Zen Master Guishan had not understood the word great, he would not have blown the unlit firewood three times. If Prince Dongshan had not known the word great, he would not have taught a monk by saying three pounds of hemp. You should know that these great masters all studied the word great over hundreds of matters. Thus they brought forth the great shout of freedom, expounded the great principle, penetrated the great question, trained a great student, and in this way completed the single great matter. The things about Guishan and Dongshan, these are just Zen awakening stories, enlightenment stories.
[20:48]
I'm not going into them, but you get the idea that these particular Zen teachers needed to understand the word great. So, you know, great, I think he gives us a little bit of a hint when he's talking about what he means here. Like a great mountain or a great ocean, it does not have any partiality or exclusivity. So this great mind is the mind that can include everything without partiality. So he says, don't be attached to a spring garden. Well, a spring garden is beautiful and we love it, but it would not be possible or appropriate to live in the spring forever. There'd be no fruit. The colors of autumn are beautiful. but they can't stay on the trees forever. So this great mind is a mind of equanimity. And there's something to be said about equanimity that I think is very important.
[21:51]
Equanimity is one of the so-called three divine abodings. And in the literature, along with compassion, kindness, and loving kindness, and sympathetic joy, and in the literature it talks about having both near and far enemies. So the near enemy of equanimity is like excitement and emotional upheaval, because that's the opposite. But the far enemy, or is that the near, that's the far enemy. The near enemy, excuse me, the near enemy is something that looks like equanimity but isn't, and that would be indifference or apathy. So when we're talking about equanimity, about having the great mind that includes everything, we're not talking about the mind that can't be moved. We're talking about the minds that accept things as they are, just as they are, beyond like or dislike, self or other, enlightenment and delusion. Things as they are, without the overlay of our stories on them.
[22:54]
And now, you know, it's pretty obvious that this is not a state of mind that we can sustain every day of our lives, every minute of our lives. It's something that may come to us in flashes, in moments. So we get to see for a moment the way things really are. What would it be like if I didn't have my judgments upon the world? What would it be like if I dwelt with a mind where everything could be included? What would it be like if I had no preferences just for this moment? This is the way things are. Obviously, in order to negotiate the world, we can't stay there. But it's important to have glimpses of those. And he talks about the great shout of freedom. And this is also joyful mind. And freedom is not just doing what we think we want all the time. I think we have this idea that in order to have freedom, you have to have a lot of money so nobody can tell you what to do and you can... If you want to go to Paris tomorrow or the Bahamas the next day, you can jump on your Learjet and do that.
[23:58]
And that's freedom. But that's not really so. The freedom that Dogen Zenji is talking about and the freedom that we find in Zen, in practice, is the freedom that the musician has or the artist has when she has fully mastered her medium. So a great artist can paint... because she knows all about color and all about form and all about the material she's using. A great musician can perform great music because he's practiced for hours and hours a day over years, and thereby has won this freedom within the art that he or she practices. And this is the kind of freedom that I believe that Dogen is talking about, this great shout of freedom, freedom within our own lives. Freedom within our own practice. And what these stories don't say is that these people who shout the great shout of freedom, like Guishan or Dongshan or the Tenzo of Mount Jia, it's not like they had this moment of clarity and then everything's okay for the rest of their lives.
[25:12]
It doesn't work like that. There really is no happily ever after. And what it doesn't tell you is that all these people have been, like, practicing for many years. And they have this opening, this insight. And the rest of their lives, perhaps, or for a very long time, their work is to integrate that insight into their lives. You know, a... I don't know if... I'm sure that some of you must practice an art. I don't know. Some of you are probably... painters or poets or musicians or dancers or whatever. And if you have been, then you'll know that at the beginning of any piece that you are creating, there's a momentary vision of how it would look in its entirety. And the work is trying to get as close to that as you possibly can. And to some extent, we always fail. And yeah, we've had that vision, that moment of completeness. And so that's what these openings are like.
[26:13]
That's what these openings are like with big mind. And if we don't have these great moments, these great epiphanies, it doesn't mean that our practice is wasted. It just means that we can't see what's going on. Dogen says in another place, Buddhas do not necessarily notice that they are Buddhas. We can take that to heart. I sometimes do. So maybe so and maybe no. And once again, this is another instance of where faith comes into our practice, which is also another whole lecture that I'll save for another time. So he also talks about kind mind. And I'll read you what he has to say here. Kind mind is parental mind. Just as parents care for their children, you should bear in mind the three treasures. Even poor or suffering people raise their children with deep love. Their hearts cannot be understood by others.
