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 morning. Good morning. Hello, Mahasonga. For those of you who don't know, today is a one-day sitting here at the temple. And the one-day sitting is part of a month-long intensive called Finding True Refuge. And we're in our opening week of the intensive. And I want to say a little bit about the theme that we have been exploring, and then to share some stories that I hope will help illuminate this topic or topics.

[01:13]

So where do we find refuge in society? a world on fire? Where do we find refuge in the midst of the internal and external churn and reactivity, the divisiveness, the dukkha, the suffering of the saha world? The word Refuge comes from the Latin, which means refugae. Refugae is to literally to fly back. That word, the part of the word re means again. And it points us almost right out the gate toward the direction that we turn, the direction that we look for refuge.

[02:25]

Refuge is not about going somewhere, finding a safe place to shelter. Refuge is about returning, remembering, resourcing, reorienting. I've been talking about refuge as reorientation. We fly back. We return home here again and again so that we have the capacity to respond, to meet the many, many inner and outer cries of the world. In the traditional teaching, we say that we take refuge in what's called the triple treasure, or the three jewels.

[03:39]

three jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. And part of taking refuge, part of the reorienting that I've been speaking about of refuge is that refuge is not so much of a withdrawal, of a pulling back, of a kind of tucking oneself away from the difficulty, but it is a wholehearted dedication, devotion, engagement with these three treasures, with the Buddha as a possibility of awakening that lives in each of us as our innate Buddha nature. We take refuge in the Dharma. Dharma In its simplest form means truth.

[05:03]

In this world, it's a radical premise. We could take refuge in the truth. In a world rife with information, misinformation, disinformation, a kind of flood of input that we are on the receiving end of all the time, The kind of truth that the Dharma is pointing to is not the truth of our ideas and our beliefs and our convictions, our opinions, our points of view. This is the living truth. The living truth that we discover in our direct experience as we drop down out of the world of the ever-churning mind And we come into the body. We discover the capacity to meet what's here, always and already available.

[06:13]

This truth is both inside and outside, and it is everywhere. So we take refuge in this. Understanding that the truth, that being willing to be with things as they are, or as Suzuki Roshi used to say, things as it is, our willingness to be with things as it is, this is the doorway to freedom. And we take refuge in the sangha. The sangha is all of us, this maha-sangha. those of us who are devoted to the Buddha and the Dharma. And the Sangha, in its essence, is the truth of our deep and inextricable connection, our interconnectedness, the truth that we are part of a single, singular web of being, that that web, the threads of that web are

[07:24]

made of love. And that what we see and feel and what may pain us so much all around us is the feeling of those threads being torn, those threads being shredded. And so refuge is about how is it that we find a way to weave the pieces back together again to rediscover a sense of wholeness, connection, community, love. So I want to share a couple of old Zen stories that I hope will help kind of illuminate and unpack these themes. Where do we find refuge and how do we respond? How do we respond to the cries of the world, to the difficulty that we see and hear and feel deeply all around us?

[08:34]

Both of these stories are what are called koans. Many of you are familiar with koans. The word koan actually means a public case. So it's a recording of a dialogue. And in each of these dialogues, the conversation that unfolds is pointing us toward an aspect of the truth, an aspect of things as they are, that is meant to help us navigate, find our way. I love that these descriptions, these koans and stories describe moments of insight, of awakening, of understanding that don't come with us sitting alone in a cave somewhere. They come in relationship. They come in dialogue.

[09:42]

They come as we engage together. So the first case is case four. of the Book of Serenity. I think the title of the book is good enough to give us a lot of orientation. Case four of the Book of Serenity is called The World Honored One Points. He's giving instruction, orientation, points to the ground. The World Honored One is a is a name for the Buddha. And this pointing instruction that he's giving is both instruction for where to find refuge, and also for those of you who are sitting today, or whoever decide to sit for a day or longer, there is in this story also quite a bit of sage advice, potent wisdom,

[10:54]

for practicing meditation, for doing zazen. And actually, it's true whether you're doing zazen in a day-long sitting on a cushion and walking, or whether you are practicing zazen as you move through your daily life. So here's the case. It says, the world honored one was walking with the congregation. And he stopped and pointed to the ground and said, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. A sanctuary is a sacred place, a place of refuge. And where do we find that place? Where do we build the sanctuary? Well, first we stop.

