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 evening. I'm so happy to be here talking to you tonight. I'd like to begin my talk, as I usually do, by thanking and acknowledging my teacher, the old Buddha of the East Bay, Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi, abbot of Berkeley Zen Center. And to say that my talk is just to encourage you in your practice. And I want to thank you all for being here tonight. And a special thank you to all the wonderful work period people.

[01:05]

The work period sangha is a special and essential part of Tassajara life, the seasons of Tassajara. It's really wonderful. And, oh, my name is Greg Fane. I'm the Tanto, or head of practice at Tazahara. And this is my 15th spring work period and will be my 15th guest season at Tazahara. I haven't spent all my time in Zen Center at Tazahara, but most of it. Linda and I lived a few years at City Center. Four or so. there's four for me more for... Because we're not always practicing in the same temple.

[02:09]

It's interesting. And we aren't now. So I'm really happy that Linda can be here tonight. We do this thing now that she's become president of San Francisco Zen Center. She comes up and visits us, lucky us, at least five nights a month and I go to City Center about... At least five nights a month. That's the arrangement we have with Abbots and the board of directors. And so far, so good. Working out nicely. And so, yeah, this is my 15th guest season in Tassajara. And my ninth guest season as Tanto. So yeah, I've been doing this continuously here since 2010, April 2010, and I wanted to let you know about something that happened to me.

[03:24]

You might think, you know, oh yeah, he's got this, right? He knows the deal. Here we go again. Another work period. Another guest season. Woo-hoo. I was actually in. It didn't happen, by the way. We finished practice period, and we had an interim day, which was very pleasant. And then the next day, people started coming, new students. Wonderful. We did zazen instruction and orientation and welcoming the new people. Love it. Just so awesome. It feels so great. And then I went to City Center for my spousal visit at the earlier part of the work period. And when I came back, when I came back, the day I came back, I was going out to the bathhouse, and I was seeing lots of new faces, and people walking by me, not bowing, and just like, what's happening?

[04:27]

And I had this thought, who are all these people? So yeah, you know, just to say, if you have that thought, you're probably in good company. And that's okay. When I was getting set to come back to Tassajara, after... visiting with Linda and the City Center Sangha earlier this month, I said goodbye in Work Circle at City Center. And I was coming back driving a large vehicle and I brought Bradley and Annie and Eddie and Emer with me. And we were all in Work Circle, as I recall. And I said goodbye. And I said, all these people are coming with me back to Tassajara, and we're all going to practice real hard all summer long, as I expect you will too, in City Center.

[05:38]

And the director of City Center, our dear brother, Gentoku Smith, who practiced here a number of years, six I think, Gentoku was right next to me, and he said, guest season is best season. He kind of whispered it, but he was right next to me. I think he was trying to prod me, to get me to say it, you know, in work struggle. Because I'm well known for saying that. In case you didn't know, it's a thing. I like to say, guest season is best season. But I don't say guest season is best season because I really believe that guest season is best season. It's just that I feel like guest season gets a bad rap. People don't appreciate it enough. So I'd like to highlight the amazing qualities of guest season on the way it functions in the life in Tazahara.

[06:54]

and why it's important, perhaps least of all for the money. I've heard Leslie say more than once, even if we didn't need the money, it would still be a good idea to do guest season. Because if we only did this cloistered, monastic, formal practice all year round, we'd get a little, I think it would get Weird. For lack of a better word. I think it would just get kind of weird. Yeah. So guest season is a chance for us to actualize our understanding. To put our practice to the test in a way. To share our practice above all. To share. We had a community meeting at the end of the last practice period, the Winter-Spring practice period, that just ended with Paul Heller leading.

[08:09]

And that community meeting, actually the penultimate day of the practice period, penultimate night, rather, we usually have a meeting not in the fall practice period, but this one, before work period and guest season begins. We have two meetings. There's one for those of us who will be continuing into the guest season and one for the people who are leaving. And for those of us who are continuing into the guest season, the continuing monks, that meeting, that's my favorite meeting of the year at Tazahara Bar Nan. I just love it. We sit in a big circle and we look at each other and it's like, this is it. We're it. We're the people, all the new people are going to be looking up to, going to be modeling their practice on. We're the people who are going to be carrying the practice forward throughout the summer.

