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. So I've been doing some more thinking. And, um... trying to squeeze out of myself some stories, some lyrics, and to find what my deepest intention is in doing so, you know, my deepest wish. What do I want? I think this tradition insists that what we want is to wake up, that that's our deepest wish. And then once we engage in a training process that is designed to help us to achieve that wish, that intention is squeezed into patterns of centuries-old communal practice, what I like to call classical Zen.

[01:10]

So upright sitting and chanting and bowing, eating meals together, sharing our work and our rest and our play. Kind of old school, very old school. So in this style of training, that intention is made visible within the community through our everyday interactions with one another. Followed by critique, better known by the dreaded word feedback. Would you like some feedback? Anybody? Really? Most people don't care for it much. I certainly don't. I don't like the word, I think, feedback. Would you like to give me a feedback on you somehow? Anyway, I think critique is really nice. I took some art classes years ago when my partner was hospitalized. I had something I needed to do for me, and I did not draw, but I wanted to learn.

[02:13]

And the teacher said, well, let's everyone put your work up on the wall here so we can critique. And I said, I'm not going to do that. I will not. You know, I was... And she said, no, no, no, this is good, you know. I had painted an apple that was floating in a blue sky. And anyway, I put my work up there, and someone said, yeah, that apple's floating. And I said, yeah. She said, you know, if you put a little bit of color under it, it might, you know. So I put a little color under it, and it dropped right to the ground, like magic. Magic apple. Critique. Kindness. Generosity. So maybe if we keep refining, helping each other to refine our practice, then we will be able to create a ritual performance in celebration of our Buddhahood. As I mentioned the other day, it looks like Chao. It dresses like Chao.

[03:14]

It eats from Chao's bowls and thinks like Chao. Well, then it is Chao. It is Buddha. I wanted to assure those of you who are going to go you know leave the monastery at some point not all of us will live our entire lives in a Zen monastery that these practices work perfectly well almost everywhere in the world you know in your home at the place where you work and although it may take a little bit more creativity and some personal discipline in order to do what is very easy here for the monks to do, because all we have to do is listen for the sounds of the haunt or the bell. Don't have to think too much. My teacher said to me years ago, some of us do a lot better in a penitentiary. I think he was referring to himself as well, and I agreed.

[04:16]

Yes, we do. This word, penitentiary, comes from a Latin word for penitence. Repentance, you know. A place where you can go to be sorry and make repair. So the teachers who introduced Buddhism to China were for the most part lay people. They were married, they had children. And it wasn't until many generations later that the Zen practitioners formed residential communities called monasteries. And they lived for a period of time. not too long usually with a teacher they mostly traveled about from monastery to monastery someone once said that tasara is really nice because you don't have to go anywhere the teachers come to you you know each practice period is unique depending on who's sitting up here so I don't know if you already know this but monastery comes from the word monos meaning to live alone to live alone with others

[05:21]

There was a wonderful older monk that lived here with us for many years, Philip Wayland, who was a poet, Zen poet. And at breakfast one morning, he said, Zen center is a great place for loners who can't stand to be alone. So on our last day of our first seshin, living together in our temporary residential monastic formation, I really do want to thank you. for what you are doing here, what we are doing here. I keep noticing gratitude just bubbling up out of me. It's just been so encouraging to practice with you, the real you, [...] you people, the ones here, not some abstract you. Sometimes I have doubts about this classical Japanese male monastic way of teaching the Dharma. And then something like this happens, you know, the 108th.

[06:26]

And I am once again all in. Okay. So I have some thoughts as we make our way toward the end of the Sashin, the end of the month, tomorrow, and the end of the year, and so on, to the end. So here's one. There is nothing wrong with your mind. And there's nothing wrong with mine either. It's just that they have simply been allowed to run around like baby monkeys while they're overworked and two tired parents trail at some distance behind, yelling out every now and then, stop that. What are you doing? Stop that. I think that baby monkeys really try to listen to their parents, but they don't understand them because the parents aren't doing what they're telling them to do. They're not stopping. And this has been true for generation after generation, you know, chasing our tails, which pretty much explains everything.

[07:38]

And so now we need to be good enough parents to ourselves and to each other with the guidance of the awakened ones who have come through their own confused childhoods and found a way to walk on a straight path, the bodhisattva path. calmly and kindly and wisely, without grabbing at everything and everyone that passes them along the way. Good morning, followed by a simple bow. You know, that's enough. And that's a lot. Not turning away and not touching, not grabbing. Just a simple, warm-hearted, constant and diligent effort to be present and to be kind. There are lots of ways to train baby monkeys. Some are not so nice. Strictness is not so nice if that's all you get. Kindness is not so nice if that's all you get. But babies all start pretty much where they are.