[11:57]

We interrupt the forward momentum of our often so busy mind, right? The mind that's constantly chasing after with all of its activity and to do and complaint and ideas. The mind that is pushing away, not liking, judging, assessing. We stop. When we come on retreat, and this is especially for those of you who are newer to sitting for a day, it's often the case that when we are moving through our daily life and we stop, that it's a little uncomfortable, you know? There's all that forward momentum, and there's also all of the stuff all of what has been untended, undigested, unmetabolized.

[12:59]

And when we stop, it says, hello. I sometimes think of it like if you were driving a car really fast and you suddenly stop, the car will have a little shimmy. So this is... words of kindness for those who are sitting for the day, if you are noticing that when you sit down, it's not automatically super quiet and peaceful, it's okay. You're right on track. You may feel some shimmy in your mind, in your heart, in your body. And our practice is to be with that. to acknowledge it, to recognize it. But please don't imagine that it means you're doing something wrong. Don't imagine that it means you are messing up somehow.

[14:00]

So we stop and maybe feel the reverb that's here. And if you don't feel reverb and it's just really super peaceful and quiet, please enjoy. So we stop, and then where do we go? We don't go up into the mind of all of our ideas and beliefs and opinions and so on. No, we drop down. This is where the Buddha is pointing. He's pointing to the ground. Touch the earth. This is where the Buddha found refuge. In the mythic story of the Buddha, as he's approaching his awakening, he's besieged by the armies of Mara that we might think of in our modern way as the judging mind, the arrows of Mara. We talked about how we can impale ourselves with arrows of self-criticism and judgment.

[15:10]

And when Mara challenges the Buddha and says, who do you think you are? imagining that you might find refuge, that you might find peace, that you might find a slice of freedom, the Buddha reaches down and touches the earth. This is the direction of our practice. It's not a practice in which we are here to lift up and out, to transcend, to get away from. It's a humbling practice. the earth humus, right? We come down. We allow ourselves to be fully human right here, right where we are, just as we are. We meet whatever it is that's arising. So the story goes on.

[16:14]

The world-honored one is walking with the congregation. He points to the ground and says, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. And then, Indra, who is the king or the emperor of the gods. I read this this time and I thought, what is Indra doing walking with the Buddha's congregation? Isn't he busy up in heaven doing something? But no, Indra is practicing too. You're regal, godlike qualities get to come to the cushion as well. You get to join in the congregation, in the practice. So Indra, king of the gods, takes a blade of grass and sticks it in the ground and says, the sanctuary is built. Now Indra, king of the gods, this is the god of war, the god of rain.

[17:16]

This is a god of immense powers. You could imagine what kind of sanctuary he might build. Ornate, with golden ceilings and all kinds of beauty. But no, he does something very simple. He, as it says in the poem that follows this case, he uses what comes to hand. So we do this too. in our practice. Whether you are sitting still all day, sitting and walking, whether you are navigating your world of work and cars and computers and children, you use what comes to hand. That's what we practice with. And each moment, like a blade of grass, is fresh. We're not using the last moment. We're not using an imagined future moment.

[18:17]

We're using this moment, this living moment, this fresh moment. And as is suggested with a blade of grass, we can keep it very simple. We don't need an ornate palace or some kind of elaborate place of refuge. A breath. A moment of noticing the sunlight on the leaves. Any moment watching steam rise from a cup of tea can be a moment of refuge. When we use that moment to be right where we are. To keep it simple. There's an interesting side note.

[19:19]

I'm watching the time because I went over last time that I talked, and I want to make sure that, especially those of you who are sitting all day, get adequate time for kinhin before you have to sit down on your cushion again. So there is a little side story about grass, a blade of grass. In the old days, The monastics, they weren't monastics, the monks and nuns who practiced with the Buddha made cushions like the ones we were sitting on, those of us on cushions, out of what's called kusala grass. Kusala comes to mean the word skillful. And it means skillful because kusala grass is grass with sharp edges. Have you ever picked that kind of grass? You can slice your fingers, your hands, very easily. So in order to handle this grass with sharp edges, to turn it into something skillful, useful, that we can engage as part of our practice, we have to learn to handle it skillfully.

