This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to the talk this morning. I'm going to take a quick... peek at the gallery and just to see your faces. Hello. Thank you very much. So it's October, the middle of October.

[01:00]

And it's turning into fall. We have a practice period in the city. We have an intensive coming up here at Green Gulch starting in November. And it always feels in the fall in this hemisphere. in the northern hemisphere, that everything is quieting down and turning towards the dark of the year. Right now, today, it's a new moon, just a sliver of a moon, just the beginnings of the new moon. And we'll be having... daylight saving time will end, and it's that time of year.

[02:04]

There's also Halloween coming up. I don't know how it's going to be celebrated this year, and we also have the scary elections coming up pretty soon as well. So right around this time of year, we often have It doesn't have to be this time of year, but we often do, called Sajiki. Sajiki means to, the S-E part is make offerings or charitable deeds. And the Jiki is food. So it's quite a wonderful, large ceremony where we make offerings of food. And also I have a large memorial service to remember our loved ones, teachers who have died.

[03:06]

So the food offerings are made to one of the beings that are in, in the Buddhist teaching, in the realm, in a particular realm. And this teaching is about the sixth, the Buddhist teaching of the sixth And this realm is called the realm of the hungry ghosts, which I think partially we have it at Halloween time, kind of acknowledging the resonance with hungry ghosts and that time of year. But it's not necessary to have it be at that time. So these realms, I want to talk today about realms. How can we understand one another in different realms?

[04:10]

What is it to share a world but not share a realm? And can we really completely share our world with anyone else? So there's a koan that's, I think it's brought up quite frequently, you may know it, called Ditsan Planting. The fields, Ditsan Planting. planting the fields. Now, Ditsan was a Chinese Zen master who lived in the 800s, 867 to 928. And he had another name. Ditsan is kind of a further name.

[05:15]

He was Lo Han Guishen. Ditsan was named for the mountain. where he taught, and Ditsan means earth store. And in Japanese, that's Jizo. Jizo Bodhisattva, we have in the Green Gulch Zendo, a beautiful standing Jizo. Those of you who have been to the Zendo know that when we give our lectures, we're right there in front of Jizo, Ditsan, earth store Bodhisattva, an earth store Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva, originally the story is, went down into the hell realms, into the hell realm to help her mother, Kishita Garba, in Sanskrit, and then helped her mother with all her prayers and offerings and wishes, but then saw all the other people who were still in this terrible realm, this hell realm, and made a vow to

[06:22]

a strong vow to return over and over and over again to help beings who are suffering. So this is Jizo Bodhisattva. And Jizo is sometimes called the Lord of the Six Realms. So the Bodhisattva who's connected with these six realms of our existence, you might say. So I'll just name them just so you know, and you're probably familiar with this teaching. There's the human realm, the realm of the devas, or kind of a paradise type of realm. The fighting or competitive azuras, or kind of super strong giants. And then we have the hell realms, various...

[07:24]

Hell realms, different kinds of terrible suffering, the animal realm, and the realm of the hungry goats. So Jitsan, Jizo, is the lord of these six realms. And we often see six Jizo statues together that resonate with these six realms that Jizo helps people in. So in this koan, Ditsan planting the fields, there's a little bit of a backstory to it. The monk that Ditsan is speaking with, whose name is Shushan, had been at this monastery with Ditsan or at this practice place and had not really been all that respectful to Ditsan. didn't really study with him or ask questions and left.

[08:25]

But the people he was with, his Dharma brothers, kind of slowly returned because of Ditsan's teachings. So this Shushan comes back and he encounters Ditsan and Ditsan asks him, where do you come from? And Shushan said, I'm coming from the South. And Ditsan said, how is Buddhism in the South these days? And Chushan said, there's extensive discussion. And Ditsan says, how can this compare with me planting the fields and making rice? to eat. And Shushan said, what can you do about the world?

[09:26]

And Deep San said, what do you call the world? What do you call the world? What world are you talking about? So many teachers have looked and turned this koan. And today I wanted to turn this, I wanted to turn this with you. The, you know, where are you from? From the South. How is Buddhism in the South? There's extensive discussions. There's a lot of talk. There is a lot. And I would say, yes, lots of, lots of things going on in the Buddhist world. right now. And then Ditsan says, how does this compare with me planting the fields and making rice to eat? And I think, you know, I used to read this as kind of, what shall I say, a little bit harsh or something.

