This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Excuse me. Thank you all for coming tonight. My name is Tim Wicks, gengyoko rincho, dark jewel turning towards the light. I would like to thank our abbot for inviting me and the tanto for extending that invitation. Thank you very much. Welcome my teacher, Rinso Ed Satterson, the central abbot. of you are here for the first time tonight?

[01:10]

Oh, very good. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thanks for coming and making time in your no doubt busy lives. Tonight I'm going to speak briefly, I hope. You never can tell with these things. on my relationship to and development of devotion. And the word devotion comes from the Latin word devavore, devovere, devovere, devovere. which means to consecrate or to declare as sacred.

[02:18]

This room, the Buddha Hall, is where it is that we have our ceremonies, we have our morning service in here, and it's the first room that I really spent a lot of time in. When I first came here 18 years ago to Zen Center, For the first couple of years, I just came from the front door into this room on Monday nights. There was and still is a meeting for people in recovery who were interested in meditation. I didn't want to go to the rest of the building right there. Basically, it was too scary for me. So I just came quickly right over here and I learned you had to take your shoes off right there, which I thought was strange. But, you know, Eastern influenced religion. So there's going to be some of that stuff. But I was told very quickly, this room is sacred. And I also learned the history of this building. This is a Julia Morgan building.

[03:19]

It was originally built for young, single Jewish women. And this room apparently was where it is that they would greet guests. So it wasn't really sacred in the way it is that we call it sacred. This room became a sacred room because we declared it a sacred room. And we asked for it to be treated as such. It's not some mystical reason or mysterious reason as to why it is that it's a sacred room. It's a sacred room because we declare it as such. And this is the act of devovere, devotion. We consecrated it. We declared it sacred. And it really is. It really is. But it took me a little while to come to that belief that this is a sacred room. I grew up in London, England, and I was born in this country.

[04:23]

So when I went there, I was an immigrant, and all of my friends were immigrants. And... A lot of them were from Barbados and Jamaica and India and Pakistan, and lots of them were from Ireland, and a few of them were from Africa. And it seemed like pretty much all of them had some kind of harm that they had received from their native religions, organized religions. And in getting to know them and hearing them... describe in various ways the harm that they'd received, the sense of rebellion that they were expressing towards their native religions, I saw that some of them even were traumatized, what I didn't know at the time was traumatized, but were deeply, deeply harmed by their native religions. And so I developed, along with them and also larger elements of

[05:27]

my culture a really deep skepticism about organized religion in general and devotion in particular because it seemed like the most devoted members of those religions were the ones who were in some ways kind of the most harmful to the people who I was growing up with who were rebelling against their native religions and so there was a very strong skepticism towards organized religion in general and devotion in particular it seemed like it was kind of propping up a convention that caused deep harm towards women almost universally mostly children and clearly towards people of color and perhaps in some ways especially in relationship to right now, most completely LGBT community members.

[06:34]

There were no religions in London when I was growing up that were accepting that I could see of what's now the LGBTQ community. So it just seemed like there was just a lot of harm and the skepticism seemed real true and honest to me. And devotion was just like a really bad thing because that was like right at the core of this harm. So when I came much later to the doors of Zen Center some 18 years ago, devotion seemed like, if you'll excuse me, a little bit of a sucker's game. I came limping in those doors a little more than 18 years ago high on the virtue of individualism. I was isolated and deeply broken. I'd recently gotten into 12-step recovery.

[07:36]

I'd been an alcoholic and a drug addict for a really long time. And one of the only things that wasn't ruined in my life was my condemnation of devotion and organized religion. I was quite clear about that, if nothing else, in my life. But I came here because I was mostly interested in meditation. I had just enough recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction to know that I had to do some things I really didn't want to do. And one of the things I really didn't want to do the most was sit silently and be with myself. Clearly, my drug use and alcohol use was all about the opposite, getting away from myself, which was unbearable. to me, but here I was trying to take opposite action. And so I was mostly interested in learning how to meditate.

[08:37]

And within a relatively short period of time, I saw that it actually treated my very intense anxiety in a way that drugs and alcohol didn't treat it. And so I began to experience moments of calm that were completely new to me in my life. So I kind of stuck around a little bit longer because I was getting these moments that were very brief. So those of you who aren't getting them yet and still trying, it takes a little while. It's not as quick as a shot of Jameson's. It's deeper, broader, and different. So I didn't really care much about the rituals and the ceremony that there is here.

