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. Good morning. I guess my favorite writing by Dogen, not only is it the most accessible, I mean, it's the one where he's the most straightforward with the story that he's telling, with the concepts he's explaining. But it's also the one where he comes to my mind the closest to talking about love in this tradition particularly at the end when it comes to the concept of sanshin and I always come back to it eventually you know it might take years for me to circle back to meaning it you know the way we do with certain things like zen mind beginner's mind you know

[01:29]

just wait another 10 years and pick it up again, and it's totally different. It's not totally different. I'm totally different. And so whatever meaning I glean from it is also new to me. So from the Tenzo Kyokun, it is written in the Changwon Chingui, that the function of the Tenzo is to manage meals for the monks. The work has always been carried out by teachers settled in the way and by others who have aroused the Bodhisattva spirit within themselves. Such a practice requires exerting all your energies. If a man entrusted with the work lacks such a spirit, or a woman, then he will endure. unnecessary hardships and suffering that have no value in this pursuit of the way.

[02:34]

Again, even, you know, when we talked about the monkey, this is kind of addressed to monastics, but always there's a way in for those of us who are not. I had a conversation, was it yesterday, the other day? Time doesn't mean anything. About my old job. And I think I told you at some point during this time together that I used to be a worker for social services. I used to be a case manager. And I did all these applications for benefits. Every benefit there is in the world.

[03:34]

I had a tough time at that job. I remember when I accepted the job, I had been offered that job, the social service job, and a job at a library. Social services, of course, paid more than the library. Also, what was in my mind is, oh, I can help people. And that I knew what it meant to help people and be useful in society. Unfortunately, I don't think I was very good at that job. I generally like people. Most of the people I meet, you know, I enjoy them.

[04:40]

It's very rare. I don't think there are people who are completely evil or completely good. All people are interesting, complicated. So I thought I was the people person around the time that I was working there. That was a big catchphrase. I'm a people person. Whatever that means. It doesn't mean anything. And so I went into this job and I worked there for 20 years trying my best to be a people person, helping people, making things better in the world. But what I was really doing was taking this sort of prescribed way of helping people. You know, we think that jobs like social services and all that, you know, are automatically, you know, made to help, intending to help.

[05:46]

But there's a lot of politics behind everything that comes, you know, in this society that are not necessarily exactly what we think. And it took me a few years to figure that out. And so I spent years of frustration doing intakes and doing applications and sitting across from people in dire straits. From a young woman who lost her job and sitting there with two children and her disabled sister's child. trying to make it in the world, just trying to feed herself and these babies. To, you know, someone who just had a catastrophic diagnosis, whose insurance is not going to cover it, even though they've been working hard all their lives.

[06:55]

And about to go bankrupt, you know, after all, you know, this... doing what she thought or what she was told she was supposed to do all her life. To refugees that just got off a plane from Sudan, wearing coats that, you know, children wearing coats that are too small, who've never worn coats before. And who are about to, you know, sitting in the winter of North Carolina, as mild as it is, and are about to be sent off to Minnesota because North Carolina is not going to take care of them. So there was a whole system to send them, you know, plane ticket and everything. How much would that cost to another state?

[07:59]

This state didn't have to worry about them. And I was a part of that. I spent a lot of time, wasted a lot of time, you know, in the bathroom, the staff bathroom, crying because I felt so helpless and so powerless. Meanwhile, these people outside needed something, and now I'm feeling sorry for me. I had a supervisor once, a young lady, beautiful young lady, who when she did my assessment, you know, for a big year, you know, how much raise are you going to get? Told me that I was not sympathetic. And I didn't know what she meant.

[09:00]

I was going home. burnt out, heartbroken, in complete despair over this system I was part of. And yet she said I had no sympathy. And I didn't argue with her. I couldn't, no word come out of my mouth. Because if I didn't know on the surface that she was right, I knew underneath. Doing a job and not seeing what you're doing because the wind is blowing so hard and knocking you off balance. The wind of emotion of the ego that says I'm supposed to be able to do this. The ego that says that I am helping.

[10:01]

The ego that says, you know, that I am failing to help. All of those things. When it's just blowing you off your little pedestal up there. All day long. You know. It's not that we're not supposed to have emotions. It's not that I'm not supposed to feel for those children sitting there. They don't smile. They don't speak. They're not making a sound. Social services is, for the most part, a riot every day because people come in and they don't have any place. Those children have been sitting in the lobby, in the waiting room for hours. You better not tell them to sit down and be quiet. How can they? And yet there were children that came in that were stiff, that were frozen, that were so traumatized.

