Good evening. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tova Green, and I recently returned to City Center to live after about eight years at Tassajara and Green Gulch. Now, that's too many years, six years, six years away. And I'd like to talk tonight about transitions and ceremonies and I I thought about talking about transitions because I'm in the midst of some and I imagine some of you may be as well. And one of the transitions for me has been to begin working at Zen Hospice Project, where I'm with people who are in the final transition of their lives and learning. I'm learning a lot about that transition of death. My day began today in a pretty unusual way.

[01:07]

At about 20 minutes to five, just as I was waking up, Marvin Mercer, who lives in the building, knocked on my door and asked if I would take him to Kaiser emergency room. And he's given me his permission to talk about the experiences we had today. And one of the experiences was sitting with him in the emergency room for several hours and I had brought the notes for my talk. I didn't know what to expect. And Marvin was very alert and very talkative. And he asked me what I was going to talk about tonight. So he actually helped me with my talk. And there are parts of the talk that I will credit to Marvin when I get to them. Some of his ideas are woven in with some of mine. So I. In investigating, beginning to investigate transitions, I found a book that talked about three stages of trans of transitions, three stages we all go through.

[02:22]

And I don't think that they're necessarily separate, but the three stages are leaving and then a stage of upheaval or chaos. and stage of beginning. For me, in my recent transitions, I found some upheaval or chaos in both leaving and beginning. So I don't think they're really separate. And I thought about how universal transitions are. We're about to have a full moon ceremony here at City Center. And at every full moon, we mark the transition of the month. the changing of the moon. And there are also people who do ceremonies at the new moon. So getting in touch with that change of the light of the moon every month. And we also note the changes in seasons, the solstices and equinoxes.

[03:27]

But in terms of our human lives, Transitions occur at many life cycle times. Being born, coming of age, often that's around 13. And we have a coming of age program for 11 to 13 year olds at Zen Center. Some young people have a bat or bar mitzvah in many cultures that that. Time in adolescence is marked by ceremonies. And then there are graduations, special birthdays, the transition of moving, changing jobs and retirement, and then death. I'm sure I've left some out, but I can see how transitions of these life cycle transitions are part of the fabric of our lives.

[04:30]

happened so often. And then in our Zen practice, there are many, many transitions. I'm curious for some of you, is this your first time here in the building at Zen Center? First time people? So this may be for you a significant transition, the first time you come into this Buddha hall and Whatever brings you here may be a significant transition. So for some people, the first time they go to Zazen instruction stays with them for the rest of their practice lives, maybe the rest of their lives. Taking your first class or practice period can be a transitional time. Finding a teacher. Maybe another major transition in committing yourself to a relationship with someone who will work with you.

[05:31]

And then receiving the precepts in lay ordination or priest ordination. These are all some of all transitions in our practice life at Zen Center. And many of them are marked by ceremonies. So I'd like you, if you would, to just take a moment and you. If you would like to close your eyes, you may do that. To just think of a transition that you either are currently experiencing or that you have recently experienced in your own life. And when you think about a transition that kind of is alive for you, what's been difficult about that transition? And what has helped with the transition? I'm not going to ask you to share this with anyone. It's just for you to think about because it may help help make some of what I'm going to say more relevant to you.

[06:38]

OK, so I thought I would talk a little bit about how ceremonies, have helped me with the transition that I recently made moving from Green Gulch farm to city center and also with the transition to my new job. I had been living at Green Gulch for about two years and I went there because my teacher Linda Cutts had asked me to work as her assistant and to live in the same place where she she lives as part of my training. And by the time I left, I was getting ready to leave Green Gulch to move to the city. I had really come to love it. And I felt very connected to the community.

[07:38]

And I had also really benefited from working with Linda so closely. And It was time to move. I had packed everything and I found myself really dragging my feet. I didn't want to leave Green Gulch. And one of the last things that happened, what was to happen was a ceremony. It's called a departing monk ceremony. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a ceremony that happens in the Zendo. And the person who's leaving says, has a chance to walk around the Zendo and everybody's standing in front of their seats and you're bowing and everyone bows to you. So it's a way of really saying goodbye to everyone in the community. And then the head of the Zendo, the Eno, says some words in my case, because I was leaving to take a job, something about

[08:39]

leaving with gift bestowing, entering the marketplace with gift bestowing hands and then going with the gratitude of everyone. So I realized that that ceremony was important to me. But for the last three weeks, I was at Green Gulch. My teacher was not well and she hadn't been coming to the Zendo. And I didn't want to have the ceremony if she wasn't going to be there. So finally, I realized I had to just schedule the ceremony because I was all packed and it was time to move to the city. And fortunately, she was able to come to the Zendo that morning. And at the end of the ceremony, after the Eno had spoken, she said some words in the Zendo that just meant a lot to me. And they were kind of funny words. She talked about a purple frog, because purple is my favorite color, and I also love frogs.