[09:11]

The long, hot summer. Doing it. Just doing it, you know. And in that meeting, most recently, I read a quote from paper that a friend of mine, a friend of ours, dear friend, a long-time practitioner, Charlie Picorny, who will be coming with his wife, Sarah Emerson. They'll be coming down later this summer for a good stretch of time to share their practice with us. And Charlie's quite a scholar, and he lived in Tazahara. He practiced in Tazahara about eight years. And he wrote a paper about monastic practice in a Western setting, Soto Zen, Western setting, monastic practice, i.e. Tassahara. He wrote a paper about Tassahara for publication, possible publication in a book. And he sent it to me to review and suggest some edits, which I did.

[10:16]

And when I read it, I was just blown away. This is so great. And I... I read a small quote from that at that meeting, and tonight I'm going to read a little bit longer piece of it because it's so good. And by the way, he just sent me another edit and gave me permission to print the whole thing, and I will do that and share it with the librarian so that anybody can read it. He said, no problem. Please share it with the community. And I think it's just about the best thing I've ever read. anybody write about Tassahara. And it's divided into three sections, if I recall correctly. Roughly, the first section is about formal practice. The second section is about Sangha practice, how Tassahara Sangha functions to mature, sentient beings, if you will. And the third section is about guest season. And it's just the best.

[11:19]

So, without further ado, Here we go. It's kind of long, but so worth it. The mode of discipline shifts considerably in moving from the fall and winter practice periods to the spring and summer work periods and guest season. From April through September, formal practice is reduced considerably. There is usually one hour of zazen in the morning at 5.50 a.m., followed by a 20-minute chanting service and a 40-minute period of zazen in the evening. All meals are informal. While schedules vary by area, students typically work around seven hours per day. Students work on crews dedicated to caring for the guests and maintaining Tassajara. The main work areas include the kitchen, dining room, office, cabins, grounds, maintenance, and administration or senior staff. Most summer work positions are intense and physically, interpersonally, and or emotionally demanding.

[12:28]

The guest season is at once a legacy of the place as a beloved hot springs resort before Tazahara was acquired by San Francisco Zen Center, a vital stream of economic support for the organization, an entry gate for new members of the community, and a field of practice which engages in a dynamic and valuable interplay with the monastic training periods. Nice. The question of economic support and the issue of interfacing with larger communities of lay supporters and practitioners is shared by all Soto training centers in the West. Rather than fully ordained monastics engaging in training with the support of a lay community, Tassajara may be thought of as a community of hybrid lay monastic practitioners who engage training mainly supported by income from the summer guest season. In one sense, Tassajara does not function on donations but on guest fees. In another sense, the summer guests become Tassajara's householder community of generosity and support.

[13:37]

And practitioners who assume this perspective tend to to embrace summer practice. You like that? Shall I read that one again? In another sense, the summer guests become Tassajara's householder community of generosity and support, and practitioners who assume this perspective tend to embrace summer practice. The summer guest season may be viewed as a potentially corrupting accommodation or as a skillful means, expediently adapting the ancient practice of settling in one place for the rains retreat and wandering from place to place for the remainder of the year. At Tassajara, rather than leave the monastery to wander the world, the world is invited into the monastery. Year-round practitioners at Tassajara follow the rhythm of the seasons by staying put while the world comes to the monastery in the form of volunteer workers, new students, and guests.

[14:48]

This is Tassajara's way of being neither too far nor too near, neither separate nor entirely in the world. Economic necessity opens into an annual rhythm defined by contrasts of cold and heat, stillness and activity. turning within and turning without. It is uniquely challenging and also, for Tassajara practice, uniquely beneficial, enriching and deepening. Well, the man has a way with words. Yeah, that's really well said. And I'm so grateful that Charlie said we could print that and put it in the library. Because for me, that sums it up better than I've ever heard anybody say it. I think that Leslie and I, people I know, we talk about Tassajara this way, and I think Charlie also, but he writes it so well. Year-round practitioners at Tassajara follow the rhythm of the seasons by staying put while the world comes to the monastery in the form of volunteer workers, new students, and guests.

[16:04]

This reminds me, I had a similar thought, very similar. About 17 years ago, there's a thing that continuing monks, Tassajara, can do, which we will definitely do this summer. If you're a continuing monk, it's not your first summer, but you continued from previous practice period, you have the opportunity to teach a one-off class. So... I took advantage of that, and I taught a class, a one-hour class, on the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is, I think, one of the longest scriptures in Buddhism, in Mahayana Buddhism. It's kind of enormous, so it was kind of humorous that I was going to teach a one-hour class about the sutra, but what I did was I kind of took it down, down, down, And mostly I've talked about the last chapter, which is called the Entry into the Realm of Reality, Entry into the Dharmakaya, which is a lovely story about a boy monk.

