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. How's the volume? Good. Thank you all for coming this morning. It's so good to be back here. In the Buddha Hall, I see many familiar faces this morning. So good to see you all. I want to thank Tim Wicks, the Tonto, who can't be here this morning, for the invitation to come here and speak again this morning. For those of you who don't know me, my name's Kristen Diggs, and I'm a recently former resident long time resident of San Francisco Zen Center. I practiced residentially mostly at Green Gulch, but also here at City Center and Tassajara for about 10 years.

[01:11]

Anyone completely new to Zen or to Zen Center here this morning? Okay, special welcome and also gratitude to all of you who continue to return. I see the faces who I recently saw at Tassajara, and I'm delighted. I've gotten into the habit, I've noticed, during a few of my recent talks of beginning by asking a few questions, which I hope will help to more fully engage you in what I'll be talking about this morning, perhaps in a more whole, complete way. And as I ask these questions, there's no need to raise your hand. You can if you wish. It would be interesting for me to see. But I think it's really for you to notice what arises in response to these questions and to make a mental note of it.

[02:18]

I wonder how many of you consider yourselves the feeling type Whatever that means to you. And how many of you consider yourself perhaps mainly the thinking type? Or perhaps the sensing type? You might also notice that you're someone who dislikes being categorized as a type. Yeah, I tend to resist being categorized or pigeonholed. However, this is relatively useful information to notice what your leaning is, or if you tend to think of yourself in one way as opposed to another, or if you are aware that it really depends on the circumstances.

[03:21]

This morning's talk will be for all types, whoever cares to receive and reflect on what I'm talking about. I'm someone who's always, or for most of my life, been aware of really sensing quite strongly, being very conscious of sensation as well as emotions. And for most of my life, I've been very body-oriented. At a pretty young age, or at around the age of eight, I started as an endurance athlete, initially as a swimmer. And I continued training and competing through my 20s. And later, I started practicing hatha yoga pretty intensely and taught yoga for a while. And later still, I started studying with a Zen teacher who said, Zen is yoga.

[04:25]

He also said, Zen is martial arts. But it appealed to me, and I thought, yes, I think so too. Fortunately, I've also very much enjoyed what you might call the life of the mind. Early on, I loved poetry and literature and later philosophy and literature. social and psychological theories and analysis. And these are all disciplines or arts enjoyed by the mind. But the mind also exists in the heart and it pervades the body. And I think in Western culture, sometimes we think more in terms of these things or talk as though they're separate, even though we may know that they're really not. As we feel, or rather, as we think, we feel. And we may be more conscious of what we're thinking, or less so, and more conscious of feeling.

[05:33]

We may have a tendency. A moment ago I said, fortunately, I've had this love of the mind as well as the body. And I say so because the capacity that I've had to use my mind to reflect on mind itself, I think is key in Zen. It's a capacity that in Zen I've continued to develop and hone. An alert and trained mind is a powerful tool and an antidote. many afflictions normal human afflictions which we study in Zen we study the self and the self is full of afflictions we call them kleshas in Buddhism they often show up as intense feelings and sensations that correspond to these kleshas some of which are

[06:49]

ignorance, attachment, aversion, pride, and jealousy or envy. And there's a Zen proverb that goes, the one who tied the bell around the tiger's neck. Please feel welcome to come in if you'd like. The one who tied the bell around the tiger's neck is the one who can remove it. In Zen, we apply our own minds to freedom from our own habits of mind. So I'll say again, the ability of the mind to look at and reflect upon itself in the light of some wide awareness is a very powerful antidote to believing what we think about whatever we happen to be feeling. in any given situation.

[07:51]

I'm talking about the capacity to look at it, to see it clearly again and again, the arising of patterns in the mind, and to look not only at the feelings and sensations, but also look at the ways in which the mind itself is giving rise to the experiences we're having. In Zen, we look from a settled place at the clear reflections in the mind as well as at the illusions, the stories, for instance. We can look without being completely deluded by the illusions that are arising in the mind. We can look without being hooked or believing in them. And everything that I've said so far this morning is really both the heart of everything that I have to say this morning and also it's been something of an attempt to orient us in a way that sets up some of the conditions for receptivity to the rest of what I'll be saying this morning.

