This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Thank you all for being here. Those of you who came in person today, old friends and new ones, And, of course, the residents here and all of those who join us online and are with us in that way, we appreciate you and appreciate all of your practice and the effort you made today to come. Morning, I especially want to appreciate our special guests, Baker Roshi and Faturo Roshi and Rosenblum Roshi. Thank you very much for being here. So I think some of you know me.

[01:05]

My name is Jiryu. I live here. And apparently I am now the abbot. Strange state of affairs. So I really want to thank you all deeply for your support in helping me to get on to the Dharma seat. And I wish us all well in this next chapter. I want to say a little bit about the process of becoming avid, specifically about these ceremonies we had a couple of weeks ago. I know many of you were involved in some way or another. in the ceremonies to install me as abbot and to hoist me onto the dharma seat.

[02:07]

It was sort of an ordeal, as a friend said, that rites of passage are supposed to be an ordeal. That's part of the design. Or in another image that my spouse Sarah offered, it was sort of like a childbirth. So, I'm not so sure about that, but maybe so. producing and trying to deliver a baby abbot. So I do know that I was working very hard and suffering and trying to get myself delivered somehow. And the whole temple body was squeezing and straining and suffering to deliver me onto the seat. And it was terrible and beautiful and joyful. and was just love all the way through, why else would we put ourselves through such things? Just mutual love. So maybe childbirth isn't so far off. And maybe that's what Green Gulch is trying to do for all of us, what our Zen practice is trying to do for all of us, birth baby Buddhas, give birth to Zen students, to mature human beings.

[03:24]

How do you make a mature human being? What's the womb for that? So at the ceremony, Sarah very beautifully appreciated our elders and congratulated our elders, which I thought was wonderful, for producing me onto this seat through their patience and forbearance and kindness and steady wisdom over the years. They worked hard for many years to produce this baby abbot that they have mixed feelings about, as I know from having a baby myself. So we're all working hard to nourish each other in this womb of Green Gulch, in this womb of Zen practice, and to deliver each of us and each other into the position we are in this moment, into our Dharma position. And it's hard. It's hard work. nourish and it's hard work to be nourished especially for those of us who are kind of stubborn don't want i don't want that food so anyway thank you very much i'm really grateful for the support and i hope to make my best effort to meet the the request

[04:51]

I wanted to talk today more about one of the themes of the many statements that I offered during the ceremonies, which were very long and had a lot of statements in them. It's a theme that some of you who know me know is important to me and that I am often repeating. And it's this teaching that our practice is not about a feeling, but about freedom. I talk a lot about that. Our practice isn't a feeling, it's a freedom. And I think that the reason I insist on that is because I love the feeling of Zen. I'm completely enthralled and captured by the feeling of Zen. I love a good Zen feeling. It's worth the drive, you know? And I'm skeptical about that, about

[05:57]

how much I love that good Zen feeling. I do know that at some kind of basic self-centered level, I think part of the reason that I started practicing and stayed practicing is I really liked the feelings that got produced in me through doing the practices. So I hope you know, I think you know what I mean by a good Zen feeling. feeling of presence and of spaciousness, feeling of being alive, remembering that we're alive in the mystery, the feeling of just being all the way here and surrendering and releasing into this gift or the feeling of the breath the breath flowing all the way out and that as Suzuki Roshi says that perfect calmness that's at the end of the exhalation perfect calmness of mind just past the end of the exhalation I love it

[07:22]

like a little nest there, pitch a tent there, and just stay there for the night. And then the breath flowing in, you know, in the brightness of the day, and a feeling of lightness or openness in the body and the warm heart. It's just a feeling of loving everything and everyone. So who can argue with that, you know? Those are the best. very compelling feelings, and very worthwhile. So if you don't know those feelings or feel estranged from those feelings, I would really encourage you to practice Zazen with enthusiasm and wholeheartedness in order to get them, because you will, and it will be great. Even if you just touch, you know, these feelings now and then, or maybe once ever is enough to transform the root. So that's my attachment and why I insist to myself at the same time to remember that the Zen tradition is wily and always looking to unhook us from something.

