This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everybody. It's like, wow, look at you all. Welcome to Beginners of Mind Temple. My name is Shundo, for those who don't know me. Thanks to Rosalie for offering me this chance to say something. She offered me this Wednesday slot or a Saturday in a few weeks time and even though it was kind of less time to prepare, I thought it would be, I felt easier talking to a Wednesday night crowd and feel very happy to be surrounded by a bunch of friends. Those of you who kind of only have a passing acquaintance with the building might remember that I was the person who used to sit over there and then disappeared and now I'm sitting up here. And it's kind of more comfortable over there but I like the view better up here, definitely. And if you're brand new, is anyone here for the first time? Great, we have something in common.

[01:02]

This is my first time right up here. I gave talks at Tassahara. This is my first time here at C-Center, and we're the ones who aren't going to fall asleep. And I'll try not to go on too long, but this is the first time I've actually got a talk ready on a computer, so I don't have my usual visual cues. And this is the last talk before the practice period begins, and the practice period is going to be focusing on late practice. and I'm offering something of the counter view, the view from the inside monastic training, the traditional monastic track. But hopefully the things I have to say will resonate with you whatever path you're on. And also following on from Tova who was speaking last week, it's kind of very sweet and fitting because last week Tova was stepping down as director and for the last seven days I've been stepping up as a director. And I might be echoing some of what she said about our practice and our roles and how we meet each other inside and outside. So right now, after one week of being director, I feel like I'm right in the learning curve, which is a very sweet place to be, and obviously makes me feel like I'm completely in touch with beginner's mind, because I really don't know what's going on very much.

[02:14]

But I feel that there's a little grace period where people aren't really expecting me to make too many decisions. But it really makes me realize that I don't know how I'm going to be or who I'm going to be occupying this position. So sometimes people get shocked when I tell them I'm an introvert. But it's definitely true. And as Tova said last week, there's a lot of introverts around here, and I'm definitely one of them. The only time I took a Myers-Briggs test, I scored 10 out of 10 on the introvert scale. And one thing that means for me is I'm really not very good at small talk. And sometimes I feel I handicap myself because there's one question I really don't. ask people very often, or I don't like to ask people. Apparently it's the Queen of England's favourite opening conversation on Gambit. It's like, well, what do you do? I'm much more interested in how you are, or what's going on for you right now, or where are you in your life. But I don't necessarily want to start the conversation by having you define yourself by the work that you do.

[03:14]

What's going on for you may include your work, or it may not. And as I was thinking about this, I think there are probably some karmic formations involved in this from my early life. So some family history. My father was a small town lawyer in England. Did probates and properties and things like that, nothing very glamorous or dramatic. And his father was a lawyer in the same small town. And his grandfather. And his great-grandfather. So there was a certain, you know, sense of predestination a little bit. And I was just remembering when I was thinking about this the other day, which I'd completely forgotten about. But outside his office was a little sign that said, Hey and Son. It's that family name, Hey and Son. So he of course met my grandfather and my father when my grandfather was still alive. But when you're that small, you think, oh, that means me. I'm the son. And, you know, my father worked very long hours and he never seemed to enjoy it. And he took many opportunities to remind us that the material advantages that we had as comfortably middle-class children and

[04:21]

in suburban England were mainly due to his working very long hours at something he didn't enjoy. So I was never really tempted to follow in his footsteps. And I really had the feeling when I was growing up that I didn't want to spend my life doing something that I didn't want to do. And it was very informative. And we had a conversation once when I was a teenager where I said, well, do you think I should become a lawyer? He said, well, you'd probably do an adequate job of it. Which actually, you know, when I parse it, you know, from my father, he's actually... Something like praise, you know. But at the time, it really wasn't what I wanted to hear. You know, as a kind of romantically inclined and high-minded adolescent, it was like, that's not what I want. But then I didn't know what I did want to do with my life. And I kind of realized pretty early on that I wasn't that athletically gifted. I was never going to be a sportsman. And it seemed pretty unlikely I'd be a rock and roll star, which was, you know, an ambition from the age of about 10 to 16, for sure. So I was really, you know, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. And I remember after college feeling kind of personally betrayed that a lot of my friends, you know, the kind of freewheeling, you know, drug-smoking, backpacking, you know, carefree people that I'd spent a few years in college with turned around and became management consultants and commercial lawyers and commercial bankers and things like that.

