This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. This is working. Yes. Thank you all for coming. Is anyone here for the first time? Welcome. My name is Gib Robinson, and I'm the head student for this practice period. And the theme for this practice period is Dharma Friendships.

[01:00]

So that's actually what I'm going to talk about tonight. I think I picked up the allergies in the local pollen, so please excuse me if I clear my throat. What I want to start with is a story that was told by one of Suzuki Roshi's very first students, a man named Stan White. And this is what Stan said. One of my first contacts I had with Suzuki Roshi was hearing a lecture in which he said, you know, everyone here is my friend. I hadn't been at Zen Center very long, and that was a very strange thing to hear from this little Japanese man who was a Zen master.

[02:09]

Of course, I respected him for being a Zen master, but I didn't know quite what he meant by friendship. Maybe I didn't quite know what friendship meant. So afterwards, when we were Bowing on the way out of his office, I said, excuse me, if you have a moment, could you please speak with me? And he said, certainly. So I said to him, you said you're my friend. What do you mean by that? He said, you know, Stanley, I look at you and And the little bit I know of you, I know you suffer. So do I. Therefore, we're friends. What a simple explanation.

[03:13]

I think it's easy for us to look past the most basic thing we share with each other. which is our humanity. For Suzuki Roshi, that was sufficient for friendship. So in the broadest sense, Dharma friendship flows out of our shared experience of the truth of suffering, which of course is Buddha's first noble truth. To recognize that, and to begin seeking a way to end suffering, is to enter the path of practice. It is there we begin meeting others traveling the same path, even if they do not consider themselves Buddhists.

[04:20]

So what does that kind of relationship mean? Zen is full of stories about the encounters between practitioners, often in the form of koans. Usually when I read koan stories, I try to understand their meaning and don't focus much attention on the relational part, what's going on between practitioners. the people in the koan. But the relationship information is there, almost always embedded in the context of the story. For instance, there's a very short exchange between our Chinese ancestor, Dongshan, and his teacher, Yunyang.

[05:27]

When Dangshan was about to leave his teacher, Yunnan said to him, after you depart, it will be hard for us to meet. Dangshan's response was, it will be hard for us not to meet. So, what are these two saying to each other? back in the ninth century. It seems to me Yun Yan is imagining how much he will miss this wonderful student, the Dharma heir with whom he has spent years practicing and who is now likely to move to some spot way on another part of China. And what does Dengshan mean?

[06:30]

It will be hard for us not to meet. Maybe something like, I may be separated from you and I may not see you again face to face, but you will always be with me. So this is a very low-key exchange. But I think we can sense some deep feeling between these two. For Yunnan, there is the pain of the physical separation, the loss of an intimate practice companion. For Dengshan, there is the open acknowledgement that his teacher is not just a separate human being, but is also living inside of him and will remain there for the rest of his life.

[07:39]

So this to me feels like love, nurtured over time by a practice in which each practitioner has allowed the other the freedom to come and go, and yet each has allowed himself to be touched to the core, so that in some real sense, they will never be apart. Dogen, who was of course the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, talks about intimacy with Dharma companions this way. To speak to another does not necessarily divide self and other. Speaking to another is self.

[08:46]

Speaking to self. It is self and and self, hearing and speaking together. Our ear, one ear speaks, one ear hears. One tongue speaks, one tongue hears. Magical, but that's the way he thinks about it. One body and one mind. realize and practice. Dogen had, of course, many practice companions, including his revered teacher, Ru Jing. He also had close relationships with lay practitioners as well as priests. His very famous Genjo Kohen may in fact have been

[09:50]

written for a lay practitioner. Can we sense that kind of oneness in our own relationships with others? I think that's a question for us to ask in the midst of our practice together, as we are right here. That kind of intimacy between practitioners has actually been embedded in our lineage from the time of Buddha's silent exchange with Maha Kashyapa. And it continues to find expression right here among us in this building. In his introduction to Not Always So, Ed Brown gives us a sense of the depth of his relationship with Suzuki Roshi.

[11:06]

Ed says, in part, at times when I struggled to sit still, Suzuki Roshi's hand would rest motionlessly on my shoulders. touching me through and through. My breath would soften and lengthen. Tension would release, and my shoulder would start to radiate with warmth and vitality. Once I asked him what he was doing when he had his hands on my shoulders, and he said, I'm meditating with you. It is quite rare, Ed said, to be touched like that receptively and openly with kind regard.