[08:45]

Some are angry. Some are frightened or lustful. Most all are confused. And parenting seems to work best when we are both kind and firm. I love my baby monkey, but that behavior has to stop. So what I want to talk about this morning on the final day of our session are some of the basics of the Zen training program, the one that we all signed up for, whether we knew exactly what we were getting into or not. And as I said on the talk of the first day, the main channels... the training for the transformation of the ancient twisted baby monkey karma our body speech and mind i talked some about body practices the main one of course being what we're doing today most days sitting upright and here at this monastery you've each been given a place on the town and i am really pleased to see how well we have all found our seats taken our seats almost daily

[09:54]

without exception. So finding your seat is probably the main thing that we have to offer to people who come to the Zen Center. Once you've found your seat, you're really good to go, you know, back into what we call the world and to meet whatever comes your way. When things turn difficult in your life, which they certainly will, you can always find a place to sit. and to breathe, and to engage others with kindness and patience. So some of the other body practices that we've mentioned are bowing to each other when passing, chanting as one voice, that one's hard, caring for the objects that you hold in your hands, you know, bathing daily, resting well, and with all the great help from our kitchen, eating nutritious and wholesome food. Having cared for our bodies, and the bodies of our friends as best we can under the conditions of a monastic schedule, we are given this rare opportunity to return the kindness of our ancestors by realizing within ourselves the one great vow to save all beings by awakening to our true self.

[11:10]

Buddha meeting Buddha. Because of the wish or the desire, to save all beings, and because all beings live in the world of desires, then Buddhas, too, live in the world of desire. Whenever we see desires coming, we sit up straight and open our eyes, take a deep breath and exhale until enough time has passed that we are not at risk of being swept away. I have found it especially helpful to pay attention to the Tandon. that area behind the belly button. I've been doing that most of this practice period. And it's really very, very helpful practice. You know, that's often right now I can see it. There's tension in my stomach. And when I notice that, if I simply allow my breath, kind of like a washboard, to just go up and down over that spot, little by little the tension simply evaporates.

[12:12]

wish to end our suffering and the promise to remain in the world of suffering is the repentance for our ancient twisted karma we get up from the spot where we fall down returning again and again to reality where all beings are patiently waiting for us to come back you know and even willing to give us a hand when we fall one of Dogen students wrote a poem about this the ocean of all karmic hindrances arises solely from delusive thought if you want to repent your twisted karma sit upright and be mindful of true reality all afflictions are like frost and dew in the light of wisdom they simply melt away now that the weather has suddenly changed It's gone from only hot to warm and cold.

[13:25]

I think we can see how like the weather our minds really are. Much like the sky, clouds will appear. Hopefully storms will arrive, maybe on Tuesday. There will be lightning and fog, maybe snow later on in the practice period. And if all goes well, we'll have some rain. All of which, like us, from causes and conditions, we do not control the weather and we do not control our minds. The body in zazen is upright and the mind is receptive to changes in the weather. When we follow the stream of our thought to the source of our thought and we watch as clouds begin to pile up again, we can then see how the clouds will simply pass away. And yet, in order to continue remaining at our seats, the clouds will pile up again, again and again.

[14:29]

And so when they do, we need to have faith that the blue sky is still up there above the rumbling and the dark and the rain. I know the sun is up there. I know it. And I know my heart and my mind are truly free. And I am pretty sure that help is on the way. In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. Not being overwhelmed by changes in the weather is the thing that we learn in zazen. We learn patience. Usually our view of the world is the creation of a mind disturbed by liking and not liking and by the set position that we think we occupy here on the earth, including here at Tassara. And yet, as Buddha saw and said, every place is the center of the world. Each being is the baby monkey in the middle. Unfortunately, the baby monkey distorts that place with its own self-centered point of view.

[15:31]

This is my place, my seat, my friends, my room, my practice, my map of the world. Okamura Roshi said that when he was in school, the maps of the world had Japan in the center. And when he came to America, he was very surprised to see the world maps with the United States in the middle. So I thought it would be interesting to collect maps from all over the world and see if the country in the middle is the one where the map has been drawn. I wouldn't be surprised. In Zazen, we let go of maps and allow each and every thing, each and every person, to be the center of a multi-centered universe. So this is the vision in the Avatamsaka Sutra, taken, I think, no doubt from the night sky, with each jewel as the center reflecting all the other jewels throughout time and space, Indra's net, which is a metaphor to illustrate the concepts of emptiness, of dependent core rising, and of the inconceivable mutual support at the core of Buddhist teaching.