[05:39]

Why do they do this? Why do they want to do this? But it was the late 80s and there was a boom going on and people wanted to earn money. But it didn't appeal to me at all, so I went off and worked in a record store. And then did some other random things like teaching English, being a bike messenger. And I did eventually end up in a really wonderful career at the BBC, which was very satisfying and quite creative. My parents didn't go to dinner parties in those days, but if they had gone to dinner parties, it's the kind of thing they could have dropped. Oh, our sons at the BBC. It was respectable. They didn't have to worry about me so much. And that's actually like a relief when your parents don't have to worry about what you're doing. But even though it was a lovely part of my life, and I spent 10 years at BBC, again, I didn't feel like that work defined me. And part of the reason I liked the job was that it gave me a lot of free time to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, which is kind of how I came to Zen, but that's, I think, another story. But if you were around Zen Center for a long time, or any length of time, and I've been here almost 13 years now, you get asked to do things.

[06:48]

And if you don't make a total mess of them, you'll get asked to do more things. And eventually, from just being on a crew or just having very simple things to do, you end up in a position of responsibility, where you're looking after other people in their practice rather than just focusing on your practice. And we have, you know, a pretty traditional monastic structure here at Zen Center. A lot of it was handed down to us by Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of Soto Zen. who did a lot to codify and, you know, kind of write down all the stuff for Buddhism in Japan, having traveled to China and spent several years in long-established Zen monasteries in China. And this is the book. This is the book he wrote it all down in, Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community, the Eihei Shingi. And I think, you know, because of this long Japanese connection, sometimes we refer to our senior staff group by the Japanese name, which is the Roku Jiji. And my Japanese is less than rudimentary, but I think that means six officers.

[07:51]

And we take on these jobs for a year or two, and that's our practice. And then we move somewhere else. And I'm now on my fourth out of the six jobs on the Rokuchiji, which has been a very interesting trajectory. I started back in 2007, so six years ago. I was living at Tassahara, and I was the work leader there for 18 months. And then I moved back to city center and was the Tenzo for 18 months. And then I did two and a half years as the Eno. And then last September I went back to Tassajara for three months to be the head monk. And as I say, for one week I've been the director. So there's been, you know, different positions and I've also had different qualities to them. And the job descriptions we have at Zen Center for these jobs, they quote liberally from the A.H.I. And reading the text in the book really gives us a great grounding for the ideas of this job. And the first part of the book, which is probably the most famous part, is the Tenso Kyokun, the instructions for the cook.

[08:58]

And it was written in 1237, but I still think it's amazingly relevant to the lives that we have today. You don't have to live in a monastery, you don't have to be a cook. I mean, he emphasizes very strongly that a temple cook, the Tenso, is not the same as an ordinary cook. And part of the reason for that is that you're cooking for monks who are engaged in this great activity of discovering the way, which is not the same as feeding ordinary people. And of course, you know, if you come to DNA, we recite the Five Remembrances meal chant. And one of those is, for the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food. So it's the Tenzo, you're the person providing the food for people's enlightenment, which is a great responsibility and a great honor. He says that not everyone can do this job. And he lists the qualities that you need to be a successful Tenzo. And he brings out the idea of three minds that you can cultivate. The grandmotherly mind, the joyful mind, and the magnanimous mind.

[10:00]

And these are ways that you can approach your work, but they're also great states of mind for anyone to be in. And the first advice that he gives in a Tenzo Kyokun is to, when you're a Tenzo, is to seek advice from former Tenzos. And right in the heart of the the piece, the book, are exchanges that he has with two venerable monks in Japan who are working as Tenzos. And obviously he was a young monk, and they deeply impressed him with their understanding and commitment. So he was kind of struck by, even though they were just in the kitchen, you know, he was, since he hadn't really figured everything out, he thought, these guys are just working in the kitchen. But then they really, you know, they demonstrated to him that they had complete understanding of practice. And so he realized, oh, is not just any ordinary job. So, of course, living at City Center, it's very easy to ask advice from former Tenzos, because there are many of them around. I could probably, you know, throw a stick and I'll probably hit a Tenzo, and I've got too much difficulty. And this, you know, really reminds me that at Zen Center, there are three parts to learning a job, or doing a job.

