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 evening. Can you all hear me? I guess that's it. Oh, good. Okay. Welcome to everyone here tonight. Near or far? Seeing your faces on the screen, I feel your nearness. And sitting on this seat, wrapped in my robe, I'd like to thank, first, Nancy Petron, my Dharma sister, the Tonto at San Francisco Center. Thank you, Nancy, for inviting me to speak and to share some words. with all of you. As well, Abbott David Zimmerman.

[01:03]

Thank you, David, for your support. And I'd also like to thank my teachers, Linda Ruth Cutts and Ed Satterzan. Their support, their encouragement, their teaching is what informs me and my everyday practice, as always. Thank you to both of you. Last Saturday, Shindo ushered in the new year. I so appreciated his opening the door to 2021. Today, this day, we anticipated the confirmation of the election. We instead saw a kind of mayhem. and violence that instead of wrapping us together and making us feel united, instead there was a tearing apart.

[02:09]

So before I begin my talk, I'd like to together have one minute of silence. And the easiest way I think to do that is I have a small bell here and I'll ring it. to begin the silence and I'll ring it again after one minute. Thank you. Thank you.

[03:55]

So here we are entering the new year. And as I prepared for this talk, I thought about how I might teach tonight, starting at the beginning. In Buddhism, we carry around quite a bit of language, rituals, and garments to wear in our tradition. I thought I would unfold some of them and share my ideas about why we carry them around. In the morning, when we finish sitting zazen, our first chant is the robe chant, a starting place for this talk. It's a beginning that is ancient and therefore I would suggest a good beginning. It's a garment. So tonight I'd like to talk about wearing the robe, being enfolded in the teaching, wrapping up, staying warm.

[04:55]

How are we wrapped by the teaching? How does it warm us and how do we warm others? The robe we wear is a way to remember, to learn and teach. The learning comes from listening and enveloping ourselves wholeheartedly. The teaching comes from passing on and offering a way to wrap up and completely immerse, cover ourselves in the Dharma. Before continuing, let me be precise about this word. this word, the robe. I see the robe as a teaching, a wrapping ourselves, absorbing it, warmed by it, which in turn allows us, all of us, to teach and share the Dharma. In this talk, I use the phrase not to depict an okesa or a rakasu, two garments that we stitch and wear,

[06:05]

but rather the robe as a symbol for teachings. Example, the idea of great teachings of liberation. When we wrap ourselves in the Dharma, there are benefits for the teacher and the student. Rather than the robe being a garment that describes a hierarchy or a designation of a position in the temple, I see the robe as a more democratic, idea and something that's available to everyone. Not something to put on each day, but something we may all wish to wear 24-7, an embracing of the teaching. Studying the Dharma allows us to move back and forth in the realm of study, sometimes as teacher, sometimes as student.

[07:13]

And studying doesn't necessarily mean cracking open a book or memorizing a phrase. Sometimes it's watching and observing and being awake. Sometimes the studying takes our whole life. In the early years of my practice, I was offended by the idea of studying. If I saw someone reading about the Dharma, I had a righteous attitude. I just wanted to sit zazen. No reading for me. Time passed. There were phrases and stories that I heard. I was intrigued. I began to collect some books to read. to study, even going to graduate school to dig deeply into the language and words. Bringing this back to the cushion, my place to sit.

[08:15]

Lately, the studying seems like a more open idea, including all kinds of learning, all kinds of being unfolded. I eat rice cakes on a daily basis. This garment we tenderly care for, this robe we tenderly care for brings joy and requires our attention. So here's the chant. I know many of you know it, but perhaps some of you do not. Great robe of liberation. Fields far beyond form and emptiness. Wearing the robe of the Tatakada, saving all beings.