[20:30]

And this, too, is practice instruction. right? Whatever it is that we pick up, whatever it is that arises in our practice, sometimes it has sharp edges. And we want to learn what does it take, what's needed to care for this grasp, these moments of experience, so that we can turn them into something useful, something helpful. So it's not the end of the story. The World Honor One is walking with the congregation. He points to the ground and says, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. Then Indra, the king of the gods, picks a blade of grass and sticks it in the ground and says, the sanctuary is built. And the final line of the story, the koan, it says,

[21:34]

The world honored one smiled. Some of you may know this echoes the story of the Buddha's first transmission of the Dharma in which it said that he just held up a flower. That was his Dharma talk. And he looked out in the audience and Mahakasapa smiled. And that was understood as the first place that the Buddha's understanding was transmitted to one of his disciples. So that smile has a lot of embedded meaning. And for you, when you practice in this way, regardless of where you are or what kind of practice you are doing at home, in the temple, in a day long, doing the dishes, When you practice in this way, when you meet the sharp edges of your life with skillfulness, with kindness, all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas smile.

[22:39]

You can rest assured that the impact, the impact of your practice ripples. It has, it sends out waves of inspiration and goodness. And you don't practice alone. So I hope some of you, especially those who are sitting for the day, can glean some meditative instruction from this first story. And those of you who are out and about in the world can also draw from these sort of core principles of pause, drop down, out of the head, through the heart, into the body. Check in, check out, check out what's happening in your own immediate experience and keep it simple.

[23:48]

Stay grounded, humble, touch the earth. We don't need to build big, ornate ideas of what our practice should be or who we should be. We're just looking to meet these moments with as much skillfulness as we can so that we can transform. It's the alpamy of practice. We transform those sharp edges, inner and outer, those cries of the world, into something useful. Another story that goes hand in hand with this one in ways I hope you'll see. One part of the theme that we've been exploring is finding true refuge. And the other part of the theme is about how do we respond to the cries of the world? And those two come together because, as I said, refuge is not

[24:56]

It's not a withdrawal from the cries of the world. It's a remembering, returning, resourcing, reorienting, right in the midst. I love this phrase from, I borrow from Paula Arai, who describes, she did research with a bunch of older Japanese Buddhist women, and one of the phrases that she describes is how they practice in daily life in the middle of the mess. So how do we do that? How do we respond to the cries right in the middle of it all? So this question comes up. How do we respond to the cries of the world with skillfulness but also with compassion? And this comes up in Oops. Case 54 of the Book of Serenity.

[26:02]

It's Yun Yan's Great Compassion. This case is also found in the Book of Record. It's also in several fascicles Dogen talks about. So it's really an important piece. And it's a dialogue between two Dharma siblings. Yun Yan and Dao Wu. They are Dharma brothers. That means they have the same teacher. They share a teacher. And in this story, Yun Yan is the younger, the junior brother. And Dao Wu is the older. And Yun Yan is a very important figure in this lineage. He is the teacher of Ungan Doyo Daosho, whose name we chant. when we chant the lineage. And his name in Japanese is . And he is the teacher of . And the toe of is the toe that is in .

[27:06]

So he's a key figure in this particular school of teaching. Yun Yan, the younger brother, comes to Da Wu and he says, how does the bodhisattva of great compassion use their thousand hands and eyes? So this requires a little commentary probably. So the bodhisattva of great compassion is the bodhisattva kanon or avalokitesvara in Sanskrit. Literally means the one who hears the cries of the world. And the story of Avalokiteshvara is that they were, maybe like some of you, a sensitive being who opened themselves to really take in all of the suffering, all of the difficulty of the world.

[28:13]

And in response, it said that their head exploded. And if you see statues of Avalokiteshvara or Kanon or Avalokiteshvara, you'll see they have 11 heads. And then 1,000 arms, like a halo of arms all around. You might feel that way sometimes in response to the cries of the world. What can I do? So this is Kanon. Avalokiteshvara did it for you. You don't have to have your head explode. So Yun Yan is asking Dao Wu, what does this bodhisattva of great compassion do with their thousand hands and eyes? So there's a thousand arms, and at the end of each arm is a hand, and in each hand there's an eye.

[29:18]

And these are understood to be the hands, the eyes, the arms that are able to respond to the cries of the world. How does compassion function? What does it look like to see compassion in action? That's the question that Yunnan is asking. We can understand what compassion is, How do we bring it into our life in a full and embodied way? What does the bodhisattva of great compassion do with their hundred hands and eyes? And Dawu says, it's just like someone reaching behind to adjust a pillow in the night. It's that simple. We don't have to think about it.

