Yaku Sen Mon No Giyo Hayo Koto Katashi Ware Ma Ken Mon Shi Juji Suru Koto Katari Negawa An unsurpassed penetrating perfect Dharma. is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept.

[01:09]

I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening, everyone. It's full house tonight. It's impressive for this winter's eve. Thank you all for coming. How many of you are here for the first time? Welcome. Very warm welcome to you. Glosses.

[02:11]

My name is Tim Wicks. My Dharma name is Gengyoko Rinsho, which means dark jewel turning towards the light. And I want to thank Mary Stairs, our Tanto, our head of practice. She's nursing her body tonight. and I want to thank her for the invitation, and to Abbott David Zimmerman for extending that invitation, and I would like to also thank my teacher, Winzo Ed Satterson. Thank you very much for being my teacher. Thank you all for coming out tonight. I'd like to ask you all to imagine, if you can, you can close your eyes if you want to, but you don't have to.

[03:28]

Imagine what this hillside was like before this building was here. Before this building was here. Before Europeans came. When it was just a windswept hill for thousands of years. Imagine in your mind... how it is that this land was cared for by people. And I want to acknowledge those people, those people who looked after this land before we placed our karmic energy here. And by imagining this land, we acknowledge the Ohlone people. We connect with them throughout space and time. And if we allow ourselves to have this awareness, our hearts can begin to.

[04:32]

And this is our imagination at work inside of our bodies. So the title of this talk is The Ugly Stitch. The Ugly Stitch. And tomorrow here at Beginner's Mind Temple, that's the name of this temple, Beginner's Mind, because we value the beginner's mind. Suzuki Roshi, who founded this temple, said that in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. So tomorrow we're going to start this three-day sewing retreat. It's one of the strange things that we do here. is we sew our robes. And you'll see that some of us kind of, this is a big robe right here, and some of us have like smaller robes.

[05:37]

Those are called rakasus. And some people might think that these are really kind of baby robes or that the robe itself is symbolic or that our they're called okesas. When we make our okesa, it's my okesa. But actually, this is Buddha's robe that we make, and that's what it is that we're going to be learning how to sew over the next three days. And we have a former abbot of San Francisco Zen Center named Mel Weitzman, And he's the abbot of Berkeley Zen Center. He's actually starting chemotherapy today. So we send very warm wishes to him and hope for his continued good health. And I first heard him say, in this room actually, he said that this is not a baby robe or a symbolic robe.

[06:41]

This is actually Buddha's robe. And... I remember when I heard that probably about 15 years ago, and I thought, oh, come on now, it's not really Buddha's robe. I mean, the Buddha, if there even was a Buddha, because I was very skeptical then, he's been dead a long time. And we made these robes. These are separate robes from the Buddha. But then I started to imagine that I know, because I had already sewn my first blue rakasu, by that time, and I know something happens when you begin to sew the robe. We take refuge with each stitch. We take refuge in the Buddha, the next stitch, refuge in the Dharma, the next stitch, refuge in the Sangha. And I knew when I heard that that since the time of the Buddha, someone has been making Buddha's robe,

[07:48]

even in the times when there's been times when Buddhism has been suppressed as a religion and had to go underground. And even in those times, I know that there was someone, at least one person, making Buddha's robe somewhere in some dark cellar somewhere. And so I began to imagine it as one continuous unbroken thread. And I started to think, well, so maybe what if it is actually Buddha's rope? What if it actually is Buddha's rope? And so I've been practicing with that for a very long time, and I have absolutely no doubt now whether or not this really is Buddha's rope. It's called the Robe of Freedom, the Robe of Enlightenment. It's a banner. It's a flag. It's an advertisement for people to come and talk with us, those of us who wear it, to talk about the Dharma, to ask questions, to practice with us.

[09:03]

It says, come and practice with me. It's also, and this is... from the chant of the Okesa. It's also the robe that provides modesty. It provides complete repentance. It creates a rice field of happiness. This robe is based on the rice field. The Buddha and his right-hand man, Ananda, were standing by rice fields when they were asked to please develop some way for people to know who it is that we can go to to talk about the Dharma with. And Ananda was the Buddha's first clothing designer.

