Love the true body of faith. Good morning. A long time ago we used to have to yell, can you hear me in the back? But now we have this excellent sound system I can just whisper. Is that okay? Before I continue, I want to confess my misdeed of calling people into gaso during the food offering, the Buddha tray offering. So that's not the custom here. And so when do we actually bring out our bowls?

[01:03]

There's the food offering and what's the signal for bringing out our bowls? After the second bump bump. After the second roll down. Okay. I was just outside communing with the Quercus agrifolia and the Ramnus californica. The Narcissus, the Rosemary, right outside the Zendo here. Beautiful sunlit day. We must have some good reason to be indoors. Of course, this room is built of sunlight and earth with the help of water and atmosphere.

[02:17]

These great wooden beams across the ceiling are put together from the efforts of pine trees and fir trees, redwoods. floor that we sit on, comes from Douglas Fir, again composed of sunlight and earth. This morning in Zazen I said our practice of Zazen is to make a complete effort, wholehearted effort of body, mind and spirit. And our effort is actually the same as the effort of the oak and the Douglas fir. Our practice of shikantaza or just sitting.

[03:21]

We say just sitting or nothing but sitting. Not adding any props. Not adding any techniques. not adding any idea of getting someplace else. It is very similar to the practice of the oak tree simply receiving sunlight. Of course, if we're if we're thinking that we need to get rid of props and get rid of techniques and that itself is not what we mean by shikantaza. The effort to get rid of something would be actually contrary to our bodhisattva vow of awakening with all beings.

[04:28]

So given that We have no props and no techniques. We have props and techniques as needed. And Shikantaza can include all the resources that we can bring as needed. So among our props and techniques, we have many traditions, many forms and many Zen stories.

[05:35]

One of my favorite stories is the story of Deshan and the old woman. And many of you have heard this story and many of you have probably heard it many times. So see if you can listen with a fresh mind. So this is in ninth century China. Deshan was a scholar monk. He was well versed in the Vinaya and well versed in the Diamond Sutra and wrote commentaries on the Diamond Sutra. in the north of Sichuan. And when he heard that the Zen teachers in the south were saying that it's possible to realize the Buddha's mind in this lifetime, he was upset and felt some righteous indignation that people were belittling the Buddha Dharma.

[06:46]

So it's a thought that it was clear to him that even if people would practice many many kalpas millions of years taking great care to observe all the details of mindfulness throughout the day for millions of years even then they would not attain the Buddha way so he felt that he needed to go and straighten out these people and their delusion. And so he traveled with his commentaries in his backpack. And at some point he came to a crossroads. And at the crossroads there was a little kiosk, a little stand with an old woman who was selling dim sum and tea. So he went and set down his backpack and said he was interested in having some refreshment.

[07:57]

And the old woman looked him over and said, I wonder what you have in that backpack. And he said, well, I have commentaries on the Diamond Sutra. teacher and a scholar of the Diamond Sutra. And she said, oh, is that so? In that case, I have a question for you. And if you can answer it correctly, I'll give you my dim sum and tea free. And if you can't answer it correctly, then you'll have to go elsewhere. So he said, okay, that's fine. And she said, in the Diamond Sutra, it says that past mind cannot be grasped. Future mind cannot be grasped.

[09:02]

Present mind cannot be grasped. So I ask you, scholar monk, with which mind will you refresh yourself with my dim sum? And Deshawn was speechless. In his hesitation, according to some versions of this story, she said, you know, there's a Zen teacher not so far away from here. You might go see if he can help you. And to Deshawn's credit, he... thought maybe he could use a little guidance. And so he went to visit Long Tan. Long Tan means dragon pond or dragon marsh.

[10:06]

And you can still see by Deshan's attitude in his approach to Lung Than, he says, when he arrived at the Dharma Hall with Lung Than, he says, the name Lung Than is greatly renowned, but here on arriving, there's no pond and I see no dragon. And Lung Than simply says, You now have met Lung Tan. So no dragon, no pond, Lung Tan. And Deshan stayed for some time, we're not sure how long, and studied with Lung Tan. And then there are various stories from there that I won't go into today.

[11:13]

But eventually Deshan's sincerity led him to become a wonderful Dharma teacher, where he wasn't speechless in the face of a surprising question from an old woman. So what do we have here? We have, in this little story, we have many parts. We have, of course, we have Deshan. And we have his attitude, his righteousness, his conviction that he knew what was correct. And we have the Diamond Sutra. And we have the old woman whose name we don't know. We have her question. We have Deshan's speechlessness.

