And welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple, also known as City Center, right, or just Zen Center. This is the mothership of the San Francisco Zen Center, so especially I'd like to welcome the new people. My name is Daigaku. I am a resident here. So, of course, I know many of you or recognize you, but it's great to see so many here. during the holidays today. I trust that all of you have been enjoying the holidays. And for those of you who are not familiar with this life here, I thought to say a little bit about how we do the holidays here. So for one thing, today is the last day of interim, which is a kind of holiday in its own right, right? Which means that for this week long, beginning on Monday, we did not have any wake-up bells. Usually every morning at 5 o'clock on the weekdays, there's a very vigorous sounding bell which calls us to get up and go down to the Zendo and do our meditation in the morning and come up here and then have the morning service and so on.

[01:16]

But this past week, we did not have that. So the people who are living here have been enjoying that freedom of sleeping in or perhaps staying up later than usual. That's one thing. And then some of the activities we've been having on Saturday, just a week ago, we hosted the Christmas party for the kids who live at Clara House down here on Page Street. Clara House is a house for families in transition, so we helped put on a party for them. I was out of town, but I heard that everybody had a great time. Santa Claus was here and so on. And then on Monday morning, we celebrated the solstice, which, of course, is technically the beginning of winter, the longest night of the year. And then on Thursday evening, we got together for a meal that we all helped to either make or set up and clean up and so on.

[02:16]

So that's a little bit how we've been... celebrating the holidays here. And of course, people have been getting together and doing this and that on their own. I lived for many years in a Japanese Zen monastery. And you may be surprised and even delighted to know that in a Japanese Zen monastery as well, there is a winter party. A big one on the 22nd of December. And it is called Toya, which means winter night. And this was, again, an activity where all of the monks, usually anywhere from 20 to 25 people at the monastery, we were all expected to make a dish, some kind of food for this party. We had people from France, Germany, America, of course, Japan as well. So we had a real smorgasbord of food and drink. I've never seen as much food in one room.

[03:21]

for that many people. So this was a big deal. And then when that was over, we had skits and karaoke and dancing and so on. But I want to put that into a little bit of perspective. Because December was also a very, very busy month. We started it off with Rohat Sesshin. Sesshin is a week-long retreat. We had six of them during the year. The one in December called Rohasu is typically the most grueling and intense session of the year, which begins on December 1st and would finish on the morning of December the 8th with a ceremony commemorating the enlightenment of the Buddha. So that was the beginning of December. And then at the end of December, we were getting ready for New Year's, which is a very big deal in Japan. So that meant... cleaning inside and outside the temple, getting the decorations from the mountains that were used to decorate the altars.

[04:28]

It meant making mochi, pounding mochi, mochi rice, which was done every year on the 27th. It meant all of the ceremonies at the last part of December and the first three days of January. So that meant preparing for all those ceremonies. That wasn't something that just happened by itself. That meant a lot of practice. So the first three days of January, getting up early, doing the ceremonies, serving tea to the guests who came to the temple. Then on the 4th of January, going to their homes. And finally, on the 6th of January, beginning our winter begging season called kangyo, which literally means cold practice. And it was cold. Rain or snow or shine, we would go out every day for three hours begging in the small town near the monastery. And frequently, even if it wasn't raining, the streets were wet. So the minute you stepped out of the gate, your feet would be wet.

[05:30]

Your hands would be cold. And we did this for 30 days. So this party on the 22nd of December had the real function then of... sort of bolstering and bringing together the energy of the monks to do all of this stuff. And I think typically that's the reason why we celebrate at this time of year. Nobody has a monopoly on this thing of celebrating this, well, the darkest time of year and the time when we get ready for winter. I don't think, here in San Francisco, I think we don't really appreciate it quite like people. I was just in upstate New York last weekend where you have the snow on the ground, that piercing cold weather that goes right through the, seems to go right through the bones, the long nights and so on. But in any case, we come together to bring joy into the season of darkness, whatever way you happen to do it.

[06:38]

But I think we also know that for many people, this is also the most difficult time of year. Maybe some people are very sensitive to the seasons. There's that part of it. There are some people, maybe there's the stress of trying to please everybody, shopping. There are the expectations of the holidays and disappointments and so on. So what I'd like to talk about today... is really going beyond bright and dark. Beyond favorable and unfavorable. And this is the Dharma, what we call the Dharma. There's a place where there's truly nothing. And really making that your own. Even beyond birth and death. And I would say that that's the objective of Zen practice. Not just to to hear about it or read about it, but actually to do it for yourself and verify that there is a place beyond in this life.

