So from what place do I offer welcome? From what place do you offer welcome? When I first arrived, Well, today, let's see, it's spring. Actually, midpoint, midway through the spring. I was driving down this morning from Sonoma County. The hills are beginning to turn this color. Blanche told me that one of the thoughts in choosing this color was that it was a reminder of wheat. because I spent many days over many years in wheat fields.

[01:10]

So here, sitting here this morning, noticing the breeze in the trees outside the windows, hearing the sounds of traffic going by. Realizing that this is exactly just what it is, this moment. For each of you here in the room, there is no other place. There is no other time. Everything that has ever happened. has participated in producing this moment. So from what place do I welcome?

[02:20]

Do I offer welcome? There is a phrase in Dogen's Tenzo Kyokin, which I've been studying lately. which is the phrase of turning and being turned by things, being turned by things and turning things. The thought that actually being fully present and accepting everything that has ever happened And that everything that has ever gone into participating this moment, this this exact situation is the basis. And if you try to grasp that basis, which is actually inconceivable, you miss it.

[03:34]

And yet there's a way of participating with it. Each of you actually to your own spot, to your own body and mind at this moment on your particular Dharma path. The notion of path is valuable because there is a sense of the dynamic quality of living. This morning I was reminded of the first time I came in the door. Why that should come up, maybe by way of introduction.

[04:40]

here in January 1972. And some of you know, I had been I set out actually from Chicago where I'd been living on the north side for the group of people. Actually, we were mostly Mennonite renegades. We had organized a commune we called the other cheek for turning the other cheek. But when someone asked that about us, we would turn around and point to our bottoms. Wasn't really quite the way the other cheek had been taught us in Sunday school. But I had felt that I wanted to experiment radically with this life, this precious life.

[06:08]

And there'd been a couple of times earlier in my life that I thought that it would end. So actually, I was regarding everything as a bonus. So why not actually take a pilgrim's view of this life? I thought that I would free myself of the various things I'd accumulated and take what I could in a backpack and and set out. And someone had given me a copy of the book, Three Pillars of Zen. So I started sitting. As I traveled, then I visited various Zen centers, including Rochester. And I was sitting in New York, Manhattan, when Edo Shimano announced one evening that Suzuki Roshi had died at San Francisco Zen Center.

[07:24]

And I thought, I wonder what's happening at San Francisco Zen Center. Various people told me that Suzuki Roshi had taken the dramatic step of turning it over to Americans, an American abbot. So I thought this could be interesting. And after a while, I hitchhiked across the country. It was winter, December and into January. tent that I would set up in my sleeping bag and sleep out in the snow, various places. And I stopped in Kansas and visited my parents for a few days. I remember it was snowing even down as far as Oklahoma City and across the Texas Panhandle.

[08:24]

And I was astounded when I arrived. in the Bay Area and how green everything was. And I camped out on the other side of the bay for a few days to kind of get settled, I think. I thought, OK. And then then I hitchhiked from Hayward around. And someone actually gave me a ride right in front of San Francisco Zen Center. And I walked up. I must have looked terrible. I hadn't had a bath in some days. My hair was this long, beard. Hard to imagine, isn't it? I knocked on the door here, and the person who answered it looked at me and said, yes. I said, I'm here to practice Zen.

[09:27]

Well, did you make any arrangements? No. Well, usually people call or write or something like that. Oh, OK. So here I am. I haven't called. I haven't written. My thought in this pilgrimage actually was that I had this this thought that. Whatever I would meet has an obstacle. I would view it as a Dharma gate. Realizing that the notion of obstacle was something that was my idea, my judgment. So whatever happened along the way, I would say. Okay, how do I enter this?

[10:31]

So I stood outside the door and the person was just opening it about six inches. We were talking through the door. And I said, you know, what do I need to do to enter and practice Zen here? So after a little while, she said, well, I'll go call somebody else. So close the door. So I stood there and a little while later, the door opened again. And this person just said, oh, OK, you can come in and sit down here. So he sat down in the entry and I answered some questions. I learned that there was going to be a session starting a few days and I thought that would be good. I said, well, you can't sit the session because have you ever done a one day sitting before?

[11:36]

I said, no, but I've been sitting every day for months. And finally, I was able to arrange to sit to be a guest student here for a few days. And then they said that I could sit the first two or three days of the session and then see if I could. At that point, review my situation and see if I can continue. So I did actually sit that session. Then it's a question. If you want to come and be a resident here, you can be a guest student. for just a little while. And then if you want to stay a little longer, that takes more arrangement. And so I didn't have a place to stay. And I found a shooting gallery over in the Castro where I could spend the night.