[08:50]

So Zen tradition, with one hand, seems to be showing us and helping us You know, setting up, teaching us about incense and about turning the lights down and about sitting facing the... With one hand. But consistently nudging us towards a much deeper, much more... Which is... this truth that the practice that's really going to help us is the practice that isn't about a feeling, but is about a freedom. It's not about achieving a certain feeling. It's about realizing the freedom and capacity to fully and deeply experience whatever the feeling is that it's time for. So you could say that Zen is a special feeling, but it's a special feeling of just really having the feeling that it's time for.

[09:59]

Suzuki Roshi, I think like all of our ancestors, our Japanese founder of this temple, Suzuki Roshi, talks about this in many ways, including one of my favorite expressions now, this sharing the feeling. Sharing the feeling. So he says when we walk in the woods and really feel ourself in the woods, feel the feeling of the woods. He says we share our feeling with the woods and the walls and the people. Share our feeling with the woods and then we share in the feeling that the woods are offering to us. And that's Zen. To walk in the woods and feel you're sharing the feeling of the woods. That's Zen practice. And, of course, to do that, we need to empty our mind, or it helps a lot to empty our mind, and to open our heart.

[11:00]

He says that when you practice in this way, you know, you're sharing your feeling with things, and you're sharing in the feeling of things, and soon you don't know which is whether it was your feeling or the wood's feeling anyway. Whose feeling was it? Just sharing in this feeling, like this morning. Whose feeling is it? Where does this feeling of the zendo come from? So we're in the woods, and we feel the woods, and we're in the car, and then we feel the car feeling, and share our feeling with the car, and share in the feeling of the car, and so on, all day and forever. So that's our constant and consistent practices then. The conditions are always changing, and so our feeling is always changing. But the practice is the same, to be that feeling, to share in this feeling.

[12:17]

So we think some of us think about enlightenment, and we think about all these feelings, these spacious feelings that I just mentioned. Those must be enlightenment, so I should hold on to those. But the teaching of this school is that the practice of enlightenment, real enlightenment, is just that ability to be with the feeling when it's vast and when it's constricted and when it's bright and when it's glooming, however it is. to have the freedom, or in Suzuki Roshi's words, the composure, wonderful word, the composure, to be able to just be how it is. So I notice when I try to practice Zen, which I do throughout the day, it's tempting to try to reach for the Zen feeling, or to bring the right feeling into the moment that we have. So I need to catch myself again and again and stop trying to reach for the Zen feeling and actually open to the feeling that is here now.

[13:27]

And to not ask myself, you know, what's the feeling? I really want to be practicing Zen. What's the feeling I'm supposed to be having? Isn't there some feeling I'm supposed to be having to practice, to fulfill my Zen practice? Or is it? I can't find it. I guess I can't practice Zen today. So to shift our understanding, practice Zen sincerely by feeling the feeling that it's time for. And this is especially important to understand when we talk about extending the feeling of zazen all day long, which we do and is a point of great confusion for many of us. We say practice zazen and then extend that feeling throughout your day. But the last thing you want to do is try to bring the zendo feeling into some other part of your day. Even when you're in the zendo, don't try to bring the zendo. The Zendo feeling, just sharing the feeling of what's here. So one way that I've talked about this is thinking about the tadpoles, the tadpoles here behind us in the Zendo pond at Green Gold.

[14:44]

So with my kids, we sometimes catch the tadpoles. from the zendo pond and bring them home to watch them for a while before releasing them back. And it's obvious even to a child that if you catch a tadpole from the green gulch pond, that tadpole should live in green gulch pond water. You don't catch the tadpole from the green gulch pond and then put it in tap water. It's the most obvious thing. The green gulch pond water makes the tadpoles. Green gulch tadpoles need the green gulch pond water. You could say in a deep way that green gulch tadpoles are just the expression of the green gulch pond water. So this tempting, a way to talk about or express this tempting, a shallow view of Zen that I fall into again and again. It's something like I'm trying to put the tadpole into the tap water.