[09:10]

Because I think the rest of this talk could be mistaken by some types as four thinking types. And so I want to encourage everyone to stay... connected with what's happening in and around the body, to keep the five senses open, to notice what you're feeling and sensing, as well as what you're thinking as you are listening to what I'm saying, and as you're listening to the entire room and the surround. This is sometimes called active listening. In Zen, we practice Zazen. And our practice of sitting silent and relatively still is a practice that we do with all of our senses open on receive. Even when we're facing the wall downstairs in the Zendo, our eyes are open, our ears are open.

[10:17]

We're not trying to keep anything out. I want to acknowledge that we are just past the most, I guess, most of the major traditional holidays that take place in the US in the month of December. Although I think Kwanzaa began yesterday and continues through January 1st, we're also about a week past the summer solstice. So I'm coming into this talk with an awareness of the widely varying ways that people can and do experience the holiday season. And I can't help but wonder how various different people are doing at this inflection point in the year. For about a week now, I guess, the light has been increasing. I looked it up. It increases at a rate of about one minute per day.

[11:20]

And this will continue for the next six months or so until we arrive once again at the summer solstice when the light begins to fade. And I'm acknowledging this because this is the nature of our cyclical seasonal existence in which various cultural traditions, whether secular or religious, are taking place and are part of this rhythm. The month of December in the US is strongly associated with a few traditional religious and secular holidays, including Christmas, Hanukkah, and as I already said, Kwanzaa, each of which are strongly associated with giving and family gatherings, or with nourishing our relationship with friends, families, communities, including families of origin and families of our own choosing.

[12:27]

And given the many people in this country and around the world who collectively observe these holidays, we have, I think, many of us have heard this month of December referred to as the season of giving. or of generosity, as well as the season of the returning of the light and the season of new beginnings. We celebrate New Year's Eve right on the cusp of New Year's, and we observe this holiday often as the opportunity to make some new resolutions, to let go of what no longer serves and to take up some new or fresh intentions or revitalize our old intentions in an effort to support our lives and our aspirations. In the Buddhist tradition in December, we celebrate the Buddha's Enlightenment, or Bodhi Day, and that takes place on December 8th.

[13:37]

Usually it's the last day of a five to seven-day sushin that we practice, called Rohatsu Sushin. So we're now three weeks past December 8th, but fortunately, every day in the calendar year is a good day for waking up from delusion. At this time of year, many people suffer from what this morning I'm calling the shadow side of the season of giving. And I'm guessing that many people in this room already know what I'm talking about and have either this year or in some previous year been gripped at some point by the symptoms of this shadow side of the way we understand giving commonly in our mainstream culture. Some of the symptoms are anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, judgment, fear of not enough, fear of too much, all related to giving.

[14:47]

expectations that include what might feel like unwise spending or spending beyond one's means, spending on things that don't feel meaningful, or offering what we fear others may not value or appreciate, whether material or immaterial. And that's all on top of any familial holiday stresses that tend to arise and play themselves out year after year. And the loneliness that many people feel during the holidays due to inability to be with loved ones for any number of reasons. So I'm considering all of this and I've been reflecting on how giving is understood in the Zen tradition and have been specifically considering one particular teaching How many of you are familiar with the meal chant that we chant in the zendo during formal Oryoki meals?

[15:58]

Sometimes we chant it informally in the dining room. And the end of the first verse, and I was trying to remember, it's hard out of the context of the ceremony of Oryoki to remember what's happening, to sort of pull it out of my... the top of my head, but I believe it's at the point where we are about to set out our empty bowls. We chant, may we with all beings realize the emptiness of the three wheels, giver, receiver, and gift. What does it mean? We chant this as we're preparing to receive or to be served. The meal, the gift of a meal. In the early Mahayana Buddhist teachings, there is an important sutra, an old sutra called the Diamond Sutra. Or in Sanskrit, the Vajra Cherika Prajnaparamita Sutra, which is literally translated, the perfection of wisdom that cuts like a thunderbolt or that cuts like diamond.