[12:46]

So I was one of these people that would hang around out here. I'd come from morning Zazen, get up. And I would pack up my things and my sleeping bag, my backpack, and I would go hide it someplace. Because I thought, you know, if I left anything there, all the junkies in the shooting gallery would cash it in. So I did that for a while. And then we opened up this house over here on 191 Haight Street at the corner of Laguna and Haight. Do Zen students still live there? No. So I was able to rent a closet. Thirty five dollars a month. Actually, I had some money because I worked as a carpenter in Chicago and the contractor there had been working for owed me money.

[13:59]

So it was I was actually being quite practical. And if I needed some money, I could wire him or call in for a request and he could wire me some money. So so that went on for a while. And then I was able to start working as a carpenter here in San Francisco. So I had many delusions. One of them was I thought that I could live by begging. I thought that people at Zen Center would live by begging. But when I suggested that to people here, they thought that was a bad idea. There were lots of people panhandling in those days on the streets, but to do formal begging as a Buddhist...

[15:01]

mendicant was a whole nother matter. And so we didn't did not support that. So it's curious to me that the practice of pilgrimage, as I came to understand it, and still actually do is that wherever you are on the path is home. Wherever you are, wherever you find yourself is where you belong. So I've been cultivating the sense of belonging to this spot where I stand. For a long time. And this practice is always a blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar.

[16:10]

Because the familiar is where you've been. If you have accepted it as a place that you belong, then it does have a feeling of being familiar. The place that you're entering is unknown. The door may be open. The door may be closed. A closed door is a different kind of entry than an open door. And yet you can view it as a place to enter. The other day, someone was talking to me here at. It's city center about how do we welcome people? And it occurred to me that people may not feel that they're in a place, a position from which to welcome others.

[17:21]

So I invite you to consider. wherever you stand, wherever you sit, whatever position that you hold, how can you adopt that as an appropriate relation to whoever arrives? In our practice, we inherited very, very many teachings from And of course, Zen comes from a blend of Buddhism as it adapted to Taoism and Confucianism in China. There is a notion of host and guest, a notion of position in which from the position of host, you can receive and welcome the position of guest.

[18:32]

offer your respect and gratitude. The position of host allows you the chance to be generous. The position of guest allows you the opportunity to be generous. In our meal chant, we say the three wheels of giver-receiver. and gift are all actually empty, which means that they're mutually interdependent. That give a receiver and gift completely depend on each other. None of them exist. The gift does not exist, of course, without a giver. The gift does not exist without a receiver. The receiver doesn't exist without the gift.

[19:33]

Receiver doesn't exist without the giver. Sometimes you may feel that you need to be given permission to be the giver. So you may wait in the position of receiver. And wait and wait. Wait for permission to take the seat of host. So it's good to check and see what is your assumption. Is your assumption that there is something lacking? How can you create the powerful? It's a creative and sacred space.

[20:37]

How can you do that from a position of not feeling that you have permission or a position of insecurity? Last year, I think it was the Pema Chodron. She produced a book, and the title is something like Making Peace, or How to Be at Peace, or How to Make Peace in Times of War. In the last chapter of the book, she talks about positive insecurity. Positive insecurity. So our usual way is to look for things to help us feel secure or look for permission to help us feel secure. Particularly when we've experienced something unsettling, when we've had the rug pulled out from under us.

[22:02]

faced with the fact that some cherished idea that we have doesn't really hold up. After the attacks on the Twin Towers in 9-11, this political response was to make war. on those that were causing a sense of insecurity. And even create a whole department of Homeland Security. So do we feel more secure with the Department of Homeland Security? It's striking to me how people

[23:12]

How easily people are willing to trade freedom, actually. Trade freedom for some idea of security. We're willing to have more people incarcerated and we're willing to have... You know, there's been some challenge to the way people have been... They had their privacy invaded with wiretapping and so forth. It was striking to me how, at that level, people are willing to give up, not talk about Because freedom carries a kind of insecurity.

[24:13]

So when Pema talks about positive insecurity, she's talking about how in this practice we actually recognize that things are changing. So whatever you might want to depend on. Maybe not so secure. You may be depending on your own health. This week, I just visited Michael Sawyer as a Dharma student and former director at Tassajara and manager of Green's Restaurant. But he's had Parkinson's for some years. And depending on when I when I talk to him, I can get a response or not, depending on the time of day.