[09:40]

A purple frog hopping over the Golden Gate Bridge, chanting the Jizo mantra, which is om ka ka kabhi sama e soa ka, and she chanted the mantra. So she also knew that I love Jizo bodhisattva. And that was what I needed to leave. My time at Green Gulch felt complete after that ceremony. And even though I love going back and I still keep in touch with my friends there, it really allowed me to feel a sense of completion about my experience at Green Gulch. So arriving in the city and there was some chaos in the process of packing and leaving and certainly in the process of moving in, not being able to find things. And I'm sure anyone who's moved understands. It takes a while until everything gets packed and finds a place. And I still have a few boxes I haven't unpacked.

[10:41]

But when I arrived at city center, everyone was in a sashim, which if you don't know what that is, it's several days of silent retreat. And I really felt out of place because I wasn't in the sashim. I hadn't kind of... fully arrived, and it took a while before we had a work meeting. Work meeting happens every morning, and I think of that as one of the ceremonies of the day at Zen Center. And when I was able to introduce myself at a work meeting, I felt a real shift in my energy. People knew who I was, and I was really here. I had introduced myself to the community. And and and during that next week, I also got some of my my jobs. I talked with Eno about a Zendo job and I got a meal board job and figured out what I could do because I was working full time.

[11:49]

And all of those things helped me to feel more connected and that I was actually arriving. And then one more thing, which I haven't done yet. It's a ceremony we have at Zen Center, a sitting tangario, where you spend a whole day in the zendo, just sitting. There's no schedule. And it's derived from a ceremony. It's a very old ceremony in Japan. I don't know if it went back to China, but in Japan there's an actual room in some monasteries called the tangario, where monks sit before they... are admitted to practice in a monastery. So it's a kind of initiation. And it's one of the ceremonies of beginning that I think is very valuable and important. It makes you just stop what you're doing for a whole day. At Tassajara, it's five days. And it really helps you settle in.

[12:50]

So those are some of the Ceremonies that I think are helpful with beginning life that helped me. And I think Thangaria will help me also just feel that I've landed here. Now, when I talked with Marvin this morning, he said a very interesting thing about life cycle ceremonies. He said, sometimes when we're making changes, the changes are so gradual, we may not even notice them. We may not recognize changes in ourself. But our friends and those who know us may be able to see the changes more clearly than we see them ourselves. And these changes can be supported by confirmation by other people. Others will see. that we may be different.

[13:53]

And he said there's really a lack of that kind of recognition in our society. And I was thinking of one situation, which I know Marvin recently experienced, when he was head student, or Shuso, in his sangha. And this was an experience I had just before I left Tassajara, being head student. for the practice period. And it's impossible to be head student without the support of the whole sangha, the whole community. Everybody makes it possible for you to take that role. It's true of a lot of roles at Zen Center, but that one in particular, in my experience, it's by the connection with all. All the students, the head student has tea with everybody. Your job is really to support the practice of other students, just always going to the Zendo.

[15:02]

That's the main thing that you do. At Tassajara, you also take care of the compost and clean toilets, which felt like a way of giving something back to the community. And you work with, you have an assistant called the Benji. And Barbara, who carried the incense for me tonight, was my Benji at Tassajara. So it was very nice to have that connection again. And in that time, you also give your first talks. So it's a way in which, you know, the whole community kind of celebrates. So it's a way it's a three month. Tassajara is three months here in the city. It's often two months. celebrates and supports that change, which kind of creates the chuseau or the head student. It's a kind of interdependent or dependent co-arising that the community benefits from the chuseau and supports the chuseau and the chuseau is allowed to

[16:15]

and blossom in some ways that wouldn't happen any other way. So, and Marvin also commented that change may be difficult. And even when you look forward to a change, such as a new job, there can be fears about the new role. And there certainly were for me when I started my job at Zen Hospice Project, I had been a volunteer for a year. but I had much less experience at doing hospice work than some of the other volunteers, and my job is volunteer coordinator. So I really was kind of anxious about how some of the volunteers who'd been there five years or more, ten years, how they would feel about my being the volunteer coordinator. And one thing that helped me, With that transition was the very first day I was working at hospice. We have a community meeting once a month where all the volunteers come together and there's usually a talk.