[11:10]

There is learning it, to begin with, which is just where I'm at with being director, and then there's doing it, which you'll do for a year or two, as I said. And then there's letting go of it. And, you know, being a former Tenzo myself, I'm always happy to answer questions if the current Tenzo comes for advice. And, you know, if the current Eno has any questions about anything in the Eno realm, I'll probably say something too. But part of my current life at Zen Center really is not to have any expectations that those people are going to be doing the jobs the way that I did it. You know, I can't go around to them saying, hey, I used to do this in the kitchen. Why don't you do that? Or, why aren't you doing this this way? Because, you know, each of them has to, we all have to manifest and learn these jobs as ourselves. Nobody else can do it for us. We learn it in our own way. And I'm very grateful that the former Tenzo's, when I was Tenzo, didn't come in and butt in and say, hey, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? Just let me make my own mistakes and allow me to go my own way and find out.

[12:11]

So my favorite line from the Tenzo Kyoko and the instructions to the cook is like this. All day and all night things come to mind and the mind attends to them. At one with them all, diligently carry on the way. It has nothing to do with cooking, but it's wonderful advice for everybody, I think. And to me it's bringing the mind of Zazen to work. It's just dealing with what's in front of us. And interestingly, it comes up in the text after a paragraph about not getting into emotional disputes about the quality and quantity of ingredients that you receive. So we can all do this. We can just meet what's in front of us with an open mind, with a beginner's mind if we can, and not thinking, I've got some lousy greens to make the soup with, or I wish this situation was different, or I wish I didn't have to deal with this difficult person right now. We can all just try. be present for the reality of the situation and act accordingly, making our best effort in each situation.

[13:20]

So when I was practicing as Tenzo, there was one word that kind of seemed to encapture the practice of the Tenzo for me, and that was offering. You're offering food to the monks in ten directions. And food is an emotional issue for people, as I was discussing with the current Tenzo just this week. you know, we feed 60 people three times a day and you're not going to please everybody all the time. And they rely on the kitchen for nourishment and sustenance. So you try to do the best you can. And my feeling was that if people had a sense of the offering that was being made, where there was no lack or stinginess and kind of enough abundance to feel they were being well nourished and well fed, that made everything a lot easier. And as Eno And in charge of the meditation hall, my word was encouragement. And there's another part of the Ehe Shingi where Dogen talks about what the Eno is expected to do. And I had this on the desktop on my computer when I started Eno.

[14:27]

Eno regards with love all who arrive and compassionately nourishes monks. so that the assembly's heart becomes the Ino's own heart, and the mindfulness of the way becomes the Ino's own mindfulness. The Ino regards with love all who arrive and compassionately nourishes monks, so that the assembly's heart becomes the Ino's own heart, and the mindfulness of the way becomes the Ino's own mindfulness. And the advice of the director is... kind of similar, actually, and I think Tova read this part last week. The essence of the director position is to respect the wise and openly accept everyone in the assembly so that seniors and juniors peacefully stay in harmony and friendship and function cooperatively in the great assembly in order for everyone to have a happy heart.

[15:29]

And so what you hear is that the heart of these jobs, all of these jobs, is people relating to other people. And the best way to do that is, as he says, putting private inclinations aside. So all day and night things come to mind and the mind attends to them. And all day and all night people come to us and we attend to them. At one with them all diligently carry on the way. So being at one with them is the key and you have to put aside your own agenda because that's the obstacle to becoming one with the situation and the person. There's another bit that Tova read last week, I think, as well, which I'd like to read again. It's again from the instructions to the director. Whenever seeing the countenance of any monk from the ten directions, the director thereupon inwardly dances with joy and is delighted. The Zenen Shingi, which is an older set of regulations, says, if their capacity for accepting monks is not generous and their heart of affection for monks is not warm, the director cannot protect the assembly.