[25:25]

And he has been practicing with this insecurity of not knowing from one a minute, really, one hour to the next, whether he's going to be able to stand up or not, whether he's going to be able to. He's a wonderful artist and painter, water colorist, and whether he's going to be able to draw or not. So when I was visiting him after I left here, so that was Thursday. He wasn't really able to talk. But at some point, he actually got up from his little scooter and took a few steps over to the table, picked up his drawing pad and kind of handed it to me.

[26:29]

And I picked up a pencil. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes to do this. Very, every, every movement had to be carefully worked out and make the move. And then I held the pad and he actually was working on a drawing of a look to me like birch trees and working with their leaves. And he held the pencil for a while. And he put it down. He wasn't, at that moment, able to draw another leaf. But I must say, he enjoyed, I found, he's staying at a residence in Nevada right now while Imola's traveling. And so many of you know Michael.

[27:32]

He was delighted. I found there was this plastic container and a spoon. And by taking the spoon and tapping on the plastic container, I started chanting. And he started chanting with me. Talking back and forth, he was delighted. So he chanted for a while. He would kind of come in and out of it vocally. So moment to moment, it's an experiment. What can happen? So we say, and we chant the Heart Sutra, we say, with nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita.

[28:52]

And the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. What does it mean to rely on Prajnaparamita? People say they want freedom and they say they want happiness. And we say the Buddha's teaching is you want freedom, you want happiness. The way to freedom and happiness is the way of non-attainment with nothing to attain. Realizing that everything is right here. Nothing to attain. The problems that you have right now are the perfect problems for you.

[29:56]

Suzuki Roshi once said something like, the problems that you have right now problems you have for the rest of your life. So this is not actually thinking in the usual way of thinking sequentially. And you may prefer other problems. You may prefer problems that are more workable or have more space around them in time. You may prefer problems that are more elegant. Just for me, coming up here and offering bows this morning, I was puzzled right here because at Green Gulch, there's a lot more space. I've been bowing in there and there's a lot more space between this incense here and this bowing mat.

[31:04]

So I'm used to stepping back and step back and I realized, OK. Here I am being clumsy again. And the problems that we have are things that we're clumsy with. If you could be more elegant with your problems, then they wouldn't really be problems. If you could be aesthetically more developed and graceful with your problems. The matter is that, you know, the things that you have already worked out may not even count anymore. Those are in the past. And what's coming up is what's unfinished past karma.

[32:07]

Lately, I've been thinking that it's helpful to view things as systems. We're looking at dependent co-origination, that things actually depend on each other. It's helpful to look at how everything in a particular configuration is a system. Looking at my my early family. I recently was just uncovering and understanding that my father and my relationship with my father, and we had a particular system that was really painful for years. I finally got it. Now, he's been dead now for over a year, but I finally got it that he believed that if he could just control things, he could be at peace. If he could just control his own family, he could be at peace.

[33:20]

If he could just control his son, he could be at peace. It's amazing. I didn't really understand how much he believed that until just recently. And it's really a great idea that you really want peace. I want to be able to just have things so I can rest. Working so hard, working so hard, working so hard. And so why don't you behave? If you would just behave, then I could rest. I could be at peace. And I persisted in misbehaving. I mean, it was pretty bad. If you wanted me to sit down, I'd stand up. If you wanted me to stand up, I'd lie on the floor and roll over. Almost like that. He wanted me to believe a certain thing.

[34:22]

I'd say, no, it doesn't make any sense. Fundamentally, I didn't buy it that his that his piece was worth my being controlled. I wasn't compassionate in that way. I didn't give him my service as a control. So this is not so unusual. But then I noticed that my father is not the only one that had that idea. It's not so unusual for people to think that if I can just. If that or when, then I'll be at peace.

[35:27]

So this very fundamental notion of what does it take to be at peace is addressed in the Heart Sutra by that phrase that the Bodhisattva understands Non-attainment. And understanding non-attainment means depending on prajnaparamita. Prajnaparamita means a prajnaparamita is wisdom and paramita is actually going beyond wisdom. Sometimes translated the perfection of wisdom. Prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom. This is the notion that whatever you conceive of, is incomplete. You may have the greatest conception of the way things are, and yet it's incomplete. Why is it incomplete?

[36:36]

It's because you are still outside of it. Who you are, having the conception, is still outside of it. And not only that, but everything that goes into your being that you actually can't account for, that you take for granted, that is not part of your consciousness. Which may be the really understanding how your six billion brain cells and their 10,000 interactions with other cells, how that all works. Again, in commenting on this in the Tenzo Kyokin, it's saying that the if you would just understand that the wild birds and monkeys, the wild birds and monkeys of your emotions and thoughts are carrying you away.