[10:05]

And he said, let's base it on the rice fields. The water flows down, The rice fields are usually on an incline or terraces, and the water flows down and out. And the water flows down and out. It gives sustenance to the rice. The rice grows. We eat the rice, and then we're able to become introduced to the Dharma. It protects you from cold, heat, and poisonous creatures. It strengthens your way-seeking mind for attaining ultimate understanding. It frees people from greed and desire. It cuts off the five wrong views and helps you to hold correct practice. This is all from the chant of the Okesa. And sometimes it's called the kashaya. The kashaya is true armor.

[11:08]

Impenetrable as diamond. The deadly arrows of delusion cannot pierce it. A dragon who wears even a shred of the kashaya can't be devoured by a gold-winged Garuda. Dragons are always being devoured by Garudas in Buddhist mythology. A person who holds a kashaya... While crossing the ocean will not fear dragons, fish, or harmful beings. Lightning and thunder, heaven's wrath, will not frighten a monk who wears a kashaya. When a lay person carries a robe with respect, no evil spirits draw near. When one arouses the beginner's mind, leaves home, and worldly affairs to practice this way, demon palaces in ten directions will tremble. Pretty cool, huh? So this was the robe that a priest named Joshin-san, she was very short, and she came in the 1970s to teach us how to sew Buddha's robe.

[12:30]

She was trained in Japan. In our Zen practice, all phenomena is sacred to us. Our Zazen training is really to get us to make contacts with the sacred and to begin to take that training out into the rest of the world and into our other activities. So we start off small by sitting in a nice, still way and learning to focus. And then we do kinhin. We take what we learn into walking, our walking practice. Cleaning is a really big deal for us, too. We do a lot of cleaning. If you want to come and party with us, you just missed our New Year's Eve party, where basically we clean the temple. We clean the temple, we eat noodles. We have a fire, we hit the bell, too, a lot. It's actually a lot of fun, but...

[13:30]

Yeah, cleaning is a big part of our practice. Work is a big part of our practice. It's thought that one of the reasons why the Raksu became small like this is because this is our five-panel robe. And my one right here is a seven-panel robe. And we used to wear our five-panel robe when Buddhism came from India as a skirt. And when it came to China, it was not socially acceptable to walk around with an alms bowl in some places in China. You had to really kind of work for your living. And so I'm told, and I can also imagine, that working in a field, which is what it is that we started to do, to grow our own food in China when Buddhism came to China, working in a field is kind of hard with a skirt on, I would imagine. So it's thought... that one of the reasons why the rakasu is small, so that we could work with it.

[14:37]

So our Zen training is to get us so that we can make contact with all phenomena, and all phenomena is sacred to us. We bow before we go into the restroom. And if you really want to, there's a little gatha that you can have while you're actually in the restroom. Because... That's also a sacred act to us. Simply being alive is what it is that we're trying to always be in contact with and what a profound thing it is. With Buddha's robe, we cut up a perfectly good piece of material and then we sew it back together again. And in so doing, we instill it with these properties of sacredness through our imagination and through our labor. We instill it with the properties of sacredness so that it has all of the things that I spoke about in the chant of the robe.

[15:49]

And before I heard Mel... and my imagination was triggered, it was just kind of a strange little sort of bib to me. It didn't really make much sense at all. Now when I put it on, it's a reminder for me... because I need a lot of reminders. And that's really, for me personally, that's what all these forms are, this bowing and the stuff that we do. If you ever come here for our morning service, which you're always welcome to do, there's a lot of bowing, and it's all very ceremonial. And these are all, for me personally, reminders to be back in touch with what a sacred thing it is just to be alive. And so now when I put this robe on, that acts as this reminder of me, reminder to me of this great matter between birth and death, we say, the great matter of being alive when it is that we can become introduced to the Dharma. So we're in the United States and many of us are descended from European stock and sort of the power ideology here is descended from European stock.

[17:08]

And it was mostly those who were trying to actually get out of Europe. There were a lot of criminals. There were a lot of people who had failed in one way or another. There were a lot of people who were escaping religious persecution. And a very powerful doctrine from the beginnings of this culture still has a strong influence on our culture, and that's the doctrine of Puritanism. And Puritanism really helped us a lot. It's through Puritanism that came, And pragmatism is really what it is that helped to develop this incredibly efficient form of capitalism that there is right now, the most efficient form of capital gain the world has ever seen. And even though that very successful capitalism solves problems and makes things better, makes things faster, it also comes along with

[18:21]

a lot of anxiety. And my experience with anxiety, which is plentiful, and I consider myself to be a great world expert on anxiety, along with anxiety comes the need to control. The need to control things, to try and control my life, to try and control my feelings, try and control the people around me. And it gets into all of our activities. And it comes into the sewing room as well. It's very interesting. People often... So the way it is that you get to sew your robe is you... Say you liked coming here today. And then you came here another time. And then a third time. And you started coming here regularly. And then maybe you'll take a class here or you start coming on Saturdays and join Saturday Sangha, which is the Saturday community. Or you take a couple of classes, and maybe you like the teacher, and you'll ask the teacher to become your teacher, and you start studying with the teacher.