[17:20]

And so my supervisor asked me to give away Seeking Mind Talk that night and introduce myself to the volunteers by talking about my life and my practice. And I don't think there could have been a better way to get over my fear about starting out and for people to kind of have an opportunity to get to know who I was. And so I think of that as a ceremony also. I wanted to say a little bit about the healing nature of ceremonies. There's a wonderful essay by Maezumi Roshi, who was the founding abbot of Zen Center Los Angeles. And it's in his book, Appreciate Your Life. His essay is called On Ceremonial Action. And he talks about the word ceremony itself. It comes from Latin, ceremonia, which is related to cura, meaning cure, the act of healing or being healed.

[18:28]

So in other words, ceremony is an act that cures or heals or by which something is healed. In having a ceremony or in doing ceremonial action, we we must ask what is healed and by what is that healed? And last weekend, I really had an experience of the healing power of ceremony. And this again involves Marvin. And he said it was all right to talk about this experience. I was at a. training with a number of people in this room were there as well. It was training at Empty Nest Zendo in North Fork, which is kind of close to Yosemite and not too close to any town or major hospital. And on Sunday morning, Marvin woke up not feeling well at all.

[19:33]

His roommate, who has nursing training, was able to help him and called 911. And I won't go into the details, but an ambulance came to take him to Kaiser in Fresno. And just at that time, it was pretty early. All of us, there were about 28 students and six teachers at this training. We were all getting ready to come to the Zendo for morning Zazen. And just as Marvin was being transferred to the ambulance and about to be driven away, we gathered and we started chanting the , which is a chant of compassion. It's a Kuan Yin's chant. And we chanted it and then dedicated the merit of our chanting to Marvin's well-being and recovery. And he was waving in the ambulance. He couldn't really hear us, but he could see us all gathered there.

[20:36]

And I think that ceremony was very healing for us, for all of us to gather and express our caring for Marvin. And then we went in for zazen and someone told the group what had happened and people had a chance to talk about how they felt about what had happened. And that, too, was a ceremony. And it really brought the whole group together and I think reminded us all of how fragile and precious our lives are. This could have happened. It could happen to any of us any time. But that's chanting really pulled us together and created a very deep sense of us as a sangha. And You know, many of us may be uncomfortable with rituals or chanting, bowing, the forms that we use at Sun Center.

[21:37]

But I find, and Mayasumi Roshi also talks about this, that there's a way in which rituals can bring some order to our lives and that in and of itself can be very healing. One of the things that a few people at Zen Center are doing now every morning is a well-being ceremony. It started when one of our teachers, Darlene Kohn, was ill. And there are a few people who gather every morning in the Buddha Hall and chant the anime juku kanan gyo seven times. Or is it 21 times? It's 21 times. 21 times. And then there's... Someone reads the list of people who need our healing energy. Abby, you're part of that. And I know Marvin was doing that regularly and Blanche and Lou. And maybe there are some other people. And Marvin told me today that he used to be very skeptical about ceremonies, said he had a scientific mind.

[22:47]

And he said, if you can't prove something, it's not worth doing. And, you know, you can't. how can you prove that a ceremony is helpful? But now he thinks it really works. And I think, I think from his own experience, but also his teacher, Darlene, is convinced that it works. She's a firm believer in the value of ceremony. So I didn't bring my watch, so I don't know what time it is. How are we doing? 8.15. Okay, good. So there's just just a couple more things I wanted to say and see if you have any questions. I wanted to talk about rituals or what can be helpful. Some of the ceremonies we do at Zen Hospice. I work at Laguna Honda Hospital, which has a hospice unit and there are 24 beds. And.

[23:51]

on a ward. So there are 12 women's beds and 12 men's beds. And often when somebody we have an idea that or a sense that somebody is getting close to the end of their lives, called it actively dying because everyone there is there because they're dying. But they're actively dying. Often people have stopped eating or they're not eating very much. They may be sleeping a lot. They may no longer be talking. And one of the things I've come to really appreciate is just pulling over a chair and sitting by someone's bedside and breathing with them. Or sometimes sending loving kindness, just thinking, doing loving kindness meditation and thinking of their well-being. They're sending them loving kindness, wishing that they might be peaceful and at ease. Very simple things. One time my supervisor, Eric, was with a woman who was extremely frightened and in a lot of pain.

