This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I must say I'm talking to nobody, but I think you can all hear me. I was thinking about Dharma talks, you know, which I think this is listed as a Dharma talk. And, you know, what does that mean to me? And then I had this idea that I'm basically writing lyrics to a song that I can't hear. You know, like that song of the Julamir Samadhi. You know, I can't hear the song, but I really want to, and I really want to write some lyrics that someday might suit, might fit. that song.

[01:00]

So I think we're all listening for the tune. It's been there since the beginning of time. So these are some lyrics, some of them that I've written, some of them that have been written by our ancestors, gratefully so. So the one I wanted to start with this morning is familiar to us all. We know it by heart. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion. born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. I think because we know this by heart, I wanted to start with this verse, just as we do each morning after we sit listening to the song quietly. And I think what we're trying to hear is where our human hearts and the heart of perfect wisdom are trying to meet. So I don't know how it feels to you when you're chanting this verse in the morning.

[02:08]

But sometimes, and certainly not always, I really mean it. I really feel that I want to avow my ancient twisted karma. I want to own it as mine. I don't need specifics. I can feel it. How my unskillful speech and my unskillful actions have created a tangled and sticky web from those beginningless karmic formations of greed, hate, and delusion, also known as ignorance, which is the mother of all afflictions. So ignorance really is the source of our dis-ease in this life, according to the Buddha. What we are ignoring is that all things that appear in this universe our rising independence on one another. Just like yesterday, everything arose in dependence on each other.

[03:13]

And what gratitude came when we finally were back together again, every piece of us, for the time being. And right now, all together, arising together, belonging together, if only we can feel it and know it. So this is the primary insight of the Buddha. And it's what woke him up on the last morning of his first sishi, which then became for him and his disciples a lifelong practice period. That's what they did with their lives. They practiced, period. And then he said, it's out of ignorance that we hate. It's out of ignorance that we lust. It's out of ignorance that we suffer. Therefore, the cessation of suffering depends on the cessation of ignorance. And he summarized that in these simple lines.

[04:16]

If this exists, that exists. If this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist. So having deep faith and understanding, the pentacle arising... In doing so, we may come to realize the non-dual nature of reality, the song. And the Buddha also said, this is from one of the ancient teachings in the Pali Canon, one who sees dependent co-arising sees the Dharma. One who sees the Dharma sees dependent co-arising, cause and effect. So this practice of clear seeing is what Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, was doing when he, she, they declared in the opening verse of the Heart Sutra that all five grasping aggregates are dependently originated and therefore are empty of inherent or separate existence.

[05:18]

You know, we've heard these things so many times, we've chanted them so many times, so I think it's good to think about them. Chintamaya Prasanna, study them. with your body, with your speech, with your mind. So what the Heart Sutra is saying is that it's this attraction to things and the fantasy of attaching ourselves to the things that we desire by means of our five grasping aggregates, form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness, upadana skandhas, the grasping skandhas, that we suffer. And that suffering itself is dependently co-arisen. Five grasping skandhas is suffering. And that's our fantasy. In giving up our fantasy of attachment, of getting anything for ourselves, of coming to own things, as we say, suffering vanishes.

[06:26]

Like smoke up chimney, or dew drops on the grass, like flashes of lightning in the dark night sky. So one by one, in teachings such as the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha dismantles all such notions of objects that the self, where there were such a one, might be trying to grab a hold of. Money, fame, sexual partners, private property, more heat, more light, more time, more cookies, and so on. So the best question for us to ask ourselves is how? How do I awaken from this shroud of ignorance that is blocking my view of the truth about reality, which is right here on the other side of the shroud? The truth about what I am, where I am,

[07:30]

what I'm doing and what I'm really here to do. So the familiar chant at the beginning of service offers some basic instruction on where to begin to find our way to freedom from ignorance. Greed and hatred in combination with ignorance are called the three poisons. And those are what drive the wheel of our suffering. To our credit, as I said in class the other day, we did not acquire them all by ourselves. We are born with them. They have dependently co-arisen with this complex life form called human being. If there were no ignorance, there would be no karmic formations, without karmic formations, no five skandhas, no twelve bases for sensory awareness, no contact between an object and a subject, No feeling, no desire, no grasping or becoming, no birth, aging, sickness or death.