[10:42]

But this time when I studied this, I thought, He's asking him, he's really asking him to think about this. How does this compare with this everyday work of providing food and manual labor and all the work of everyday and making food? How does this talk compare to that? So I didn't hear it as a kind of... strong, harsh response, but more, think about this. And Shushan says, what do you do about the world? Which I feel came from a real place to me, which is maybe the question, how are we going to practice? You know, there's all the words and discussions and all that going on.

[11:43]

And in our daily life, what do we do about the world? And then Nitsan says, what do you call the world? So I want to stay with this. What do you call the world? And talk about our own subjectivity. Subjectivity, you know, is one of those words that... subjectivity and objectivity that I found, I don't know, like I don't want to, I don't like those words or something. I don't want to talk about subjectivity and objectivity. They sounded so boring to me, you know, but I feel like, you know, the importance of understanding our subjectivity is paramount, is so important to

[12:44]

What do we do about the world? Our own subjectivity is, we can't somehow skip over our own subjectivity with some delusion that how we see the world and how we experience the world is the way it is, is the reality of the way it is for everyone. And this is delusion. And not only delusion, but dangerous, dangerous delusion. So I've been listening to a wonderful teacher, Jay Garfield, professor, who's doing a series of talks. They're online, and I think they were a while ago this year, but a while ago. studying Yogacara teachings, and these teachings are part of the third turning of the wheel.

[13:52]

And one thing he said was that the first turning of the wheel, the early wisdom teachings, were about setting out the path of samsara and nirvana and the path to being free from suffering. The second turning of the wheel or the great wisdom traditions, he said, were about the emptiness of the object, the emptiness of our mind objects or the objects of our senses. And the third turning of the wheel was about the emptiness of the subject, the subjectivity. And all three. work together, all three turnings. It's not a success of getting better and better and better, but all three are part of our teaching field, and there are teachings in all three turnings, and they all contribute and complement and help each other.

[15:07]

So this notion that, oh, this one's better than that one, or supersedes, or that one, you know, as we know, happened, some of you know, a kind of denigration of one school or another. This is not our way, but what can we learn? So subjectivity is our own... thoughts, feelings, experiences of the world. There is no world except as the world as we experience it. There isn't a world out there that's it. Our world is the world as we experience it, the world we were born into, educated in. And you might say, well, I share that with, all these people, right?

[16:08]

At least in, you know, I can name people who share that world. However, I'd like to say that there's a rough sharing, a rough sharing that we might say that this is a, someone might say that's a book and I'd say, yes, that's a book or an apple or we agree to that. However, my experience of that book is, And your experience of that book or of that food or of that place is your world, is my world, the world of this subjectivity. Now, there's something Suzuki Roshi said in the precept ceremony that we repeat when we give precepts. where he uses subjectivity and objectivity. And I've always wondered what it was that he meant.

[17:11]

He's talking that this particular part of the ceremony is after the ordinance have been have received Buddha's precept and Buddha's robe and a new name. And it's a very celebratory time. And right there, at this time, Suzuki Roshi's is from what he said in an early ordination. Who practices the precepts? For whom do you practice the precepts? To whom do you give its merits? In the pure precept, there is no subjectivity or objectivity. And in itself, there is no merit even. So this is this non-dual teaching of neither subject nor object. And that teaching of where you can't pull apart the subject and object,

[18:22]

I want to bring into the room right now. However, I want to focus on the subjectivity of our world as an antidote, as a way to study what's going on for ourselves and for everyone we live with and speak with and how not studying this contributes to suffering in the world. So I was saying about the six realms in the Genjo Koan, there's a piece that says when you ride out in the ocean and no land is in sight, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean's neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel.

[19:25]

This water, this ocean that's like a jewel or like a palace. I'm seeing somebody wants to be admitted. Jenny, can you take care of that? Yep. The water to the fish and the creatures of the sea is a palace. It's where they live. It's very different from what water is for us. We say water, but... And then to the hungry ghosts, water is undrinkable. They thirst and thirst, but when they drink water, it turns to fire. So water, there isn't a fixed reality of water that everybody says that's water. Water is according to our lived experience, the world as we live it and experience it. That's our subjectivity. And to maybe arrogantly think, well, I know what water is, and it's water for you.

[20:30]

It's the same for you as it is for me, is dangerous. And I would say harmful, harmful. So I wanted to tell the story about... myself and my own subjectivity. And this is a story that I've never told. I don't think I've told hardly anyone. It was 52 years ago in 1968, and I was on my way to Florence, Italy for my junior year abroad program. a full semester, a full two semesters. It was September through June in Florence. And I went across the ocean with a ship full of students only.