[16:39]

So this is something I've really had to work on over the years, seeing the countenance of any monk from the Ten Directions inwardly dancing with joy. You think about all the people that you meet during the day, and does your heart inwardly dance with joy every time you meet them? It's not easy, especially for an introvert, I would say. Really not easy. So this is, for me, in my practice experience, this has been central in my trajectory of doing the jobs that I've done. So when you're the work leader at Tassahara, People come to you twice a day for work assignments and you need to supervise some people, you need to instruct some people, you need to make sure that everyone has the right work to do and the right equipment and the right ideas. And sometimes during the work period at Tassahara in April and September you get 40 or 50 people crowded around you and everyone wants to find their place quickly and the crew heads want their crews quickly. So you really try to meet everyone in that moment and make sure they get what they need and that the crews get what they need.

[17:43]

And I kind of enjoyed the process, but I also noticed how happy I was when everyone was taken care of and assigned and I could just go off and play with rocks by myself and just do my own thing. It's like, okay, I can show up twice a day for these things, but then I'm going to go off and do my own thing. And then as Tenzo, in your head of the kitchen, you have a full-time crew that is looking to you. So you always have to... negotiate the interpersonal dynamics of a crew. And on top of that, as I say, you have the residents who always have ideas about the food or feelings about the food. And usually they're not very shy at expressing it either. And then shifting to Eno, you're supervising everybody's practice, and of course the practice here is the heart of what we do. And so, in a sense, you're kind of supervising the heart of everyone's activity. And there was quite an interesting shift to me doing this. Because I had my own standards that I set for myself. I really always wanted to get everything right and always wanted to be the good student, the good monk.

[18:47]

And I knew that my inclination was to set the same high bar for everybody else. But that's not actually a very constructive way to meet people. You need to meet people where they're able to be. And I did realize I didn't want to spend all my time just wagging my fingers at people or policing them. So I really had to let go of that inclination to... make everybody conform to my ideas. So I'm still figuring out what it means to be the director here. It seems to be there are a lot of meetings. But I think it's helpful to remember that meetings also involve people. And try and honour where everybody in the meeting is. You know, find out where they are. And we have a lot of meetings, we have check-ins at the beginning. And I think this is a very valuable way to set the moment. We set the stage. We hear how everybody is feeling. It's like, oh, I'm kind of tired. I'm feeling a little bit sick. I had this really difficult conversation with somebody yesterday. So rather than just having an agenda to plow through and kind of being fixed on the agenda, you have this bigger picture of what's going on in that very moment with the people that you're dealing with.

[19:58]

And Tova gave me some great training as director. But I definitely had the picture in my head the whole time that we were just looking at a road map. You know, we could see the terrain. The terrain was well marked. You can kind of point to some of the things like, well, that's going to be a hazard, and this is going to take up a lot of time. But it was very different. Obviously, the first time I was sitting in the office by myself and, oh, emails, phone calls. What do I do? What do I do? And even reading, you know, I read through emails from the last month, month and a half, just to see what has been being talked about. But it still doesn't give you any idea what the next phone call is going to be about. And I have the sense that the job is kind of like a fulcrum in the building. It seems to be in the middle of everything and hopefully not a bottleneck. But I think I also get to be a sounding board of a lightning rod and maybe a dispenser of advice and maybe a second pair of eyes on the situation. And as Dogen says, consulting with other people is the key. And one thing I learned when I was

[21:06]

What tends, though, is that there are so many situations you really don't have any control over. Even when you're in charge of the kitchen, you give someone a recipe, you give them the ingredients, you tell them how to cook it, and you come back, and it may or may not be what you expected. I'd have an idea of how something is supposed to taste, and it may be that it tasted like that, it may be that it tasted completely different, and that may be better, or it may be worse. It was actually just the same when you're at the Eno. You come to a ceremony and you can script it and rehearse it and say, okay, so the Gico stands over here and then you go over there and you have to be ready to do that. But when you actually get to the ceremony itself, something else may happen. You know, there's really no way to control that. I think there's no ceremony at Zen Center that had ever come out perfectly. And it's really good to remember that. It might look bad if you're looking from the outside, but it's really not the case. And it's often the imperfections that I think are the kind of assault in the ceremony. You get to see that people are expressing themselves through ritual.