[09:42]

Like I said, I could see it out of the side of my eyes, so I was just coming in this room and going out the door. But I started to see more of it, and I didn't care for it very much at all. It reminded me vaguely of the royal family in England, which has got a lot of ritual and a lot of ceremony around it. I wasn't raised, I didn't have a native religion to despise like so many of my friends, so I despised the royal family. We all have to despise someone, I guess, especially when we're growing up. But yeah, it reminded me of the royal family, and I only saw it as devotion to some kind of oppression. But after a while, if you come in here, even if you just come into this room, you start to notice there's other people around here. They're coming from, they hang out in the rest of the building. And one of the first people that I met was Blanche Hartman.

[10:47]

And she ended up teaching me. We make our robes. we make our own robes, all of these, the little rakasus that we have on and then these big ocasas right here, we make them ourselves and Blanche was our sewing teacher and she taught me for 10 years how to teach the sewing of Buddha's robe and that was such an amazing experience to work very closely with her and she really spiked my interest in the bodhisattva path it struck me as a very democratic form of Buddhism in the bodhisattva path we have the bodhisattva ideal where as bodhisattvas we agree to put off going into nirvana until all beings can be enlightened with us and I really like that

[11:50]

Blanche had been a communist and she was a feminist and she was deeply devoted to sewing Buddha's robe. But mostly, very quickly, I saw how devoted she was to her teacher of sewing Buddha's robe. A woman named Joshin-san who came here in the 70s and in the 60s, I think, she came here. and Suzuki Roshi brought her here, and she taught several people, and Blanche was one of them. And there's a photograph, which I'll talk a little bit more in a minute, of Blanche with Joshin-san, and it's a very beautiful photograph. We have it down in the sewing room of Blanche, and she's got her arm around Joshin-san, and Blanche was not that tall, but Joshin-san comes below Blanche's shoulder, and there's this... very unusual smile on Blanche's face that's very particular to that situation.

[12:59]

When we sew Buddha's robe, we're taught to take refuge with each stitch. With one stitch we take refuge in the Buddha, the next stitch we take refuge in the Dharma, and the next stitch we take refuge in the Sangha. And Without me knowing it, Blanche was teaching me how to have a devotional act. And that's what sewing Buddha's robe is. It's a devotional act. So being close to Blanche's devotion that she had to her teacher and doing this devotional act started to open me up. in ways that I wasn't totally conscious of which is good because I would have been in resistance immediately had I been conscious of them in a way and so that was very sneaky Zen is very sneaky in many ways and for me they've all been good so let's see am I there yet

[14:14]

Yes, I am. So in Zen, if we don't have a God figure or the royal family to be devoted to, what is it that we are devoted to? And to talk about that a little bit, I'm going to enlist one of our teaching stories. We love our teaching stories, our Zen teaching stories, koans. And we are very grateful because they're handed down to us from our ancestors. And we're grateful to our ancestors because they brought us this teaching which increasingly became important to me. Without that handing down of these teachings, we would have to reinvent our practice every 50 years.

[15:24]

So we're very grateful. Several times a week, in our services, we give thanks to our teachers, both men and women. And that is the act of instilling in us gratitude towards them for bringing these teachings to us. And the story that I want to just quickly pass on is that of Yunyan and his student, Donshan. Donshan had studied with... Yunyan, for several years. Actually, we don't know how long he studied with him. Maybe it wasn't years, but it was for a while. And when he was getting ready to leave, Donshan studied with several teachers. He said to his teacher, later on, if I'm asked to describe your teaching, how shall I respond? And Yunyan said to him, just this is it.

[16:27]

This is a very famous koan. that we study, and it's really Yunnan's, and very soon after this, like in so many of our koans, the receptor of the teaching, Donshan, in this case, became enlightened. He saw his reflection as he was crossing a stream. He became enlightened. And this is Yunnan's commentary on what today we would call being vastly present in the present moment. So that's what it is that we're devoted to in Zen. We're devoted to being awake, fully awake right now and recognizing when it is that we're not. And working together, we work in Sangha, we work in community to help each other to be as aware as we possibly can of this present moment with everything that is here, with all of our imperfections and all of our inabilities to be

[17:29]

all the obstacles that we have to be present right here in this precious, sacred moment that is each moment, without separation from all other moments. And of course, this is very easy to say and not so easy to do. And some of us need a lot of help, and I certainly do. For me, I was deeply affected by my conditioning of isolation. And it was very important for me to be around a group of people who were actively trying to break down those obstacles that protect isolation. And so it was very important for me not just to see that photograph of Blanche and Joshin-san, but to be around Blanche.