[12:22]

And we have his sincerity, that he was willing to open up his questioning mind, his mind of inquiry. Whereas before he thought he knew the answers. And then we have dragon pond. No dragon, no pond. So there are many points that we could open up in this one story. Today I want to look a little bit more at the old woman. Years ago I gave a talk here in this hall and I At the conclusion of the talk, I said, then I told the story about my grandmother, actually. At the conclusion of the talk, I said that I felt that it was time, at that time, for men to stop talking and for women to expound the Dharma.

[13:44]

Since then, at San Francisco Zen Center, we've had two women as abbess for a while for two women as the leaders of San Francisco Zen Center at the same time with Blanche Hartman and Linda Ruth Cutts. I don't think that that necessarily means everything is in balance, but that I do feel okay at this point. And I know as the elders discussed whether to invite me to be in the role of Abbot. Part of the deliberation had to do with gender. We have many, say, biases in our culture which distorts our own perceptions from the time we were very young, our deceptions.

[14:44]

As we adopt some of the prevailing notions of our culture, we fail to see things any other way, just as Deshawn could only see things one way until he was stopped with a question. I also want to note that it's Black History Month. We need to have a Black History Month in this country because of the cultural bias and distortion around racism. It's like a hidden wound that needs to be brought to our attention from time to time. And it's, I would say, an extreme example of the kind of distortion that that we call delusion when we say our four vows and we vow to end delusions.

[15:51]

Moment by moment, we may notice some delusions that arise, some that are not so obvious or that are so ingrained. We may not notice until someone really calls it to our attention. In staff meeting this week, we were I sat in the staff meeting and listened to some discussion about how to make this place accessible for someone in a wheelchair. So we tend to build things and assume that, okay, this works for people and not realize that we have a bias until someone calls it to our attention. And then how do we respond? So here in the story we have the old woman. We don't know her name because of the cultural bias in China at the time, I think.

[17:00]

I regard her though as being a real Zen teacher. Someone who has taken her practice Can you imagine working in the dim sum shop day after day, year after year, paying close attention to who comes in the door? Most people who come in the door would have no idea what the old woman is capable of. No idea of how alert she is. To them, she's just the person who takes their order and serves the dim sum. If they're paying attention, they may notice some aliveness or lightness in her. But she's not making a big deal out of it. Only when someone who is ready for her question arrives, does she reveal her deep compassion.

[18:16]

her alertness. A couple of weeks ago, I was at a training for priests, and part of our study was looking at our own spiritual path with a question of who contributed to our own sense that there was such a thing as, say, truth, integrity. sense of deep trust. Many people had very difficult experience with their parents. Didn't feel that they could trust their parents and had good reason not to trust their parents. Many people, some people had not really even lived with their parents growing up. And some people having lived with their parents found it painful and actually frightening and confusing.

[19:29]

It was interesting to me though that most people had some person in their life who they felt they could trust. someone who actually accepted them as the truth of their being. So I thought of that as the bodhisattva grandmother, the bodhisattva grandmother archetype, because there were a number of grandmothers that people mentioned. And I myself am very fortunate to have a grandmother who I didn't recognize really until I'd been practicing Zen for many years, I didn't realize how wise she was and how she had influenced me. I want to tell one story about my grandmother's teaching, which it always moves me when I tell it, so I'll see if I can get through it.

[20:44]

And I feel actually a little more emotional being here. After our opening ceremony, was it yesterday? The day before yesterday when we walked around Green Gulch making offerings at various altars. When I came from out of the office and towards the Zendo and I looked over the Zendo roof and the magnificent pine tree right over here that's that we built the roof, the Ngāva roof around, just was so vivid and powerful. Tears came to my eyes. So my grandmother, Olga, She was pretty quiet most of the time.

[21:54]

This was a German, Germanic patriarchal family. My ancestors came from Switzerland. They were Anabaptists, persecuted in the 16th century and moved around Europe and then into Russia. and then came from Russia to Kansas in 1873. All those years, I think, the head of the household was understood to be the male and the woman had to take some lower position. My grandmother inherited that. She even had to take a lower position to her sons, one of whom was my father.

[23:03]

When I was maybe 13 or 14, we acquired a new riding horse, a mare named Hilarious Lady. And she had been trained as a barrel racing horse He was a quarter horse thoroughbred mix. And I was a relatively inexperienced rider. And my father said, okay, with this new horse you can ride around the yard, which was between the barns and around one shed and past the garden But don't take her out into the pasture because she'll probably get away from you. So I rode around this yard and I rode around this yard and I rode around the yard walking and trotting, walking.