[16:45]

In the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by someone skilled in craft in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the craftsperson has hung a single glittering jewel in each eye of the net. And since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number." There hang the jewels glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of those jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. And not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all of the other jewels. in an infinite reflecting process throughout the entire universe.

[17:52]

Almost too much to bear. So the image of Indra's net represents the magic of our illusory thinking. Sometimes that magic is dark, and the clear mind is covered with delusions. There's a TV series I read about, I didn't see it, but I read the book, Brave New World, in which everyone is connected to an artificial intelligence called Indra, which watches and monitors and analyzes its citizens 24 hours a day. This is not a very cheery telling of the Indic deity's magical net. And for us, studying our karmic consciousness, it can be very helpful to have these images to both inspire us and also to startle us from our waking dreams. In Zazen, we can let go of our mystical visions and our fantastical longings. The practice of Shikantaza, encouraged by Dogen Zenji, is not understood as a technique for our brain to become aware of the subject-object split.

[18:58]

It is simply pure awareness. Just sitting. As Dogen says, everything, moment to moment, just is. without holding on to our incomplete maps of the world, such as an elephant's ear or a trunk or a tail or anything else that appears to be separable from the whole. In studying Buddhist texts, we learn about the incomplete maps. And in zazen, we let them all go and allow the mind to simply be ready and open for the arrival of an entire herd of elephants. Okumara Roshi says that when we let go of our maps, our eyes and our ears, and we let go of our delusions, then delusions can no longer harm us. We can no longer be fooled by delusions because we see them for what they truly are, delusions. My favorite telling of the Buddha's encounter with the master of illusions, Mara the evil one, takes place in the meadow as the evil one,

[20:08]

appears to threaten the Buddha with extinction if he doesn't get up from the seat of awakening. Mara says, I have sent my squadron of haters and my lustful sons and daughters, and still you refuse to abandon this foolish quest. Now I will destroy you. And Buddha says, no, you won't. Mara says, yes, I will. And then Buddha says, no, you won't, because I know who you are. You are myself. And with that, Mara vanishes. So this is the pattern of self-making by means of delusional thinking that the Buddha was studying when he woke up from that very pattern. He saw how separation, the cause of suffering, required three things. It required a perception of the object as if external, some emotions or feelings about that object, and an impulse to act on our perceptions of the objects.

[21:12]

I see it. I hate it. I'm going to hurt it. I see it. I love it. I'm going to eat it. Either way, delusion. In a Genzoe Sesshin that was offered by Okamura Roshi some years back at the city center, he kept emphasizing this Japanese term, Buddhist term called joshiki, Joe Shiki said, Joe refers to sentiment or feelings, and Shiki refers to thinking. So taken together in English, they could be called emotionalized conceptualization. Emotionalized conceptualization. Or in Japanese, Shin, heart, mind. That's just one word. Thinking and feeling as one. So... As you may recall, thinking expressed through feelings is the very next link in the 12-hole chain that leads to grasping and clinging.

[22:17]

We always start with I, an imaginary person, who will do something about that, followed by the inevitable human suffering due to aging, sickness, and death, the disillusion of our wishes. So given that the core delusion blocking our awakening is basically a fantasy or a story about the separability of things, when we think-feel, there is a distinction between enlightenment and delusion, we are once again making use of our distinguishing equipment, also known as discriminative thinking, judgmental thinking, preferential thinking, or mental elaborations. Which is why the Heart Sutra keeps pounding on our discriminating consciousness with this one big word. No. [...] Just stop it.

[23:20]

Stop cutting the world into parts. Now this word parts is also used when we talk about leaving someone we care about. Parting. Parting. It's the sweet sorrow of parting. And the Buddha said this as well. The parting reality into parts is delusion itself. Awakening from delusion is our mission in becoming whole. And how we go about it is the teaching. So there's a poem that Reb read to us once from a poet that I'm really very, very deeply fond of, Wallace Stevens, called The Snowman. I think this poem evokes this very mind of awakening. Some of you may have heard it before. One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees crusted with snow, and have been called a long time to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter, of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land full of the same wind,

[24:32]

that is blowing in the same bare place. For the listener who listens in the snow and nothing himself beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. You know, in Zen this could be summarized as the single body revealed in the midst of myriad forms or as the lyrics to the song that none of us will ever hear. Some things really do never change, such as the true nature of reality and the possibility for awakening to that. And even so, Dogen himself had very serious doubts about the necessity to practice, given this basic understanding of who we really are. Well, for already Buddha, why do we have to do anything? After many years of studying and ordaining, In the Tendai school of Buddhism, Dogen had this burning question about their doctrine.