[19:25]

And we study the vows that we take or that we receive when we become ordained. And at a certain point, the teacher will say, okay, I need you to start sewing now. So you have to come down to the sewing room and see us. And it's fascinating to me. A lot of people who come to Buddhism are very experienced people. They've had a lot of stuff going on in their lives and traveled and educated. And it's amazing to see people who are so accomplished in so many different ways be so anxiety-ridden when they come to the sewing room and really, really worried, you know, really worried. I joke, but it's only a halfway joke because I am myself one of these. I was very nervous when I came to the sewing room to learn how to sew Buddhist robe.

[20:29]

I joke that a lot of us are adult survivors of childhood sewing trauma. And... It's weird. A lot of people will have had a grandmother or a mother. For me, I just had to sew because I grew up in England and me and my three sisters, we had school uniforms that had to be repaired and there was no one at home. My mother had died. There was no one at home to repair the... And so I did it in this really bad way. No one ever showed me. And people would tease my sisters and me at school for how poorly our school uniforms were repaired. And I thought this was some weird thing that happened. But now I've been teaching sewing for nearly 15 years now. And there's a lot of us out there. I mean, not with my exact story, but with this sort of childhood sewing trauma.

[21:31]

It's really amazing. So there's a lot of people who come with this anxiety. They're taking a big leap and they're going to become ordained. That's what you do after you finish sewing your robe. You become ordained in Buddhism. And We want to make life better. We have this relationship with anxiety. We want to make things good. Some of us, that's why we come to Zen Center. We want to make our life better. And we want to make our stitch better. We want to make the stitches better. We want to have good stitches. We want to have good stitches. The stitch, of course, should have integrity, but it doesn't need to be a perfect-looking stitch. Our life as it is is sacred, and each stitch is sacred.

[22:34]

No one ever told me that this is what Joshin-san said. She didn't speak English. She taught Blanche Hartman, who was my sewing teacher, and she was the first abbess of San Francisco's Zen Center, the first abbess of a major Buddhist temple outside of Japan. she didn't speak Japanese, and Joshin-san didn't speak English, and they had to communicate over Joshin-san, you know, she knew how to say no, and she would give it back to Blanche, and then she'd show Blanche how to do it, and Blanche would try and do it, and she would either say no, or she would say yes. And no one ever actually said to me that she said that each stitch But the way that Blanche spoke about her over the years and Blanche's deep devotion to Joshin-san rubbed off on me in a way to where I feel like that's what it was that was transmitted, is that each stitch is sacred.

[23:52]

And this is difficult to get across to... many of us, when we're coming with so many anxieties to the sewing room, and we want to do right, and we want to do well, and we want it to look good. Each stitch should have integrity, but it doesn't have to be the perfect-looking stitch. We take these vows that I said that you study with your teacher, and then your teacher tells you to sew your robe, and then when your robe is ready, and your teacher feels like you are ready, you have an ordination. It can be a lay ordination or a priest ordination. And we take the 16 bodhisattva vows. They're your basic vows. No lying, no stealing, no cheating, no killing. And they're impossible to keep. You can't possibly keep them. Because for us, like I said, in Zen, all phenomena is sacred.

[24:54]

And when it comes to killing, for some reason that one was on my mind the day before I went to my first teacher who gave me late ordination. And he said, it was the day before, he said, how are you doing? I said, I'm nervous. He said, what are you nervous about? And for some reason, no killing was on my mind. I don't know why. I hadn't thought of myself as a killer. And I told him that. And he said, you know, just by standing here, you and I, just by standing here and breathing, we are killing thousands and thousands of organisms. And this was very disappointing to me. But what he was teaching me is that... Really, you start from, this is the way that I like to think about it, you don't need to think about it this way, but you start from a position of failure.