[15:47]

Oh, I'm thinking I'm practicing Zen, but I'm actually making this useless and doomed effort to bring the tadpole called my zendo feeling. I saw it. I got a tadpole this morning in the zendo, the zendo feeling. And now I need to bring that into the tap water of my chaotic day. But it doesn't survive in that water. That's not the creature of that water. So the tadpole won't survive, and the tap water won't even be it anymore. Both are ruined by this effort to bring the tadpole into the tap water. I thought a lot about this metaphor, so I realized it might be totally lost. Is that with me? Yeah. The tadpole lives. in the pond water. And I can't take it anywhere else.

[16:52]

But wherever I am, I'm in some water. And there's a creature there that's born of that water. And my practice is to become intimate, to get to know that creature. What is it now that the conditions are making? And to be intimate with that, to meet that fully. it won't be a zendo, it won't be the zendo feeling. So there's a term, a Japanese Zen term, that is used sometimes to express this freedom and fluidity. This ability to just keep meeting the creature of the moment with no agenda, no idea, no insistence on what kind it is.

[17:54]

So this term is yusan gansui, which Suzuki Roshi translates as strolling about in mountains and waters. So yusan gansui, strolling about in mountains and waters, is this joyful wandering. And effortless, free, walking where the wind blows, flowing with the condition, with an empty mind and open heart. Not trying to get anything or get somewhere or get away from somewhere, but just walking, just strolling freely and in harmony with everything, whatever it is and as it changes. So this is an image of the mature Zen life freedom. There's nowhere in particular we need to be. Wherever we are, we're just there. Right now, you have the correct feeling of being in a Dharma talk.

[19:08]

There is no other way. If I question... how I'm giving the Dharma talk, or you question how you're listening to the Dharma talk. The gate there, the path there, is to notice how it actually is and be how it actually is. So this is wandering freely. How is it here? What's this hill like? What's this valley like? So wonderfully, Yusan Gansui is also a sort of Zen insult. It's a burn that you yourself can use on your Zen friends. You can say, Yusan Gansui. So it's this wonderful compliment, wonderful expression of the Zen life. And it's also this dig. So you can try it out. Sleeping in instead of coming to Zazen, it's Yusan Gansui.

[20:10]

nursing your resentment instead of practicing patience and loving kindness, yusangansui. So in the negative sense, this yusangansui means you're just not even trying. You're just, I'm just strolling. In my karma, I'm just strolling, pushed around by my greed, hate, and delusion. So in that sense, yusangansui is you're kind of wasting your life and wasting your time. And I love this dual sense of the term as it gets at the deep dynamic in Zen practice. So mature, true Yusan Gansui is rigorous and strict. There's this great effort that opens this authentic and easeful strolling. It might seem lazy, but It's not lazy because it takes so much effort to not be fooled and not be caught moment after moment.

[21:16]

So it sounds like you're just being how you are. Just being how you are. Just doing what you like. And what could be easier than that? But it also means not being caught by anything. And what could be harder than that? Not being caught by anything. So that understanding, that tension in our own body, in our own life of practice is what Zen practice is about. That's the heart of it, I think. So I want to share a koan about this Yusan Gansui. The main character is the 8th and 9th century Chinese monk Changsha Qingzen, known as Chousha, in the Japanese pronunciation. Changsha, or Chousha, was a disciple of the great Chinese ancestor Nanshuan and a Dharma brother of our friend Zhao Zhou.

[22:29]

So in this story, Chousha sets out from the monastery to walk in the mountains in the spring. in tang china it must have been the zendo personal day as we call them now and i i like to think he had some rice balls in his stack a well-deserved stroll in the mountains and rivers maybe on a day as beautiful as today so this seasoned monk sets out and strolls around in the mountains for a while, and then comes back to the monastery where he's greeted by another mature monk who is tending to the monastery gate. And there at the gate, they have this little, simple, profound meeting, which Suzuki Roshi translates in this way.