[07:44]

But how? How are we going to do that? That's what Zen practice is all about. And today, I would especially like to talk about koan practice because this, I believe, is a very important way of doing that. But first, a little bit of history. For those of you who know just very, very little, if anything, about Zen, Zen is one school of Buddhism. In Japan, we typically say there are 13 different schools or sects of Buddhism, and Zen is just one of them. And I think of Zen as the child of Indian Buddhism and Chinese culture. culture a very gifted child that was born about 1500 years ago and it took a while for this child to grow up several hundred years we typically say that the golden age of Zen in China was about 1200 years ago more or less and at that time in the golden age of Zen there were five schools of Zen so within one school of Buddhism there were five lineages and

[09:04]

or schools, or houses of Zen. Ummon, Hogen, Igyo, Rinzai, and Soto. And you don't have to remember that. What I'd like to say is that three of them died out quite quickly. Within two or three hundred years. Those approaches to Zen, to making the Dharma your own, petered out. And so what we have are the two approaches which really stood the test of time. Rinzai, and Soto. Those are still the two major schools of Zen in Japan. And as you may know, the San Francisco Zen Center is associated with the Soto School of Zen. And by far, here in America, in the West as well, Soto is the most widespread form of Zen practice. That could change. Everything is impermanent. It's possible that Rinzai Zen could later, you know, let's say 100 years from now, could become more popular.

[10:10]

That's perfectly possible. But at this particular time, Soto is very much widespread here in America. I think we say there are over 200 Zen groups or centers here in America already. And the touchstone, the hallmark... of Zen practice, of Soto Zen practice, is what we call Shkantaza. Kind of a difficult word. Shkantaza we could understand as just single-minded sitting Zazen. Just sitting means to leave everything as it is. That since everything is the Dharma as it is, not to reject anything, and not to try and get anything. We say that is the practice of a Buddha. Just like up here on this statue, on this altar. But we have to take it one step further, I believe.

[11:14]

We have to sit so close to Zazen. Shkan means to be so close to Zazen that there's no separation. That means there's nobody actually sitting. Nobody actually aware of zazen. So we call that samadhi. So close to zazen that you are the thing itself. And that's, I would say, no easy thing to do because usually we are aware that we're sitting. And not only that, we're quite fond of judging. Well, oh gee, I'm really sitting well. Or the next period, you know, beating yourself up because you're not sitting well. But shikantaza is really to go beyond that. In fact, the Dharma is a condition where things cannot be compared. And I would say that that is the objective, to really make that reality where things cannot be compared, our own.

[12:16]

Now, the Rinzai approach is quite different. In the Rinzai school or sect, they're fond of taking a question. And really holding on to that question and chewing it just like a dog chews on a bone. Just chews and chews and chews on that question until the question disappears. You've just chewed it to pieces. So this is a little different than finding an answer to a question. It's the same thing as shikan taza, shikan koa. To be so close to the question that that sense of separation between Me. And the question disappears, just grinding it up, chewing it up. And that kind of question can take various forms. One of the forms is from stories from China, the Golden Age, a lot of them. And I'm going to talk about one later.

[13:17]

A well-known koan. Or they could arise from your own life. And I would suspect that many of you here have your own question. You may not think of it as a koan. But unless somebody really dragged you here this morning, I suspect everybody who's sitting here has your own question. That question could be, well, who am I really, anyway? Or, what is the purpose of this life? How can I really live this life to my utmost? I was thinking another one. We just did this short verse, right, before I began to speak. I vow to taste... the truth of the Tathagata's words. And yet there's a well-known koan where Shakyamuni Buddha, at the end of his life, he said, in 49 years of teaching, not one word of truth has been expounded. So how am I going to ever taste the truth of the Tathagata's words? That would be a perfectly good koan.

[14:23]

As well as others. I'm sure you have your own. koans as well. Or, in an even larger sense, we could think of Buddhism itself as a koan. After all, Shakyamuni Buddha, 2,500 years ago, when he had his enlightenment, he guaranteed that all sentient beings, past, present, and future, are Buddhists. As we are right now. So as Kanzan Kokushi, the great Rinzai master, early Japanese Rinzai master said, if everything is the perfect, complete Buddha, why are sentient beings deluded? We could say that that's the very first koan. It's a big one. And I would suggest we all have to answer that one.