[17:19]

I don't know how old he's supposed to be, but he's a boy named Sudhana. And Sudhana goes on this pilgrimage and he goes from place to place to place and he meets teacher after teacher after teacher. And on his pilgrimage, The teachers that he meets, they're not only Buddhist teachers and they're not only Buddhist monks or nuns. They're men and women. They're not even all human. Some of the teachers he meets are like spirits or merchants or yogis, not necessarily other religions. But each one he meets is has got something very specific to teach him. And each teaching is very significant. When it gets to the end of that section, that teacher says, well, I can tell you about la la la la, but if you want to know about such and such, you should go and see this person. And then he goes on to the next one. And this goes on and on.

[18:20]

53 different teachers. And I say to my class, that's just like guest season. Only, unlike Sudhana, we don't have to go anywhere. Because not only do guests and new students and volunteer workers come, but all kinds of different teachers. And not only Buddhist teachers, all kinds of different teachers and body workers and various sages and seekers all come to Tassajara all summer long. It's amazing to me, the richness of it. I just, I can't get over it. And some of them are sitting next to you on the top. There was a student one year who, at the end of the summer, told me that they had had practice discussion or dokasan with a teacher or practice leader, different teacher,

[19:30]

practice leader, 50 different teachers or practice leaders. Sudhana, 53. Pretty close. Interesting parallel. Not that I'm recommending that. That seems a little over the top to me. But you could. You could. And, you know, my generalized advice, I guess, is take advantage of of all the teachings. Take advantage of the richness of it and, you know, take care of yourself. Don't titrate it. I mean, do titrate it. Don't try to do everything. I always say that every guest season. You know, if you try to do everything, go to every class, meet every teacher, you're going to make yourself nuts. You've got to have a day off once in a while. But you could. Another thing that continuing students can do is offer zazen instruction.

[20:39]

And we offer that every day, all guest season long. We get to share our practice. And if you're a continuing monk, you haven't yet been trained to offer zazen instruction, I will train you if you are interested. And it's a wonderful opportunity to share your practice. And we do stone office talks three times a week. So these opportunities are amazing. And I will do some zazen instruction myself. And as some of you know, I did zazen instruction for the new Alzheimer's students who arrived on the 6th. One thing I say in zazen instruction a lot is that although... The summer practice is very different from the formal cloistered monastic training periods. The forms that we observe in and around the Zen Do and during Zazen are the same.

[21:41]

It's the same. We are Zen training monastery all year round. All year round. So you can think of this as the summer practice period. And you may sometimes hear me refer to it as the summer practice period. This is a training period, and the forms are the same. One thing about practicing in Tassajara this long is I have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, if you will, the neighborhood being like, you know, Monterey County, Big Sur, Carmel, the environs and a longtime friend of mine who lives in Carmel Valley and comes to Tassajara every year and is a dear friend and benefactor of Tassajara.

[22:47]

I was having dinner at their house and quite enjoying ourselves and he was asking me about Tassajara. He was asking me in terms of what he'd heard about changes at the Esalen Institute over on the Big Sur Coast, which I don't know if you know. I don't know, actually. I didn't go to the last meeting of the Four Winds Council where we'd get together and talk about things. So I don't really know, but he had heard rumors that Esalen was changing their focus, that they were now going to be devoted to... catering to and interfacing with the tech industry, tech culture, Silicon Valley, and kind of serving that, making that their focus, which I don't know if that's true or not, actually. But he'd heard these rumors. And what he wanted to know was, his concern was, he said, Greg, you think Tassajara will go that route?

[23:53]

And I laughed so hard. I said, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not going to do anything like that. This... Hey. Come back here. I'm sorry if I scared you people in podcast land. We're back. He said... I said, when I finished laughing, when I finished laughing, I said, no, don't worry, we're going to stick with this medieval Chinese thing that we've been doing for the last 50 years. It's working out for us. That's another thing Leslie says. It's effective. It's effective. The way this whole operation is set up,

[24:58]

pretty effective and pretty important, I think, because we are living in pretty scary times, I think. I think a lot of people are pretty scared or freaking out. I could mention off-the-cuff anthropogenic climate change. Mass species extinction. Cartoonishly bizarre wealth inequality. Anybody scared yet? And we could go on, right? So it's really important that when that's happening, when people are freaking out,

[26:01]

and succumbing to despair or cynicism or paralysis, that there are people who are willing and able to practice offering the gift of non-fear, abhayadana. Wouldn't be a Dharma talk if I didn't lay a Sanskrit word on you. abhaya dana. This is the mudra of non-fear, abhaya mudra. Non-fear. Confidence. How do we do that? Well, the answer is in the question. We do it. We do it together as a sangha. So this summer.