[12:13]

Most touch says, go over there. Come over here. Straighten up. calm down. This touch, Ed said, was, I'm here with you wherever you are. I'm willing to touch whatever it is. That was, for Ed, the spirit of his meditation and the spirit of his practice. So to me, this is a description of two deeply committed practitioners, meeting mind to mind, body to body, heart to heart, each absorbing and being transformed by the other.

[13:29]

Neither is trying to change or manipulate the other. Ed's description of Suzuki Roshi's touch expresses that intimacy perfectly to me. I'm here with you wherever you are. I'm willing to touch whatever it is. And I don't think that moment was simply a one-way experience with Suzuki Roshi giving and Ed receiving. As Suzuki Roshi was touching Ed with his hands, Ed was touching Suzuki Roshi with the sincerity of his practice.

[14:33]

In my experience, if two people are open to each other that way, it transforms both the giver and the receiver. Both people are letting go of their small selves to meet as one Buddha with another Buddha. Of course, Ed was a young student, and Suzuki Roshi was an experienced Zen teacher. But Ed's practice as a Buddha in that moment was to be open and trusting so that his teacher's touch could transform him in a way that allowed Ed to convey that experience so beautifully many years later.

[15:41]

I don't actually know of an English, a word in English that really conveys what that experience, what I imagine that experience is like. You know, we have the word compassion and we have the word empathy, which are wonderful words, but they both have to do with feeling. And I would prefer to call this kind of experience being one with each other. In their silence, Ed and Suzuki Roshi are communicating in a way that Dogen described when he said, one body is and one mind realize and practice. So it may be easy for us to imagine that this kind of experience is possible between a teacher like Suzuki Roshi and a student like Ed.

[17:02]

But what about the rest of us? Can we practice with each other in that way? Suzuki Roshi, of course, does not let us off that hook. And not always so, he says. Each of us is different. and each one of us has his or her own problems. Fortunately, you have the support of others who are practicing with you. This is not an umbrella to provide shade or protect you, but a space where you can have real practice, a space where you can express yourself fully.

[18:07]

You can open your eyes to appreciate the practice of others. If you continue practicing together and your mind is big enough to expose yourself and accept others, naturally you will become good friends. What a wonderful challenge. If you continue practicing together and your mind is big enough to expose yourself and accept others, naturally you will become good friends. And then Suzuki Roshi doesn't actually leave it there.

[19:16]

He says something else. He says, to know your friend is to know something beyond yourself. Beyond even your friend. So what is that? In another talk, Suzuki Roshi says more about that. He says, when you see somebody practicing sincerely, you see yourself. If you are impressed by somebody's practice, you may say, oh, she is doing very well. That she is neither she nor you. She is something more than that. Who is she?

[20:17]

What is she? After thinking for a while, you may say, oh, she is there and I am here. But when you were struck by her present and practice, That her is neither you nor her. When you are struck by something, that is actually the real you. Tentatively, I say you, but that you is the pure experience of our practice. When you empty your mind, when you give up everything and just practice, zazen, with an open mind, then whatever you see, you meet yourself. That is you beyond she or he or me.

[21:24]

So when we're struck by something, I think for that moment, we stop the busy activity of small self. For that moment, we are open to our deep connection with others, which of course is always available to us. In fact, I don't think the experience of being struck by someone's practice is actually very unusual. But we may dismiss it or put it in some category like being jealous or feeling bad because we don't think we can practice as well as somebody we admire.

[22:51]

is encouraging us instead to understand how we nourish each other's practice and to have the courage to be open and to let the practice of others strike us, inspire us, in some sense, bring us to our senses, quite literally. so we can have the experience of a certain kind of connection and oneness with each other. If we feel we are practicing just primarily to improve our individual selves, it may be hard to feel this kind of inspiration. We may be too busy evaluating how well we are doing

[23:53]

to feel the impact of others practicing with us. But here we are, now, in this Buddha hall, practicing together. And tomorrow, many of us will be in the zendo before dawn. We sit alone, we sit together. Not two, not one. We bow to each other. And if we are present in our bowing, we will feel each other's presence in a way that is beyond our individual identity. When we are distracted, by our self-concerned thinking, we may miss the opportunity to feel that connection with our friends and with all beings.

[25:07]

But that is how we live our vow to save all sentient beings. The opportunities are there for us. Right now, tomorrow morning, whenever we want to take the opportunity. I want to end with one more story from Stan White and his connection with Suzuki Roshi. And this story, and by the way, there's a lot of this kind of information and storytelling on David Chadwick's website, which I think is what, cuke.com. And there's just a wilderness of wonderful information.