[11:09]

You didn't even have to ask the question, are you okay? Because they're not. And then all you can say at the end of that conversation is, you'll hear from us in 30 days. send this in and you'll hear from us in 30 days, maybe 90. And in doing my assessment, you know, my supervisor, she could see all this, you know. Not saying she was a nice person, she was an efficient lady. And she needed her, she needed to get her team together and get us done. But all that wind blowing, you know, took me off my balance. And I couldn't stand upright and be what I needed to be for those people. I went to Zazen on Sunday nights down in the city.

[12:20]

And I went up to Asheville to do my sessions with Tejo. And I was, you know, trying so hard. This is going to help me. This is what this is supposed to do. This has got to help me, you know, be stronger. Be more clear about things. Clarity was a big word. And, you know, my vocabulary still is. But, you know, whatever. And I thought that's what... this practice was supposed to do. And it wasn't until I laid that all down and figured out, you know, that it's not just the sitting. The work that you do in the world is also practice.

[13:22]

And the attitude that you come to that work with, is the quality of your practice. Just like the Tenzo in the kitchen. How are you going to feed somebody if you can't even stay at the stove hot as it is? Years later, I went to the Nisoto and I was disappointed because I was assigned to Tenzo Rio. And in my mind, you know, I wouldn't have said this, but when I thought I was going to the Nisoto, to Ango, and Nisoto, if I need to explain it, is a women's convent.

[14:24]

Nagoya, I thought, you know, oh, I'm going to get the opportunity to go in here and really get the forms down. I'm going to be, you know, they put me in cheating, Rio. I'll finally get, you know, my cheating skills together. If they put me in, you know, Rio, I'll get those skills together. Because in my tiny temple, you know, the opportunity to really, you know, practice with those forms wasn't even... You know, possible. You know, not really because it's only two of us. So I felt I was missing that. And they put me in the kitchen. Now, I had been tenzo de facto for most of the time that I was at Great Dream. And so I'd been in the kitchen a lot. Part of, you know, searching for me was I had to cook. Teja would do breakfast and I would do lunch and dinner because they were the more, you know, complicated meals.

[15:32]

And so I was kind of like over it already. They put me in the kitchen. And at Great Tree, you know, in the kitchen, I was competent. I'm not a good cook. I cook something and I don't care if they have a recipe there. You know, it's going to come out different every time. For whatever reason. I can't even explain it. It's always different, you know. Carrot soup tastes one way, one week when I do it, a couple weeks later. Is this the same soup? You know, yeah. I'm not really consistent. I went to the New Soto and got thrown in the kitchen. And it was... The hardest work I've ever done. It was, there were times when we were in that kitchen for 17 hours. And from, you know, from the beginning of the day to the end.

[16:35]

And somewhere in there, we got shoved into lectures. We had to do our part in terms of the different jobs that, you know, people took turns with. whether it was opening the gate in the morning, banjo in the, you know, at morning service, something that I remember is called opening the pillow at night where you went and you went around chanting the heart sutra and you closed the gate. You know, we all had to take care of those, you know, wake up bell, all of that, you know, squeezed in between, you know, taking care of that kitchen, cleaning up the dishes, wiping the floor, washing the plastic bags, feeding the cat. It was a lot of stuff, you know. And I was really disappointed, and I was always really tired.

[17:36]

And, you know, just to show you, by the time I got there, I was still finding, you know, myself in bathrooms, weeping. You know, my body's so tired. And I'm far away from home. And, yeah. And I don't speak the language. And that was blowing me around, you know, for at least a month out of those five. But somewhere in there, and this is the beauty of Sangha, in working with all those women, who were going through the same thing I was. Not necessarily exactly, but the same thing. They were away from home. Some of them away from children. Having to do this hard work all day long, every day. No break. No break.

[18:42]

And something about that doing it together in monastic practice, you figure it out easier. That's why being in lay life is harder than monastic practice because, yeah, there's a tune there that you're going to catch on to. And I figured out that everything that I was doing, was in service. I wasn't there to learn how to cook. I wasn't there to learn how to ring the bell. I wasn't there to learn, you know, the sutras, to chant the sutras, though that was part of, you know, this is a school. You know, Yisoto is a school. That's on the surface what they're there to teach us.

