this is Good morning. Good morning everyone at Green Gulch and everyone on streaming. I wanted to continue talking today about the practice of confession and repentance, which I've been talking about for the last times I've been invited to speak.

[15:22]

So that's a kind of warning. But I've been finding this. practice and setting this practice to be very unfolding in more and more ways. So I feel like I have to keep bringing it up for myself and sharing that with you. But before I begin, I just wanted to say a few things about this time of year. We had the fall equinox, and the days are growing shorter, longer evenings. And practice periods have begun. Tazahara and City Center. And next week at Green Gulch, we'll be starting our fall practice period, led by Dantin Roshi.

[16:30]

And what I hear is that it's... very well. There were many applicants and it will be very full, which will feel wonderful to have the valley filled with eager participants for the fall practice period. This is also in the Jewish calendar the time of the new year, and it's similar to this mid-September festival, the new year, the sweet new year, and followed by these are called High Holy Days, or the Days of Awe, and on Tuesday, the Day of Atonement will be

[17:33]

commemorated, will be practiced. And, you know, the word atonement, if you parse it a certain way, is at one month. And that ceremony, that day of atonement, is also devoted to confession and repentance. This practice of looking at our actions, admitting, acknowledging, avowing our actions, asking for forgiveness if needed, making amends. So this is a time that's set apart for that practice. I just returned from a long bike ride, long in miles. over 400 miles and two weeks on this bike trip.

[18:38]

And it was very strenuous and had the wonderful feeling of full exertion and the tiredness that comes after full exertion, which I think human beings really, really find enjoyable. Even if while you're doing it, it's really hard, whether it's exercise or any endeavor, to really fully exert and then rest afterwards is quite joyful. And on the trip, I had a couple of little tumbles, nothing major, but one was... weren't really bike paths and the shoulder kind of disappeared while I was going uphill and it turned into gravel and earth and I couldn't keep going and I just tumbled towards the road but it wasn't very trafficking and I wasn't really hurt.

[19:47]

My leg got scraped by the gears but the bike was so heavy with the panniers that we were traveling with I couldn't bring it upright again, sitting upright, standing upright, biking upright. And a number of cars passed and said, are you OK? And finally, one said, can we help you? And I said, actually, yes, I can get the bike back up. And they jumped out of the car and helped me. But I found this to be true a number of times when My husband and I, Steve, were just resting by the side of the road. People would stop and say, anything we can do to help you? Are you okay? Do you have everything you need? Total strangers. That kind of camaraderie of the, sorry, I'm feeling like it's going to fall off. The camaraderie of the road, which many of you maybe have experience in camping or travel.

[20:54]

You meet people and there's a shared life. Right before we left on this bike ride, I got word that a Sangha member's husband had been killed in a bike accident. A very experienced rider. And so I was asked to do the funeral, the memorial service. For this person who I didn't know. But I know. His wife. And I had this thought. Once more. That we never know. Each moment is like that. Each moment is. We don't know. There's going to be. An accident. There's going to be. One moment of. neglecting to pay attention or a break in concentration while driving.

[21:58]

And our life is always like that. That is our life of impermanence. And in doing the funeral, the questions of what do you say? What do you say at a time like that? How do you comfort someone? How do you just be present with someone? Is there anything you can do, really, for another person? While I was on that trip, I was reading a book called Awake at the Bedside. The subtitle is Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care. And it's edited by Koshin Paley Ellison, who has part of the New York Zen Center as a program for contemplative care training and chaplaincy, and a fellow named Matt Weingast.

[23:11]

And the book is, they edited the book because it's an anthology. It's a number of different people writing about contemplative care. caring for people, hospice, but not only hospice, just caring for people, quality care. And a lot of different people wrote, including Norman Fisher, our former abbot, Gil Fransdell, a former who's on our elders council. They both have articles. There's poetry. And I found it to be... which often happens, not a kind of thinking mind at, you know, end of life care, but very, very helpful, very encouraging because each of us, there's nobody who is exempt in this life from knowing someone who's sick or who is dying or has,

[24:21]

died and family members, you know, this is our life together. No one's outside of that world. And I found the stories to be particularly helpful and partially because, as many of you know, Zen Center is in the midst of creating what's called a Zen-inspired senior living community. And so Village in Healdsburg and the kind of bedrock practices there that makes it different from other senior communities is we're offering contemplative care training for all the staff and whoever is helping with the residents. And also the people who live there who would like to have that kind of training so that we can be there for one another through the years in a real way, authentic way.