[08:34]

The end of all stories. And yet this sequence called the wheel of birth and death is a story that the Buddha told us. And he told us that by remaining in samsara with us, the world of sorrow, in order to see us, how we behave, and to show us how we might be saved. Saved, for the Buddha, means helping beings to awaken from this dream, this fantasy of a separate self, and from all the unwholesome actions that arise when we dream. As the Buddha says in verse 5 of the Diamond Sutra, all that has form is an illusory existence. When the illusory nature of form is perceived, the Tathagata is recognized. All that has form is an illusory existence. When the illusory nature of form is perceived, the Tathagata is recognized.

[09:39]

Tathagata is an epithet for the Buddha, meaning one who neither comes nor goes. Just this is it. And it is good enough. So by hearing, studying, understanding these teachings about our illusory selves, we began, which began in the beginning of this past and are merely arising as us here today, we open a passageway to freedom by our faithful practice of living by Dharma, by the truth, and by seeing if it suits us to continue to do so. After the Buddha awoke, he recognized that dependent co-arising was one of these two principles which are profound and difficult to see. The other principle which is profound and difficult to see is nirvana, the stopping or the transcending of conditioned co-arising, the stopping or transcending of fantasies.

[10:44]

In the Maha Nidana Sutta of the Pali Canon, the Buddha states that dependent origination is deep, And it appears deep. And that's because of our not understanding and not penetrating this teaching. Because of not penetrating this teaching, humans become tangled like a ball of string in views of samsara, of rebirth, of suffering, and just about anything else we can name or imagine. As an example of what is difficult to see, there is a question that we often ask one another. Where are you from? This is a question that in our current understanding of our social relations is fraught with potential for causing harm. It's a question that might imply that you obviously are not from here. By here, I mean the place that I think I'm from. Maybe this country or this Zen community.

[11:47]

So... Some years ago, when I was helping out at the Green Gulch Kitchen, one of the new students was standing next to me, and he appeared to me to be Japanese. That's what I thought. And so I said to him, where are you from? And because we'd had a number of visiting monks from Eheiji over the years, I thought I'd be polite by suggesting he was from Eheiji. So I said, are you from Eheiji? To which Tendo, who is now the Tenzo at Green Gulch, replied, no, I'm from San Jose. So where are you from is a question that is best not to ask in that it can be received as a microaggression in any number of situations. However, if I ask all of you, where are you from? The answer is that you are from the very same place that I am. as are all other human beings on planet Earth. We are from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind.

[12:59]

So what I want to emphasize this morning are the three birth canals through which the three poisons have entered into our human bloodstreams since beginning this time. The birth canals of a body, of speech, and of a mind. Mostly I'm going to be talking about body and mind because knowing when and how to speak is a much bigger topic of conversation. Something that we can talk about over and over again, and which I hope we will. What is right speech? What is Dharma talk? So try to imagine, as Dogen says, that when you examine the world with a confused body and mind, you might think that your mind and nature are permanent. That what you call yourself is right here in this room, and that self really is who and what you are. And before you came into this room, you were somewhere else.

[14:00]

And then you might imagine after the practice period ends, you will again be somewhere else. Or perhaps you might stay here in this valley while the rest of us take our leave. However, as Dogen goes on to say, when you practice intimately, when you study that self and return to where you truly are and will forever be, right here, right now, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self, especially what you think of as your unchanging self. So I went through this exercise in my own imagination the other morning during Zazen in response to this question, where are you from? And by the time I got back to the day I was born, I realized there was a lot further back that I could go. So then I went back in my imagination to my mother's womb. And I thought, oh, I was probably curled up in there in the dark for many months on end as...

[15:05]

A spine and a head and gender markers and facial features grew into a more or less complete human being. And then I went back in my imagination before that, when I was no longer I. But a single unfertilized egg dropped into my mother's reproductive organs. A single egg out of around 400,000 stored in her ovaries. 400,000. The odds are not that good. And that egg was unknowingly waiting for my dad. So my dad, so I imagined, on a day sometime around the end of June 1947, made love to my mother and implanted around, this number just blew my mind, 200 million sperm into her body. Of those millions, about 200 million 200 reached the egg that would become me.

[16:08]

Only one of those sperm, after an immense struggle, made it through the shell of the egg, and when it did, the shell turned into a solid wall, and no other sperm were allowed in. Does that sound true? It's quite a story, huh? So in answer to where are you from, what I just said is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. that we call the universe. As Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist, famously said, and I often repeat, if you want to make an apple pie, let alone a human being, first you need to make a universe. Dependent core rising. So the reason I'm bringing this up right now is because we humans within our tiny circles of water, meaning the tiny circles of our imagination, Don't consider the vastness of the universe out of which we appear. We think our parents made us, that they grew up in such and such a place, went to school, found a partner, maybe made some other kids along the way.