[17:11]

What do we cut through in this sutra? What would invoke the image of such a powerful force? And I would say something equally powerful, which is delusion. The sutra states that a bodhisattva, or someone who vows to live and be lived for the welfare of all beings, gives without abiding in anything. without clinging to the idea of a giver, a receiver, a gift, or the act of giving, which means without attachment or fixation, without dualistic thinking. Or in other words, without thinking that the giver, the receiver, the gift, or the act of giving are in any way separate from each other or from oneself. So that verse that we chant is said to have its origin in the Diamond Sutra.

[18:20]

My previous reference to empty in terms of the bowls, I said the empty bowls being set out, that is a reference to a different, more commonly understood meaning of empty, which is a visible kind of emptiness that means a perceivable absence or lack of something or other. In the Zen and early Mahayana Buddhist teachings, emptiness, the emptiness of giver, receiver, and gift is understood to mean essentially without separation in a world, in a universe, a cosmos, in which everything, everything that can be pointed to as apparently something in and of itself, like this lectern, these robes, all of the items, as we call them in this room, are actually thoroughly interconnected, or as we say, interdependent with everything, with myriad, innumerable things.

[19:28]

And so we say that every apparent thing is without own being. I was thinking of a simple illustration of a spider's web You know, a large spider's web. If you take hold of any intersection of the spider's web and you pull it, obviously, you pull the entire web. And this is just a visible illustration of something far beyond the capacity of the human eye to see all at once or to perceive in any way all at once, which is this web of the universe or what we sometimes call Indra's net. When we talk about Indra's net, we usually end up talking about the nodes and the jewels in the net. We don't talk about it so much as having this net-like quality that I just described. The implication of this is that I actually have nothing to claim as my own.

[20:30]

And you have nothing to claim that is truly yours alone. And this is true for everyone. Now, these few simple statements that I've just made, if you consider them simple, about the emptiness of the three wheels are radically at odds with the understandings that govern many of the rules of our everyday conventional transactional lives in which ownership, private property, socioeconomic status, striving and competing for personal status and accolades, recognition, all reign supreme. In Zen, we believe in what we call the two truths, the relative and the ultimate. And we acknowledge that, well, we acknowledge their apparent contradictions.

[21:39]

And I will say a little bit more about this. I'll return to it in the end, just so that you're not left with the impression that I'm against conventional reality. It's impossible to be against conventional reality. But it is possible to learn to live wisely within conventional reality on the basis of some wider understanding of the way things actually are. In the act of giving this talk, for instance, everything in the universe is supporting me to offer this talk at this moment without you being here to listen and to offer your presence, your embodied presence, and those of you online as well are there with your embodied presences. Without the invitation from the Tanto and all the speakers who've come before, the founder of this temple, my benefactors, my parents, teachers, supporters.

[22:44]

And I was thinking without the relative freedom of speech that we still have in this country for now, this talk would not be possible to be given or received. So it is shot through with interbeing with support from all beings. That said, giving never occurs solely on the basis of my own personal will or efforts. Because will and effort don't exist in a vacuum. I was thinking about something, again, a simple example of a piece of fruit, such as an apple. Can't give the taste, the particular taste that it offers without the particular... roots or blossoms of the tree on which it grows.

[23:46]

And yet, we can see each of these things separately in space and in time. We can see the apple without the blossoms, without the root, and so forth. And we get used to seeing in this way because we perceive in this way, we end up thinking in this way oftentimes without investigation unless we become practitioners. There are so many causes and conditions near and far all the time beyond personal volition. And that being the case, giving or generosity is not something to become proud of, to pride oneself on, though we do talk a lot about in Buddhism and I think in other spiritual and religious traditions as well, the virtue of giving. So I'm not denying that giving is virtuous. But I am saying to feel like I did this or this is all I could do.

[24:51]

That has its relative truth. But its limitations deserve to be recognized. We have a Zen story that addresses this in which an emperor asks a highly spiritually accomplished being, what merit have I accumulated for all of the good deeds that I have done for society and for the flourishing of the Dharma? And the answer that he receives is, no merit, empty of your own merit. That's me paraphrasing. There's a lot more to the story. But this is an example of how the teaching of emptiness also cuts through spiritual pride. For those of you online, we just heard some really good music.