[23:31]

So when he returns to the gate, the gatekeeper said, where have you been? And Chosha said, I, Yusan Gansui, I have been strolling in the mountains and waters. And now the gatekeeper is a little bit concerned and wants to know what sort of Yusan Gansui was this. So he asks, where did you go? And Chosha said, at first I followed the scent of the herbs. Then I wandered by the falling flowers. He was just going where it was time for. The gatekeeper says suspiciously, very much like a calm spring feeling. In other words, it sounds like you had a beautiful day, not because you're free.

[24:41]

to see the beauty in whatever day it is, but because it just was a beautiful day. But Chosha says, it transcends even the cold autumn dew falling on the lotus. So that's this maybe a little bit esoteric, but I think quite wonderful conversation between two friends long ago in the practice. You say you have a good feeling. Are you stuck to that feeling? Or is that feeling coming from your ease to be with whatever feeling it's time for? So he lets him back in to the monastery. And Shredo, Secho, who compiled these, this story appreciates is so grateful for chosha's reply expression of freedom it transcends even the cold autumn dew falling on the lotus it's not just the joy of spring that we're practicing for it's the heartbreak of autumn

[26:06]

I emphasize this freedom and this flexibility and make the point again and again, as I'm doing this morning. Thank you for your kind attention. But what's occurred to me as I sit with this image of Chosha wandering in the mountains and thinking about our Zen practice and my own wandering in the mountains, I realize that I have been remiss or neglectful in fully expressing, along with this teaching, why I feel it's so important. I think it's obvious to me, and hopefully to all of us, why this is so important to practice in this way. But if we don't keep mentioning it, then maybe we'll forget. So this really is what I want to emphasize this morning. Why do we practice aiming at freedom rather than aiming at a good feeling?

[27:28]

Why would the practice of freedom be more useful than the practice of knowing how to make a good feeling? So I could think of lots of reasons. But the fundamental one for our practice, for our way, is that we need this freedom. in order to be able to walk with and truly meet all suffering beings, however they are. So we practice in this way, not just to better enjoy the spring flowers and the falling leaves, but to fulfill and enact the compassion of the Bodhisattva's vow, the vow which is to fully be with, to fully be in this world of suffering, with suffering beings in order to be of actual benefit from the ground of authentic meeting and connection and compassion. So if my Zen is just a calm or enlightened feeling, which unfortunately most days I think it is, then how will my Zen meet suffering?

[28:43]

My Zen is the springtime flowers and the lovely walk through the plum blossoms here at Green Gold, then who but myself will be helped? So again, I love a good feeling and I welcome it. And if I have some free time, like might as well work on that good feeling. But if my Zen is just about a good feeling, how will that help me to understand and support someone with a very bad feeling? Or how will I be with myself when my own feeling turns? very bad, which it will. So as I work with this image of Chosha, this image of Yusan Gansui, it's one thing to picture that walking in the hills, and that's literally what it means, strolling in the mountains and rivers. But more to the point for Bodhisattvas.

[29:46]

is to picture this mature and easeful walking, that same free, light, open body walking through, say, the cell blocks at San Quentin, or the ICU, or at the razor wire of the border wall, or through the fires that maybe we dodged this year but probably won't next year, or through the muddy fields and bombed-out cities of Ukraine. Can we picture, as we picture this easeful walking, can we picture that presence in those landscapes too? That easeful, present walking through the suffering of drought and hunger and oppression and violence. Can we see that walking freely in our own life, in our own suffering, with our loved ones in their suffering, meeting birth and sickness and death? with this same open heart and empty mind, the feeling that it's time for.

[30:53]

So our tradition wonderfully has the image of this kind of walking too. This great monk behind me, Jizo Bodhisattva, with his staff, walking, Yusangansui, strolling, easily, openly, with presence and with love, through all of the realms of existence, from heaven and down to hell. So we picture that, too. Jizo Bodhisattva walking through hell as Yusangansui, walking just like Chosha, but in hell. He's not bringing the Zendo feeling with him in hell. The Zendo tadpole has burned up, you know, before he reaches the gate of hell. He is not separate from the feeling of hell as he's walking in hell. It's not he knows that Zendo feeling. So he's in hell, but he's protected by the Zendo tadpole.