[19:42]

But in all of those things, learning to do those things, it's, really in service to the Sangha. When the time drum goes in the morning, and it's telling the time, it's telling the time to the whole temple, not just me. It's telling the Tenzo that this is, it's seven, And three quarters. And the Tenzo knows what time it is. A service to the Tenzo and knows they have to, they have so much more time to get the meal together. You know, when we ring the bells during service, those bells are beautiful, but they're not just music.

[20:47]

Sit up, sit down. It's move on to the next thing. It's bow. And really what we're learning to do is not just to make them sound pretty, of course you all know this, but to be consistent and to help each other get through this service together in harmony. In the monastery, one day you're the penzo, and the next day you're the bathroom. You're cleaning the bathroom. And there's no difference between those two, because the value to the people that we're, to the sangha, to the people we're here with, is important. Not the person, not me, but the person.

[21:48]

Please keep me on time because I don't have a clock. So that's what I got from that practice there in that kitchen. And I look back and I, you know, what if I had that understanding that it wasn't me? Because even in the realm of social services, it was all... you know, rotating around this empty ego person. And nothing got done. When I got back to Gray Tree and I truly stepped into the role of Tenzo with that gracious, that I received from those women at the Nisoto. It was different.

[22:56]

I didn't come back with any recipes. I had some ideas of, you know, some different foods and stuff like that, but I didn't come back with a book of recipes. I came back and I wasn't any more skillful at cooking. But there was a mindfulness that what I was doing this for. I was making food for my teacher. I was making food for the people that came to Sashim and were, you know, working so hard to really understand the practice. And that was giving them nourishment, be able to sit there for those eight, nine periods and get through it. healthy food in their stomach. I learned how to cook. One of the things that would always drive me crazy is because, you know, when you're cooking for not even a lot of people, but for different people, people who have different needs, gluten-free, dairy-free, it's like, oh my God, you know, 50 cookbooks trying to figure this out.

[24:13]

When I got back, I didn't need a cookbook. I just figured it out. I just paid attention. I tasted it. When something didn't work, you know, I just tried until it worked, you know. I was taking care of the food much better. Back in the Minnesota, one of the things about food was that we had to, when they had new rice, they got rice from the farm, and you had to still pick out pebbles and bugs and stuff. And that was like almost a meditation in that. That didn't happen at Great Tree because, you know, we get it off the shelf and it's already clean. But, you know, just paying attention to what food does and how it reacts when you cook it. How not to, you know, make people sick and try to keep everything clean. You know, just paying attention.

[25:15]

And the odd thing was, like I said, I can't cook. I'm not even going to claim that now. But something happened, and people kept saying, oh, this is so good. I love this soup. Still, you know, didn't taste the same way from one day to the other. But, you know, whatever it happened that day, you know, I was able to put my mind to it and really address it, you know, really take care of it. well enough. And that's not some bragging or anything because there were plenty of times when it didn't work. When I didn't work. But I could see it. And there was a great joy in doing that. I suddenly loved to cook. I loved to experiment. You know, I learned to make mac with no cheese, and it actually tasted like something to me, you know, and other people liked it.

[26:20]

That was more important. And, you know, I learned, you know, what Tejo could tolerate in terms of, you know, she's, I used to think that Tejo liked bland food, and it is kind of bland. It's like, because it's, you know, a spice. There's a aesthetic of spice, you know, for different people. And hers is a little different. But I learned to take that into account when I'm doing it. You know, at least a little less food doing that, you know. I learned to use the ends of vegetables and make stock, vegetable stock from it.

[27:22]

And it became almost a hobby. Something so simple. And maybe... You know, the creativity that I gained from being at the Nisoto and just paying attention and being mindful and being, you know, present with it and understanding that this was not for, not for cooking and beginning great cook, but for this triple treasure. And maybe if I had that same mind way back when, it may not have fixed everything, but it may have, you know, made a little bit more, might have seen a little bit more joy in the fact that of being there really for people.