[25:36]

He said, As I study both the exoteric and esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma nature, Buddha nature, by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages, undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment, find it necessary to seek enlightenment and to engage in spiritual practice? Still not able to get a satisfactory answer from his peers or his seniors, he left the Tendai tradition when one of the teachers there suggested that he go and study with a Zen master. And the best of them, he was told, can be found in China. So in the company of a Rinzai monk, Miozen, he traveled to China. He studied koans under a number of well-regarded teachers, but still he failed to find the answer that he was seeking. Nearing the end of his stay in China, he went to visit a Soto Zen teacher named Ru Jing, whose approach was quite different than all the other types of study he had done since endeavoring to find the way as a very young boy.

[26:43]

While sitting, just sitting, in the Zendo of Ru Jing's temple, he overheard the master say, cast off body and mind. And so he did. And later, when he took his newfound liberation to Ru Jing for verification, repeating, cast off body and mind, the teacher replied, body and mind cast off. In other words, now cast that off too. And keep on casting off to the end of your days, which he did. So this phrase was very important to Dogen, and it appears in various ways throughout all of his writing. and particularly this familiar one that we recite every week, every Tassajara week, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things, like Indra's net. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away.

[27:48]

No trace of realization remains, and this no trace remains. continues endlessly. So, with no trace in mind, I'm going to finish my talk today, the last of our five days of Sheen, with two stories about tea. One story my teacher told in his book, Being Upright, about how experiences such as Dogenet Had might fit into our life of Zen practice. And the second story is about our sincere effort. which without a doubt is all I believe we will ever really need. So this first story is called Lord Sendai and the Tea Bowl. And it's a little mini-drama with three main characters. Lord Sendai represents the Buddha, the monk Tetsugyu, meaning iron bowl, a sincere practitioner, and the monk Chowan, meaning tidal sound, the non-dual nature of reality, on which our practice of Zen is...

[28:52]

precariously balanced. So during the Tokugawa era in Japan, which was 1603 to 1868, when the story takes place, Tetsugu was serving tea to Lord Sendai when his Dharma brother, Choan, dropped by the tea room. So Lord Sendai invited Choan to join them for tea. Tetsugu, in honor of the occasion, chose an especially precious antique tea bowl that Lord Sendai had given him. and set it down on the tatami mat to make tea. In the midst of appreciating the great beauty of the tea bowl, Cho'an suddenly reached out and smashed the tea bowl with his staff. Now look at the authentic tea bowl that exists before birth, Cho'an says with great confidence in himself. After all, he is the non-dual nature of reality. Tetsugyu, on the other hand, turns pale and nearly faints. But Lord Sendai remains silent and still. After a time, he says to Tetsugu, I gave you that tea bowl, but now I would like you to give it back to me.

[30:00]

And before you give it back, please have it glued together and make a box for it. On the cover of the box, I ask that you write the name of the bowl, which I now give, as the authentic tea bowl before birth, and which I will reverently pass on to my descendants. So as far as I can understand this teaching story, these two monks are the personification of the two truths, of the ultimate truth in which the tea bowl is already broken, it's already broken into one, and the relative truth in which we take very good care of precious objects, as in the saying which is the hallmark of our classical Soto Zen, meaning careful attention to detail. So having studied tea for quite a while, as I mentioned, our first lesson was on how to handle the tea bowl with great reverence, picking it up with both hands, keeping it close to the tatami mat in case it should fall, and then passing it back to the host with a deep bow of gratitude for having been allowed to drink from such a treasured object.

