This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Special thanks to Luna for all the care that's gone into the sound system in the last 24 hours. Yeah. 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 tanto. 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 what amazing what amazing things to raise a person i also want to acknowledge that we're there are a few of our community members who are not here tonight we're having a board meeting elsewhere taking care of the the other half of what we do here i think i think it's so important that the the i'll call that the life of activity and the life of stillness that those work in balance

[01:29]

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 thought of for this talk is three bolts of silk or three rolls of silk. We're gonna talk about a story from 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. This is a story called Guishan's Gift. And the beginning goes like this. Guishan said to Yongshan, I have a lay student who gave me three rolls of silk to buy a temple bell in order to bestow happiness upon the people of the world.

[02:41]

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, Yangshan, kind of a tenacious, insightful, penetrating student is Yangshan. 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 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 give her 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.

[03:50]

It's so simple. The 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 maybe less obvious, the practice of giving, the mental posture of giving actively directs our mind toward freedom. 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.

[04:53]

And this is a Christmas story in a place that is hot and muggy. Christmas time and that is central Texas and I was living 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 you know I've got I need to buy a gift for this person I need to buy a gift for this person 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 because what he heard was I was

[06:05]

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. like why is this so important to the practice why 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 i was spending a about a week in a burmese monastery in another state here in the states 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?

[07:07]

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 it 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 some 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 their alms bowl 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.

[08:15]

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. 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 that I just, I hadn't understood before.

[09:17]

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. 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, 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. So practiced was his giving. So I lived with that question, why so joyful?

[10:22]

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 Oriyoki 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. 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.

[11:29]

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, 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. And that gift he took in, sat under the Bodhi tree and awakened.

[12:34]

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, is 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 When I went to work in the office, it was 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. And first week, Michael McCord, I started working with him.

[13:37]

I was 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, what happened as a consequence was it opened the relationship in a different way. Rather than the relationship just being, hey, Kodo, 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. We'll see. We'll see how we do with that.

[14:39]

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. And I remember a friend of mine walking in and handing me, with his two hands, a card that was...

[15:53]

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 the Buddha, so should I only give to you? Should I only give to you and your monks? Is that...

[16:54]

Is that what you're saying to me? He's like, oh no. Don't do that. 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. 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.

[17:58]

A virtuous recipient. We call them a field of merit because 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. 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.

[19:11]

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. the little bib, so to speak. 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.

[20:20]

I think we're really fortunate to create a field where that sort of intention is possible. Yeah. 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. 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. 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?

[21:23]

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? To open up the next couple of lines, it's helpful to bring Suzuki Roshi into the room. It's this great chapter in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind called God Giving, where he talks about dana paramita, the perfection of giving. He does it in this really beautiful way.

[22:26]

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 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.

[23:40]

We think that it's the small I that's giving. 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. 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.

[24:42]

And 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. Thusness. complete interpenetration of all things all conditions across all time interacting at once to manifest that and some might tell me that my explanation is a insult to the buddhas and ancestors for putting language on it to try to encapsulate it and gueshan says That's my gift. That's my offering.

[25:54]

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. Rishan 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? Things are heating up now. And 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.

[27:08]

This is Yangshan saying, the big eye gives to the big eye. It's Yongshan saying, we can't take this little knee 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. It, in a movement, portrays the non-grasping. the non-clinging, that is freedom. Adana and freedom, open-handed. And we practice it. We practice freedom every step of the way, opening our hand, Weishan goes on, since you know it belongs to everyone, why did you want me to repay him?

[28:21]

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. 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. 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 Guishan 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.

[29:28]

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. Big eye gives big eye to big eye. It's the giver, the receiver, and the gift with this background of emptiness, dustness, our profundity of connection. 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.

[30:41]

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. 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

[31:47]

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. doing on time, Brian. 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.

[32:50]

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. I really have that wish. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[33:51]

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

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