[21:31]

It's kind of wild. We landed in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, in Holland. And I can't remember exactly how we did it, but then we went to Germany. This was in a We left in September. It was now October. And part of our itinerary was to be, we went down the Danube, I think, was to be in Munich for the Oktoberfest. Now, the school that I was attending was called Gonzaga University. in Florence, which was a Jesuit college from Spokane. Some of you may know it. And all the students were Catholic. They all were Catholic, except for me. And my religion of origin was Judaism. And I had already begun to sit.

[22:31]

In fact, I had my Zafu and Zabotan with me in my trunk, which is another story. Anyway, We started on this voyage down the Danube. I think it was the Danube. Maybe it was another river. To get to Munich in time for the Oktoberfest. And here it is, October. This is why this story came to me. So everybody was very excited. I was 21. Everybody else was 20 because I had dropped out for a year. And so to be... in Europe to be in Germany where you didn't have to be 21 to have a beer and everybody was really excited, very giddy, you might say, too excited. And I was not excited. I was extremely uncomfortable and fearful. When we got to this beer hall, this big beer hall, and there were these

[23:36]

big wooden tables with all these people. And it was loud. And there was music and women in kind of Bavarian, I think, dress, traditional dress with, you know, lace bodices and long skirts carrying in their hands like three steins of beer, big, big steins, and throwing them down on the tables and singing. And there were dumplings for sale. And men in lederhosen, and I had a complete traumatic, fearful, terrorized feeling based on my own subjectivity. It was only 25 years since World War II. I had never been to Germany. I had been taught. a lot of things about the German people.

[24:41]

And here I was now surrounded. And what were they going to do to me? Once they knew, they could tell I was Jewish. And anyway, I went into a state of fear of I could barely speak. I wanted to leave. Meanwhile, all of my school buddies, all my friends, were having a grand old time and drinking these delicious beers, having all these treats and laughing and fun and dancing to polka music. And I was in a state, in an altered state. friends of mine, which I never did, you're living in a fantasy.

[25:42]

My world, this is the reality of this world. My experience, this is the true, and you're in some delusional state. Or for them to say, look, nothing's the matter. What fun, aren't we having fun together? And knock it off, you know, get over it, have a beer. Both of those, you know, to reside in either of those ways of thinking is harmful, creates more suffering, and neither of those worlds are the reality, but they are the worlds as we experience them. And in the yoga chart, There's three characteristics of phenomena. The first characteristic is called the imputational, or the imagined, sometimes translated as.

[26:50]

And this, we impute, we put meanings and, you know... all sorts of significances. And on top of that, then, flowing from that, all the emotions that come with it, all the fears or the opposites, right? We impute on reality all of these things based on our world. What do you call the world? What do you call the world? So this story about my experience of terror and, you know, when I think, you know, 25 years ago right now feels like two seconds ago. You know, it just doesn't feel like that long ago. So to walk into that Oktoberfest, there was no temporal, you know, that was 25 years ago.

[27:59]

This is now. So much has changed, et cetera, et cetera. There's no, what shall I say, reasoning, you know, with the world as experienced. These were my feelings. These were my. And. For someone to be able to not know it for themselves, but to. understand, to try it on, to, from subjectivity, from the subject side, to know what that is, is the beginning of our undoing of harm that we cause. So when we say, you know, it is like a palace, it is like a jewel, the world of water.

[29:06]

It's that way with everything. And we've been having a lot of talks where we touch on these practices that help us and illuminate our world. completely our worlds. My world will live and die with me. All my associations, all of the things, and the same for each one of you. All that you appreciate and recognize and love and taste, sound, smells, taste, touchables, and how your consciousness has been, how you've been educated, the shape of your the shape of your mind that lives and dies with you.

[30:07]

And it cannot be exchanged or shared. However, we can make the effort, and this is the beginning of compassion, to know and realize that people do not experience what I experience. So in these talks that Jake Garfield has been giving in the ninth talk, and you can find these on YouTube if you wish, he's giving these talks on YouTube, but also to a group of nuns from the Shravasti Abbey. And there's a group of maybe 10 or 15 women, Tibetan, practitioners who are in the room together, but I think he's on, I believe he's on a screen for them.