[22:07]

So the key is not to have expectations about the end product in any situation you're in. And there's a phrase in Dogen's work, the Genjo Koan, where he says, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. Nothing that speaks to the difference between trying to go into a situation and control it and just allowing the situation to arise. And it's good to recognize that we don't have a lot of control over our lives, even if we want to. There are many things we can't control. And that doesn't mean we don't have some authority in our lives. It doesn't mean we don't have influence on other people. Any time you get two people or more together, there's going to be a dynamic. And here we have a community of 50 or 60 people. And I think mostly we're a very tight and functional community. And my hope as director is that we continue to be functional and harmonious in this building, and that everyone contributes and benefits from this.

[23:12]

And at the residence meeting last week, we were talking about horizontal and vertical. So having inherited this Japanese system, we have a very hierarchical system with a very vertical authority structure. But when we sit zazen, I think it's very horizontal. We're all sitting zazen together. We're one practice body. And it's a very permeable practice body. And everyone can come and sit with us. Everyone is welcome to come and sit with us. We're in an open building. And when you join that practice body, you can influence it with your presence and be influenced by the presence of other people. And I think this is what has kept Zen Center alive and flourishing for the last 50 years is this openness of the practice body. And so, as I was saying, I was away for three months at Tassajara, and stepping out and coming back is a very interesting process. It's kind of like going on vacation and coming back and saying, wow, I really love my apartment, but I think the carpet needs cleaning.

[24:21]

It gives you a little fresh perspective on things. I had this very interesting sense when I came back, which was a different sense than I remember, of how we hold this place as an urban refuge, how our practice as residents, our residential practice, holds this place as an open urban refuge for everybody. And now I'm already noticing that being here for a couple of weeks, I can kind of feel like the skin is closing a little bit, and I'm kind of focusing much more on the internal practice and not so much on the externals, and I really hope that I don't lose that view of holding the open space for everybody. But this is, I think, the particularity of city center that we have, this inside and outside and permeability and the greater Sangha that comes and supports and helps keep the building running. Looking at people who keep the building running. But then being at Tassajara is very...

[25:26]

Different experience and very refreshing. It's a wonderful place to change, you know, go for a change. In the winter, it's very simple. You're always dealing with the same people. It's a very set number of people, and that's who you get to deal with. So there's nowhere to hide in some sense, but it's also a very different experience because a lot of your interactions are non-verbal. You're in silence a lot of the day. So you learn about people in a very different way. And I think this is true of the people. When I was Eno and I used to see people coming in and out of the Zendo, I'd kind of have the same, you know, the non-verbal knowing of people, just how they walk, how they move, how they behave. And this is very interesting from a lot of our usual social engagements and interactions. I think you get a different sense of people. And the main thing at Tessari is the schedule during the winter, the monastic schedule. You're inside it all the time. It's a constant demand, a constant request to do the next thing.

[26:29]

So that's what you get to practice with, is how you relate to the schedule. Or in my case, how you relate to being tired and cold and hungry a lot of the time. And here we have full-on temple activity from 5 until 7 in the morning. We're doing that silent zazen and service and soji. And then it's almost like a switch is flipped, and then we all go off to work. get stuck into the busyness of the day. So I think it's harder here to keep that minor practice focused during the day. And to us, you're always inside that practice container, and it's very easy to stay with that. I think it's our human nature. We have this intention to practice, but we always forget. We always forget what to do. I think that's why New Year's resolutions are such a big deal and why we have talks twice a week to remind us of the things we want to do. There's a quote, I've been reading a book by Koto Sawaki, who is an amazing 20th century Japanese teacher.

[27:36]

And there's a line in it that says, to be guided by feelings is very unreliable. What is reliable is our intention. So even though we can forget day to day what we really want to do, we get caught up in busyness, our intention can still be there. And Christina's class, I think, is going to be addressing this in a way. Name the class Aligning All Activity with the Heart of Buddha. I think that is our intention. I'm sure if you go to the class, she will tell you how to manifest that intention. So at the beginning of the practice period at Tassajara, we were all asked what our intention was for the practice period. And I said that I wanted to meet each situation, each person, through the lens of the four Brahma-viharas, which are the four heavenly abodes, equanimity, compassion, loving-kindness, and sympathetic joy. I think these are all qualities where we can put ourselves and our agendas to one side and really meet the situation and the person more intimately.

