Thank you. Good evening. Just a moment to connect. How wonderful. Welcome. How's the sound? Maybe I'll... Try to bring the mic a little closer. How's that?

[12:52]

Any better? Yeah? Thoughts? More? How are we doing? Great. Special thanks to Luna for all the care that's gone into the sound system in the last 24 hours. Thank you very much. That segues pretty naturally into thank yous that I would like to begin with. Of course, everyone here, everyone online, customary, and I'm happy to do it, to thank the Tonto. And I actually want to, I feel moved tonight, actually, to thank my parents, my mom and dad in Central Texas, whose gifts I could just never repay. Ever. Like, what amazing things to raise a person.

[13:55]

I also want to acknowledge that there are a few of our community members who are not here tonight. We're having a board meeting elsewhere, taking care of the other half of what we do here. I think it's so important that the call that the life of activity and the life of stillness, that those work in balance in order for us to thrive as a community. So the topic for tonight is Dana, the practice of giving, the first of the perfections. And the title that I've thought of for this talk is three bolts of silk or three rolls of silk. We're going to talk about a story. A collection of koans that Dogen Zenji put together. Must have been early 13th century Japan. And much like the well-known koan collections, he seems to have amassed a pretty large collection of his own and then commented on it.

[15:04]

This is a story called Guishan's Gift. And the beginning goes like this. Lei Shan said to Yang Shan, I have a lei student who gave me three rolls of silk to buy a temple bell in order to bestow happiness upon the people of the world. I have a student who gave me three rolls of silk to buy a temple bell in order to bestow happiness upon the people of the world. And his student, Yang Shan, Kind of a tenacious, insightful, penetrating student is Yongshan. And he asks an apt question. When the student brought you the silk for the temple bell, what did you give him in return? So we'll unpack this beginning of the story and the rest of the story, but I kind of want to begin with a little bit of a caveat, and that is,

[16:14]

The practice of dana, the practice of giving, it's actually so simple. We've been doing it since we were children, giving things. It's like, I have something, give it to Ellen. We just did giver, receiver, and gift. It's amazing. So we've been practicing it for a long time, and I don't want our talk about it actually to complicate that practice. It's so simple. Buddha is known to have said, if people knew, as I know, the benefit of giving and sharing, they wouldn't eat without having shared their food. They wouldn't eat if they knew the benefits of giving and sharing. And so in the teachings, to give, the practice of giving, of course it leads us onward, happy destinations and bright futures, but the Maybe less obvious, the practice of giving, the mental posture of giving actively directs our mind toward freedom.

[17:23]

As with other parts of the Dharma, they say a child of five can practice it. Or excuse me, a child of five can say it. But can we practice it? So I want to tell you a little story. And this is a Christmas story in a place that is hot and muggy during Christmas time. And that is central Texas. And I was living in a small town that's known for its outlet malls. People would come from other states, other parts of the state, like all over the country. They would like flock to this little town to buy stuff at this outlet mall. And I was there with a friend Christmas time. And I had my little list and I was reporting to my friend.

[18:29]

You know, I've got, I need to buy a gift for this person. I need to buy a gift for this person, this, this, this, this. And what I saw on his face, his response, because he was a good enough friend to like, just admonish me a little bit. I got the, I got the equivalent of the raised eyebrow. Like, yeah. what he heard was I was giving out of obligation. It was like totally just a chore that I was doing. I may as well have been mopping the floor or something. I had a lot to learn about giving, giving and sharing. Fast forward to about 10 years later, and by this time I've done a fair amount of sitting practice, but I still didn't totally get giving. It's like, why is this so important to the practice? Why is this talked about so much? Why is it the most important? Paramita. And I want to tell you about the moment where something kind of shifted for me.

[19:33]

I was spending about a week in a Burmese monastery in another state. Here in the States, in a Burmese monastery. And by then I totally got sitting. It's like, oh, sitting, that's where the freedom happens. My mind in sitting is when, like, that is how freedom happens, right? Like, I totally got that part. And I got monks get to sit. That's great. That's great. But part of what I didn't get was the relationship between the monks in this traditional monastery and the laity and how there was this, like, there was this mutual care there was like a symbiosis between the laity and the monks and the moment that this registered for me really for the first time it was um it was a morning and it was uh an alms round all the monks were lined up in the in the sort of drive the beautiful like silk robes on and this big alms bell or alms bowl

[20:47]

The monks are standing there, and there's this young Burmese man, and he has this tiny pinch of rice, just this little pinch of rice, and he's reaching to put it into the bowl, into the monk bowl. If I could convey the joy on this person's face, in that moment of seeing him hand over just this little bit of rice, it was like, his whole heart was just a glow. He was so joyful in this moment of just offering a little bit of rice, right? A tiny gift, but it was palpable. It was palpable. And it wasn't just him. It was like he was lit up, but he was with his whole family and his whole family was so joyful. These little bits of rice. And it wasn't just this one family, but it was like lines of families. There was a, temporary ordination for children that week.