[25:28]

And a shared way. Because as we know. We're all just temporarily abled and temporarily alive and well, because. the truths of old age sickness and death that that is our our life together so this book you know it doesn't say what to say or how to say it gives it gives practices for being ready to be present authentically completely with family and friends Or strangers, if that becomes the work that you might want to do as a volunteer. And the work, this kind of work, is not only for those people who are the supposed receiving of this care, but the person giving, the giver and the receiver are both enriched by this practice.

[26:44]

One of the things I just wanted to mention is in one of these articles, I think it was a doctor who worked in palliative care said what he found over the years is that people at the end of their life or when they're very sick, there's four things that they want in order to unburden themselves and to Let go of regrets. You know, Suzuki Roshi said one of the reasons to practice is not to have any regrets at the end of our life. Having regrets is a weight, is a painful suffering. And this doctor said these four things that people wish to say to family and friends that unburdens them. And they reminded me of something Tenshin Roshi had offered years ago.

[27:53]

And I'm not sure the origin of those. But the first is, please forgive me. Asking for forgiveness. And, you know, our lives are such that we don't always act for the benefit of another for their best interests. We can act in ways that are self-serving or that favor us in our situation. Anyway, there's plenty of reason for asking, please forgive me. The second one is, I forgive you. People want to forgive others. They want that to melt away, that block of anger around something or tip, you know, that one holds to resentments.

[29:03]

This is something that this doctor was saying. People want, want at the end. They want to say, I forgive you. And the third thing is thank you. expressing gratitude and I've seen this being around people who are in their last days and expressing gratitude for the smallest things nothing huge but just one's presence feeling gratitude and the last is what people want to say is I love you which for many people is very hard to say. Over the years, you might hold back from saying, but people want to say that at the end of their life. So these four things, please forgive me.

[30:05]

I forgive you. Thank you. And I love you. And I think please forgive me maybe is also I'm sorry. So coming back to the confession and repentance, somehow these four things reminded me of the feeling, actually, of confession and repentance. It's not something someone is made to do, which I think often people have a tangled kind of complex relationship to confession and repentance because of maybe during their growing up years in their religion of origin, they were forced to or made to or that was something they had to do, go to confession.

[31:12]

And not just Catholicism, but in Church of Latter-day Saints, I think there's a confession component. Anyway. So that being forced to is very different from it welling up that I want to say something. I want to express my sorrow at acting in ways that were not in alignment with how I want to live. That's part of our confession and repentance. expressing this. In one of Suzuki Roshi's lectures, at the end of his life, it was in 1971, he died in December 71, and in the summer, in July, and I was there, but I don't remember it exactly, but I love reading the ones where I was present.

[32:18]

He talks about the full moon ceremony, the Ryaka Fusats, that we do on the full moon and at Green Gulch we're doing on the new moon as well, which is traditional for the lunar calendar. Every 15 days, new and full moon, doing this ceremony of confessing and repenting. And in talking about this, Suzuki Roshi also brought up a particular ceremony at New Year's time. Now, this New Year's... I'm not sure if it's Lunar New Year or the solar, you know, January 1st New Year's. It is in January. It's between January 1st and January 14th. There's a Japanese ceremony called Tondo.

[33:23]

Yaki. And what Suzuki Roshi was saying is that, and we do a similar kind of thing here. It means a bonfire festival. We have a bonfire on New Year's Eve. And in our bonfire, we burn certain things. And I now understand better how it is that we burn those things in this description from Suzuki Roshi. What he's saying, there's things that are used over time that get old and dusty and things, he said, ornaments, decorations, shrine, objects, and you put them all in a fire and with a straw and you build this big fire and then you make rice balls and there's branches and they're hung. I think you roast the rice balls and then you set it all afire and it's a big bonfire. And then Suzuki Roshi said his mother told him about the meaning of the ceremony, and he relates it.