[31:09]

Anyway, he talked about implicit bias as an example of the imputational or the imagined. Implicit bias, which is often unconscious. We often don't know. We didn't ask for this. We didn't decide. But based on the world we live in, the way we're educated, the media, and all the myriad of things, we have fixed views. We have health views. And so... This thinking of that as the part of the characteristic of the mind of this, how we impute on things, how we imagine things. And then not only do we impute and imagine, but then we act on those imaginings and contribute more to how the world is for good or for good.

[32:25]

So he read in this class nine a letter from a friend of his who is a philosopher, an African-American man, George Yancey, philosopher at Emory University. And he read a letter that I think was in the New York Times, an article. where Professor Yancey is talking about talking with a white friend about jogging, both joggers. He lives in Georgia. And his white friend was saying, I really like to jog outside. It's, you know, the fresh air and it really feels good. And he was saying he really liked to jog indoors on a treadmill. And what... Professor Yancey did not say to her was that the fear and terror of the possible harm that might come to him by jogging in the neighborhoods, in different neighborhoods, and the knowledge of things that murders, assassinations that have happened to people of color,

[33:55]

when they have been imputed and imagined to be not where they are imagined to supposed to be. And this is the world as he experiences it. This cannot be otherwise at this time. And for her to understand that and to see it rather than talking about the merits of open air jogging, and indoor jogging, but to get it, you know, to begin to get from a subjective, from subjectivity, what that must be like, what that must be like. So, do we realize, am I realizing as a white person, the lack of,

[34:57]

my ability to understand the subjectivity of people of color, am I giving it my full attention and knowing the world as I experience it is my world, and what is the world that someone else might experience? This is a... Necessary, necessary. It's also important to objectively work on these things and the laws and structural, you know, structural things and studying and all these things. But to me, and Jay Garfield was saying, and for me, strongly feeling like I want to make as big an effort as I can to understand subjectively what this must be like, knowing that the world as experienced cannot be exchanged.

[36:15]

So our own subjectivity and our imputations both we live in the world that we impute and imagine, but not only that, we create more of the same, or we create the world by virtue of these imaginings and imputations. Our actions of body, speech, and mind flow, can flow from the imputation, from the imagined. And we know many stories about this. I thought, such and such, I thought I was in danger. And that story of me and the Oktoberfest, this was a subject, I felt what I felt. And created, you know, there was a world that I was experiencing, and then through that, I created more, you know.

[37:29]

So Jay Garfield, you know, admonishes us, you know, unless we're clear about this, we become more of the problem than dismantling the problem. So what do we call? What do we call the world is a good question. What do you call the world? The monk, you know, said, what do we do about the world? Assuming, you can almost hear it in the question, we both know what we're talking about, right, teacher? And Ditsan, which means earth store, you know, comes back to what do you call the world? Let's start there. Rather than assuming in a loose kind of rough way, well, sure, yeah, we all do, right? Our experiences, our world as we experience it.

[38:39]

I watched a movie recently, which maybe some of you have seen, which I wanted to mention, called My Octopus Teacher. It's on Netflix. And it's a documentary about a man named Craig Foster. who he was in a kind of, I don't know, a kind of burnout state, I think. He felt he couldn't do his work, which was documenting wildlife, and he felt he couldn't be there for his family and his son, his young son. And he kind of did a self-practice period almost where he went to a place that he remembered as being happy, which was the coast of South Africa. I think maybe that's where he grew up, right by this body of water with huge waves. And just kind of did a retreat for a year or so.

[39:50]

And he swam in this very cold water, about 46 or so degrees, without a wetsuit and without a scuba. and went down into this kelp forest every single day for a year, over a year. And he encounters a very unusual being. You know, these six realms, there's the animal realm, The hell realms and the hungry ghost realm, those are called the states of woe, I think partially because in the animal realm, you're often, it's characterized by fear because you're prey, you're hunted.

[40:51]

So I don't think all animals or your pet at home necessarily lives in fear, but maybe, you know. as this characteristic, it's one of the characteristics. So it's a different world, right? The animal realm is a realm. And it has, you know, sense abilities that we don't have in the other realms, in the human realm. And how do we, and our studying the different realms, studying the animal realm is kind of what he, He did. You know, he went into the water, and one day he saw this strange object, which looked like a big mound and collection of rocks and pebbles and shells and all just like a big mound. It was just so strange looking, like a little hummock of all these things.