[21:53]

So there were a lot of families there, but it was like family after family, just aglow with this joy of giving. And that's when I knew that there was something, there's something there that I just, I hadn't understood before. I think Sharon Salzberg summarizes this nicely when she says, generosity is a celebration. And I really felt that. I really felt that little gesture of giving, the celebration. The other most common phrase I heard that week from the Burmese lay community that I was spending time with, an opportunity for Donna, an opportunity for Donna. Like it was the practice to see and act upon opportunities for Donna. It was so part of the way of looking. And it seems like it was so baked into the culture. It was so part of the culture that there are stories of this Southern Burmese teacher named Uba Ken who in his old years when he would receive visitors apparently would take the pictures off his walls to give them to people.

[23:01]

So practiced was his giving. So I lived with that question. Why so joyful? Why so joyful? Of course it feels good. It feels good to give. But I suspected that there was a dharmic background to the joy. And I think maybe talking just a little bit about the dharmic background behind giving can help us unpack this story about Guishan and Yangshan. So I want to talk about this in terms of three sort of categories that we hear a lot. Giver. the receiver, and the gift. Any of us who have sat for Orioki or done a meal chant in the courtyard, giver, receiver, and gift. In terms of the giver, first thing I want to say, of course, Dogen echoes this.

[24:10]

this opportunity for dhana teaching and encourages us not only to give, but also to search for every opportunity to do it, to look for it. What I want to emphasize about sort of the dharmic encouragements for the giver, the real value is how we give, how we do the giving. It seems in the teachings that how we give so much outweighs what we give. There are these stories of really humble gifts, like somebody giving a little crust from their bowl, a little rice crust or something, or like the burnt rice crust on the bottom of a pot. And that's so fruitful in the act of giving a really humble gift. And I think this touches back to one of the most consequential gifts in the stories of our tradition, and that's when Sujata mistook the sort of like emaciated, collapsed Buddha to be on the riverside, mistook him for a tree spirit and offered him just a bowl of rice milk.

[25:18]

And that gift he took in, sat under the Bodhi tree and awakened. Sometimes I think without that gift, we wouldn't have the tradition. We wouldn't have this place or the practice. So the how we give can be very humble. Be very humble. But the manner in which we give, it's talked about as like, we give in such a way that there is an opportunity for warmth or an opportunity for friendship. And something we see a lot is that gifts strengthen relationships or create them or they open new avenues. I often tell the story of my first week at City Center when I... I went to work in the offices right over there. And I'd been out of the mountain for some time, but I still didn't have much of a wardrobe, we'll say. I'm sort of like scraping by.

[26:21]

And first week, Michael McCord, I started working with this, like, Kodo, do you want some pants? Yes. Thank you, Michael. I really do. And he brought in this stack of pants to give me. It's kind of silly that it was pants, right? But the implication, like what happened as a consequence was it opened the relationship in a different way. Rather than the relationship just being, hey, Koto, can you give me that report on Tuesday? There was this personal connection that was established and strengthened. Just from a little gift, a little gift, but given in a way that had warmth, given in a way that had friendships, the how, the how is so important. In the teachings, they talk about giving with an attitude of faith, giving nobly, giving respectfully, and giving without expectation. This one's really tough. Giving without expectation of return.

[27:24]

We'll see. We'll see how we do with that. That's one interesting thing to observe with the practice of giving. It's like, oh, where? Oh, look at that. I thought I was giving with no strings. And look, there's a string. Give in such a way as to not harm the other. And this last thing I want to emphasize about the how. I really like this one. To give with your own hands. To give with your own hands. And I think that strengthens the way that giving builds relationship. I have this other memory. I was in a hospital here in the city a few blocks away. And again, I hadn't been out of the mountain at Tassajara for that long, but I really missed my Tassajara people. I really missed them.