[27:16]
This can only be known when you become a father or a mother. They do not care whether they themselves are rich or poor. Their only concern is that their children will grow up. They pay no attention to whether they themselves are cold or hot, but cover their children to protect them from the cold or shield them from the hot sun. This is extreme kindness. Only those who have aroused this mind can know it, and only those who practice this mind can understand it. Therefore, you should look after water and grain with compassionate care, as though tending your own children. The great master Shakyamuni Buddha gave the final 20 years of his life to protect us in this age of the decline of learning. What was his intention? He offered his parental mind to us without expecting any result or gain. I think it's important to say that he expected no result or gain. You know, we can sometimes offer things quite generously without expecting any gain for ourselves, but we would like to see them have a result in other people.
[28:22]
And just to give for the sake of giving is quite different. When Dogen was dying... He spoke to one of his disciples named Gikai, and this is Gikai's part of what Gikai had to say. On the eighth day, seventh month, the fifth year of the Encho era, Master Dogen's disease recurred. I was very alarmed and went to see him. He said, come close to me. I approached his right side and he said, I believe that my current life is coming to an end with this sickness. In spite of everyone's care, I'm not recovering. Don't be alarmed by this. Human life is limited, and we should not be overwhelmed by illness. Even though there are ten million things that I have not clarified concerning the Buddha Dharma, still I have the joy of not having formed mistaken views and of genuinely maintaining the correct faith in the true Dharma.
[29:23]
The essentials of all these are not very different from what I have spoken of every day. This monastery is an excellent place. We may be attached to it, but we should live in accord with temporal and worldly conditions. In the Buddhadharma, any place is an excellent place for practice. When the nation is peaceful, the monastery supporters live in peace. When the supporters are peaceful, the monastery will certainly be at peace. You have lived here for many years, and you have become a monastery leader. After I die, stay in the monastery, cooperate with the monks and laity, and protect the Buddhadharma I have taught. If you go traveling, always return to this monastery. If you wish, you can stay in the hermitage. Shedding tears, I wept and said in gratitude, I will not neglect in any way your instructions for both the monastery and myself. I will never disobey your wishes. Then Dogen, shedding tears and holding his palms together, said, I am deeply satisfied. For many years I have noticed that you are familiar with worldly matters and that within the Buddha Dharma you have a strong way-seeking mind.
[30:29]
Everyone knows your deep intention, but you have not yet cultivated a grandmotherly heart. As you grow older, I'm sure you will develop it. Restraining my tears, I thanked him. At that time, head monk H.O. was present and heard this conversation. I have not forgotten the admonishment that I did not have a grandmotherly heart. However, I don't know why Dogen said this. Some years earlier, when I had returned to the Aheji Monastery, And gone to see him, he had given me the same admonition during a private discussion. So this was the second time I was told this. So Dogen, close to his death and perhaps the last time he would see this monk who had been studying him for many years, didn't say, you have to practice harder, you have to sit more zazen, you have to, you know, up, Hold yourself more upright. You have to... He said, you know, the most important thing for him to say at this moment was, you do not have grandmotherly heart.
[31:36]
But then not to discourage him, he said, I'm sure that in time you will develop it. So this was the most important thing. And I think that's very... It makes me like Dogen a lot better. I think it's very sweet. You know, the sweeter side of him comes apart, and I'm sure he must have had one. So when we read this thing about kind mind and grandmotherly heart, on one hand, it seems pretty obvious and sweet if we're talking about children. I mean, most people are sort of drawn to children and would go out of their way to protect them and such. But I think it's also interesting that he says we also need to protect and nourish the water and grain. In another place, he says you should treat the... pots and pans and the food in the monasteries that were your own eyes. So what we're looking at then is a concern that extends beyond the human.
[32:38]
So water and grain is basically the whole earth. The grain comes to us from the earth and the water is everywhere. And we have a charge to watch over the water and the grain and the whole earth with a grandmotherly heart, a parental heart, a kind heart. And this means paying close attention to how we use the things that are lent to us for the time being. Suzuki Roshi says... Oh, I love this story. If you go to Japan and see the Aheji Monastery, just before you enter, you will see a small bridge called Hanshukujoukyou, which means Half Dipper Bridge. When Dogenzenji dipped water from the river, he used only half a dipperful, returning the rest to the water again, to the river again, without throwing it away.
