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. This is the second talk. That's part of a series of talks I'll be giving for this three-week intensive program. that we are doing here at the temple and being joined by many people who are zooming in online. And the topic of our intensive is this ancient poem called the Xin Xin Ming by the third Zen ancestor, Song San. Xin Xin Ming is translated roughly as the mind or heart mind of great faith.

[01:14]

And on Wednesday evening, I spoke about faith, which is the second character, the second of the Chinese characters, the second Xin. So the first Xin means heart or heart mind. And the second character means something like faith or trust or confidence. And we talked about how it is that faith is born from difficulty, from dukkha, from suffering. And I began to introduce... the idea that faith and vow, living by vow, living by one's, I would say highest, but really it's more, one's heartfelt aspiration, intention, that these are connected, faith and vow.

[02:26]

And I read from, and I will read again to begin this morning, from one of my most favorite texts, from Heihei Dogen Zenji, who is a descendant many thousands of years later, I think thousands, after Song San, maybe hundreds. Anyhow, Dogen Zenji is the ancestor who is understood to be our first Japanese ancestor and the founder of this lineage of Soto Zen. And he has this text, which is a description of his vow. And I'll just repeat again the opening lines from the Eihei Koso Hotsudanman, from Eihei Dogen Zenji. He says, with all beings from this life on, throughout countless lives, to hear the true Dharma, that upon hearing it, no doubt will arise in us, nor will we lack in faith.

[03:46]

It made me pause and wonder, what does it mean? the true Dharma. I don't think that Dogen means true in contrast to false. This is very much what is at the heart of Sung San's poem, is pointing out to us the ways that our binary mind is constantly creating a this and a that, a better and a worse, a good and a bad. a true and a false. So I don't think that that is in the spirit of what Dogen means. I think true Dharma, what could that mean? The true Dharma is the living Dharma. It's not something that is written on this page. It's not an idea that I have.

[04:56]

It's not something that happened for someone else a long time ago. The living Dharma is here. And as we know, this here is a moving target because it's alive. It's now and now and now. And so the invitation isn't to go and find something and say, I got it. but rather the invitation is to stay awake, to show up for this moment, for this moment. And some of you who've been reading will know that the opening line of Sung San's poem is that the great way... path of practice is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

[05:59]

And this means that the invitation is to show up for every moment, the ones we like and the ones we don't like, the ones we prefer and the ones we'd like to get away from. This is the spirit of radical inclusivity that is laid forth in some songs. This morning, we did a ceremony called Riyaka Fusats, or the Full Moon Ceremony, which is an ancient tradition. And it's a tradition in which the community comes together to reaffirm our individual and collective vow.

[07:06]

The vow to hear the true Dharma. And as it happens each morning in morning service here, and also for those who are attending a service online, the opening lines of the full moon ceremony go something like this. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So we have this path in which we are stretched, opened, between vow and avow.

[08:13]

Between committing ourselves to something that's a moving target. And many of you know the bodhisattva vows, which were also chanted this morning, are beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. So we have this language of beginningless greed, hate, and delusion. Numberless. Beings are numberless beings. Dharma gates are boundless. All of this is pointing us that we're entering into not a different world, but one that lives side by side with the world of greed, hate, and delusion. That we are vowing to do the impossible. Now, why would we do that?

[09:19]

Because if we don't do that, if we don't encourage ourselves to step beyond the ancient twisted karma, the wheel, the endless wheel of samsara, of greed, hate, and delusion, then we just keep turning the wheel. But to make that step requires faith. requires us to be willing to step beyond what we know, what we're familiar with. And so in a way, we aim very high. So high, it's outside our grasp, which maybe is a good thing. We can't get it. It's impossible. But we do it anyway. So we aim high and we also bow low.

[10:31]

It was beautiful to hear the words of the ceremony this morning, but what I felt most in my body was the gesture of putting my head on the ground. This is another kind of direction or pointer. It's telling us that what we're looking for isn't up there, isn't out there, isn't over there. It's here. That our practice is to drop down. I think maybe my most favorite Zen image, and there are gorgeous images in Zen, You know, legions of gorgeous images in Zen. But one of my favorite, I believe, is also from Dogen Zenji.