[28:28]

And I remember a friend of mine walking in and handing me with his two hands a card that was a It was a picture of a monk walking in the mountains with the words, warm wishes from the mountains written on it. And all of the well wishes from my friends in the valley. And when he handed it to me, I felt the exchange and the connection. I felt all those people. Much, much different than if it had landed in my mailbox with a stamp on it. I mean, that's still good, but... To give with one's own hands. So how we give. So important. And then in terms of the receiver. There's a great story in the teachings where someone asks.

[29:35]

Someone asks the Buddha. So. Should I only give to you? Should I only give to you and like your monks? Is that. Is that what you're saying to me? He's like, oh, no. Don't do that. And he strongly discourages any impulse. He calls it blocking. Blocking someone from giving. If it makes you happy to give to someone, then give. That's the encouragement. And the person asks a second question. Giving to whom is productive of great fruit? And the Buddha says, oh, well, that's a different matter. And there's this encouragement to give to people who are cultivating the path, actually. That's what he encouraged. And in this regard, again, I think of that humble bowl of rice milk and how consequential that was.

[30:37]

Like the fact that she happened to give it to the Buddha. who had cultivated so much virtue so as to awaken as a consequence. A virtuous recipient. We call them a field of merit because we have the opportunity, we have the opportunity to give because they exist. I think of that monk and The monk in the Burmese monastery and the little lump of rice. Because that monk's bowl was there. He was able to give. So the giver, the receiver, and then the gift. As we've already talked about, the gifts can be just what's available. Just what's humble. There's an encouragement not to give something that you're going to throw away.

[31:39]

Something that you feel some value for. In the tradition, we talk about giving three things material, which I include in there, our time and our effort, in addition to things like food and shelter and clothing, medicine. Second is the gift of the Dharma. A Dharma talk like this is freely given. Totally offered. It's amazing. It's just amazing. And the third is fearlessness. We give the gift of fearlessness, and we give it to each other. And we give it to each other by being safe for one another. Some people in the crowd are wearing rakasus. a little bib, so to speak.

[32:43]

We sow when we take refuge and we take the precepts. And I once heard Abbas Fu explain, someone asked, what's that about? What's the Rakasu? And she said, this is my promise to you that I won't harm you. I think we live in a place like this, I think we're really fortunate to create a field where that sort of intention is possible. Giving fearlessness. So the giver, the receiver, and the gift. So these is the background. Let's go back to the beginning of the story of Guishan and Yangshan. Guishan said to student Yangshan, I have a student who gave me three rolls of silk to buy a temple bell in order to bestow happiness upon the people of the world.

[33:51]

And I think it's worth pausing there to actually tap into the moment. I like to imagine the student going to the abbot, Guishan, on top of the mountain with this gift and handing it over with his own two hands And imagining the joy that might have arisen in this student, right? And then not only did he hand over the silk, but he had an intention. He said, may this silk benefit beings. May this silk afford you a temple bell that everyone can hear. And everyone will benefit as a consequence. And the breadth of that intention, the breadth of that gift, that's inspiring. So he gives the silk. Yongshan asks, so the student brought you the silk. What did you give him in return?

[34:52]

To open up the next couple of lines, it's helpful to bring Suzuki Roshi into the room. He has this great chapter in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind called God Giving, where he talks about dana paramita, the perfection of giving. And he does it in this really beautiful way. He introduces dana prajna paramita, that's what he calls it. All of them partake of wisdom, the paramitas. Paramita is perfection. Paramita as perfection. Crossing over. Crossing over to what? He says crossing over to the other shore of nirvana. It's the purpose of our life's effort. It's the function of dana. And then he has this great Zen master twist. He's like dana and the paramitas crossing over. The one true way of living is

[36:02]

is to realize that we're arriving at the other shore with every step. And we do that through our practice of giving. And we do it through our practice of the precepts, energy, patience, meditation, and wisdom. He goes on to explain that when we're in tune with this, we're in tune with this truth. We think that it's the small I that's giving. like the little us, who we think we are, the I according to me. I think it's us that's giving. He says, no, no, no. Suzuki Roshi, to paraphrase him, it's the big I, he says, small I, big I. It's all things, all time. It's what we tap into when we sit sauzan. And that's what does the giving. And when we have this understanding, Suzuki Roshi is saying, everything we do is giving.

[37:12]

Everything we do can be giving. So Yangshan asks, when the student brought the silk, what did you give him in return? And Guishan does this. says, this is my offering. In the Zen milieu, it's pretty classic, tapping the platform, three hits on the platform as an expression of lessness. complete interpenetration of all things, all conditions, across all time, interacting at once to manifest that.