[24:14]

After a while, my grandmother came out and she sat down on a stump that was there at the edge of the garden. And she watched me come by a couple of times. And then she raised her hand and signaled for me to stop and said, why are you just riding around here in the yard? And I said, well, dad said not to take her out into the pasture. He wanted me to just, he thought that would be too much or something. She said, oh, no, I see. So I continued and rode around and around a couple more times. And then she raised her hand again and she said, you know, I've been wondering if there's water in the reservoir in the pasture. And I said, yeah, yes, grandma, I'm sure there's water in the reservoir.

[25:19]

She said, well, I really would like to have it checked. So would you take the horse out and check, see if there's water in the reservoir? So I did a little computation. Dad said not to take the horse out there, but she's dad's mother. So if he has a problem with it, I can put it on her. She knows that dad said not to do it. So I said, okay, so I took the horse out into the pasture and rode out to the reservoir and sure enough, there was water in the reservoir. Then I turned the horse and as I turned her, she took off running. And she had the bit in her teeth

[26:26]

Those of you who are riders know that there's a point if the horse has a bit in their teeth, it was impossible for me to get it out of her teeth. She was racing full tilt and I was yelling, whoa, whoa, whoa, which had absolutely no effect. And then we came to a little creek, the creek that fed into the reservoir And I thought, what's she gonna do? And she leaped the creek. And at that point, I almost lost it. I was riding bareback. Grabbed a handful of her mane and hung on. And she kept running at a full gallop. And then I realized, I was riding. I was flying. a minute maybe, maybe 30 seconds of pure joy.

[27:37]

And then we were coming to the end of the pasture and there was a fence. And I thought, she jumped the creek, what's she gonna do? Is she gonna jump the fence? So I again tried to get her to slow down and had no effect. And we charged right up the fence and I was thinking, she's gonna jump the fence. But instead, she planted all four feet and skidded to a stop. And I slid up over her neck and overhead and landed on the ground right in front of her. And I picked myself up and dusted myself off and she was just standing there, grabbed the reins, found a place where I could get back on and took her in hand this time and rode back to grandma. I said, grandma, there is water in the reservoir.

[28:44]

And she just nodded and said, now you can ride anywhere. So it wasn't until years later that I realized that she understood that I needed to be liberated from my father, who was a very loving person, but also was a kind of a tyrant in a way. So when I think of Deshan and the old woman, in that old woman, I see my grandmother.

[29:56]

So in these Zen stories, it's helpful. Some of them seem arcane and distant, but it's helpful to find some image, some person, some experience in your own life that can bring that story alive for you. So this old woman I think of as being a real Zen student, someone who was practicing mindfulness day by day, moment by moment. But someone who is not limited to some particular form. She was taking her practice right out into the marketplace.

[31:07]

Who knows how many people she helped in myriad ways. to find some balance in their own Dharma path, which is unique to each person. So I want to support each of you to find your own true place in your own Dharma path again and again, because it keeps changing. Sometimes it may be good to have some instruction, some reminder to pay attention to your mudra, some reminder to pay attention to your posture. Sometimes it may be good to chant the metta sutta. Sometimes it may be good to chant the heart sutra.

[32:15]

To understand that you actually can't understand, you can't realize the truth of Avalokitesvara seeing through form and emptiness without a loving heart. Today we're emphasizing zazen. one day sitting until dinner time. So please pour your whole body, mind and spirit into your zazen. With that intention you begin to notice the ways in which you fail to do that. You begin to notice Because of your deep intention, you can notice that there may be some part of you who's not so willing to be present.

[33:26]

That's hesitant or tentative. Faced with the question of your life. There may be some part of you that's speechless like Deshawn. Suzuki Roshi once gave a talk in which he said that any part of your body that's having some trouble sitting can be recognized and all the other parts of your body can bring encouragement and support to that part. So if your knee is not so willing to be fully present, And bring some attention to it. If you have some emotional state that's distressing, bring some attention to it.

[34:35]

But can you do that without being overwhelmed by it? Without being, say, distracted from your intention by it? always have that question and then come back to your stable, centered, grounded quality of mind. And only from there can you actually be very helpful. So I think my grandmother and the old tea woman were working from a grounded, centered pretty clear and loving place. Those qualities are all essential. And those are qualities that we all have. But sometimes they're covered up.

[35:44]

Sometimes we lose that, say, access to those qualities and we need to stop just like Deshaun was invited to stop. So I think I'll stop with that.

[36:14]

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