[11:33]

And the images of a person you might imagine yourself floating in the ocean, and your head is bobbing just above the water. And as you float, maybe it's pleasant at first. You kind of enjoy bobbing in the ocean, but over time, you know, there's wind. and chop, and churn, and you get salt water in your eyes, and then it starts to rain, or it gets dark, or a bird flies over and poops on your head. This is our life. Some of it's pleasant, some of it's unpleasant. And here we are. And our vow is to stay... not to escape, not to run away, not to try to go somewhere else, but to keep our head floating in this vast ocean. And yet, in this image from Dogen, he says, now imagine that you have a very long body.

[12:41]

And the body drops down, [...] to the very deep ocean, all the way to the bottom. So at the top of the ocean, there's sun and rain and fog and chop and churn and birds. And at the bottom of the ocean, it's completely dark and still and quiet. So our path is a path of both, of yes, of being willing to stay in the midst of the chop and the churn, but finding our depths, finding our feet in this deep, dark, beautiful mystery.

[13:54]

This is not an easy process. The story of greed, hatred, and delusion is an old, old story. It's a story that goes back and back and back. greed, the hatred that come out of the delusion, the delusion which is believing the illusion of our separateness. The delusion that causes us to other, to separate, to divide, and then to prefer.

[15:02]

to like and not like, to grasp and push away. And we could say also that this is the heart of our practice, is, as the Buddha said, to untangle this tangle, to untangle this ancient twisted karma, this ancient web. of greed, hatred, and delusion to find a different story. And this untangling of our ancient twisted karma, this is happening both at an individual level, at a personal level. Many of us are sitting, one day sitting today, And our sitting practice is sitting in the middle of the churn, remembering that deep, dark, mysterious depth.

[16:14]

And our faith, our faith is our willingness to sit right in the middle, not to move. We don't have to like it. We just have to show up. This practice, this practice that we're doing today, is essentially the same practice that we do in untangling our collective karma. The karma that grows up out of this delusion of separation that creates... systems of othering, systems of harm, of oppression, of rules and laws that put some of us over here and others over there that are based on

[17:32]

the loss of understanding our true connectedness. So today, while some of us are sitting in quiet and practicing this showing up for, being with, our own ancient twisted karma, our own greed, hatred, and delusion, today, all across the United States, there are beings of all genders who are marching, who are giving voice in protest to what looks like inevitable rolling back of Roe v. Wade, protesting this system or systems of power over of denying some, whether it's women or those who are gender non-binary or are BIPOC and LGBTQ communities or immigrants or it goes on and on.

[18:55]

There's no end to othering. So whether we're sitting with our own karma or we are marching, moving with others who are speaking out against the systems of injustice, of oppression, that grow out of this fundamental confusion, this is our work. kind of gritty work. We are in very good company. Because just as this story of greed, hatred, and delusion goes back and back and back, so too does the story of the true Dharma, the living Dharma,

[20:01]

The opportunity to stop turning the wheel of hatred, of greed, of confusion. This is the good news. This is why we're here. Because we don't want to keep repeating the same over and over and over again. Because we don't want to do harm. Because we care about ourselves, we care about each other, we care about our planet. And so we're willing to step in. Perhaps at first there's just a little bit of faith. And as we walk, we begin to find our way to begin to trust and have confidence that something dark, And mysterious.

[21:02]

And essential. Is holding us. So it turns out. That our ancestor. Sung San. Who wrote this poem. He had some trouble too. And very much like the kind of social, political difficulty that we have facing us, humans, now, during the time that Sang Sang lived, Buddhist monks were persecuted by the government. And interestingly, that persecution, that trouble, was, I'm not sure what the word is, foreseen or foreseen. So it wasn't exactly predicted in a scientific way, but it was envisioned by Sung San's teacher's teacher, who is our first Chinese ancestor, Bodhidharma.