[31:11]

As a tea student reading this story for the first time, I remember feeling this kind of gasp of horror. as I imagined this person exhibiting such outrageous behavior in the tea room. Choan. And yet there's Lord Sendai watching the play of these two actors, you know, Ultimate Truth and Relative Truth, as if they're separate from one another, in just the same way we think of ourselves as being separate from Buddha. So rather than punishing either of these monks, one for not knowing what a rascal his friend is, and the other for being a rascal, Lord Sendai asks that the bowl be glued back together and placed in a special box, a box of wholeness made possible by its having been shattered into parts. I actually have a tea bowl that was broken and repaired and that I now treasure. The person who had sent it to me discovered it was broken and then practiced an ancient Japanese craft of repairing this precious ceramic

[32:18]

with the liquid made from gold. It's a practice called kintsugi. Kin is the word for gold and sugi for repair. Kintsugi is also used as a metaphor for embracing our flaws and our imperfections as we celebrate the rejoining of our parts into its inherent wholeness. When I first saw the bowl with each crack etched in gold, It brought to mind the 49ers who made this state the crazy place it is in their desperate hopes of striking it rich. So I don't have to go up into the Sierras to strike it rich. That precious tea bowl is sitting on a shelf in my kitchen and it's as great a treasure as I will ever need. A precious tea bowl before birth that I too will pass on to my descendants. And here's the last story about tea before we end for today. This story I told at the city center on the occasion of Suzuki Sensei's 100th birthday.

[33:23]

She was able to watch it. I don't think it was Zoom in those days, but she was able to watch us making tea. Some of her students, we made tea and told stories about her. So one day, Riku was invited by a tea grower to come for tea. The tea grower was very fond of the tea ceremony and practiced as often as time would allow. Riku arrived at the old man's tea house, bringing with him one of his promising young disciples as the second guest. Riku, by the way, is the founder of the tea ceremony. He's a master of art of every kind. Being very nervous, the farmer's hands were visibly shaking. and he made a number of obvious mistakes. And yet at the finish, Riku said to him in all sincerity, this tea you have made is the finest. On the way home, the disciple asked Riku how he could have made such a generous comment given the clumsy performance by that man.

[34:27]

Riku replied, he made tea for me with his whole heart. When you can do that, you too will understand the way of tea. So when I think about Suzuki Sensei and the other teachers that I have learned from, I think wholeheartedness is the dominant quality in each and every one of them. Whether Sensei was teaching us tea or doing her daily exercises up and down the second floor hallway of Page Street with her wet hair hanging down her back or singing children's songs at the top of her lungs or carefully bowing each time she passed in front of the kaisando upstairs. And each time she passed by... Each of us. She was wholehearted. When Mea and I went to Japan the year before she died, we were very blessed to be allowed to go and visit her in her home, in Yaizu, where she was living with her daughter and nearby her granddaughter. She spent nearly two hours with us in Seiza, on the ground, showing us photo albums that Zen Center had given her when she returned to Japan, all full of pictures of us.

[35:38]

And then she pointed to the tea kettle that was sitting in the corner, and she smiled at me and said, there's your old friend, Fusan. I think she knew very well that Zen Center needed her to stay with us for a while until the shinmei, the new growth, had a chance to strengthen and to flower. Her presence and example were a through line from the temple life she'd known in Japan to our sincere efforts to ground our own culture. in the practices that Suzuki Roshi brought, these simple and profound teachings. She took so many of us under her wing personally, and yet it wasn't personal at all. She was not my friend, and she was not my parent. She was my teacher. She had Dharma to offer, as had her husband and his son, and now their grandson, who have each taken the long plane ride to come here to America to teach. And they will do that again. for the mountain seat ceremony in March when Jiryu Richman Beiler and Malko Vocal become the newest Zen Center abbots under the watchful eye of Suzuki Roshi's son and grandson.

[36:47]

They've just celebrated their 550th anniversary of Rinzuan Temple in Japan. Two of our people, Galen and Maya, were able to go, and everyone was so happy that Zen Center people were there. They think of us. So I do think that we have been learning. I do trust that we're learning. Yet it seems that it's best if we're never quite sure. And there's so much for us to learn, you know, each of us. Among them, how to be a good host and how to be a good guest, which is a profound social forum, which among all of the world's cultures, I think the tea ceremony may know best. And it's what Zen practice also knows best. The host and guest are not two, and yet they're not the same. There's something in that relationship that each needs to learn from the other by taking turns. Now guest, now host. By altering our points of view, by giving up again and again, whatever it is that's holding us back.

[37:51]

Just as Sensei wrote in her book of award-winning haiku poetry called The White Tea Bowl. First, calligraphy of the year. Today again. I write Beginner's Mind. The last time I made tea for Suzuki Sensei, before she returned to Japan, I was having a very hard time remembering the steps because I kept crying. And when I finally finished whisking and I looked into the tea bowl, there were all these tiny little lumps of green tea. So I bowed and I said to Sensei, I was very sorry about the lumps. And when I looked up, She was smiling at me, and then she said, Fusam, enjoy the lumps.

[38:56]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[39:19]

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