Good morning. So I wanted to start by welcoming all of you, visitors, residents, members, supporters, and strangers who find yourself here today. My name is Jordan Thorne, and it's my... my privilege to offer this talk today. Some years ago, or it seems like quite a few years ago, in the 1970s, I first walked up the front steps of San Francisco Zen Center, and I knocked on the door.

[01:08]

Actually, I rang the door buzzer. And I wasn't surprised that in response to ringing the buzzer, the door was opened and someone said, hello. At the same time, I was nervous. I felt some anxiety. I thought to myself, you know, why am I here? What's this about? What's the impetus that brought me to this point where I'm knocking on the door of the Zen Center? And this is actually still my question today. It's the question of what brings us to this place. Not just myself, but what brings you and all of us together here in this room today. What do we think we might accomplish and learn or express by being here?

[02:21]

So today, that's what I would like. I would like to try to talk about how I understand this. And the first thing I want to say is that we are all here today because we are all of us bodhisattvas. We are, each one of us, enlightenment beings who have undertaken the way of enlightenment whether or not we know it. Whether or not we realize that this is who we are. And this certain feeling that I have, this certainty that I would like to suggest you have, that you have aroused the thought of waking up, this thing in Buddhism sometimes called bodhicitta, this is a deep background to our practice of Zen.

[03:50]

This is... In some ways, it's a beginning of the path for each one of us. And in another way, it marks the destination of our path. Whether we call it the beginning or the end or the middle, nonetheless, it also could be called a journey. We are on a journey of awakening. And Buddhism is a teaching, is a practice that is founded on awakening. But it does not deny the fact of our delusion.

[04:52]

of our confusion. So Buddhism starts with the fact of awakening and helps us to see this truth through the recognition of our delusion in our Zen practice we find encouragement in various ways we find encouragement in this height of a beautiful vase of flowers

[05:53]

and by the fact that those flowers slowly wilt. Zen practice asks us at some point, at some time, to lean either left or right, to sit upright to practice in the middle. of things to practice the middle way of things to walk in the middle and in this walking if we do it completely we might understand or have a glimpse of That our own very life is Buddha's life.

[06:57]

It is Buddha's mind. It's not so simple as just simply walking. Or it's not always so simple as just walking. How do we understand that our body and mind and our heart is the body and mind and heart of Buddha? Well, in order to help with this, I want to say some things about zazen. about Zen meditation, which is the central practice, perhaps, of Buddhism.

[08:12]

And Zazen is a gift, the encouragement to sit in meditation is a gift we're given if we are so foolish as to walk up the front steps and knock on the door. at Zen Center or to come to a lecture. And about Zazen, about this meditation at the center of, at the middle of Zen practice, I want to say that We don't do this thing, whatever this thing called Zazen is, in order to realize a state of mind that's special. We do this practice of meditation in order to

[09:23]

Recognize the world that is already around us for what it is. So that we can see the way things are. And one way we include ourselves in this is that we don't understand Zazen as being something which is just done in the meditation hall. We don't understand Zazen as something that is focused only on obviously spiritual or noble endeavors. We take up the understanding and the intention of the spirit that meditation is nothing more than the experience of how our whole life is lived and is living us. And we don't make a separation from how we're doing when we're on the muni bus, from how we're doing when we're down in the meditation hall.

[10:38]

This spirit or... attitude of non-duality is it's a deep deep ground foundation to Zen and to Buddhist practice Suzuki Roshi said in a talk in 1964 He said, when you accept everything, I'll put this down a little because it hums a little. When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great, nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of great activity, picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe.

[11:56]

Saving one sentient being is saving all sentient beings. Close quote. End of quote. So by practicing zazen and by moving the mic, can I still be, everybody hear me? Yeah. By practicing Zazan, we have the chance to learn how to do one thing completely. It's not always the thing we think we're supposed to be doing down in a Zando, but we have the chance to learn how to do one thing completely. And learning how to do one thing completely for the rest of our life just naturally is changed. As Suzuki Roshi said, picking up a grain of sand, we realize we are picking up the whole universe.

[13:03]

Meeting one person with our best effort at connection, we see that we are meeting everyone else. paying attention to smallest parts of our life. And this is something that our effort in the meditation hall can help us with by realizing that the smallest bits of our attention are greatly significant. There is a gateway towards opening our heart in the biggest possible way. I don't know if it's paradoxical. But by going through a narrow door, we enter into a vast hall. But while it is a fact that this is always true, it's also a fact that this is only possible if we make the effort.

[14:24]

This is only possible if we make the effort to open a really large space in our hearts, which is not a space that's a gift for ourselves. It's not a place for us to keep. It is a gift for everyone that we meet. And everyone we meet, we need to support them in their effort to open up such a space. using the metaphor of Zen being here as we are at a Zen temple I want to I want to say that we don't undertake this extravaganza of Zen training

[16:09]

and doan training and whatever it might involve. We don't undertake this to become someone other than who we already are, were, and am, if that's the right way to say it. When Shakyamuni Buddha, our first Zen ancestor, sat under the boat tree for a After many years of being on a journey and perhaps even feeling at times that he was lost, he sat down and for seven days made a heroic effort. And in that time, he was, we're told, this is the story, in that time he was besieged by deluded thoughts, by temptations. Well, I think it's important to see in the story of Buddha's Awakening that at no point did he have to get up to get some more information from somewhere else.

