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. Welcome, everyone. All. Welcome, Echoes. is make yourselves comfortable. moment to be here now I want to talk about wholeness can you hear me any louder you're welcome I hope you can't hear me

[01:48]

Over there? Okay. We look at this world and we talk about these different lands, these different continents. We say there's seven continents. And yet we know they're all connected underneath one world we see their shapes as recognizable we think they're these fixed things and yet it depends on the ocean As the ocean levels rise and fall, the contours change.

[02:58]

The land will take on different shapes. Not a fixed thing. We've divided up the ocean and talk about these different seas. But there is only one ocean. It's all connected. We can talk about, we can't talk about, but I will try to point to the ocean of reality. What we call the ultimate. Maybe some have come to call it Buddha nature, or others God, or the absolute.

[04:05]

Some of the greatest Mahayana scriptures, the Lotus Sutra and the Flower Order Sutra, again and again, refer to the inconceivable, cannot be conceived of, cannot be grasped, held onto. The name is not a thing. It goes beyond. It is everywhere. and always present, available. Sometimes I think we get confused, and we might talk about my Buddha nature, or your Buddha nature, or we might say the rock has Buddha nature.

[05:14]

Our founder Domi says very clearly that Everything is Buddha nature. We are all Buddha nature, not separate. Somehow, for longer than we can remember, we've been cutting up the ultimate in our minds. into me and you, self and other. Happiness, sadness. Sometimes we talk about these worldly winds.

[06:21]

It was like praise and blame, fame and fortune. And these winds, these surfaces, the ocean gets whipped up into waves. And we think there's birth. Something has come into existence that didn't exist before. When we make distinctions, we identify with particular things as a particular way. And everything is flowing through the sound of the blue jay, sound of the voice, feelings in the body. thoughts in the mind.

[07:24]

When asked to sum up the teaching, as simple as possible, Suzuki Roshi said, everything changes. When the wave ceases to be a wave, we think, we call it death. The way is still the water. The way was always the water. Dogen quotes it this way. For those of you who were present this morning, we chanted this. The way is basically perfect and all-pervading.

[08:26]

How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma vehicle is free and untraddled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe that it means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice? And yet, and yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, the slightest distinction, the way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

[09:36]

There was a boy once by the name of Shane whose father was spending time with my mother. They moved into the house that I grew up in, and he was living in the room that I grew up in, but I was off to college at Peace Corps. And when his father died, my mom basically adopted his kids. And when Shane was 19, he was diagnosed with leukemia. It took a while to figure out what was going on. And he died just after his 21st birthday. Many of us here work in a hospital and we see all kinds of things that, like my brother, the boy I came to call my brother, Shane, we could think of and we might label as a tragedy.

[11:25]

Somehow it seems wrong. I thought his life was cut short. Thanks to my practice, my study of the Buddha way and practice opportunities afforded me working in a hospital with people going through the same kind of thing. I have come to feel and see and trust that life, the capital L, is complete every moment in all of us, in all its manifestations. It always was and it always is.

[12:30]

In a different fascicle, Genjo Koan, Dogen says, Apsh abides in the phenomenal expression of Apsh, which fully includes future and past. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after a disaster, you do not return to birth after death. This being so is an established way in Buddhidharma to deny that birth turns into death. Accordingly, birth is understood as no birth. It is an unshapable teaching in Buddhist discourse that death does not turn into birth. Accordingly, death is understood as no death. This is the part I want to highlight.

[13:41]

Birth is an expression complete this moment. Death is an expression complete this moment. They're like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring. nor summer, the end of spring. Our lives are always changing. There's the ultimate and relative. Our practice is to touch and hold and honor both. So when we're faced with a parent losing their child, or a young child losing their parent. We group them with compassion, we meet them where they are.

[14:45]

We don't simply tell them, it's okay, there's no such thing as birth and death. We hold them, we cry with them, we meet them compassionately. and in our own practices in order to touch into this truth of the ultimate. That we are all arising and falling away, moment by moment, complete, just as it is, nothing lacking. Our little minds can sit here and imagine all kinds of stuff that's laughing, that it wants, that it thinks it needs. OK. Life, which you are not separate from, we are all bound up in this together, and not just us humans.

[16:00]

all the animals, and not just all the animals, all the plants, and not just all the animals and plants, all the rocks, the earth, the water, the air, all the space and time. We are never separate. That separateness It's a delusion. That's the teaching. It just feels that it's real. A little courage in it. The way we practice faith in Buddhism is to start by going, hmm, okay. I hear we're not separate. And then the practice becomes to verify that for yourself. Stillness and silence help.

[17:10]

We can see more clearly the ways in which we separate ourselves out, clear ourselves above, below, other, external, internal. Is that so? What is freedom? Carl Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. Gogan said, take the backward step. Turn the light within. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. The self.

[18:12]

We start by looking at this little self. Little S, little life. What we think is separate. And the more we do, we start to see and fall into the big S self. The big L, life. And we drop away body and mind. We drop away these distinctions, these ideas that don't hold up on your shrivel. This separation, you can hear my voice. You can see me. This reflection enters your eyes. You have perceptions and it changes. There's no fixed thing. We're all meeting. We're all meeting. We're all interconnected. We're all influencing each other. The earth is holding us all up right now. The air is flowing into our bodies and back out moment after moment and into each other's bodies.

[19:25]

Everything is in flux and change. I invite you to fall back into the wholeness of this present moment. Stop seeking for things to be other than they are. To rest in the stillness of compassion and wisdom. to be present for your life, for this one life, just as it is. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[20:29]

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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[20:51]

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