[33:43]
That is why we call the bridge Half Dipper Bridge. At Aheji, when we wash our face, we fill the basin to just 70% of its capacity. And after we wash, We empty the water towards rather than away from our body. This expresses our respect for the water. This kind of practice is not based on any idea of being economical. It may be difficult to understand why Dogen Zenji returned half of the water he dipped to the water. This kind of practice is beyond our thinking. And yet, perhaps not. I think that Dogen was expressing his gratitude to the river for giving him the water and returning it because it's only lent and there has to be some left for the people who come after us. So, you know, grain, water, food, none of this really is anything but a gift. It's all unearned and it cannot be purchased.
[34:45]
You know, you may think when you go down to the corner market and get a bag of apples and they ask you for, you know, X amount of money and you pull out your wallet that you're buying the apples. But actually you're not. There's no amount of money that you could possibly have or give that would pay for the apples. Pay for, you know, every apple is a perfect history of every apple that has ever gone before and a perfect history of human labor. You can't possibly pay for that. So the kind mind is associated with the great mind. in that there's nothing outside its regard and nothing outside its respect. How we treat the zendo here, how we treat the Buddha hall here, we're very careful about this. If you go down to the zendo or if you'll notice around the Buddha hall, you know that we try to keep it in sort of pristine condition. This is just the way we would ideally like to be able to treat every part of our life. There's a job in the temple called Anja, and that's the person who looks after the abbot.
[35:51]
And I had it once. It's a wonderful job because it allows you to treat one person as you would ideally like to treat every person in your life. And, you know, if there is no distinction between self and other, between giving and receiving, then serving is no problem. You know, we're not less and we're not greater. And so we cannot fail in respect and affection for this body and this mind, this poor mind. And I saved Kind Mind for last because I think it's the essence of practice. We were talking a little bit about the bodhisattva vow, the vow to save all beings. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. And one of the people in the practice, in the retreat, said that she had rewritten it to say, Beings are numberless. I vow to love them all. And I rather like that, or to learn to love them all, I suppose, in some of our cases. And so the bodhisattva vow is that which everything from our practice stems.
[36:57]
It's the most important thing in my idea. So I'd like to sort of go on a little limb here and be just a touch on what may be a little heretical. Just to liven things up a bit. You know, when Dogen is at the end of his life, when Dogen is talking about the most important thing, kind mind, joyful mind, great mind. Pardon? Giving is the fourth. Oh, that was the fourth. Yeah, okay. Thank you. But what he's talking about then is there are many places where Dogen talks about Zazen, and emphasizes the primacy of Zazen. But Zen is that school of Buddhism which emphasizes Zazen.
[38:02]
That's what the word Zen means. It means meditation. And so it's easy, I think, to develop a somewhat idolatrous relationship with Zazen. That Zazen is the end-all and the be-all, and it's going to kind of fix everything. And that's what we should be doing first, last, foremost, and only. And I think that this can be very discouraging for people who perhaps are involved in trying to maintain the kind mind of parents, literally, with children and jobs and such. And Suzuki Roshi says here somewhere. Oh, I like this. Zen is not something to get excited about. Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier. If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous. I think that if you try to do Zazen once a week, you will be busy enough. Do not be too interested in Zen.
[39:03]
Now, fortunately, the Tonto is asleep, so he didn't hear that. So I'm not trying to encourage, I'm not trying to encourage any resident to tell the Tanto that he only, she only has to sit thousand once a week. But what I am saying is that, you know, our practice should be a gift, both given and received. And it should not be something that we use to make ourselves feel like we're not doing enough. You know? It should be something that comes out of joyful heart, comes out of kind heart, and comes out of magnanimous or great heart. And if we practice these three minds, everything else is kind of icing on the cake. It really is. And if your practice brings you here to sit, that's a wonderful thing.
[40:09]
If your practice brings you here to live, where you can sit every day, that's a wonderful thing. Remember that what Dogen said at the end of his life to his disciple was, you know, you need to cultivate grandmotherly heart. And if we do that, you know, that will always stand us, I think, in good stead. So I finished talking now. And once again, I just want to express my true gratitude for being able to spend the last couple of days reading Dogen's energy, sitting with the people who were in the retreat, and feeling so well supported by the practice committee and everybody in the temple. So thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue the practice of giving by offering your financial help. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.
[41:10]
May all beings be happy.
[41:13]
@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.75