[25:56]

So I, you know, being not separate from anything, I was just overtaken. Here at Zen Center, as part of our full moon and ordination ceremonies, we chant among several vows, I vow not to praise self at the expense of others, which is very closely related to I vow not to slander, and also I vow not to lie, you know, to knowingly portray things as they are not. the more we know, and now we know nothing separate. So when we talk as though they are, we're not necessarily intentionally lying, we're just falling into habitual patterns of thinking, and we can wake up. I've found it nearly impossible to praise myself without it being at the expense of others, without

[27:03]

putting others down implicitly or if I'm putting myself down, putting others up. It's very difficult to praise self without looking down or looking up in judgment upon. But as I remember those previous versions of myself when I think I'm better than I used to be or I used to be so much better at X. I often fail to remember all the different circumstances. I was operating under entirely different circumstances with different understandings, different supports, different barriers, insecurities, all the causes and conditions that enable us to succeed or apparently fail. So this looking down on others is what we mean by praising self at the expense of others.

[28:13]

Every moment of our lives we are continuously giving and receiving simultaneously and completely. And in this way, every moment of our lives is really a gift, like it or not. And the gifts of our lives are inseparable from the gifts of myriad other forms of life within one fabric of existence. Without this fundamental understanding, life is just a zero-sum game. I'm sure you've heard that expression. There are winners and losers, makers and takers. and all the appearances within our transactional, conventional, dualistic consciousness seem to be all that there is to life, this continuous turning in the wheel of samsara.

[29:23]

Buddhism teaches, Zen teaches, and Zazen actually reveals that the sums of our lives are indivisible and infinite. The emptiness of the three wheels is not a moral teaching. But morality, ethics, can be established on the basis of the way things actually are, some wise understanding of the way things actually are. Without nothing or lack of own being, without emptiness, something could never come to be. In the same way that Without silence, there could be no music, whether we love it or hate it or feel neutral about it. So this also in and of itself is not a moral teaching, it's just the way things are.

[30:27]

No silence, no music. So how can we, I was wondering, how can we polish our acts of giving with this understanding? our acts of giving without making ourselves out to be something special, setting ourselves apart from others. And I thought, I think it has a lot to do with the cultivation of receptivity and the practice of consciously offering whatever it is we think we have to offer in any given situation in a manner that simultaneously fully receives the offering So we're in touch with the receiving of the offering as we are giving it. I thought of this expression we have that must be related in some way. Don't dish it out if you can't take it. It sounds rather superficial, but I think there's actually insight to be gleaned from that.

[31:37]

In offering our own receptivity to others, as we are offering any kind of gift that we think we may be offering, we're offering that sense of that presence that is the wholeness of this indivisibility, which conveys that there's also nothing outside. Everything, everyone, is included. That's a feeling that we can that can arise in the heart based on an understanding. I would like us to consider this our everyday rice and tea as Zen practitioners, because this total undivided inclusion is really what the world needs in so many ways. I'll just begin to end by saying that as I said, I would return to saying, I'm not against a dualistic or conventional orientation to life.

[32:45]

No, the relative and the ultimate aren't separate, so you can't be against it with any real understanding. And our practice of Zen is a practice of cultivating appropriate responses to duality, to the illusions that arise in duality, to the appearances Our practice is a path of awakening to the way things actually are, not a practice of judgment and exclusion. It's a path for the welfare and liberation of all beings, everyone and everything. And it does require some transformation. We don't talk a lot. In the traditional teachings, the word transformation didn't exist. But in modern Western society, I think we've come to understand the kind of mental, emotional, somatic transformation that is often required to really open to and fully receive and begin to enact these teachings.

[33:56]

The more we practice looking quietly in stillness, in zazen, and throughout our daily activities, the more we practice looking and listening with our whole bodies with this undivided understanding, the more we begin to see and the more clearly we see the meaning of this emptiness of the three wheels. And in my experience, the more we feel supported in our lives by this understanding, the total interdependent inclusion of giver, receiver, and gift. Thank you all for offering your receptivity. I couldn't have offered this talk without you. As I said earlier, and it's true, so really this has been our talk. So you're responsible.

[34:59]

Even though it appears that I've been doing all the talking and you've been doing all the gracious listening. Thank you very much. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:33]

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