[18:31]

Blanche could be kind of stern sometimes. She was strict in certain ways and not strict at all in other ways. It was sometimes confusing to be around her. But to be near that photograph and to be near many of the contradictions of Blanche and to have this very profound act of sewing a stitch and taking refuge as deeply as I could with each stitch was very important to me and it was changing. It started to change me and started to affect me and seeing this love that there was between Blanche and between Joshin San and this incredible glow that there is in the photograph began to open me up to the activity, the action of devotion and cultivating devotion.

[19:39]

And so it had to do with relationships with people and not just the most obvious things, although that was included in the photograph. But an internal interaction that happened over time and it had a lot to do with the development of trust which is really the breaking down of obstacles and an opening up of the ability to perceive and practice So being around Blanche and doing this practice started to open me up to the other things that I was being introduced here.

[20:40]

And after coming here for about 10 years, I started to join in the service on a regular basis. It was less than that. It was about seven years I started to join in the service. And this, our services, because I'd spent time with Blanche and because she taught me, was beginning to teach me how to teach the sewing of Buddha's robe, had opened me up to this idea of being in close proximity to other people and being open to the energy that they have, to breaking down my sense of isolation and being and practicing... with the devotion to being open and aware to this moment right now, both the connections that we feel as well as the obstacles to being connected to others, I began to be more accepting of the other things that we do here. I'd already sat oryoki a couple of times.

[21:44]

Oryoki is our formal way of eating during seshin. and a friend of mine from here has called it OCD picnic. It's a very specific way of eating, and at first I felt like it was oppressive. It reminded me of the royal family. You know, you have the right fork and everything. But it's actually, what it is, it's a way for us to engage very deeply in what we, especially in the West, consider to be a very mundane act, something to get done with, something to get finished with so we can get on to the next thing. But it's something that we do all together down in the Zendo, and it's very, very beautiful. And I consider it to be a devotional ritual. We're pretty much all doing the same thing at the same time.

[22:48]

And it takes a little while to learn, but not as long as you would think. And if you don't have a chance to do it, I strongly recommend you come to an orientation the night before and then you do it the next day. And you do it wrong. And it's okay. but very quickly you get to enjoy, or you get to be a part of this devotion to the mundane act, or what we consider the mundane act of eating. And so all of these tools are what it is that I needed in order to begin to deepen this practice of being devoted. Basically, to being alive, being devoted to being alive. And that really is what our devotion is. I've worked extensively with mental health stuff, with depression in the last couple of decades, and Suzuki Roshi said something that has been...

[24:05]

an incredible aid to me in working with depression. He said, just to be alive is enough. Just to be alive is enough. And at first, when you apply that to feelings of despair and hopelessness, it's not very helpful. But if you do it enough and do it in the right way with other assistance... like Oriyaki and sewing Buddha's robe and being in close proximity with other people who are practicing with the same obstacles that you are, it begins to have a very deep and effective effect on emotional states, the most troublesome emotional states. Just to be alive is enough. So that's our devotion. You know, what time am I supposed to stop?

[25:07]

I want to save time for a few questions if people have them. Oh, that's too long. That's too long. So that is our devotion is to being alive, to being as open and aware as we can be to what it is that is happening right now. both the negative and the positive. When we sew our robes, the rakasus are made up of five rows, and each row is made of a short piece and a long piece. And we say the long pieces are the wisdom pieces, which is, you know, the good stuff. We all come to Buddhism for the good stuff, the wisdom. We want to get the wisdom. But the short pieces are the delusions, Or the ignorance pieces. And we sew them together. This is our robe of enlightenment.

[26:10]

And you can't have that without including our delusions, our habit energies that take us away from being aware of the present. And that has to be connected with. And... sewn together in our robes with our wisdom. And that is in fact a part of wisdom to include delusion, to include our obstacles, to include our habit energy that we return to all the time, even though we come here a lot and we still have anxiety and we still have depression and we still have harmful thoughts and we still do cruel things in the world. We have to include those in our bodhisattva path. And what this does is it begins to provide a sense of firmness, of firm ground for us to stand on.

[27:14]

And as some of you know, once you start standing on firm ground, you wonder if you're really standing at all or perhaps just being. I want to, for some reason, my four pages of notes is... been much shorter than it usually is. That usually takes me beyond the time that I have. So, we'll have time for questions, but I want to just finish up with a poem by Delmore Schwartz. And it goes like this. I waken to a calling, a calling from somewhere down, from a great height. calling out of pleasure and happiness and out of darkness like a new light, a delicate ascending voice which seems forever rising, never falling, telling all of us to rejoice, to delight in the darkness and the light, commanding all consciousness forever to rejoice.