[28:40]

And as Shuso, as the head monk, this works very well because you don't have an agenda when you're Shuso, there's nothing you have to do. And it took me a while to realize this. It was an interesting transition from being, you know, the head of the meditation hall to being Shusel. Because on the one hand, I was still doing a lot of the same things, which is trying to model good practice behavior, showing up for things, showing up early, doing everything wholeheartedly. But on the other hand, I had absolutely no other responsibilities. So if the person didn't ring the bell properly or if somebody didn't show up for a job, that wasn't my problem. And I didn't have to rehearse any ceremonies. I didn't have to organize anything. So it suddenly became really easy to meet people without an agenda. And it was amazingly relaxing. I just got to meet them just during Zazen and doing other things. So all I had to do was show up and sit. And that's really an amazing privilege. It's an amazing, wonderful thing to do. And at the end of the practice period, there was the Shuso ceremony. And I think somebody asked me and... I don't actually remember all the details of the ceremony, but I'm pretty sure somebody asked me what my intention was going to be as director.

[29:46]

And I thought I would focus on the compassion part. And they said, good luck. And I know part of the reason I said that was that when I was in there, I often found myself very wrapped up in activities, organizing activities. Like when there's a one-day sitting or a session coming up, there's a lot of organization, a lot of logistics, a lot of paperwork. amazing amount of paper that has to be collated and distributed and organized. And so in the middle of that, you know, it'd be like four o'clock on a Friday afternoon, somebody would come up and say, you know, I don't think I'm going to sit tomorrow. I don't really feel like it. So that means you'd have to redo your seating charts and your job charts and all the other charts. And, or maybe somebody wanted to, you know, come and talk to me about something completely different. So we've got this ceremony in a couple of weeks and what do we do about this? How are we going to organize that? And I was generally too stressed to be available for that person. And compassion was kind of in short supply. And this week, even my first week as director, I've been noticing that kind of tight mind feeling.

[30:50]

It's very interesting to feel it, like the brain gets squeezed a little bit. And for me, that's kind of a signal like, oh, things get a little stressful. And that's the downside of being on the learning curve is that, you know, I don't know enough to be able to relax around what I have to do. And so it's always like, Oh, what do I have to do about this? What do I have to do about that? So I'm trying to make sure that I remain mindful of this. Oh, I'm just feeling a little bit stressed here. And not respond from it. And please let me know how I'm doing about that. I think probably some of you were on the receiving end of me being a little short-tempered, as you know, from time to time. And I apologize to anyone who had that experience. And I don't want to keep doing that. So you are my... encourages in trying to maintain holding compassion close and not allowing the stress to be uppermost. So again, all day and all night, things come to mind and the mind attends to them.

[31:54]

At one with them all, diligently carry on the way. There's one other story in here which I kind of liked. It's a Koan story. Again about the temple administrator. The great Guishan one day called for the director. The director came and Guishan said, I called for the director, why did you come? The director did not respond. Also Guishan had the jisha call for the head monk. The head monk came and Guishan said, I called for the head monk, why did you come? The head monk did not respond. Dr. Dogen follows this with a couple of answers that other teachers gave later. So one teacher said, if he'd been the director, he would have said, I know the teacher did not call me. And he said, if he'd been the head monk, he would have said, if you had the Jisha call, perhaps I would not have come.

[33:01]

And another teacher said, I just heard the Jisha call. So who are we? Are we the Shuso? Are we the director? What do you do? We have this practice of picking up a job, doing it for a couple of years and letting go of it. And to borrow a phrase from the dual mirror samadhi, you are not it, but in truth it is you. At the same time, right now I'm the director, but what am I? What am I doing? Who am I? And one final word about intention, I think the precepts are always great places to bring our intention from. And I'm particularly holding up for myself the third precept of living and being lived for the benefit of all beings. Another intention I would like to try and uphold.

[34:08]

Again, please keep me to that. So what do I do? I try to do the best I can. And that's all we can ask of anyone. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[34:46]

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