[28:44]

I might not have stayed at that job so long. I might have found some other way, you know, because, you know, the toxic things in our culture around taking care of people who are poor, and I'm not going to say what else, because there's really no such thing as poor, very rich, you know, society. When there's a pile of stuff over there, nobody should really be poor. There's some greedy folks. But how can we be poor and have so much? But that's another story. I could go off on that. Now I have time. It says in the Tenzo Kyokun, maintain an attitude that tries to build great temples from ordinary greens that expounds Buddha Dharma through the most trivial activity. Whatever my job is, my job is, whatever my work is, that attitude, whatever I'm handed, whether it's, you know, crazy policy or, you know, withered greens or, you know, a bell to ring.

[30:08]

treated as if it's just another jewel in the net that we're treated with as if it was the most I don't want to say why do I go off track. the great jewel that it is, and let it help in the way it's meant to help. It's never ordinary. It's ordinary, but it's not. It's still of value. It still has the power to transform

[31:16]

And to love. And caring. I'm panicking because I don't know what time it is. But anyway. 10.52. So I got to 11. Oh my God. I'm not going to do that. Thank you. And what I'm talking about here, if you haven't got it already, of course you have, are essentially the magnanimity, and I can't say that word very well, but to stand upright in the wind, to not let despair

[32:23]

emotion, even, you know, your sympathy, blow me down, roll me all over the place, and just feel myself getting battered while I'm not helping anything in that state. Magnumity, I kind of found in the sisterhood of that sangha where we were all hired. We were all putting in this great effort. We were all dealing with our delusions together. And that's kind of, like I said, it's kind of easy when everybody's on the same page like here. It's not so easy. When you're out in the world working at social services, and some parts of that world are working against the good we're trying to do.

[33:40]

And there's also parental mind, which we sometimes forget. I think that's, you know, in all of us. We all know that in order to help ourselves, we have to help others. Some of the loneliness I think that's in this society is, and this feeling of powerlessness, is that we don't know how useful we are to other people. even in the slightest, tiniest ways. For me, the way to kind of break the loneliness that, yeah, I sometimes feel is to get up and not so much, you know, seek to do something for myself.

[34:49]

You know, we had this whole, you know, culture of, well-being and wellness and all of that. And all of that is wonderful. And all of that is necessary and needed. Definitely go to that spa if you need to go. But that's very lonely. When I get up from the spa bed, it'd be nice to, you know, go home and take a little, you know, page from the massage therapist and give my sister a back rub and make that contact and make myself understand that I am capable of making things better even in the smallest way.

[35:52]

It's the you know It's a balm for that helplessness. Sometimes feel. Or just to go out, you know, and, you know, work at a soup kitchen for a day. Or, I don't know. Is it an elderly relative, you know, these are not small nothings. This is Sangha. This is a treasure. This is what can help with the burnout sometimes. It feels like, it seems like you're, oh, but I'm giving some more energy. I don't have enough energy. The energy is there. It'll come, you know, with that contact, with that connection into being.

[36:53]

It goes both ways. And that is the joy. The joy of this practice. The joy of being Tenzo with a pile of dishes. You know, it's got to get through, you know, before it's Tazen time, you know, and somehow you do. And there's clean dishes the next morning for the sangha, for the treasure. It's hard to keep thinking about it that way, because we do get tired. These bodies are so delicate. I'm going to read one more thing, because... The many rivers which flow into the ocean become the one taste of the ocean.

[38:08]

When they flow into the pure ocean of the Dharma, there are no such distinctions as delicacies or plain food. There is just one taste, and it is the Buddha Dharma, the world itself as it is. I had a... Ango teacher, Taiken Yokohama. Taiken-san. And I was scared to death of that man. He could be very tough. But there was one point where we were all standing in the room at Ango and he said, one taste, one taste. And he tried to explain it. And he's like, you know, we're all together here, one taste. And I didn't know what he was talking about then, but at some point I went back to the Tenzo Jokun, and there it was.

[39:15]

That's what this process, this practice is about, whether you're a monastic or whether you're out in the street. And I keep saying out in the street because I don't know. I'm thinking of the streets of the Bronx. When you're out there in the world taking care of business, the attitude to embody Tanshin magnanimity, you know what I'm saying? care, parental mind, and joy. It's a little, it's the kind of, well, it is connected to the Brahma Viharas and all kinds of things in the sutras.

[40:19]

And that's, I think, Dogen's way of saying and not saying love. Or maybe it's just our translation because, you know, we're so, tough and heady and intellectual. How about love, you know, a little bit. So that's what I have to say today, and I hope I haven't run over too much. 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 Dharma.

[41:10]

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