[27:02]

We will continue our book club, which was a great success in the 100th Ango. And we read Stamped from the Beginning by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and discussed that book. And now I have a book. I'm very excited and other people in Zen Center are studying this book. Here it is. Awakening Together. by Larry Yang so this is going to be the book for the book club this summer which will be meeting provisionally every other Monday night and the stone office is going to get a clipboard and a sign up sheet if you want to buy this wholesale they'll take your order and when everyone we're satisfied that everyone has a sign up who wants to we'll make a book order and get it for any summer student who wants to purchase it wholesale.

[28:06]

And then we'll get going and read it together. And I'm not reading ahead of it because that's not how book clubs work. Well, I don't care if other people want to read ahead of it. But I like to just read up to what we're expecting as a book club. So I've only read a little of the preface, and I'm loving it. Larry Yang says, We learn... not only from our personal individual lives, but also from the rich gathering together of our collective experiences. When we tread any path, start any project, embark on any journey, it is often easier to do it in the company of friends and associates than alone. We learn both individually and collectively. This is why the Buddha offered the teachings of Sangha, of community, because there is both wisdom and freedom in exploring our collective experience. One of my intentions with this book is to explore our awakening together within the multiple experiences of community and communities, however we choose to define them.

[29:19]

The experience of community brings with it complex issues of belonging. Who is included? What power dynamics are involved? and how any community defines its collective identity through the individual identities that form it. I believe not only that the teachings of the Buddha help us navigate those complex issues, but that such complexities are embedded in the Dharma itself. So that, as I see it, is what we're up to at Tassajara. joyous community of practitioners supporting each other, giving each other the gift of non-fear. That for me is what defines a successful guest season.

[30:21]

The money is ancillary. It's a side effect. If we have A successful guest season is because we have a joyous community. If we have a joyous community, it means we're supporting each other. If we're supporting each other, it's easy to support the guests. It's easy to practice dana. To do that, cultivate a warm heart. Suzuki Roshi emphasized in zazen, cultivating a warm heart, warm-hearted practice. Also, Stacey told me that I don't talk about warm-hearted practice enough, that I should probably mention every time I give a Dharma talk. So here we go. This is how we do that. When you sit zazen, it's important to bring a warm-hearted feeling to your practice.

[31:24]

And very easy for me to find That's the Suzuki Roshi quote, talking about warm-hearted practice. And here's one I found I liked a lot. He says, don't say Manjushri is here or there or in the middle of the Zendo. It's when you do things with a warm heart, by your warm-hearted mind. That is actual practice. That is how you take care of things. That is how you talk with people. This is the Soto Zen spirit of Men Mitsu no Kafu, which Sojin Roshi translates as, just take very good care of whatever is in front of you. With your warm heart, take very good care of whatever or whoever is in front of you. That's the way to practice. That's how you take care of things.

[32:25]

That's how you talk with people. So this is my ninth guest season as Tanto, and it's also my last guest season as Tanto. So it's kind of poignant and lovely that when I finish this guest season in September, I'll be shifting out of that seat

[33:31]

And Hakusho Yuan Ostlen from Green Gulch and his partner Marie will be coming down to Tassajara probably sometime around the end of July. And they'll be training and doing whatever, some practice positions and living and practicing with us. And then Hakusho will take up the position of Tanto. in September, at the beginning of the fall practice period. So that's poignant and quite lovely, actually, quite lovely. So my last guest season as Tanto, I have a request for you. Please take very good care of each other. This is the way to practice. Who are all these people? All these people are spiritual friends, mentors, guides, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

[34:44]

That Jukai we did the night before last, so lovely, really wonderful thing. I feel like when we do precept ceremony, everybody receives the precepts together. And I think many people's favorite part of the ceremony is at the end when the ordinees do last three bows and on the bottom of the bow, they say, thank you very much. Right? You like that part? I think everybody likes that part. So, you know, thank you very much. Good night. 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.

[35:50]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[36:04]

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