[38:23]

And some might tell me that my explanation is an insult to the Buddhists and ancestors for putting language on it, to try to encapsulate it. And Guishan says, That's my gift. That's my offering. Yangshan, being a tenacious student, he presses further. He says, if you offered him that, how will it benefit him? How will that benefit him? A fair question. Rishon is also tenacious. And his response? Boom, boom, boom. And he says, why is it that you dislike this? Why is that not enough? All things and all space and all times, is that not enough?

[39:29]

Things are heating up now. Yangshan says, it's not that I dislike it. It's just that the gift, what you're giving him, this all-pervasive connection, it belongs to everyone. This is Yangshan saying, the big I gives to the big I. It's Yongshan saying, we can't, like, take this little me and this little object and have a complete understanding of giving. There's something still closed about it. But the actual gesture of giving is so, like, it's right there. It's open-handed. It's open-hearted. In a movement, portrays the non-grasping.

[40:40]

non-clinging that is freedom dana and freedom open-handed and we practice it we practice freedom every step of the way opening our hand Yongshan goes on, since you know it belongs to everyone, why did you want me to repay him? Yongshan, I just wondered how you understood that. Since it belonged to everyone, you could still make it a gift. This is like the caveat for me at the beginning of the talk when I was like, oh, let's be careful here. If we bring emptiness too close to giving, we'll think we don't need to give. Like we don't need to practice giving. Let's give it up. Not what I'm saying at all. Not what I'm saying at all.

[41:43]

Just that Suzuki Roshi is suggesting with the depth of wisdom that knows our connection with that spirit in the background, give with your two hands. Give with your two hands. What's at hand? And Guishon concludes, don't you see? The great master Bodhidharma who came to this land also brought a gift. We are always receiving gifts from others. And Daido Roshi has a comment on this closing and he says, heaven is filled by it. Earth is covered by it. The hand that gives is also the hand that receives. eye gives big eye to big eye so the giver the receiver and the gift with this background of emptiness lessness our profundity of connection

[43:04]

Maybe easy to say. Maybe not so easy to practice. Maybe not so easy to practice. There's something peculiar about the way that practicing giving reveals the ways that we're challenged to give. Reveals the ways that we cling to things when it's finally time to let something go. That doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. That's the path. That's the path of practice. I like to think that we will avail ourselves from now until Buddhahood. We will avail ourselves of an imperfect practice. We'll just keep doing our best. But my giving is always gonna be with a little string.

[44:12]

It's always gonna reveal a little bit of clinging, but I'm gonna keep trying. I will keep trying. I'll bring in Salzburg again, and then we can open up the conversation a bit. She says that the movement of the heart as we practice generosity in the outer world mirrors the movement of the heart when we let go of conditioned views about ourselves. Letting go creates a joyful sense of space in our minds. And in this way, our inner work and our outer work join together to create a generosity of spirit that is the expression of freedom. What are we doing on time, Brian?

[45:14]

Cool. Thank you. So I have a wish. I have a wish that our practice of giving, your practice of giving, stay simple. Stay simple. Straightforward. Uncomplicated. just like our awareness in Zazen, just simple, straightforward, uncomplicated. I hope we give in ways that do no harm. I hope we give frequently to each other with a feeling of friendship and warmth and hospitality.

[46:17]

I really have that wish. Thank you very much. Do the chant or we'll just go straight in. I used to know all the forms, Brian. Thank you, Tanuka, for the audio. Anyone in the Zoom room may raise their Zoom hand. Anyone in this room may raise their actual hand. FOR YOUR TALK, KODO.

[47:22]

SO I THINK OF GIVING AS OPENING ONE'S MIND AND YOU KNOW SOMETIMES ESPECIALLY HERE LIVING IN COMMUNITY, FOR INSTANCE, I WENT IN TO WASH SOME DISHES. NOT TO WASH, TO PUT AWAY MY DISHES. AND BEFORE I COULD WASH MY DISHES THERE WAS A JAR THERE WITH SOME CHOCOLATE LEFT IN, YOU KNOW, SO IT WAS KIND OF DIRTY. AND IF I HAD COMPLAINED TO MYSELF, I WAS THE ONLY ONE THERE, THEN BEING CRITICAL, I'M CLOSED DOWN. BUT IF I JUST WASH THAT then I have a more open mind. And I'm wondering if that's a gift. What do you think?

