This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome. My name is Ed Saldop. My name is Ed Saldop. My name is Ed Saldop here at the city center. And I'm very... I'm always pleased when I get to introduce this to a friend of mine from the early days of Thassara, but I'm particularly pleased to introduce Thassara because we went through Tongari, and we lived at Thassara for three years together, and for six years here at the city center in the early 70s. In the early 80s, it was a very dynamic time in Thassara. Those of us here, I know that was special. And I'm very pleased that you've returned. Now, I have to say a few things about what happened with Diane after she left in 1986, and I'll have to use a script for that.

[01:03]

I probably need it, too. Diane was ordained here in 1981 by Richard Grisberg, and she studied the blind guitar and sewing. And here has been cited and interesting sawing with her that carried through an academic career that she started when she left in 1986. She studied at UCLA and got her PhD there, and her dissertation was on the cultural and religious significance of Japanese Buddhist vestments. And she did her research in Kyoto at Rukuku University and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. She's currently teaching at the Department of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, and she teaches courses in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese religious traditions, Buddhist meditation traditions, and Zen Buddhist. We've been having a week-long national conference of sewing teachers here at Tassara and the City Center, and Diane came out before that conference and gave some beautiful talks yesterday.

[02:11]

I'm very pleased that she could come here and share some of her wisdom on these robes that we wear. I think most of your collections that you have still just to wear these robes will be answered today. Thank you for having us done. Well, first of all, I'd like to start out with having... Let's think a little bit about... your life and your clothing. So first of all, when you decided to come to the Zen Center this morning, how did you choose what clothes you were going to wear? What went through your mind? Now, you have to do something here, right? You have to tell me. Were you thinking, oh, I want to be comfortable? Were you thinking, oh, I want to show respect to other people? So what happened?

[03:13]

Tell me. Yes. Good. You're just lying on the floor and you just picked him up. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Anyone else? What? Comfortable because my heavens, you're going to be sitting cross-legged and whoever does that. Okay. Anything else? Yes. Casual and... Casual armor and fitting in, yes. But you are wearing a rock suit. So, now, is he fitting in or not? Yes, if he's here. No, if he's on the street. Right? So, you probably didn't put the rock suit on when you got on the bus.

[04:14]

No, you didn't. You saved it and you kept it and then you put it on here. Where did you put it on? Okay. And did you put it on your head? Okay, good. He's really on the hot seat right now. Okay. Now, one reason we're going through this exercise is is because we are human beings, and sometimes we take clothing for granted. We never take clothing for granted. But we think it's not important. We think it has nothing to do with the higher things, philosophy, or Buddhist practice, or Buddhist thought, or any of those hard things like emptiness. But in fact, clothing does have to do with emptiness, Everything has to do with emptiness.

[05:15]

And when you choose your clothing, you're doing something. Now, we have a choice. We don't have to wear clothes. Squirrels do not have a choice. Squirrels must wear heavy coats in the winter, and in the spring, they wear light clothing. So they change their clothes twice a year should they live so long. Now, a squirrel doesn't have a choice, but you do have a choice. And so that's one of the things we're going to be talking about today because you chose to come here to San Francisco Zen Center and to hear a lecture, which you don't know what's going to happen. What's going to happen? She's already asked us about our clothes. What is she going to ask us about next? And what I... I want you to think about now is being naked. What's it like being naked? When would you choose to be naked?

[06:18]

Okay, now we have to do something that's harder. Okay, when would you choose to be naked? It's in the shower. Okay, that's good. Where else? Yes? Skinny dipping. That's a really good one. Okay. What? Sleep? The beach? The beach. Okay. Okay. Now, what's sleeping? So enveloped in blankets though, right? Or sheets or something. So we call those bedclothes. So it's almost like you're wearing clothes still. You're in contact with cloth. But the beach... Okay, let's talk about the beach for a second. You go to the beach, you get off the bus... and you take off your clothes at the beach. Now, what are you doing? Getting arrested.