[17:22]

What he needed to see through his confusion was present right there where he sat. And what we need to see through our confusion is present right where we sit. This is true for all of us, I really believe. In this simple moment or complicated moment of right now, with the sounds of the street, sounds of the courtyard, everything we need in order to wake up is present and available to us. But this everything is available to us fact also is a fact that needs our wholesome actions and needs our deep vow to come forth and be useful, really useful.

[18:44]

So the reason that sitting... Zazen, if you should try that out. The reason that sitting Zazen can be satisfying, tricky thing to say satisfying, but the reason the Zazen is satisfying is the same reason that it is difficult because in Zazen really there's nowhere we can hide from ourselves. We cannot be hidden when we sit facing the wall, making an effort to be quiet. In some ways Zen practice is very pragmatic. It's not so much a teaching about purity.

[19:49]

like a lotus existing in muddy water, we blossom. It's more about how to live a helpful life for ourselves and for others. Setting forth on this particular journey, this universal journey of awakening, there are some common threads that tie us together, different people in the room, different sorts of people. There are some things that we share in common. And, you know, we are all so different on some level. We each of us have a different dream about how to live our life, about what will make us happy.

[21:00]

But what we, I think, share in common is that this dream that we have about what will make us happy is oftentimes so compelling that we take it as true. This is called confusion. This is called delusion. We take our happy, personal, private daydreams as a solace. It gets us through sometimes a tough point in the day. When we go home and shut the door, we can be by ourself. We're never really by ourself. And even if we were to be by ourselves and we were to have such a kind of like a lovely space for ourselves, well, right there on the front page of the New York Times we can see that this world is full of

[22:25]

And if we stop looking at just our own opinion about how to find our happiness and just look at our family and friends, it's not so difficult to see the heartbreak that exists in this world. And in fact, not so difficult to see the heartbreak that exists in our life. Suzuki Roshi was asked once, does a Zen master suffer in a way different than his students? And does a Zen master suffer in a way different than his students? And he said, a Zen master suffers in exactly the same way. If not, I don't think he is good enough. learn to trust our situation when we learn to have faith that our intention is to support a waking up of ourselves and everyone else and then the problems of our life or they still are problems but they're not the same

[24:18]

In some way, they're also not really problems then. They are what's called opportunities. Because when we are afraid of the names we might call each other if we just dared to be honest, well, that's not at all living a life of waking up. In some way, the biggest challenge that we have is to trust the people we know and treat them with respect and appreciation and with the knowledge that they also are on the same path that we are. maybe more than we realize or can understand our friends need our trust and faith just as we need the trust and faith of our Dharma companions and in some way also

[25:54]

We need the support of those people who know us so that we don't stay stuck. We need both their permission, their support, and their stepping forth from small ideas of each other so that we can have support to really grow up, really wake up. really be helpfully present. And because we take ourselves so seriously, the whole thing gets complicated and difficult. making this sort of effort in this way we and I hope this isn't too grandiose to say but in this way we live our lives as actualized Buddhas who go on actualizing Buddha and as we go on living our life as actualizing Buddha enabling and supporting our friends to actualize their own

[27:34]

Buddha nature. This is all quite fragile and delicate on the surface. Underneath it's rock solid, but on the surface it often seems delicate. Making this enormously positive effort is not something that we can count on without some energy, some attention, some skepticism. I look around and I see familiar faces.

[28:50]

I see unfamiliar faces. I see people that I think are not me. And I see people who I think are like me. I see a room full of folks with their own human life that has their own Rhythm and shape. Slow. We, each of us, were born. I think that's a fact. In order to be in this room, we, each of us, were born. And when we were born, we were the innocent sweet apple of our mother's eye. We were, I hope at least, that we were favored children whose parents took care of us sent us off to school with proud hopes but this was the beginning but soon each of us find out that we could make decisions for ourself we discover we are independent from each other

[30:14]

We discover we can make choices. We can make decisions that we think will satisfy us. And in this way, in this pursuit of our personal satisfaction, we discover that our life is complicated. It's quite complicated. And somewhere we might even wonder, what brings us to this place? How did we get to this spot? This question, this discovery that our life has become complicated. Perhaps even not being sure whether we are at the right spot, whether we're going forward or backward, turning around in circles lost.

[31:24]

Perhaps this is an essential piece of the journey of practice. But really I don't think our practice is authentic if we haven't acknowledged at some point that we've lost ourself along the way. I lost ourself at some point at some time. This fact of getting lost, of getting our shirts dirty, is something that we need in order to understand how important it is for us to directly wake up.

[32:42]

To make personal decisions the fact that this very mind is Buddha. To understand how to make sense of the impermanence of our life. The impermanence of our life. Some are... autumn brings falling flowers. Winter is cold and spring brings forth flowers. What brings us to this place? What brings us to this room?

[33:46]

What brings us into this world? Where our footsteps echo in faded memories, reminding us of paths and doors not opened. What lesson is there in a dream that does not end? Thank you.

[34:23]

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