[15:24]

Otherwise, Zen is just something that we've heard. We've read about. But Zen, I believe, is really to go beyond faith. It's really to make it your own. To verify that from the beginning, we have been a Buddha. That we are a Buddha as we are right now. So I'd like to talk about a koan. This is a very well-known koan. And by coincidence, it involves the man... we think of as the founder of the Soto school. Dongshan or Tozan Ryokai. The So, Soto, To comes from his name, Soto, Tozan. He lived about 1,200 years ago, more or less. And one day... a monk came up to him and asked him, he said, cold and heat descend upon us.

[16:34]

How can I avoid cold and heat? Again, I think here in San Francisco, it's hard for us to appreciate this colon completely. You know, we have such great weather here. It looks like it's getting ready to rain, but that's about as cold as it ever gets here. But back in China, before they had air conditioning and heating and all that, that was probably a real question because it gets really cold some places and very hot too, hot and humid. So yes, how can I avoid hot heat and cold? And the master said, Tozon said, well, why don't you go where there's no cold and heat? seems like a reasonable thing to do. And the monk probably had to think about that.

[17:36]

Because if there is such a place, why didn't he know that? He wouldn't have asked that question if he knew that, if he knew where there was a place where there was no cold and heat, right? And this is something that I always emphasize in Zen practice. listening to the teaching, thinking about it, and then practicing. This is a three-step process that we cannot overemphasize. In other words, we hear the teaching, or maybe we read about it. But then it's necessary to think about it. It's not, as I said earlier, Zen is not something where you just swallow the teaching whole without chewing it up. No. That's not going to do. You've really got to think about it. And then you have to, ideally, you have somebody that you can ask these questions.

[18:37]

And here at Zen Center, there are many teachers. And I encourage you to ask them. Well, where is that place then where there's no cold and heat, for example? And so on. There are many, many questions that can arise. Because much of the Zen teaching is counterintuitive to the way we usually think. No self, no mind, no eyes, no ears. What is all that stuff anyway? But even if you do get a good answer, let's say you find a good teacher who gives you good answers, that's very likely going to be the seed for more questions. So this is an ongoing thing where you ask, you got that answer, and then you think about it. And there will be more questions. And then in the process of... Asking, which is such a great thing to do, you ask those questions, it disappears, but then you get the next answer. And another question very likely will come up. And then when we understand what practice is all about, we can really dive into it.

[19:43]

And then in the process of diving into it, we can let go of all of that stuff. You don't want to hang on to all that stuff you've heard. No. You just want to do it. Because as I mentioned, in a samadhi of zazen, there is no zazen. So this monk was thinking, okay, where is there no cold and heat? I've got to ask the master that. So he did it. He was compelled to ask, well, where? Please tell me where there's no cold and heat. And the master said, well, when it's cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. And when it's hot, let it be so hot that it kills you. Very famous story. And again, remember this is Tozan Yokai. This is the beginning, the founding of the Soto Zen teaching. This word kills, for some of you, may seem a little bit surprising.

[20:45]

We're talking about compassion and all that around here. What does that have to do with killing? Well, Rinzai... the founder of the great Rinzai sect as well, was fond of saying, if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet one of the ancestors, kill the ancestors. And of course, I just want to emphasize, don't get the wrong idea here, this means, this is a strong way of saying, right, kill the self. Don't go out and kill somebody else, kill the self here. In other words, when you meet the Buddha, be so close to the Buddha that there's no space there. If you do meet one of the ancestors, be so close to the ancestors that there is no space.

[21:47]

So I would say in this way that this koan, or any kind of koan, is our reality. The idea there is to be so close to the question that you're one with the question. In fact, koans are reality. They're like a law. They're like something that the ego cannot interfere with. And some of you, I don't know if this is a good example or not, but I was thinking like a red light or like traffic lights. These are koans in their own right. If you come up to a red light, you've got to stop if you're driving. If you go through a red light, you're going to pay the price in some way or another. Either an accident or a police car is going to come along and tell you about it. So these are facts of our life, to be one with them. But of course, let's think about this call in a little bit. Cold and heat could represent other things like likes and dislikes, or favorable and unfavorable.