[07:21]

Or not. But you're making a statement, right? Aren't you making some kind of statement about your relationship to clothing? Right? So you're not... It's funny. You're without clothes, but you are still in relation to clothes. So if we wanted to talk about form and emptiness at this point, form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. So clothes or no clothes, clothes or no clothes, they're in relation to each other. Now, in the time of the Buddha, there were a number of people who felt that if you were really a sincere practitioner, You should, or practitioner, or sincerely seeking after the truth, you should give up everything. Everything.

[08:22]

And when we say everything, we mean your clothes. Give up your clothes. Wander naked. Let your hair get matted. Don't do anything for yourself. Live outside. Beg for alms. Or not even beg. Just concentrate on your practice as you move through the world and food will come to you. Those people were called sannyasins or wanderers and it's a very important context in which the Buddha developed his teaching. He saw sannyasin when he was quite young and he thought to himself, that's what I'm going to be. I'm going to be a sannyasin. Now, the thing about it is he saw a sannyasin, a holy man, and he thought, that's what I want to be. So you see someone who has a certain kind of deportment and you say, that's what I want to be.

[09:30]

And that thread of seeing a person who has some wisdom, a person who has some peace, that thread of seeing that, having that of seeing that, that's an important aspect of Buddhist training or Buddhist thought. Buddhist thought. Now the Buddha tried this. He wasn't the Buddha yet because he wasn't enlightened yet. And he tried a lot of meditation and he tried a lot of ascetic practices, eating only one pea a day, one little tiny bit of bread, and it became very thin. And, of course, he was probably wandering around without clothes, because many people were, who were doing this kind of practice, and was following what his teachers taught him. And he was very good.

[10:34]

He was very good at developing the kind of meditation practices where everything disappears, And you enter this sort of frame of mind where you understand completely emptiness. But he found that when he returned to his ordinary life that he still had the same problems. He hadn't solved the problem of life and death. And he found that when he limited his intake of food, his rest, and so on, he found that it also didn't solve the problem of life and death, of suffering. And his whole goal was to understand suffering. So eventually he realized that he was going to die. That's all. He was just going to die. And he was going to die without ever understanding what it was that causes suffering.

[11:37]

So at that point he said, enough, I'm going to eat. And he ate and he bathed and then he sat down and he remembered something from his childhood. He remembered a moment of meditation under a rose apple tree in which he suddenly felt a kind of peace. Now, remember, he had done a lot of meditation already. And at this moment, he... What? He's doing meditation again? But what's different about it? That's something we have to think about. What kind of meditation leads to enlightenment? And once again, in Buddhism, meditation...

[12:40]

It never causes enlightenment. Meditation leads to enlightenment, but it doesn't cause it. So try to remember that. It's concomitant, let's say. It's your companion. So he sat down and he had this sense of ease and he moved through what we call the four jhanas. and then he was in a position to experience enlightenment. Now, we call this the middle way. His discovery that starvation and ascetic practices don't lead to enlightenment, that's called the middle way. And the middle way, actually, it sounds kind of boring, actually. Just what? The middle way between luxury... and deprivation. So you find a middle path.

[13:40]

And we already have this in Western thought, we call it the golden mean. But in Buddhism, it becomes a much larger concept, and it has also to do with the idea of letting go of thoughts. It has a philosophic dimension as well, which we don't need to talk about today, because we're talking about clothing. So we're going to go back to clothing and think a little bit about how clothing developed in the Buddhist order. After enlightenment, the Buddha was recognized by several people, and he began to basically convert people by teaching them the Dharma, and a community developed. In order to practice Sambiluwe, the Buddha wore robes. So the robes are an indication of the middle way.

[14:42]

It's an indication that we are not extreme. We practice a comfortable way. Our way is comfortable. We wear robes. We don't go naked. But at the same time, we don't have a lot of robes. We don't have piles and piles of them. We don't have big chests filled with them and closets full of them. We just have just enough. And that's one of the guiding principles of the Buddhist road is just enough knowledge of sufficiency. It's a little four-character phrase in Chinese that means that you understand how much you need to survive and how much you need to have just enough. Now, what is just enough when it comes to robes? There's actually two kinds of traditions that develop.