[09:21]

I recently read about a conversation that occurred in 1995 when David Chatwick and Sojin Mel Weissman discussed an early memory of Suzuki Roshi. Mel said, just the way he stood up and sat down, his body language was his greatest teaching, also his subtle way of teaching. At Sokoji, we used to do the rope chant, but in Japanese. I didn't know what it was called even. So I went to him and said, what is the meaning of that chant that we do right after Zazen? Suzuki Roshi said, I don't know. I stood there and Katagiri Roshi was in the office with us. Katagiri was trying to think about it, and he started looking through the drawers, looking for some kind of translation. And Suzuki Roshi gestured to him not to do that.

[10:30]

And then Suzuki Roshi pointed to his heart and said, it's love. The first line, great robe of liberation, is a shout out, a kind of celebration. Sigh being enthusiasm, being free or unhindered. and puku the clothes that we wear. How incredibly great to be able to become free and unhindered by embracing the teaching. A shout of joy. In the Lotus Sutra, which I've been reading lately over and over, in chapter 10, it speaks about the robe. The robe being one of three main components of practice.

[11:32]

One of three. The first, enter the room to have great compassion for all beings. The second, wear the robe to be gentle and patient. The third, sit to contemplate the emptiness of all things. those three main components. When we enter the room, we are in the room of great compassion. When we wear the robe, we are wearing a robe woven of gentleness and patience. And when we sit, we are sitting in the seat of emptiness. This robe, a robe woven of woven of gentleness and patience, these are elements that have a softening influence. When we carry these qualities, it makes us approachable and able to hear.

[12:39]

The Lotus Sutra concluded, doing this, these three main components, we should then teach the Dharma. When Norman Fisher spoke about this chapter in the Lotus Sutra, he said, the passing on of the teaching is the teaching. Even in the midst of the elaborate Lotus Sutra, the simple, straightforward act of passing on, this is a kind of wrapping the effort involved in passing it on, how liberating and free it makes us. wearing the robe, being enfolded in the teaching, wrapping up. The second line in the chant translates as fields far beyond form and emptiness.

[13:45]

Muso, together, means signless, beyond form, or without characteristic. Den is the rice field and A the road. Nothing is an obstacle, but rather there is an opening. It is signless, beyond form, and brings with it blessing and good fortune. The field brings back the exchange between Buddha and Ananda when they spoke on a hillside above rice fields, together designing the patched robe. This patched robe made of cast-off cloth, describing the field of merit and a field which can provide nourishment. Dogen, as well, spoke about the robe and mentioned it in the Shobogenzo.

[14:58]

Dogen was someone who loved language and both clarified and confused us in his teaching. He devoted two chapters to the robe, the power of the robe in chapter 13 and transmitting the robe in chapter 14. Here he said that the ability to wear the robe depends on wholesome past actions. He describes the robe as being Buddha mind, Buddha body, made of great love and compassion. A victorious banner. When we are wrapped in the robe, we hear the Dharma, see the teacher, are illuminated and full of joy. A banner sounds kind of dramatic. like a celebration of good fortune, a 4th of July with fireworks and parades.

[16:09]

This reminds me of an exchange I had with my teacher. I'd come to Linda Ruth for Doka-san. I had before that bought a statue, my first Buddhist statue. It was very cold in my room in Cloud Hall at Green Gulch Farm. So I took one of my favorite scarves and wrapped Avalo to keep her warm. When I went to see my teacher, I brought the wrapped statue with me to introduce the two of them. There, my teacher and I unwrapped her. We opened her eyes. She warmed the room. My teacher passed something on to me. Only later, I realized that the wrapping was my way of carrying.

[17:16]

Over the years of travel, before each trip or project I took, I purchased a length of cloth, hem it, and then wear it whenever it was cold. Or I needed comfort. Sleeping on the deck of a boat, riding in a train car in the middle of winter, hiking in the mountains. And when needed, wrapping something else up or someone else up, including them in the folds. Great robe of liberation, fields far beyond form and emptiness. The third line of the chant being, wearing the robe of the Tatakada. In this phrase, we have several different interesting words, I being unfold, Kyo teaching, and Bu meaning skin meeting cloth.