[17:17]

It's a very limited story. Ignoring the tiny sperm that really is my dad and is soon to be fertilizing a tiny egg that is my actual mother, seemingly destined to be me. However, as Dogen says, when you sail out on the ocean where no land is in sight, which is where we truly are, sailing out in the vastness of space with no other habitable land in sight, and we view the four directions, up and down and all around, the ocean looks circular and it doesn't look any other way. Skies above and the earth below, or so it seems. But the ocean, the universe, is neither round or square or Its features are infinite in variety. Whole worlds are there. It's like a palace, like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as your eye of practice can see. I think it's really important for us to challenge our limited views of ourselves and of this world and to really consider deeply what part of the elephant we have taken a hold of.

[18:30]

and come to firmly believe that that's all there is to it. You know, a tree, a rope, a snake, a water jug, to which the king laughs a hearty laugh, as we blind humans continue to argue with one another over our isolated visions of the truth. And then Dogen says, and I'm adding a few words, in order to learn the nature of the myriad things, we must know that no matter how they look, or what we think, the other features of this world, this seemingly single human life, are infinite in variety. It's so not only around each of us, but also directly beneath our feet and in a tiny drop of sperm heading blindly upstream, seeking without knowing to find the golden egg in order to make me into yet another quarrelsome human being. When we human beings truly against all odds are finally born, we arrive with a challenge that is often, sadly, ignored.

[19:32]

Namely, the inborn karmic tendency to be selfish, to ignore the miraculous appearance that is each and every human life, and to be intoxicated by greed, hatred, and ignorance, thereby failing to be grateful, awestruck, generous, ethical, patient, wise. And so when we're asked where are we from, It's a good practice to look ever deeper into the causes and conditions that brought you and me and the Buddha and every being that has ever lived into this world. The good news, as Dogen says in the Ehe Kotsu Gomon, which we just chanted, Ehe Kotsu Hotsu Gomon? Koso, thank you. Ehe Koso Hotsu Gomon. Before Buddhas were enlightened, before they looked deeply into themselves and clearly saw their falsely imagined views, they were the same as we. And that enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old.

[20:37]

Same species, same beginning, same egg and sperm count, same opportunity to find deliverance from ignorance and self-centered clinging. So where do those who wish to become free of self-clinging begin the journey to freedom? In the opening verse, we are offered these three basic elements that give rise to karmic actions of the human being. There's the body that speaks, a body that knows the world through the mind, a body that takes actions on what it thinks it knows about the world that seems to be outside of itself. The body has been the beginning place for students of the way since the Buddha sat his own body down under a tree. When I first encountered Zen at the Page Street Zendo, it was Saturday morning during Zazen instruction, and as I mentioned, it was Linda Ruth Kutz, a young priest with a newly shaved head, who was offering instruction that morning to my body, as it turns out.

[21:45]

And she told us to cross our legs, to sit up straight, neither leaning to the left or to the right, place our hands in what she showed us and called the cosmic mudra. That sounded interesting. And then she said, if you want to, you can count your breaths from one to ten. And that was it. And I remember thinking, that's it. That's all the instruction I'm going to get. No explanation or reason why I should be doing this. Sitting here on the floor. of the Buddha Hall in San Francisco. And yet before that day, I am not sure I'd ever noticed that I was breathing. Or if I had, I didn't pay much attention to it, or much else about my body, my mind, or my speech. So I didn't do very well with counting. I still don't. But I found it an amazing relief just to sit there in the darkened room of the Page Street basement. Every evening after work, I'd stop there and I'd sit there, wondering why I was there.

[22:51]

And I've never found out. I have no idea. But still, I return again and again. Body, speech, and mind. Nothing really happened there. and yet everything happened. I began to feel my body and to become curious about its parts and how intelligent it truly is, especially when the I managed every now and then to get out of the way. Over time, I was told in a Dharma talk that our sitting practice was the practice of the Buddha and the realization of a vow that he had made many eons ago to save all beings from becoming, by becoming, Buddhas themselves. That vow took place in his all-too-human heart. And as we're told in the story that I mentioned to you the other day from the Pali Canon, the story of a young yoga by the name of Deepankara, who met, excuse me, Sumedha, who met Deepankara Buddha.