[22:18]

Bodhidharma is the first Chinese ancestor because he's... supposedly the one who brought Buddhism from India to China. He was known as the red-haired barbarian. Some of you may have seen images of Bodhidharma. That's not one. There's one on the hallway. You can see he has big bulgy eyes and a hoop earring. He looks a bit like a rascal. And I spent some time in China about a few decades ago. And I lived in a healing center where I was studying Qigong. And in the mornings, I would walk above where I was staying through the green tea orchards. And the story interesting about Bodhidharma is it said that the reason his eyes look the way they do is because in his fierceness to sit meditation, he cut off his eyelids.

[23:25]

I'm not recommending this. And in compassion, the story goes, and please don't take this as a suggestion, something to do. This is a mythic story, right? But it said that Bodhidharma's eyelids fell to the ground and became green tea plants so that in the future, monks wouldn't have to cut off their eyelids. They could just have green tea. So I think of Bodhidharma every morning. I am a big fan of green tea and thank him. for his effort. So Bodhidharma apparently predicted that there would be trouble. And Bodhidharma himself didn't have an easy time when he came to China. He was, in some ways, I think, deeply misunderstood. And at the time that he lived, the government, the emperor, Emperor Wu, was actually quite a deep advocate.

[24:29]

for Buddhism. And when Bodhidharma went to meet him, Emperor Wu said, basically, what do I get for all my good works, you know, for supporting all the Buddhist monks and temples and so on? And Bodhidharma essentially said, nothing. Imagine, you're facing the emperor or you're facing the patron of Zen Center and they want to know, what do I get for all my donations? Nothing. And then the emperor says, well, then what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? What's the heart of the teaching? And Bodhidharma says, emptiness. Nothing holy. And finally he says, the emperor says, well, who are you? Who is it that's facing me? And Bodhidharma says, don't know. And this don't know, Bodhidharma's don't know, has echoed down through the ages.

[25:33]

This is a doorway for us to open. This don't know is a doorway to faith. It's a doorway to finding a path that isn't just repeat, repeat, repeat. So after Bodhidharma left the emperor, he went and sat and faced the wall. This is legend again. I don't know if it's true. For nine years, he faced the wall at Shaolin Temple. And at some point, our second Zen ancestor, Hui Ke, or Eka, came and started pestering him. So the guy's just trying to sit Zazen, and this student is wanting to talk to him. And for a long time, Bodhidharma just ignores him. And Huike, ultimately, again, please take this as a metaphor, not literally, chops off his arm as proof of his devotion, just as Bodhidharma had sliced off his eyes.

[26:42]

Again, I'm not recommending anyone to lop off anything, but to consider what's important and how important it is. So finally, when Huike proves his dedication, his devotion, Bodhidharma is willing to talk to him. And at some point, Huike says to him, he's already a very deep practitioner, but he says to Bodhidharma, as confession, as a kind of All my ancient twisted karma, he's admitting to Bodhidharma his struggle. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, he says, I have been practicing for a long time, but my mind is still not settled.

[27:44]

He's deeply honest. And Bodhidharma says, bring me your mind and I will settle it for you. Maybe 10 minutes later or 10 years later, Kui Ke comes back and says, I can't find it. I can't find my mind. Bodhidharma says, you see, I have settled it for you. This is so essential in our practice. This practice of searching and not finding. Searching and not finding. What we come in wanting. is not what we get. What we get is something so much better. So this is repeated, this kind of dialogue, now between Hui Ke and Sang Sang. So Sang Sang, he is described to be living with an illness.

[28:55]

sometimes described as leprosy, sometimes rheumatism. And he comes to Huike and says, I am riddled with sickness. Please cure me. Some translations, cure me of my sin. And in that translation, the adding of those words you can feel, Sung Sang's relationship to his illness, he had some preference. He didn't want it. And the dialogue unfolds in the same way. Kui Ke says, bring me your sin or bring me your illness and I'll cure it for you. And again, maybe it's a day later, Maybe it's a decade later, Sung San comes back and says, I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it.

[30:02]

Aha, I've cured you. Now, was he literally cured? Maybe, maybe not. But something happened, something shifted in his relationship to himself, his body, his life, the world. This is what turns for us as we're willing to have the faith to sit in the midst of our own ancient twisted karma. I have a very deep resonance. with Sang Sang because his story feels to me very much like my own. When I came to Zen Center, I also came with about 15 years at that point.