[34:31]

So his mother, I have the part of the lecture, said the story of why we do this is that at the end of the year, we want to observe good precepts, but often we don't. So this reminded me of that song about Santa Claus. You know, he knows if you... done good or bad, so be good for goodness sake. So what Suzuki Roshi's mother told him is that there are these Shinto deities that are often on the roadsides called Do, So, Jin. And they are, you know, they take care of you. They're beneficial. And at this time of year, this is what his mother told him, the evil spirits come and they want to check out whether you've been following precepts or not.

[35:32]

And the fire is made so that there's no record. It's like, sorry, everything burned in the fire. We don't have any record of, which is what we do. We burn the Tenkin records, you know, who came to Zazen or, you know, your attendance records. other kind of memorial tablets and things. We just burn it all. So the reason, according to Suzuki Roshi's mother, is so when these evil spirits come to check up on you to see if you've been naughty or nice, there's nothing there. And they have to come back the next year. This is just a little cultural description and kind of background for ceremonies that we do. I never knew that that was part of this bonfire that, you know, we burn chips, you know, sticks of incense that haven't quite burned down, tanking records of Zazen attendance and just start fresh.

[36:37]

Nobody's checking up. Which leads me to. wanting to talk a little bit about how it is that nobody can really check up and that there really is nothing to check up on in terms of wrongdoings and transgressions. So there's a story of one of our ancestors who we chant in the morning, and Kanchi Sosan was a disciple of, he was the third Chinese ancestor. So the first was Bodhidharma Daeyosho Tai So Eka, or Hueka, who was the one who, the story says, stood in the snow waiting for Bodhidharma to allow him to study with him and expressed his desire to practice.

[37:45]

and his deep sincerity by cutting off his arm. So the story says, which we don't know if this is apocryphal or not. And his disciple is in Chinese. His name is . So this particular student was a layman. He was older to start practice. Many people started practice at that time in their younger years. He was over 40. He was a lay practitioner and he had the disease of leprosy, which is a very disfiguring or severe kind of disease. And in my understanding, there is a misunderstanding still to this day, I think, where when we have, let's say, a disease, there can be some sense of, what did I do?

[39:02]

Why me? What did I do wrong that this has happened to me? And I think in some countries, it's more literal. It's like that proves that you did something. some wrongdoing because there you are in this situation. So that to me is a very literal and kind of fundamentalist kind of understanding of the vast inconceivable teachings of karma. And at any rate, Kanchi Sosan went to Huayka and in this condition that he was in and he said, I am riddled with a sickness. Please absolve me of my wrongdoing or my transgression.

[40:02]

And Hueca said, bring me your transgression and I'll absolve you. And Kanchi Sosan pause for a moment and said, I look for it, but I can't find it. And Vika said, I have absolved you of your wrongdoing. And then he said, you should live by the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. So. Just imagining, you know, feeling I'm a horrible person. You know, I've done terrible things. I'm, you know, the self-critical mind that loathes ourselves and just can get caught up in what, you know, what a failure we are.

[41:12]

You know. That if anybody knew how horrible they would oust us from the community of human beings or something. And I think, you know, people can hold those ideas very, very strongly of self-criticism and diminishing ourselves And being caught in that maybe for years. And can you imagine going to someone to say that, you know, please, you know, absolve me of this. And then, you know, show me, bring it to me. Where is it? And of course, there isn't such a thing as that, as terrible wrongdoing that somehow lodged.

[42:18]

Somewhere deep in our hearts and bodies, this terribleness. Bring that to me. You can't find it. You can look for it, but there is no such thing as a thing like that. That's a delusion. It's an illusion. It's in the teaching of in the most basic teaching, it is empty of this kind of separateness and solidity. So, Gan Chi Sosan went on to be, he wrote, he became ordained and wrote something called Faith in Mind, Xin Xin Ming, you know, the great way is

[43:21]

perfect and, you know, the great way is simple. Only abstain from picking and choosing. That's Kanchi Sosan who wrote that wonderful poem. And Kanchi Sosan, after Hueca said, you know, bring it to me and I'll absolve you. And I look for it and I can't find it. You are absolved. He said, Today, for the first time, I've realized that the essence of transgression is not inside, not outside, not in between. This kind of essence or solidity of wrongdoing, or sometimes you see it translated as sin, but I like to use transgression or wrongdoing. It's not inside. It's not outside.