[22:54]

It could even represent life and death. Where is that place that is really beyond life and death? And Zen is a teaching that is pointing at that place. And it belongs to all of us. It's simply a matter of really verifying it for ourselves. I'm very fond of a teaching by Dogen Zinji. perhaps his best-known teaching. To study the way of Buddha is to study the self. So notice, Dogen Sensei is not saying, well, study the sutras or the teaching or any of that. He's saying, study the self. This is the Dharma, he's saying. So if you want to know what an awakened, liberated human being is, study the self, Dogen Sensei. And then he continues, to study the self is to forget the self.

[24:03]

And this is a very important part of the teaching. And in the original Japanese, he's using the same word here, but I think we can also use the same word, but I think it's easier for us to understand if we capitalize the first self. So to study the self, the big self, the cosmic self, the self that is one with all things, which I think is really what we want to wake up to, the Buddha self, the Buddha nature. In order to wake up to the self which is really one with everything, Dogen is saying, forget the small self. Forget the ego. And I don't want to say that's an easy thing to do. That is perhaps the most difficult thing that any human being can do. Because in one way, that self, regardless of which culture we've been brought up in and so on, that's our most prized possession.

[25:06]

Even though in Buddhism we say that's an illusion. It doesn't really exist, but we very much hold on to that idea of me. And letting go of it, or seeing through it, seeing through that illusion is very, very difficult. But Zen is the way to do that. by grinding up the self in zazen, whether it's shikan, taza, just sitting. Leaving everything be as it is. Not judging our zazen. Not judging those thoughts. Not judging whether it's favorable or unfavorable. Or shikan, koan, to be the question itself. If you find an answer, let it go. Or if you can't find an answer, let it go and just be the core. Because there is the Dharma of not understanding.

[26:09]

That is a reality. If you don't understand, you don't understand. That's okay. And if you're confused, that's okay too. There's the Dharma of being confused. If you could simply be one with confusion or anxiety, that would be peace of mind. But we are in that habit. of constantly comparing. Oh, I'm anxious, so I've got to find peace of mind. I've got to find peace of mind. That's the seed of anxiety. I'd like to leave you with one poem. Some of you have maybe heard me say this poem before. I do repeat myself quite a bit. You know, some of these things we've just got to hear more than once. That's how it is, maybe even every day. Short Japanese poem, a four-line poem that I've translated like this.

[27:11]

This very moment, first line. Just think of only this, second line. Third line, the past cannot return. Fourth line, the future cannot be known. And I think this poem describes quite well our Zen practice, the attitude of Zen practice. Because we are the ones who divide the moment now into past and future. As this poem says, the past and the future don't exist. And furthermore, nobody can think of the moment now, not even Buddha. It's impossible. We can only think of the past and the future. But if we think about it just a little bit, we know the past is something that we cannot hold on to.

[28:13]

This morning, right? Whatever happened this morning, we can think about it. Whatever we think about it is happening now. But we cannot hold on to it. We cannot change it. And yet it's very easy for us to get into these, I think of them like tape loops. where we just go over and over and over. Almost like obsession. Something, you know, that happened this morning. We didn't like the way the eggs were cooked or who knows what. But we just spin out on something that happened this morning or yesterday or whenever. Or we're thinking about the future. Even five minutes from now. Gee, what kind of cookies are we going to have this morning? what are we going to have for lunch? We can think about whatever we want to think about, but it's not here. That's all happening in thought right now. And we have that experience on a daily basis, I believe, that things do not go as we thought they would.

[29:18]

There's a lot of disappointment in life because we set ourselves up for it. Then, is about living in the moment now, where there's nothing. But I would add, we could also understand of it this way as well, that when the situation's favorable, we're okay with that, sure. And when the situation's unfavorable, we're okay with that too. By my calculation, it's about 50-50. even though we have a tendency for the favorable conditions. We'd really like to hold on to those a little bit more than the other unfavorable ones. But it's really, if we think about it, it's when we're down. It's when we're heartbroken. It's when we've lost something, stock market or whatever.

[30:21]

That's actually when we're most pure. That's that time when we can focus most easily on our koan. So there's nothing to reject about unfavorable. The idea is to take it as it comes. To verify that this thing is always one with those conditions, regardless if they're favorable or unfavorable. And that to awaken to our pure Dharma nature right now is what Zen is all about. Well, I think I'm almost finished. I thank all of you for listening wholeheartedly. There will be time for questions later on or comments.

[31:23]

I always say we don't have to agree on every single thing. So maybe you disagree with some of what I have to say. That's okay though. Let's talk about it. Anyway, have a great Happy New Year. Thanks so much.

[31:38]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.35