[25:57]

And that's very helpful to me. If it's not helpful to you, don't think of it that way. But it's very helpful to me to start from sort of the very beginning. And... I have to say that I used to keep, because when people come, we teach them the stitch, and then they have to practice for a little while. There was someone who came probably about 10 years ago, and he had the most amazing stitches. I mean, these stitches. I remember when I saw them, because I taught him the stitch, and I said, okay, now you do that. And it was very busy in the sewing room, and I went off for a half an hour and helped other people. And I came back, and I looked at his stitches, and his stitches, they were the most amazing stitches I had ever seen, and I started to nearly cry. I mean, they would be considered the worst stitches that you could ever...

[27:02]

I mean, you know, one of them was this big and the next one was this big and one of them was slanted like this. But he had put so much into these stitches. He was someone who had never sewn before and had never done anything like this before. But he had tried so hard. And, you know, we kept working with him. And in the end, he had a rakasu where... you could see the stitches, and the stitches were big, and they were irregular. And some people would consider them ugly stitches. In fact, there's lots of Zen centers around, and there's lots of Zen sewing teachers around. And not all sewing teachers are like me. And these would have been unacceptable stitches in some sewing rooms throughout the nation. But to me, they were the most beautiful, amazing, moving, And I tried to find them to bring them here.

[28:07]

I hope I haven't lost them. So that's what it is that we're going to be doing for the next three days. And if you are here to sew, thank you very much for coming. I'm really excited to be doing this with you. It's going to be an experience like no other. It's very intense. If you're in the community and you've sewn before, come down and visit us. We've got lots of extra sewing to do. You can help us. And if you're in the community and you haven't sewn before and you're not going to come down, thank you so much for supporting this rare... strange and beautiful thing that we're going to be doing for the next three days. You will be cooking or cleaning or looking after administrative things.

[29:09]

Whatever it is that you're doing, thank you so much. If you're not in the community and you live outside, give us a little thought over the next few days and help us to not control our stitches too much. And to be accepting of the sacredness of each stitch. And I think... Where is the... There he is. Do we have enough time for a couple of questions? Okay. Yeah, I think I'm going to leave it right there. And we'll... If anyone has any questions, if you don't have any questions, we'll go to bed early. But we're Zen people, we don't go to bed early. Yes. Yes. Blanche Hartman. Oh, sure.

[30:12]

I sewed my rakasu and Blanche said to me... I would like you to be a sewing teacher. Would you consider that? And I said, sure. Those of you who didn't know Blanche, basically, she asked you to do something, and you pretty much did it, you know? Yeah. So I did, and I was ashamed and embarrassed and anxiety-ridden for... A long, long, long time. A long time. And that was all from me. It was never, ever from her. She shouted at me one time. And I deserved it. But other than that, she just was... She taught me how in Zen we talk about face-to-face transmission and warm hand to warm hand.

[31:15]

And I was a... speaker before that. I spoke to people. That's how I communicated. She taught me how to communicate silently with proximity. It's a deeply moving experience and it's available here in Zen. over and over, and I felt her... Blanche did not want to be a sewing teacher. Blanche was a feminist, and she made many sacrifices to be successful intellectually and in this world dominated by men. And she did not want to be a sewing teacher. She was a trained... and she was a mechanic, and she met Joshin-san, and Joshin-san transmitted through proximity to Blanche something that Blanche became devoted to, and it wasn't sewing.

[32:31]

But it was through sewing that a special depth and a special relationship that could then be transmitted to others was developed, deepened, and provided as a gift to so many of us. That was probably a lot more than you were asking for. One more, one more question. Yes, dear Barbara. I couldn't get Wi-Fi this afternoon. I have a question. Where exactly is it from? I'm pretty sure it's a sutra, but I had in my notes, where is it from?

[33:38]

Because... I don't remember seeing it in the short discourses. Vicky, perhaps, would you know? The chant of the Okesha. No, the chant of the Okesha is... I quoted from it, but right before you came. The one that we do at Tassajara before sewing cloths. Listen carefully, Janana Prabhupada. That is a sutra. I believe it's from the short sutras, but who wrote it? I don't. Yeah. Yeah, so there's many different canons, and that's definitely an Indian name at the front of it, but thanks for doing that, Barbara. I'm going to...

[34:38]

where I really try to be prepared, and I let that one slip by me, and I'm not going to do that again, and I will not go to bed tonight without being able to answer that question for you. You know, like so many of the sutures, we don't really know who wrote them a lot of times, but we usually know where they came from, which country they were from, and which... which vineyard they're from, so... I'll get that information for you quickly. Okay. Thank you.

[35:20]

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