[44:22]

It's not in between. You can't grasp it. You can't get a hold of it. This is the teaching of emptiness. So. Turns out that Khan, she's so sound student. If you think of what we chant. had a similar kind of experience with his teacher. He felt that he didn't understand and wanted to wake up. So he goes to Kanchi Sosan and says, I pray for your compassion and beg you to open the gate of liberation for me. And Kanchi Sosan said, who is binding you? He says, I want the gate of liberation to be open.

[45:25]

I want to be liberated. And then Kanchi Sosan says to his disciple, who's binding you? It's a similar, they're parallel stories. And Daihidoshin says, no one's binding me. And Kanchi Sosan said, why then seek liberation? He first asked, please, out of compassion, open the gate of liberation for me. Help me, which we feel we want. We feel like we want help from our teachers and Dharma friends and the teachings themselves. I'm so stuck and so, please, open the gate of liberation for me. Who is binding you?

[46:27]

No one is binding you. Why then are you seeking liberation? And at that point, Dayahi Doshin had this great realization. Dayahi Doshin was a very strenuous practitioner. He didn't lie down. He did one of these practices of not lying down for 60 years. You know, he had a practice of just sitting upright for sleep. So these exchanges, you know, free me from my transgressions. Free me. Open the gate of liberation. Who's binding you? Bring me your transgressions. We're so used to thinking in that way that there are these transgressions.

[47:33]

I've got to get rid of them. I've got to push them away and get these other things. That'll make me a better person or a real practitioner or will awaken me. So we're caught by pushing and pulling, grasping and getting rid of. And the first day we come to practice, you know, if we come to Zazen instruction, we're told in Zazen instruction, sit upright, neither leaning forward, nor backward, nor to the right, nor to the left. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. This is the Fukan Zazengi, you know, the universal admonitions for Zazen. This is right from the get-go. The first teaching. You don't have to be practicing for a million years to hear these teachings.

[48:35]

You don't have to prove yourself with your sincerity. The first day you walk in the door, you're told, sit upright and don't push things away or lean. I think push things away is like leaning away from our life. Push things away. And grabbing onto things is leaning forward. The teaching is sit upright. Not leaning. And see, you know, what unfolds. So neither grasping nor grasping after things. Nor trying to get rid of them. Neither of those is what we're talking about in our practice. And our minds really tend towards this dualistic thinking, right?

[49:38]

We tend towards this either or. And these stories, of course, cut through that for us. Liberate me. Who's binding you? Just another story about Dao Hi Do Shin. This teaching, this is Heart Sutra teaching. This is emptiness. This is the great wisdom beyond wisdom. He was with some practitioners and they came to a village where bandits had been circling the village for make a siege. There was a siege. And he had all the villagers chant basically, Maha Prajna, great wisdom.

[50:41]

And the whole village chanted that. And the bandits decided to skedaddle. It was very powerful. The Heart Sutra can be used as a kind of protective spell almost. These teachings of no abiding self and nothing to grasp and nothing to push away. So the kitchen has just left, so it's just about 11. I wanted to just continue a little bit more with confession and repentance. So in the Lotus Sutra, There's the three-part Lotus Sutra. The first part is Sutra of Innumerable Meanings and the Lotus Sutra itself, the Dharma Flower Lotus Sutra. And then the third is called the sometimes called the Samantabhadra Sutra.

[51:47]

And it's about our Bodhisattva of great practice, Samantabhadra. And basically Samantabhadra is practice of confessing and repenting. That whole last sutra is about confessing and repenting. And in the verse, right at the end of the verse section, so in Lotus there's prose and then verse and often prose again. There's this part of the verse. The entire ocean of karmic hindrances arises from delusion. Those who want to repent should sit upright and contemplate the true marks. And all wrongdoing will disappear like frost and dew in the sunlight of wisdom.

[52:52]

This is the verse. So this kind of repentance and confession is called jisosange. This is sitting upright in the midst of the ocean of karmic hindrances, all the karmic hindrances, realizing that they arise from delusion. And if you wish to repent, Take this posture and be mindful of the true marks of all existence, which is empty. This is wisdom beyond wisdom. Everything is empty of separateness. That's the true mark. The true mark of reality.