[15:46]

One is that the Buddha probably wore only one robe. And he probably made it out of scraps that he found along the road. There's sort of an idea that he just picked up cloth wherever he saw it. And people just would leave cloth out and they often left cloth in graveyards. that wrapped like shrouds that wrapped the body and so on. So this is cloth that can no longer be used by ordinary people. And there's a whole list of them in the monastic rules. So he gathered cloth and he made robes and his followers gathered cloth and they sewed robes together into sort of rough patchwork robes. But as the community developed, they realized that... wearing robes had something to do with the community around them. The community around them, and there's one story in the monastic rules where a layperson was out on the street one day and he saw the son of a very important person who the son had decided he was going to be a Buddhist follower and he was going through the trash and looking for robe, you know, robe material.

[17:06]

you know, going through the garbage. And he felt pity for the young man. And he went to the Buddha and said, I want to offer fabric for your monks so that they'll have fabric. At that moment, you have laypeople and monks coming together to develop a kind of life together. Where the laypeople offer material goods... And the monks develop their sense and their understanding of the Dharma and give it to the lay people. So it's a relationship through clothing. So your clothing is not just that you respect others, so therefore you wear clothes, but also that it's given to you. And when that's given to you, you have a responsibility to understand the Dharma as well as you can. and to give them back the Dharma. And of course, the lay people gain merit by giving you the material things that you need.

[18:14]

Merit is an important concept in Buddhism, and donating or giving is also an important concept in Buddhism, where you give of yourself, and that giving... flows onward. Now, one thing about merit is it kind of looks a little bit like if you make merit, then you get good things in the future, right? That's what we understand karma to be. You do good karma, which means action. You do good actions. Karma means action. You get good results. But guess what? You do something good, but you don't own it. It's not yours. It's flowing. When you do a good thing, it starts the flow. The flow is moving and going through the community and going through you, of course, and good stuff happens to all of us.

[19:18]

Now that idea of merit is emptiness. That's emptiness. Emptiness is you don't have anything. There's nothing to hold on to. And merit is one of the themes of our talk today because I think some people, when they study Buddhism, they think, oh, do good things out, good things in. And almost like it's a ledger, right? Good things out, good things in. I'm going to get good stuff. Yeah, you're going to get good stuff, but you don't own that. So, yeah, we dedicate the merit of this talk. But it's just a joke. You know, we don't really mean that you have it to give. You don't have it to give. But when we dedicate the merit, it allows the merit to keep flowing.

[20:20]

So, free-flowing streams, no dams. All right, now, I said the Buddha probably wore one robe. But as the community developed, they developed a system of wearing three robes, and these were all rectangular pieces of cloth, usually sewn together out of little pieces of cloth. Even when you got new cloth, there was regulation. You had to cut it up into little pieces and destroy its secular value so that lay people could no longer use it, and also monks couldn't sell it, because cloth is money. So, I mean, literally, it's money. And they would cut the fabric up in a certain amount of time, and then they would restitch it into robes. And they wore one around their waist. We're talking men here. One around the waist, and then one over the left shoulder, and then under the arm here.

[21:23]

And that outfit, sort of generally speaking, you could come... to hear a lecture in the Buddha hall with your other fellow monks or, you know, to perform some other ceremony. And then if you were going to go out begging, though, you'd wear a third robe kind of over both shoulders. So get three robes, one around the waist, one over the left shoulder, and then one that sort of covers over the whole thing, covers your whole torso and... below your waist. Okay, fully outfitted monk. Now what happens when this outfit goes to China is that the Chinese go, no, I don't think so. A right shoulder, a bare right shoulder, this is no good. It really violates the Confucian sense of decorum. So they weren't going to put up with this.