[37:58]

And if these wild birds and monkeys would just step back, take a backward step, then you would be unified. When you're unified in this way, when the wild birds and monkeys of your emotions and thoughts have taken this backward step in that place, you. things while being turned by things. It's a little bit like river rafting. That's that when you're going down the river, you're carried by the river. You're in the raft and you're paddling. But your paddling is not driving the river. Your paddling is working with the river. And sometimes The river is more powerful and you actually just have to accommodate to the power of the river.

[39:03]

And sometimes the current carries you dangerously this way. And so you paddle very hard so that you can work around that particular danger. And sometimes you have no choice. The river catches you and turns you around completely and you feel helpless and you're smashed into a rock. But as long as you have some conscious awareness and are present and don't panic, you're in the position of. Turning things while being turned by things. And actually, every interaction in life is like that.

[40:07]

Every person that you meet, every sound that you hear affects you in some way, and you have the opportunity to respond or not. So this works in the sense of being surrounded by things, by the whole phenomenal world. And also it's a matter of the inner world. What are these wild birds and monkeys that Dogen's talking about? Lately, I've been thinking of them as a way of talking about samskaras. Sankara is a Sanskrit word, which is sometimes translated as mental formations.

[41:10]

Mental formations really includes your whole psychophysical being. It's not just your mind, but it's all of your karmic tendencies, actually. All the habits. The very nature of how you perceive what you perceive, the very sophisticated ability that you have to hear these sounds that are just vibrations in the air right now coming through this speaker system and resonating in your ear drum. And you're making sense of it in whatever way you can. Or not. Or you're taking a little nap. It's after 11 already.

[42:15]

So these samskaras or these tendencies you really need. You really need these samskaras. You really need these tendencies. You really need. This ability to make sense out of the vibrations striking your ear right now. And at the same time, there are some tendencies that no longer serve you. There's some tendencies that you notice really cause trouble. There's some tendencies that cause you to. kind of blank out or go to sleep rather than wake up. So since I was talking about my father, naturally, when I feel someone wanting to try to control me, those old tendencies come up.

[43:28]

Oh, no. I don't like this. But that's not my situation now. Someone was talking to me the other day about their tendency to really want to make an effort in sitting zazen. Which puts a strain in their body. So how do you sit and make effort in the direction of non attainment? This is really very important. This is a key to practice how to make effort and actually not be the one making the effort.

[44:29]

Try to make effort and let that effort arise as a gift of this whole body and mind. That's actually a gift that's supported by the entire universe. So when we stop and sit, we have an opportunity to notice anything extra, any extra effort. Even an idea of making some effort. And we kind of play with that. We notice, OK, well, this is sitting upright and I have a habit of not even knowing what it feels like to sit upright. So I have to. I used to sit kind of like this. I thought it was upright. That's literally true. I really thought that was upright. person very much in my head right I didn't even know where my body was and so that idea of being upright actually wasn't as good as paying close attention to the actual sensation of my body so thinking that

[45:59]

years a certain way is actually not as good as paying attention. Both kind of a question. What is going on? Is this upright? Is this? Is this? What is this? What is this place? So all of the. We need to continually keep winnowing through, winnowing through, seeing what is appropriate now. What works now? So rather than making a strain in your zazen, can you find balance? Can you find neutral? Can you find where the vertebrae just sit on top of each other?

[47:06]

And when you meet your friend, can you actually meet them? Not knowing who they are now. And you think, oh, okay, there's something familiar, but actually, There's more that I don't know about this being in front of me than what I do know. So I actually have to trust Prajnaparamita. I have to trust the totality of the situation, the wisdom that goes beyond wisdom, to trust that actually there's some wisdom there, that what I'm meeting is wisdom. It's the ways in which my own tendencies, my own habits, prevent me from doing that.

[48:12]

Oh, I have ideas. I start thinking about it. Oh, I know. I remember the time that why don't we go someplace rather than actually meeting? to encourage people here, everyone in this room, whether you're a Zen Center staff person, a resident, a visiting pilgrim, a tourist, just saying, well, what's going on here? To find a place. that you can actually be listening inwardly to yourself. Noticing the wild birds and monkeys that want to crop in and take over and let them see if you can let them relax, invite them to relax.

[49:20]

And adopt this place where you are. a place from which you can welcome others. You can actually meet. This is not knowing exactly what this place is, but being willing to be here. This is positive insecurity. And this is. Our actually universal Dharma practice, Dharma path. OK. Thank you for listening.

[50:23]

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