[53:57]

And sitting upright contemplating this. All the misdemeanors, transgressions, wrongdoings melt away like frost and dew. In the sun of wisdom. With this wisdom teaching shining down, there is nothing that you can grasp called wrongdoing or misdemeanor or I'm this way or that way. It melts. This kind of delusion melts. Now, this isn't to say that, well, then we can do anything. That's another kind of delusion. It means that being so, we care for everything with love and compassion. Knowing that it is our own true self.

[55:03]

The interconnected being. And so we take enormous care with each thing. There's a number of translations of that verse. The whole ocean of hindrances. From past actions, that's karma, arises from illusion. If you want to repent, you should sit upright and reflect on the true nature of things. All wrongdoings, like bras and dew, melt in the sun of wisdom. The sun of wisdom dissipates them. So I feel this teaching is very, what shall I say? To me, it strikes very, very deep.

[56:10]

And also, you know, I begin to ask, well, but there is wrongdoing. There is not following precepts and not observing. There is cruelty. daily life and relatively speaking we're taught yes yes definitely and we're very careful with our conventional life and how we treat each other ourselves in garment and you know sitting upright contemplating the reality then we also see That they are empty of separate self. This is the confession and repentance of Jesus. Or the true marks of reality.

[57:13]

So. Or I'll leave it. This. The. Confession and repentance practices. There's the Ji Sanghe. A formal. Confession and repentance. That we do every morning. And that. That's full and new moon. Where we. Of our ancient twisted karma. That's formally. Saying. Having witnesses. or speaking with our teacher or Dharma friend, where we formally say, you know, and bring up these areas where we feel we have not been in alignment.

[58:20]

That's called Ji Sangye. And then there's Ri Sangye, which is formless confession and repentance, which is just sitting. And then there's this third one, Jisōsange, which is sitting upright in the midst of our karmic life, the ocean of our karmic life, and contemplate the true mark of all things, and then seeing the melting away of transgressions by the power of this confession and repentance. And those are practices for a lifetime. Thank you very much.

[59:34]

. . . So we have time for some Q&A. Please make yourself comfortable. Do a little stretching if you'd like. Often, you know, we used to have a break and tea and come back for Q&A. So please, at City Center, I gave the talk a couple weeks ago. They have five minutes of kind of stretching people. So those of you at home, I know you can do that with impunity, but I just wanted to offer that to the Zen Dome.

[60:47]

So does anyone have, and yes, what is your name? Jeff? We talked about forgiveness being a... give and take where if one wrongs another, we ask the other for forgiveness. And I was wondering how we can speak to, sometimes when we do things very wrong and the other is not ready to forgive, which I believe is their promise. You can speak to that. Yes. So Jeff, for those of you online, is bringing up sometimes You're in a situation where you ask for forgiveness from someone, but the person's not ready to forgive you. They're not there yet. And how to practice with that, basically? Yeah. Well, I think that does happen. And we know it from ourselves.

[61:55]

Sometimes we're not ready to forgive, right? So it can't be forced. It's, you know, the word give is in there, forgive. It's a funny word, forgive. It's so respecting that, that someone's not ready, giving someone space, not adding on to now I'm angry because they won't forgive me, you know, just more layers of tangledness. So, yeah, so acknowledge that. And time, you know, sometimes this thing about melting away like Frost and Dew, I know for my own personal life, realizing without me working on it or asking about it or therapy or anything, realizing, oh, I just don't feel so angry at that.

[62:55]

It's gone. Where did it go? It kind of... By just practicing, sitting every day, sitting regularly, trying to observe precepts, eightfold, you know, doing the practice, there's power there where you see all these nuggets of can melt away, really, like Frost can do, without us saying, I have to do that work of forgiving. So it can happen to me, it can happen to us. It can happen to someone else also that given time. And your openness to let them be who they are authentically. Yeah. Thank you for the question. May I?