[22:26]

And certainly it was okay maybe if some foreigner came and wore clothes like that. Maybe some kind of Indian or some kind of Central Asian person. Okay, we don't care about them. But as soon as Chinese people started getting ordination and started having bare right shoulders, then that was a horse of a different color. And they had to do something about that. Now we're going to show you the three robes of the Zen monk. Okay? Okay. All right. Now, Jean is going to demonstrate for you. No, leave that behind. And we're going to take it slow so that you all can see what's going on here. I've got to pick this up, right? Now, first of all, let's just look at her for a second.

[23:30]

She's wearing, this is the kesa. And you'll see in a moment that this is rectangular garment, which she has tied around her body. And notice that it's not over this right-hand shoulder. Okay, so what does this look like? What would this be? I just talked to you about the three robes, one around the waist. Okay. Which one is this one? The second one. Good. Excellent. Okay. Take it off. Oh, she can... Okay. You'll see her put it on. Okay, now we won't fold it completely.

[24:48]

We're going to hold it open. So you go over there. All right. Okay, so I hope that some of you have never been here before. And this is your first sight of a rope, okay? Now, it's a little hard for you to see it, probably. But it's made up of panels. So there are these long vertical panels. Can you see that? Can you see the stitching? Okay. Now, stay where you are. Or move over that way a little bit, and then just don't move. Okay. Now, see this? This is a tie. This is in the ancient monastic regulations. You can have a tie. Keep the signal on. You know why? Because one day Shariputra was walking down the street and a wind came.

[25:49]

And blew his robe off. And there he was, naked. Okay, remember? We're Buddhists. We're not naked. So it was no good. And Buddha said, okay, a tie. Ties would be good. All right. Now, so we have a big column here. Now can you see these horizontal lines too? All right. Let's... at it so these people can see over here? See the horizontal lines as well? Okay, especially you guys can see it because the light's coming through. Yeah, okay, so we have long, long, and short, right? And then we have long, long, and short here. Okay, let's show everybody else. Okay, so Short, long, long. Short, long, long. Okay, get it? Now this is a picture of a field.

[26:55]

And these narrow seams are the irrigation channels. And this part here, these are the fields where we've got the rice growing or whatever it is we're growing. So these little square and rectangular larger pieces, these are where the crop is growing. Now, in the rope chant, we talk about the field of merit. Now, you guys developed another translation that no longer has the word merit in it, but that's actually what it says in Chinese. It's a field of merit, and field of merit means... All monks are fields of merit. The concept is that if you give a donation to a monk, it's just like planting a seed in a fertile field. You're going to get a nice crop of merit if you give to a monk because the monk is training in the Dharma and he's understanding the Dharma and he's increasing the Dharma and that's extremely meritorious.

[28:02]

So the robe itself... is an image of that field of merit metaphor. It's designed that way. The story, according to the Vinaya, is that one day when the king was out on his elephant, and you guys who were in the sewing teachers, you've already heard this story, but the king was out on his elephant and he saw this guy from afar and he said, oh... must be one of the Buddha's disciples, and so I'm going to get off my elephant and pay him respect. And he gets down from the elephant, which is kind of a big deal, and I'm afraid King Mimasara was a little nearsighted, but since I'm nearsighted too, I can understand, you know, life is hard when you're nearsighted. And the guy comes up and he realizes, this guy is not a follower of the Buddha. How he can tell, it's a little hard to tell, but again, it's deportment.

[29:07]

It's the way the guy carries himself. And Bhimba Sada gets really, he's pissed. And he goes to the Buddha and he says, you know, you guys, you just got to get some kind of distinctive outfit because I can't tell one from another and it's driving me nuts. So I need to be able to see from afar that it's one of your guys. So the Buddha says, okay, and he turns to Ananda, and he says, Ananda, go make a robe that is like those fields over there. Design something that is like those fields over there, something distinctive that we can wear. And that's the story of the origin of the robe. according to the monastic regulations. So this is in those ancient texts that were finally written down.

[30:09]

It was passed down orally, and then it was finally written down around 100 BC, between 100 BC and 100 CE, around the time that other Buddhist scriptures were also written down. So this form, which we have here today, is over... 2,000 years old. It may be 2,500 years old. It may be 2,000 years old. We don't need to know. The point is, it's old, right? It's old. And she's wearing it today and practicing with it today. Okay, now fold it up. How are your legs? Doing okay? Don't need to stand up. Want to take a break? Everybody's okay? It's been going on for a while. Okay.