[26:12]

So Stan said, and this is at the end of Suzuki Roshi's life. So I went up to his room, and there he was in bed. with his skin that had discolored quite a bit, and he was extremely weak, and he got showed, and I did the same. Then he looked right at me, and he said, not with a loud voice, but firm, don't grieve for me. Don't worry. I know who I am. So I think I'm going to stop here so we can have a little time for a conversation.

[27:15]

I brought this big heavy watch. And yes, we do have some time. I'd love to know what response you might have to that last story, that meeting between Stan White and Suzuki Roshi, but also anything else you want to ask about or comment on. So, please. Yes. It's not about the story, but about being friends with everyone. It sounds like you're suggesting or you have an understanding that it's beneficial to be friends with everyone.

[28:23]

Is that what you're saying? Yes, but please continue. Yes. You know, I just wonder about that. I wonder what that looks like since there also are disagreements that are real and that we need to express as part of being healthy. Absolutely. And Suzuki Roshi said somewhere I think on David Chadwick's website. He said, you don't know how hard it is to love some of you. And I think he's referring to just the kind of work.

[29:28]

This is, I mean, we're in the middle of reading the Adogan fascicle about the bodhisattvas. What is it? Four ways of guiding. And then there's kind speech. And we talked about kind speech last night. And I, you know... virtually leapt out of my chair to say, what about power? What about the things that happen that you can't understand where somebody's being manipulative? It's work. It's not fluff. But practice isn't fluffy either. So I don't know whether that answers your question. I guess it's also, I think it's, if you're not, if you're not friends in the same way that, you know, you might think of as a friend.

[30:48]

Yes. Yes. And that's, to me, one of the wonderful qualities in Stan's question. Because that's what he's saying. I mean, friendship, I think, means to most of us, we think the same way, we have the same interests, we're roughly the same age, etc., etc. And Suzuki Roshi came up with this blanket statement. He's a little Japanese Zen master. He's looking at this wild bunch of hippies, et cetera, et cetera, in the middle of the woods. And he's saying, you're all my friends. And that to me is a koan, you know. This is five minutes. Okay.

[32:02]

Yes. We use it to the point where we get anesthetized to what that means, but yes, that's right. Please. I saw Stan White a month ago, in Colorado, and he'd be immensely pleased to know that he's being important. What if I had the opportunity to be the first to tell him? I've heard many of his stories. And I would be happy to get an email address for him or something.

[33:06]

I enjoyed meeting him very much when he was here. And I wonder if anybody does want to comment on that last story. To me, it's stunning. And when I think about what must have inspired Suzuki Roshi to make that statement, don't grieve for me. Don't worry. I know who I am. I imagine him looking at Stan's face and seeing mute grief in Stan's face. Stan facing his teacher, discolored skin, frail, and registering that expression on his face.

[34:11]

And Suzuki Roshi, close to death. to stand to try to comfort him by saying what he did. You know, that's my sense. And I'd like to live with that. Yes, please. Well, it's, I just feel inspired by the selflessness of Suzuki Roshi as I imagine it in that story. Obviously, I wasn't there. And maybe I'll have to talk to Stan about whether my interpretation matches his experience of that. I'm sure he remembers it. Okay. Yes. Christina.

[35:13]

that often the way we have relationships have something to do about affirming each other's identities. And so to say, don't leave for me, or don't, what was your photo? Don't worry. I know who I am. I don't need you. I need you to be yourself, and I don't need you to be defined by me or defined you. Yes. Yes. So it's the freedom of that kind of relationship that allows you to attach to what you've said. Yes. And I actually had a student one time say to me, but... how could Suzuki Roshi say I know who I am? You've been talking about Bodhidharma and I don't know and how important it is not to know.

[36:24]

And to me, it's wonderful that Suzuki Roshi would take that position and in just that way, relieve Stan of any feeling that He needs to take care of his teacher. Yes? I think in this practice we stick with the not knowing part except under special circumstances. But that would be a very long discussion and we don't have time tonight.

[37:25]

Absolutely. Yes, Vicki. I was very moved by that story and to me it reminds me of two things. One is how the Buddha in the last two months of his life with dysentery walked for 200 miles saying the same thing in simpler and simpler ways. And the other thing is Suzuki Roshi's last word of, you know, where will I meet you? for him to do that is, you know, he knows who he is. That was Richard's last meeting with Suzuki Hiroshi. Yes.

[38:34]

So I guess we're done. And thank you very much. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:07]

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