[31:15]

Yeah, 16 maybe of living with illness. I was diagnosed as a child with type 1 diabetes. I was 10 or 11. And I would say my attitude was very similar to sang-sams. All I wanted was to make it go away. And I was sure that it was a problem. It was wrong. It was bad. I was bad. There was something wrong here. And isn't this the way it is? We come into practice wanting to be settled, wanting to be cured, to be healed, to be fixed, to find some slice of peace. And we do, but not in the way that we imagine. Very early in my practice,

[32:24]

I was living at Green Gulch Farm, and I had an opportunity to go and visit... Actually, it was before that. I had an opportunity to go and visit a Tibetan doctor, healer. He was staying with Yvonne Rand, for those of you who remember her. And I came in with this worldly mind... in which I just so much wanted him to give me the answer, to help fix me, to help heal me, to cure me of my sin. So I came in, and he was there with a translator, and he took my pulses and looked at my tongue, He looked in my eyes. He walked around me in circles.

[33:29]

And I don't know what he was doing, but I just took it all in. And then he sat across from me. He was sitting directly across from me. And then his translator was about where you are. And he just watched me for some time. I felt like he was looking right through me. I was trying to be sort of bright and chipper, and actually I was just aching. You know, please help me. And at some point, he began to speak, and his translator, as is often the case, it seems like people speak for a long time, and then the translator says very little. So who knows what he was really saying. But anyway, the translator, he would speak for a while, and the translator would say, he's saying that the most important thing for you, and I was ready to hear, and then he stopped, and he talked again for a while, and the translator said, the single most essential thing for you is to love God.

[34:53]

yourself completely. I was so mad. That was not the answer I wanted. No, I wanted him to give me a pill. I wanted him to tell me what to eat or how to exercise. And I knew that what he was saying was true. And I knew that I didn't know how to do it. So this story, this story of greed, hatred, and delusion that goes back and back and back is not the only story. There is another story, the story of the true Dharma, which is the story of love.

[35:55]

It's the story of non-separation. It's the story of Just before I came down, I was remembering being a young Zen student very early in my practice, and I came and sat on a Saturday morning and heard Kobanchino Rosh Tadik. And at the end of his talk, I don't remember what he said. I just remember being, there was something about him, you know. And at the end, there was a tea in the back of the dining room, and he was taking questions. And I was really new, so I didn't quite know the etiquette. And he sat down, and he poured himself a cup of tea, and then he said, any questions? He had this thing he would do with his mouth, like that.

[37:01]

Any questions? Waiting. And my hand shot up because I didn't know that it was kind of, you're not really supposed to be that enthusiastic. And I said to him, what is the Dharma? And everyone laughed. It was kind of this wave of laughter that rolled across the room. And I wasn't deflected by that. I said, no, no, no, really, I'm new here. And I keep hearing this word, Dharma, and I don't know what it means. And echoing Bodhidharma, the first thing that Coben said was, I don't know. That was probably the real, the true answer. And I just kept watching him. Like, a little more, please.

[38:03]

And then he did this thing that stayed with me all these years, which is that he reached over and he picked up his teapot. He held it up. And he said, the Dharma, the Dharma is what holds this teapot together. Just like with the Tibetan healer, I had no idea what he was talking about. But I knew that he was pointing me to something important. He was pointing me to what I mean by love. Love is the thing that connects. Love is the thing that holds. It's what holds us together. It's what connects me to you and you to each other and all of us. this great earth. So how do we get off this wheel of samsara without turning away, without closing our eyes, closing our hearts?

[39:27]

How do we commit ourselves to walk hand in hand with all beings without being overwhelmed? We're finding out, aren't we? And I'm speaking today to invite you to consider that there's something more. There's something beyond. greed, hate, and delusion. And that the doorway, the entry to the great way. Well, I think Bodhidharma summed it up pretty well. It's this willingness not to know. The least willingness to be not so sure. not to hold so tightly to our preferences, to what we love and what we hate, what we like and what we don't like, to our views and opinions.