[25:02]

And he could tell that she was very close to death. And he sat at her bedside and he did a Tibetan practice called Tonglen, which some of you may be familiar with, where you can breathe in someone's pain or suffering and breathe out. wishing them peace or relaxation, healing. And he did that and he could see her body relax. And later that night she died. So very simple ways of easing people's transition. And I promised Jordan I would relate my talk to the Heart Sutra. So... So I thought about it. And, you know, when I thought about ceremonies and how they connect us in a way, you know, one way of looking at emptiness is emptiness of own being. But it's also interconnectedness that when you can get a glimpse of how we are interconnected and all of life is interconnected, you can have a.

[26:16]

a little taste of emptiness. And forms and ceremonies are really one way that help us access that experience. So I'm not sure that's exactly what's meant by form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. But there's such a connection between form and emptiness in that way. And then I also thought about the mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra, gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhisvaha. It means there are a few different translations, but one is gone or gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. And then bodhisvaha is praise to awakening. So in a way, it's about, it's a transition, really. going from our ordinary mind, ordinary experience to the other shore, which is being awake, being connected, feeling our oneness with others and with all of life.

[27:34]

I thought I would end with two short poems. One of them, I thought of this. It's by T.S. Eliot. It's just part of a poem. I'll say the poem and then tell you why I thought of this poem for my talk tonight. We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring. will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. I'll read it again. My teacher says that every poem deserves being read at least twice. I agree with her. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. And I realized when coming back to city center, I lived here and I moved here in 1999 and lived here for a year and a half before I went to Tassajara.

[28:45]

And coming back to city center really does feel like I'm knowing the place for the first time. It's the same place and it's very familiar, but it's also I'm in a different place perhaps. So that's why it feels like I'm knowing this place for the first time. And I think many of our experiences may be like that. We can do the same things every day, but sometimes it feels like we're doing them for the first time. Just something happens that day where, you know, you kind of notice the light on your floor or the sound of feet in the zendo and just a sense of freshness about it that can be very surprising. And then there's a short poem by Rengetsu, who was a Buddhist nun. She lived from 1791 to 1875. And she was ordained after the deaths of two husbands and three children.

[29:50]

So she had a lot of loss in her life. And in order to make a living, she made pottery and inscribed her poetry on some of the pottery she made. This is her poem. Coming and going without beginning or end. Like ever changing white clouds, the heart of things. Say that one again. Coming and going without beginning or end. Like ever changing white clouds, the heart of things. So that. may also say something about form and emptiness. So do I have time for a couple of questions, Judy? Yes. Okay, so does anyone? Tanya? I wonder if you could say something about grief and your experience of grief.

[30:54]

Well, grief is certainly part of coming and going. It's certainly the going. And definitely part of loss and working with people who are dying. I experienced my own grief and I also see family members' grief. And I feel that our practice is really helpful for just staying with the different emotions that arise in grief. Allowing grief to take its time. Grief can take a long time. And appreciating that different people experience grief in different ways. Right now, there's a resident who's been at hospice almost a year who I'm very fond of. Her name is Betty and she loves poetry.

[31:58]

And when I first met her, she told me she liked Buddhist poetry. So I started bringing poems and reading Mary Oliver to her and Rumi and various other poets. And I read a poem and we discuss it. And in the last few weeks, she's been sleeping more and more and just seen a real big change in her. And she's not so interested in reading or being read to even. And I'm starting to feel my grief. You know, because I know she's going to die soon. And I feel such a bond with her. I really love her. So I've started telling her that I love her before I leave at the end of the day. And yesterday she told me she loved me, too. And so I think I'm starting to grieve now because, you know, but and I don't know what it will be. like when she dies.

[32:59]

So what can I say about grief? It's just such an important experience to really allow space for it. Is there more you want to say about it? space for marking these transitions at the same time, recognizing the case of continuity. Well, I don't think there's a problem with that because it doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like a contradiction to you. Maybe not a congregation so much as a problem. I mean, it's simple. Every year, do the taxes.

[34:03]

You shouldn't have to do them again, ever. Because they're done, but they're not. Well, they're done for that year. I mean, it's true. Every day someone washes the dishes, but they're never done. But, you know, you can feel some satisfaction after you've finished your dish shift, knowing they're done for that morning or afternoon. You're going to have to do them again the next week. So I think, you know, when you finish your taxes, you can do something to celebrate. You've done them for this year and, you know, it's a hassle. when next year comes around, you will have to do them again. OK, why don't we chant.

[35:14]

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