[41:57]

And then at a certain point, it just... burst apart, and out of it came an octopus. And he begins this almost like a pilgrimage of returning every day to this area in the kelp forest and getting to know this being, this animal. The octopus is a mollusk that has no shell. It's like a snail that crawled out of its shell, just is very vulnerable, very, very vulnerable. And it's millions of years old, you know, millions and millions of years old. It lived for one year, the octopus, and it is very intelligent. And this octopus was a sheep. Slowly, slowly, I can't remember how many days he had gone down there and began to trust that he was not going to hurt her.

[43:05]

And there's this one part of the video, I don't want to be a spoiler, where she reaches out one of her tentacles and touches him. And then, you know, they become friends. And what do I mean by that? I don't know. time together. She showed him who she was. She wasn't hiding all the time. She has to hide from prey. So this, and I felt in the documentary, his effort over and over to understand this being from another world. What do you call the world? Her world where her Her brain is both inside and outside. It's on all these suckers and tentacles. There's brain, what you could call brain.

[44:06]

You know, such a different being. And what happened between them was curiosity, I think, to start. And then trust that there would not be harm. And then there became play, you know, actual play together of these beings. So there's a kind of overlap in the realms. Like they were there, they could see each other and all, but what is the world as experience? His world, Craig. Foster's world and this octopus, her world, her very short life. And, you know, if you can watch it, it was recommended to me by Fu, the Avicet Green Gulch.

[45:12]

And it's wonderful and beautiful. And the ingenuity and cleverness. And fast thinking of this being in order to survive her brief life in the water. And she shows him. She shows him this, includes him. So to be in awe, to be respectful, to not assume. anything, really, to know the imputational and the imagined is our daily life, you know, and that if we study it, we can be as careful and gentle as possible.

[46:21]

with our fellow human beings and animals and plants and this great earth, without that stepping back to realize this is not true for all beings, what I'm experiencing, and to be curious. What are you experiencing? What's going on? Please. And to be trustworthy enough that someone would open up to you because we are vulnerable. We are as vulnerable as that shell-less mollusk, you know, swimming with all her... extraordinary ways to survive, changing shapes, changing colors, speeding away ink, you know, squirting ink, just amazing.

[47:24]

And I would say that human beings, vulnerable human beings in our, in the world that we live, this shared karmic life, but that is not exactly the same, have had to do the same, have had to protect themselves, have had to find with great intelligence and skill ways to be safe and to make choices. where one can be left in peace. It's not always possible. So. So these six realms, you know, we think of these six realms as it's a kind of teaching story, maybe.

[48:33]

different psychological states. You know, we can be in a paradise kind of a realm where everything's going smoothly. And in that realm, we might forget that people are suffering. That's one of the characteristics. There's a lack of compassion there. Or we might be so strong and powerful and using our power to beat down opposition and and a lot of anger. That's a realm. That's the realm of the Ashuras or the fighting gods. And they have a tree, a fruit tree in their realm. But all the fruit, it kind of leans over and all the fruit is over in the Deva realm, in the paradise realm. So they just pull the fruit and have a nice snack. And the competition, angry, They can't get at it.

[49:35]

It makes them even more angry, right? That's a realm. Maybe we recognize that kind of a realm. And then there's the hell realms of great suffering. So much suffering that we can't move. We can barely act. We can just survive. Like the octopus when she had a wound. Just stay very still. In the animal realm I mentioned of fear, in the hungry ghost realm is desiring and wanting and obsessing and wishing and being quite frightened and not being able to fulfill because you can't, whatever you eat or drink, it doesn't touch, it turns to unedible things.

[50:37]

It's kind of a world of addiction, a world of nothing is enough. Nothing is enough ever. Once you get one thing, it's not enough. No contentment. And the human realm. In the human realm, there is suffering. There is plenty of suffering, but it's not. It's enough suffering so that we have compassion for others who suffer. We see. And I can understand that that is a suffering being as well. And in the human realm is where we wake up. These are the teachings of this wheel of life, the wheel of coming. And in all those realms, there's bodhisattvas teaching. There's bodhisattvas who are teaching Buddhadharma. And we can hear in all those realms.

[51:42]

We're able to hear. So this octopus meeting this being, these two beings meeting and caring for one another. in this realm was a teaching for me and an example of how to live in this world, really. So I want to end with this tiny little poem. It doesn't have an author even. It's like a haiku, but even shorter. And the poem is the stone image of Jizo kissed on the mouth by a slug.

[52:51]

A stone image of Jizo kissed on the mouth by a slug. I think it's a slug of mollusk. Without a shell, I'm not sure what it is exactly, but somehow I just wanted to leave you with that little poem. 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.

[53:40]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.56