[18:19]

Based on this translation, We listen to, we feel that wearing the robe of the Tadakra is based on the wisdom of the original teacher. We reverently wrap ourselves in cloth. According to Dogen, when we wear the robe, there are merits that come forth. And he lists these for us in the Shobogenzo. Some of these merits are... That when wearing the robe, this provides modesty and a practice of wholesome conduct. It provides protection and provides comfort in the practicing of the way. Wearing the robe manifests the form of a mendicant and arouses joy. It averts wrongdoing and brings forth benefaction. It transforms delusion.

[19:26]

and creates wholesome field of benefaction. Wearing the robe makes unwholesome actions disappear. It nurtures the bodhisattva mind, like a rice field. It allows one to be born in the heaven of purity, and it frees one from the five senses of desire. All that in a garment. All that in a garment. that in the robe. While staying for a time at Rinso Inn in Japan, the mornings that winter were very, very cold. Each day I joined Huitzu and Shungo and maybe four or five other persons from the nearby town to sit Zazen in the Zendo. My feet were bare.

[20:26]

My breath made clouds of heat. And I shivered as the time passed. One day, while sitting, I felt a warm, soft garment being wrapped around my bare feet that poked out from the edge of my clothing. I was too embarrassed to turn and see what was going on. Only later, when I stood across from Huitzu and a stack of flannel blankets, did I realize that in the midst of Zazen, sitting on the cushion, he had stepped down and then he had wrapped me up, warmed me, and folded me in the teaching. Wearing the robe, being enfolded in the teaching, wrapping up.

[21:36]

Now we come to the last line of the chant. Great robe of liberation, fields far beyond form and emptiness. Wearing the robe of the Tathakara, saving all beings. Kodo Shoshujo. is people or multitudes. Joe is alive or sentient. Kodo is to save over a broad range. Saving multitudes of people or multitudes of various beings that are sentient. That's what we do when we wear the robe. Wearing the robe is we prepare to enter the day enacting our vow to save all beings.

[22:46]

I'd like to return again to Dogen and to a story that he tells in the Shobogenso about his first experience with the rope chant. Here's what he says in chapter 13. During my stay in Sung China, when I was making efforts on the long platform, I saw that my neighbor at the end of every sitting would lift up his robe and place it on his head. Then, holding the hands together in veneration, he would quietly recite a verse. At that time, there rose in me a feeling I have never before experienced. My body was overwhelmed with joy. The tears of gratitude secretly fell and soaked my lapels. The reason was that when I had read the Gama Sutra previously, I had noticed sentences about humbly receiving the robe on the head, but I had not clarified.

[24:00]

the standards for this behavior. Seeing it done now, before my very eyes, I was overjoyed. I thought to myself, it is a pity that when I was in my homeland, there was no master to teach this and no good friend to recommend it. How could I not regret? How could I not deplore passing so much time in vain? Now that I am seeing and hearing it, I can rejoice in past good conduct. If I had vainly stayed in my home country, how could I have sat next to this treasure of a monk who has received the transmission of the robe and who wears this robe? The sadness and joy was not one-sided.

[25:03]

A thousand myriad tears of gratitude ran down. Because a devout anonymous monk sat next to Dogen in China around the year 1223 and recited the rogue chant, and because Dogen valued and carried this teaching forward, we now engage in this chanting and wearing this robe. being the first sounds we make in the morning. We are wrapping ourselves in the Buddha's teaching, prepared to enter a full day of work and family life with this depth, connection, and warmth as the foundation of our activity. Wearing the robe, being enfolded in the teaching, wrapping up. Next month, here at San Francisco Zen Center, there'll be a course called Favorite Pages, a literary look.

[26:18]

And this class will be offered using the haiku of Mutsu Suzuki, Suzuki Roshi's wife. In closing, I'd like to offer one of her poems, written in January of 1975. Makeyaga shioe no sodaya hatsu boki. Dharma robes. Sleeves rolled up. First sweeping of the year. Dharma robes. Sleeves rolled up. First sweeping of the year. Perhaps this talk is like the good friend in Dogen's recounting who recommends.

[27:27]

Perhaps. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[27:55]

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