[48:31]

Well, there's no receiver. A fair point. When we give flowers to the Buddha, do you think anyone gets it? Is there anyone there to receive it? That's a good point. Maybe we should call into question our liturgy. No, not what I'm suggesting. One of the ideas about how we give is to give in such a way that what's wholesome in us opens and what's unwholesome in us fades away. I think whether or not there's someone there We're there. And is that movement of the mind opening up something beautiful in you? Yeah, thank you. Sure. And thank you for washing the jar.

[49:34]

We have Shirley on Zoom. Hello, good evening. Thank you so much for the talk. It reminded me who I really am because I give a lot and oftentimes now because I've experienced people who get competitive or just are sort of mean. I think sometimes I turn and look at myself and I question myself and judge myself in the way that other people see me. And so this talk really expands it out so that I see my actions in a bigger sense. And it feels like it rings true for me. And I have...

[50:57]

question for you like how like I've experienced like I I'm in a martial arts practice and I've experienced in the past few months someone who's come in as a new student she's been here for a year now and has gotten really just competitive and so I shut down I don't want to help her anymore. I just feel like if I'm myself, I'm vulnerable, I will be taken advantage of. So I close up, but then I don't feel like myself. And there's always going to be this kind of energy. So how do I navigate in this practice so that I'm steady? What is a way for me to look at this?

[52:01]

Because I feel like I go from being my big self, which I feel like is my true self. And then I get these little things and I get mad. But that, I guess, is also myself. And I don't like bouncing around. Thank you, Shirley. Thank you. I feel some tenderness hearing your story. There's something about, something we say about community that comes to mind. Kind of like we're rocks in a rock tumbler. It's like bumping into each other and wearing away our tough corners. It's our social situations that really show us the state of our mind, the state of our heart, the state of our practice. And not knowing your situation in particular, I have an intuition to suggest something, and it may land, it might not.

[53:12]

My intuition is to suggest when those stories come up, when the activation happens, and before you know it, there are like maybe four, five, six, seven steps, kind of layers to the difficulty. I wonder how it would be to practice with letting that float by in the background. And when you notice that this has come up, move back into the simplicity of embodied experience and relate to it there with the With all the skills you have, I hear strength and I hear sincerity and I hear awareness. And so I think a wisely directed, a practically directed awareness could open up some interesting things. So does that mean just have my feelings but don't follow the judgment as if it's real?

[54:21]

Well, it's... It's difficult to parse the complexity of your social situation. I can't really advise you the best thing in your one way, in your one spot. But what I'm suggesting is to, if the judgments are still coming and they're still there, just to begin teasing apart the difference between mental activity and physical activity. And see if that opens up any new perspectives for you. And that can introduce some wisdom about whether or not to follow those judgments or not. Is that straightforward? Maybe not. I guess I don't really understand how to, like what it means with the mental and the physical. Like, I think there's a, I guess there's always like I identify

[55:25]

the reactor as, as the child. And then I have my, my, um, really big wise self. And then I have my mud. Like I consider myself like the one that is the media. It's sort of like the mother, like trying to calm that. So I'm usually, I think in that situation, I'd be like, okay, I don't know how to get to my wise self because I'm so activated, but there's something there, but I'm not there yet. And I think I was asking you the question because you just seem like so much the wise person. Yeah, but I know it's a practice, so I appreciate. I will ponder what you're saying and maybe something will open up for me. Yeah, yeah. I think my one phrase suggestion as you're moving along with that is, Remember the body.

[56:26]

Okay. Even as you move between connecting with these different parts of yourself, stay with your body. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Yeah, one more. Sounds good. So great to see you. Sure, Parker. HOW ABOUT NOW? OKAY, GOOD. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I JUST WANTED TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALLY ACKNOWLEDGE A GIFT I WAS GIVEN RECENTLY AND I HAD THE BENEFIT OF BEING A RECEIVER. AND THAT WAS THAT THIS WOMAN, KIMMY, BROUGHT ME SOME FRUITS WHILE I WAS SICK A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO. AND YEAH, I could feel the compassion and sweetness in that gift, as small as a few berries.

[57:29]

So thank you, Kimmy. That's wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. Something I didn't get a chance to say is the practice of enjoying the pleasure of knowing you're gonna give, then enjoying the pleasure while you're giving, and then enjoying the pleasure after, which all of us just got to share. Thank you very much. How wonderful. Seems like that might be the end. Thank you, Brian.

[58:15]

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