[63:59]

It seems to me that repentance is very different from asking for forgiveness. Say that again. I think repentance is very different from asking for forgiveness, that I can thoroughly repent something. If there's not a person involved, I mean, there might not be, but if there is, they might not want to forgive me, but that really doesn't affect my repentance. Thank you. The repentance is my practice. Yeah. The forgiveness is their practice if they want to take it up. Yeah. But whether they do or not, I don't think really has to do with my own practice of repentance. Yes. So may have brought up an important point, which is our own practice of repentance is not... dependent upon somebody else forgiving us, we can completely, thoroughly repent of our unskillfulness or transgressions that we feel that doesn't, nothing hinders that, actually.

[65:15]

We can thoroughly do that. And when someone's ready, that's, Mayor was saying, that's their practice of forgiveness, but it doesn't, Go ahead. The person may be dead. Thank you. Yeah. Ma'am mentions the other person may be dead. You can't do that exchange with them. But you can do it completely on your own and thoroughly without the necessity of having them. And I think people do that, I mean, at the end of life. maybe we don't have a chance to take care of unfinished business with someone, but we can take care of it in our own hearts, whether someone's there or not. Thank you. Anyone from online have any questions?

[66:18]

Yes, we have a question from the Monterey Zen Center, and it is, how do you work and practice with families of someone who has committed suicide? So the question from the online, from the monitoring centers, how do you work and practice with the family of someone who has committed suicide? This is one of the most difficult experiences for those left behind. the combination of anger and outrage that can come up along with, you know, terrible sorrow and missing someone and love and this mix of emotions, including the anger often that's there is, can take lots of time

[67:28]

and sometimes very specific work. For example, working with a group of people who are family members of those who've committed suicide, talking with others, listening to others. I know someone who did a lot of writing to try and integrate and metabolize what happened. And it took a long time. So understanding, I think, that there's this great range of emotions. It's not when someone dies of an illness or old age or even of an accident, although there can be similar things with an accident of anger, this in particular. And also feeling guilt. Couldn't I have done something? Why didn't I? Why wasn't I there?

[68:30]

Why didn't I see the signs? So people have enormous guilt that they carry around, even though if you read the literature, we know that there's almost nothing. If someone's determined, there's almost nothing anyone can do. Other than, you know. be in some kind of institution or something to stop someone if they're determined. Anyway, it's such a range that how to be with people is understanding the range, judging, being able to be present with all of it without trying to fix or platitudes of, you know, the things that people end up saying that aren't really helpful.

[69:34]

One's presence and acceptance, I think, goes a long way. Thank you for the question. Anything else or are we done? Yes. Thank you for your help. You're welcome. I'm thinking about how when we do our regular, our morning routine of confessing and repenting, both in the sitting ourselves in, but we also recite all my ancient twisted karma. There's a power of doing that collectively in the same way that holiday that is marked, or hell, or atonement, or repentance, or burning the transgression, the reverence of transgression.

[70:35]

It's also a collective practice. And I wonder if you could speak to that, the power of confessing and repenting collectively. Zuzu's question was, and comment was really about the power of the practice of repentance in community with others that we do daily and also particular monthly ceremonies. And asking me to just speak to that. It's interesting because in this lecture, Suzuki Roshi brings up doing at a Heiji, doing the full moon ceremony. and saying how deeply that affected him. So I think, you know, the power of voice of all of us joining in together, which has been so hindered during these COVID years, and even now we chant with our masks on, there is something harmonizing biologically, I mean, throughout the body,

[71:52]

To hear other people's voices saying those words together has a, it's not nothing. It's not like, oh, it could say it by ourselves. It has its own depth of ceremonial power. It's like chi in the room, the field of chi or this life force that's there. And then with everyone directed to avowing their karma, which is this beneficial practice, you know, that, you know, all the teachers talk about and Dogen and that to have everyone do that together is a practice that I'm so grateful we have. You know, we didn't, Zen Center didn't start out doing that. It was added to our liturgy. Yeah. So I think what,

[72:53]

can contribute to that is to bring ourselves fully to that, those words in our breath during that morning, rather than just da-da-da-dee-dee-dee wrote, which, you know, oh, I guess it's over. I don't even remember chanting. You know, if we can bring ourselves fully to the sound and listen with our ears, that will add to the... I guess I have to say power of the practice together. Thank you. Okay, thank you all very much for your attention. Good day, everyone.

[75:21]

Have a good day. Goodbye.

[75:23]

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