[30:20]

It is a natural response. When the body is uncomfortable, you're half asleep, it's in the dark, it's the middle of the night, you don't have to tell your hand to reach back and adjust your pillow. It does it automatically. This is Dawu's response. Compassion is a natural response. especially when we're willing to drop down out of that churn. And we don't have to force it. We can trust that even if we're half asleep, even if we're not sure what we're doing, that there is a compassionate response that's possible. Anyway, Yun Yan, in response to Dao's answer, says, I understand. This is always dangerous, especially in Zen. And sure enough, Dao Wu kind of challenges him and says, really, how do you understand?

[31:28]

And Yun Yan says, all over the body, there are hands and eyes. It's a beautiful answer. The whole body is filled with hands and eyes. The whole body is filled with compassion. But sure enough, The older brother, Dao Wu, says, that's pretty good, but you only got about 80% of it. He challenges him, right? And Yuen Yan kind of holds his seat. And he says, well, that's what I've got. That's my answer. And then he gives it back to him and says, how about you, older brother? What would you say? And Dao Wu says... throughout the body are hands and eyes. It's sometimes translated as the whole body is hands and eyes.

[32:30]

So I invite you as you're listening now to watch what your mind is doing. Because if you're anything like me, you may be trying to figure out which is the better answer. Is it there are hands and eyes all over the body, or throughout the body are hands and eyes, or the whole body is hands and eyes. I spent many, many years convinced that Dao Wu was right and that he was showing up, Yun Yan. He was pointing out what was wrong in his answer. And I had various elaborate explanations for why that was. But over time, I've come to see that this dialogue itself is compassion in action. This is how it happens. We engage with one another. We challenge one another.

[33:36]

We share our different perspectives back and forth. And this can also be read in a slightly playful way. And while on one hand we respect that there is older and younger, senior and junior, we also recognize that every voice is important. It also is helpful to remember that 80% is pretty good, right? And maybe the better way to say it is there's no way to get to 100% by yourself We need each other to get to it. We need this engagement. We need this willingness to listen, to respond, to be attentive, to care, to allow each person their unique expression.

[34:38]

And that's how we express compassion. That's how we use our thousands of hands and eyes There's an image that I have loved for many, many years, also from a Zen story that describes each of us moving through the world, looking at the sky through a, I think the original version was a lead pipe. I think of it as looking at the sky through a straw. Is that the sky we see? It is. Is it the whole sky? It's not. This was the impetus for the title of my book, which is called A Bigger Sky. And it really comes from the idea that the only way to see the entire sky, the only way to discover the whole sky is together in what the poet Naomi Shihab Nye calls the shared world.

[35:51]

In our shared world, we need each other to see the whole. And we engage in moving toward that wholeness, which is a place of refuge, through this kind of compassionate dialogue, by being willing to say our piece, do our part, say, I get it. and still to be willing to hear somebody else's point of view may be quite different than our own. So they're demonstrating this for us. It's really been wonderful for me being back here in the temple and watching How this plays out in temple life.

[36:57]

How each person has their role. So today I'm in this role and you're in that one. And this morning there was someone whose role was to hit the drum or the bell or to serve breakfast. For those of you at home, your role may be to change a diaper or do the dishes or answer an email. We're looking to shift from the mind that of comparison, of saying this one's better and this one's worse. That was where my mind went with this story, right? Who's right and who's wrong? to begin to shift toward understanding, receiving, appreciating many, many voices that each of us plays our part.

[38:04]

So I will leave you this morning with these two koans. For those of you who are sitting, you can... chew on them, as it were, in your sitting practice. And for those of you who are moving about in the world, you too can consider what does it mean, not what does it mean, where, where do we find true refuge? And to use this instruction from the Buddha to look down, to feel your feet, to invite yourself to even temporarily pause that perpetual forward momentum and land right here. And to keep it simple, you may have mighty powers like Indra the god. You may have a mind that's full of all kinds of elaboration and complexity and complaint.

[39:05]

But in any moment, you can find refuge by finding your feet. by picking up what comes to hand, whatever it is that is arising. Some of it will be lovely. Some of it will have very sharp edges. And knowing that finding refuge is not about a withdrawal from. It's about a wholehearted engagement in. And that wholehearted engagement is how we respond to the cries of the world. Because you know those thousand hands and eyes, I don't have them. We have them. And if I know that we're all engaged in that way, then, you know, for this little stretch of time, I can wholeheartedly play my part and invite each of you to wholeheartedly play your part

[40:08]

So where do we find true refuge? And how do we respond to the cries of the world? How do we engage with other people in a way that is receptive, respectful, without so much judging or comparing mind, but instead with a willingness to recognize that the only way, the only way that we find a sense of peace in us and among us is together. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[41:17]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:26]

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