[31:56]

The tadpole is burned up. He is not separate from it. He is burning just like they're burning in hell as he walks freely. But he's not caught. So he can be there with the love, with the presence, with the ease. That's what our practice is about. We're not yet Jesus Bodhisattva. So, you know, we run away at the gate if we can avoid it. But that's what we're practicing for. That's the stakes of our practice. That's the motivation of our practice. That we may, I vow, to become through practice somehow as mature as this Bodhisattva who can walk with that same ease through the hills of Green Gulch, And through the fires of hell. Wherever he is. Having the feeling that it's time for. And being free of that. In order to be with suffering beings. And that's the basis.

[32:58]

We say accept everything as it is. Just to be with what is. That's not the end. That's the beginning. That's the basis of then acting in some way. That's the basis of our compassionate action. which is why it's so important, we try to work on the compassionate action without working on the part that's actually our capacity to be with suffering, then the compassionate action will be disconnected and in the Buddhist perspective, not really so liberative. So I was trying to express some of this a couple of weeks ago through my statements. in this powerful ceremony of being birthed, being hoisted onto the mountain seat. And then in the evening after that ceremony here at Green Gulch, I was exposed to COVID, and I got a mild case of COVID, and I didn't get to take the seat until this morning.

[34:12]

And I was... quite frustrated and grumpy about that the wrong thing is happening so I've been put everybody made this great effort to put me on the seat and then I just kind of flop over so I had Three o'clock in the afternoon, I'm making these profound statements about the freedom to be with whatever is. And hours later, I'm outraged and grumbling that not only has the wrong thing happened, but I'm feeling the wrong way about the wrong thing that's happened. So not only has everything been ruined because now I have COVID, but I'm not even able to be free and just be okay with that everything is ruined and now I have COVID. So the tadpole of that beautiful ceremony did not survive its exposure to the wind.

[35:29]

But since, thankfully, I wasn't too sick, I could just appreciate the humor of that and ask myself, okay, Mr. Abbott, Where's your fancy freedom now? I had big plans, you know? And I felt like I expressed this freedom so deeply, and yet so hard to practice. So our baker said, And elder and great stroller in the hills here, Mick, said, oh, you were brought to your knees. And I am so grateful for that comment. Just as Secho is grateful for Chosha's comment, I feel that about Mick's comment. I was brought to my knees.

[36:34]

I was frustrated and frustrated to be frustrated, but that's what it's like to be brought to our knees. And I see that being brought to my knees is not a bad thing. We're an abbot. It's not a bad thing. Maybe for any of us who long to practice the Buddha way, painful as it is and in the many and terrible forms it can take, it may be sometimes it's just the right thing to be brought to our knees. I know that for me, at least, even in this small way, it's been just the right thing to help me to take the seat. So for my practice of attaining the Zen feeling, I need to be strong and healthy and energetic. And that's why I drink tea, you know, which I recommend for that Zen feeling. Drink your tea, be strong, be healthy. You get that Zen feeling. But for my practice of freedom, being strong has nothing to do with it.

[37:46]

Being healthy and able has nothing to do with it. Being able to be exactly how things are, what's that capacity? It's not strength. It's not hell. It's much deeper and much more portable. So it's good to be on our feet. to be able to be on our feet and express our full energy, our full life, and, you know, charge into the mountains and cities, ready to meet and support whatever comes. But it's also good to be brought to our knees and try Yusan Gonsui on all fours. I was trying that image, strolling about the mountains and rivers on all fours, on my knees. A practice that doesn't rip rely on any power or skill. Doesn't rely on our ability to bring in some feeling to drown out the current feeling.

[38:52]

This practice is about cultivating and nourishing this capacity. open to what is and meet what is as it changes moment after moment. And then to act from that connection, to act from that being just how we are and just how it is, which is the activity of compassion. Thank you all for your kind attention this morning. I hope you all get to stroll. this afternoon or this morning, this beautiful day. And I hope even more so that you can do so without being caught by poison oak or by a beautiful flower. And as always, any merit, any good that comes of our practice today or ever, we dedicate to the ease and liberation of all suffering beings.

[40:10]

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:44]

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