[31:20]

All right. Okay. So we got one robe down, right? We got two more to go. Okay. China. Well, it's a little bit of Japan, but anyway. This is China. We got a whole torso is covered, both shoulders. There's a seam here. In the beginning, around the time of Dogen, before Dogen, It was like a shirt and skirt. But around the time of Dogen, when he went to China, they developed a new style, which is that they put a seam in here. And so they made it one garment. Notice how covered up she is. This is China. Okay, take it off. You newcomers, see what this is?

[32:52]

Can you see it? All right. This is all they're wearing. They're just wearing this big thing. Okay. And it's got big sleeves. And it's kind of a pain because the sleeves keep slipping down and you have to learn how to wear it. You do not have to wear this, but I want you to see it so you know what it is. when these people come flashing past you, you know, and we're kind of diffusing this a little bit, okay? Now, now what's she wearing? Kimono, what country is this from? Japan, God, you guys are, I don't know why I even bothered to come. You know everything. Okay, so she's wearing kimono, And it goes from her neck to her ankles.

[33:54]

She's completely covered up. That's East Asia for you. Boy, you've got to be all covered up. Now, she has more clothing on underneath. We have China, Japan, and India represented in this outfit, don't we? because we retained that rectangular shape from the ancient times, but now we've put it over what for the Chinese and the Japanese are ordinary clothes, kind of. They're kind of special clothes, but they're also derived from the national dress of Japan and China. They are according to the taste of Japan and China. Now, here we are in America, and that means we have a problem, don't we? Because we've kind of run out of space. Where do we fit? Are we only going to be the underwear?

[34:57]

Right? And we're not going to make her take this off, right? So we decided that ahead of time. Oh, we didn't tell her, though. She's been scared the whole time. So... One of our questions as we move forward into Buddhism in the West is, what's gonna be our relationship to these garments? How is this going to work out? So far, we've adopted the Chinese and Japanese clothing. And as a sewing teacher, which I did in the past, I'm very much in favor of retaining the koromo because this garment because when the queso rests over the corollement, it's completely protected. If you were wearing pants, and I've seen this, it'd be pulling on your clothing. So these three garments move together, you know, and they are in harmony with each other.

[36:03]

And that's partly because people developed it over so many years. You can get dressed now. So we're really in the first hundred years, right? We're still pretty much in the first hundred years of adaptation of Buddhist culture to America. And again, Buddhists thought one thing, and you may feel, well, I don't need robes to practice. I really don't. But in fact, religions always have some kind of material component to them. You have to do things. Otherwise, you can just sit and read books and then we'd be calling that philosophy. So the thing about religion is that these kinds of things, these roads, this is where the rubber hits the road.

[37:10]

This is where it hurts. Or, you know, questions come up. This is questions, you know, you should be asking questions about... What's going on here? Why we're wearing these robes? And how do they fit into our practice? So that practice isn't merely mental. It's not just a mental gymnastics. It's a whole body experience. So at this temple, we've retained that whole body experience, which... involves wearing these robes, bowing, and putting the robe on a certain way. Now we're going to get out your little thing, and we're going to do the robe chant together, okay? Now here she is. Now she's going to put the robe on, but we can't just put the robe on. We have to have a chant.

[38:12]

Okay, until everyone... No, put it on your head. We're going to do the robe chant. Okay. Ready? Is everyone ready? Got your little thing? We're going to do it in English, only in English. And I don't know it because you changed the translation on me, so I have to. All right. Then she can get dressed. Great robe of liberation. Okay. Okay. Okay, let's look at the rogue chant.

[40:32]

Great robe of liberation. Now, the daizai gedapuku. Gedapuku means clothing of liberation. Daizai means great wow. In Chinese, it's sort of great wow. Robe of liberation. Okay? So, or you could say just great robe of liberation and just forget the wow. Zai is a kind of word that just is there for emphasis. Now, you've translated it here as field far beyond form and emptiness. But... Literally, it means mu is no. And so is aspect.