[40:38]

We can have them, but let's also stay open. This, I think, is really the heart of our Zazen practice, that we sit, we take a posture which is grounded, present, Here. Here. There's a stability in the body and then this willingness to be wide open to receive whatever comes. To receive our great ideas and the pain in our knees. To receive the pettiness that comes through the mind and the brilliance. Inviting it all in, but not holding on. Because the thing is that when we engage in this way, when we're willing to make a vow that's beyond what we know, beyond what we can figure out, and we're willing to do the gritty work of sitting in the middle of

[41:54]

our ancient twisted karma, our own and the world's. And something happens. We have the possibility of being surprised, of discovering something utterly fresh, alive, surprising. So we practice in this way of vowing, vowing to hear the true Dharma, vowing to sit in the middle of

[42:57]

of our individual and collective ancient twisted karma. And to be honest about what we see and hear and feel, the true Dharma is not a pretended Dharma. You don't need to pretend that everything is great. Everything is great. And it's also tough. Yes. This is our practice. Yes, both and. In the close of the Ehekoso Hotsuganman, Dogen says, by revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, we melt away the root of transgression by the power of our confession and repentance. This was the ceremony this morning. We are putting our heads on the ground and saying, I aimed high and I'm willing to go low, to touch the earth, to be a human being, not to pretend.

[44:12]

By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, we melt away the root of transgression, by the power of our confession and repentance. It just means admitting what's here, being honest. And he says this, this practice, is the pure and simple color of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith. And when we do this, we have this opportunity to discover or maybe to realize, which I like that word because it means to make real, to make real for ourselves, to know for ourselves, not something we heard over there, but something we know in our direct experience, in our bones.

[45:12]

We have this opportunity to be surprised, to discover something we didn't expect. to hear an answer that was maybe not the answer that we thought we wanted. So I want to close with a short poem from one of our early women ancestors. These are poems of awakening that are recorded from the early bhikkhunis. the early Buddhist nuns. And this is a poem from Dhammadina, She Who Has Given Herself to the Dharma. And just to underscore how ancient this turning of the wheel of samsara, of greed, hatred, and delusion, of systems of oppression and injustice are, Dhammadina,

[46:21]

was married to a man who wanted to become a monk, a bhikkhu with the Buddha, which, if he left her, would effectively make her a widow, which would make her invisible within the culture that she lived. Because women at that time were property. They belonged first to the father. then to the husband, and if they were lucky and gave birth to a son, then they became, if their husband were to die or go become a monk, they would become the property of their son. So she didn't have a son, and she was concerned for her well-being. And it's described that her husband, who cared for her deeply, gave her permission to become a bhikkhuni. And then it turned out that she surpassed him in her understanding.

[47:25]

And there's a story in which it describes her husband, who's now a monk, and she are in conversation, and he's asking her questions about the Buddha's teaching. And she gives him answers. And afterwards, it turned out the Buddha heard the dialogue. And he says, I could not have spoken the teachings any better than she did. So this is a bhikkhuni of some renown. And this is her poem. It expresses this spirit of unwinding the wheel of samsara and allowing ourselves to be surprised and be carried by this great Deep, dark mystery. Dhamma Dina.

[48:28]

She who has given herself to the Dharma. For so long, I thought only of the river's end. Maybe like you or me, she wanted to get somewhere. She thought there was somewhere to get. The river's end. This is a metaphor for crossing over. She wanted to be enlightened. She wanted to wake up. And she thought that that was over there at the end of the river. For so long, I thought only of the river's end. Then one morning, I set my paddle down. To watch the sun rise over the eastern hills. Only to find myself floating somehow gently upstream.

[49:41]

I promise it was not what I expected. So as we enter this practice of cultivating the mind of great faith, of discovering what it means to live in the midst of preferences, to live in the midst of love and hate, of ideas and views, without holding. then we have the opportunity to discover something that may surprise us, something that may carry us, hold us, support us. I'll read it one last time. For so long, I thought only of the river's end.

[50:43]

Then one morning, I set my paddle down, watch the sun rise over the eastern hills, only to find myself floating somehow gently upstream. I promise it was not what I expected. Thank you very much for your kind attention. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:44]

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