[28:27]

And... Do any of you have any questions at all? Yes, please. Could you say your name, please? You're wondering about my experience of refuge. Yes. Good. So you can say it when you're doing the stitches in any language that you want, but Blanche liked us to say in Japanese, which is, I take refuge in the Buddha. But the Kie part in the middle, she explained, that is, I plunge into refuge with the Buddha without any resistance, without any...

[29:34]

Resistance. There's another word somewhere. It's kind of like resistance, but resistance will do. We'll say it twice. No resistance. And hearing that instruction from Blanche over and over again, I understood that what we're trying to do is really make contact with that. What would that be like? I had never had that experience before. And I imagine jumping into the arms of someone who I totally and completely and utterly trust. What would that be like? I can only imagine it. Because up until that time, I had never had anyone like that. So our imagination is very important to all spiritual activities. Less so in Zen, but still somewhat in Zen. What would that be like? And with practice, I can imagine it. Especially if I don't have to actually do it. I can imagine it. And it begins to change... we know now, my brain plasticity.

[30:38]

And how that feels inside of me is that feels actually like a refuge, like an abode, a building that I am seeking refuge in, that I'm safe in. The outside is something that has been harmful or has I've responded to in a way that brings about fear or anxiety. And I'm seeking and finding a break from that, some kind of a safe place. And, you know, it changes as you continue to practice with it. But it takes efforts to, first of all, imagine what that's like. And then with... just a little bit of time, you begin to see there's people around who actually, they're not imagining it. They really are that way. And they might not be like that all the time.

[31:42]

But there's quite a few around, especially around Zen Center, where they seem to be like that really a lot of the time. And you spend time around them to see, is it real? And it's real. It is really real. And so that turns back in on your internal experience of doubt, which we value deeply in Zen, of doubt, and ends up, in my experience, opening you up more. People come to me for practice discussion now because you're allowed to do practice discussion after you've become Shuso, which is the first monk for a period. And If anyone has ever experienced, when they come to me, a moment of calm, basically they're screwed. Because now, all it is, is about how do you get back to that? What was that like for you? Under what conditions did you experience that?

[32:45]

Because this is a crazy world, and for many of us, it cultivates a lot of anxiety and fear. So, if you ever experienced that at all, that feeling of... refuge. How do we get back to it? How do we get back to it? Thank you. Next question. Yes. Hi, John. I have. I have. Yeah. Oh, you do? Yeah. A heavy bear that walks with you. I don't know if it's in here. It might be. But I'm not going to read it right now. Yeah.

[33:50]

Why do you like that poem? Yeah.

[34:51]

It's about companionship and imperfection and warmth. And it's really about love. Which in the end, all of our teachings are trying to get us to. We've got time for one more. Yes, please. May. Yeah, yeah.

[36:12]

It's a contradiction to you, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, well, the koans are supposed to be contradictory. They throw us off from our usual black and white thinking of absolutes. And even though we're on the Bodhisattva path, we're already enlightened. So we don't even need the koans to experience that great contradiction right there. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to ask questions about koans. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we are American. Our Western culture is very pragmatic. And we are conditioned for solutions. And... and clarity, and koans do not provide that for us. They're trying to upset us and upset our ideas of what does it mean at the end of these stories when someone becomes enlightened.

[37:19]

What does that really mean? We don't really know, and we don't really have modern situations like that, so we don't really talk that much about enlightenment in modern Zen in California that I've been around. We talk about emptiness. We talk about emptiness. We really focus on emptiness. We really focus on the connectedness of all things, all phenomena. Yeah, and yeah, it's a big contradiction. A koan within a koan.

[38:36]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, there's also the element of encouragement, which, you know, it might have been encouraging back then, but I mean, me personally, I read those, you know, and he became enlightened, and I think, oh, well, that's never going to happen to me. That's discouraging. Anyway. Anyway. That's a wonderful question I didn't answer and can't. Yeah, keep asking. We keep asking. That's what koans are partly for, to dive deeper in. Well, thank you all very much for making time in your busy lives to... come to Zen Center. Some of you live here and you're going to bed to get up early to go to Zazen tomorrow. For those of you who live outside, be safe.

[39:41]

And I hope to see you again soon. 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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:16]

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