[41:32]

No aspect, no form. So mu means also emptiness. So emptiness and form. Emptiness and form. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. And then now we have to talk about the fuku dene. Now fuku... is merit, okay? Or virtue. Now, virtue, if you say, virtue sounds kind of like you're good or something like that, but it means power. It really means power. So the power of virtue, the power of merit, this is a power, a kind of power. So... If we leave merit out of our translation for the rogue chant, why do we leave it out?

[42:32]

Do we leave it out because we're afraid that the word merit will make us want to grasp at things? Is that why we're leaving it out? Is there some reason why we want to leave out a teaching of the Buddha? And merit is a teaching of the Buddha. Doesn't thinking about merit cause you to wonder and ask questions? If we leave it out, does that mean we are no longer asking questions about what merit is? Do we remember merit if we leave it out? It's there in the Chinese. Why did we leave it out? You guys got to think about what's going on here. And this is for the older people. I'm telling you. You guys, you've got to think about what's going on. Why did you do that?

[43:34]

Why? Why drop the Buddha's word? Because we don't need it in America? Right. So fuku, what does fuku mean to you? You have to answer now because you... It's not the singularity of fuku. It's the general meaning that's conveyed by the whole state. Which is what? And how does merit fit into that? No, it's not. It's actually part of Buddhism.

[44:35]

So, yeah. Now, yes, okay, good. You've brought it up. All right, thank you. I planted him in the audience. I was hoping we'd bring this up. Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma. We have a little koan in Zen. Bodhidharma came to Emperor Wu's court and Emperor Wu had done many, many things for Buddhism. He'd created temples. He'd ordained monks. He'd done a lot. Money. Lots of money. He donated lots of money and he created a lot of things. He created stuff. And... Bodhidharma came. You know, Emperor Wu had heard about this great man. Emperor Wu comes to the court. I mean, Bodhidharma comes to the court and Emperor Wu basically says, I've done all these things for Buddhism.

[45:41]

Basically, what do I get for it? Right? I mean, any lay person would ask that question. I mean, it's a legitimate question, I think. What do you have to show for all this that I've given to Buddhism? And Emperor Wu says, no merit. I mean, Bodhidharma, excuse me. Bodhidharma says to Emperor Wu, no merit, no merit. Vast emptiness. Okay, so it's not that there's no merit. It's that there's vast emptiness. You can't separate no merit and vast emptiness. Vast emptiness and no merit go together. And what I'm suggesting today, when I say that merit flows and that you don't own it, that merit keeps flowing and it's something that you can't stop,

[46:54]

that's no merit. So, no merit and merit. Vast emptiness. And that's really what the robe is about. And because the robe is a physical thing, and it's where the rubber hits the road, it makes you have to think about things. And thinking about things is part of Zen practice. Because we don't just ride along on a peaceful, mindless space. Because we're part of the world. And the robe reminds us that we're part of the world. That's where we are. Sawaki Kodo... who is one of our teachers in the kese sewing practice, talked about another koan where Dongshan asked a monk, what is the most painful thing?

[48:12]

And the monk said, hell is the most painful thing. And Dongshan said, no. Hell is not the most painful thing. The most painful thing is to wear the robe and not understand the great matter of life and death. So the robe itself is a kind of responsibility and sometimes it's described as heavy. The robes are heavy. And yet it's also a recognition that we're moving together in the Dharma. And that we do this not only through our teachers, whose shoulders we stand on, but also the person standing next to us who is in the practice with us. That person who you don't necessarily look at and you don't completely understand them, but they're next to you and they're practicing with you,

[49:20]

and they support your practice as well. Without them, you wouldn't get very far. I kind of feel like you're cooked. If you want me to talk about Blanche and Joshin-san, I will. Or we could do question and answer. I think so, yeah. I think you're... You're done, right? Are you done? Okay. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

[50:21]

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