[23:56]

And out of respect, he bowed to him, offered his bare hands for him to stand on as he crossed over the mud, which is our own five-point vow. offering our hands to Buddha, our hearts to the mission, which the Buddhas through all time have taken as their own, to become a Buddha for the benefit of everyone, including themselves. When Deepakar Buddha saw this earnest young man, he gave him a prediction that in a distant time in a far-off world, he would become a Buddha by the name of Shakyamuni. And when that time came, as the young prince gazed at the morning star, that vow was realized. And he knew for the first time he was not alone. Because as he said, I and all beings are awakened at the same time, dependent core rising. And then he saw how the core delusion of separation, based on the stories he had been told about himself, was the cause of his and of all human suffering.

[24:59]

So I'd like to ask all of you to just take a minute or so to consider how it's being done. How are you doing it? How are we doing it? How are we creating the thought of ourselves as separate from the world around us? You might choose an object outside right now. It appears to be outside. If you like, you can choose me. That's pretty obvious. You can choose the floor, a window, a person in front of you. How are you doing it? is that how does that happen is it even true is anything separate from you separate from us separate from each other I think we're hearing the song.

[26:20]

When we're calm and when our bodies are settled onto themselves, we can continue looking at this mechanism of separation just as the Buddha did, you know, over and over and over again. He saw how the affliction of ignorance was leading him to believe that his own eyes were separate from his ears, his nose from his skin, his whole body separate from the earth and the sky and the flowers and the trees. But worst of all, how he and his fellow humans were separate from one another and how they behaved because they believed that was so. And he got really scared, as we all did when we thought we'd lost Heiko, when we thought we were separate. The formula for creating this separation not only results from what we think, but also how we feel, what we perceive and how we act, all of which is taking place simultaneously within the body.

[27:35]

These entangled elements from which we are made and being made, the five aggregates or skandhas, is the fourth link in the wheel of birth and death. And yet even Prajnaparamita, the goddess of wisdom, is nothing other than those same five aggregates. And the sword of wisdom is the means by which she cuts those five parts into smithereens. No parts, no whole, no body, no feelings, no perceptions, no harmful impulses, no consciousness separate or outside of the mind of Buddha. This very mind that is your true self. So that's what the last line of the Heart Sutra is trying to tell us. Bodhisattva, gone, gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone. Hallelujah. So that's really nice, you know, to be freed from attachment to ideas we have about how we're being made of parts, parts of an isolated self floating all along on the great ocean of reality.

[28:47]

However, no matter how many ways these teachings are said, or how many stories are used to say them, they too are merely stories. Stories made from things that we ourselves have made. Words. Millions and millions and millions of words. Without words, in a flash of lightning, there is utter contentment. Nirvana. Meaning never having to worry again. As it says in chapter 50 of Kezon's masterwork, The Transmission of Light, you should know there's something that not only is speechless, but doesn't even have a mouth. Indeed, not only has it no mouth, it has no eyes either, no physical elements, no sense faculties. Fundamentally, there is not the slightest thing to it. Yet, though it is so, this is not voidness and it is not nothingness. It means even though you see things and hear sounds, it is not these eyes seeing, it's not these ears hearing.

[29:54]

This is the way that the faceless one is. Furthermore, your coming into being as a body and mind is the doing of this faceless one. It's not the body arising from your mother and father, the one covered in skin and flesh. It's not emptiness or existence. It's not light or or dark. It's not diluted or enlightened. Therefore, we can't call this realm Buddhahood, and we can't call it truth, and we can't call it mind or nature. It is just light, empty, clear, and bright. It can't be seen through, and it can't be grasped. It is just clear awareness. Along with his teaching, Kezon offers a little instruction on how to meet the faceless ones. For the time being, close your eyes. Where breath ends, this body ends, and there is no house to protect you.

[30:56]

All function is unnecessary. You are like the blue sky without clouds, the ocean without waves. Then you'll be somewhat in accord with it. However, as the Buddha saw and said, nothing lasts. Nothing. Not utter contentment, not nirvana, not the great earth, or all beings we have vowed to save, and not a meeting with the faceless one. And so as my therapist used to say to me, what's a girl to do? Well, he didn't tell me what to do, but he did teach me to ask questions like that one. And so recently, having taken up this ritual role for the practice period, I have asked myself that question a number of times. After heading off the wrong way a couple of mornings, leaving my jisha, wondering what she should do, I have adopted the mantra for myself, what's next?

[32:03]

So after 9,000 in the morning, I say to myself, what's next? confession and repentance. And then what's next? Flower petals. And then three bows all the way up to breakfast. So what's next now is that I would like to bow to all of you, dear Sangha, and join you in some silent outside walking before returning here to practice silent sitting. Thank you very much for your kind attention. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[33:01]

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