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 morning. My name is Hiro Ikushima. I'm a resident at the city center here. I have been with San Francisco Zen Center since 2014, so it's been about 11 years or so. First, I came to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center back in 2014, and then I moved here right before the pandemic in 2020. Well, first, I would like to begin my talk by thanking our tanto Tim Wicks and Central Abbott And David Zimmerman, thank you so much for this opportunity to give a talk.

[01:04]

And also I would like to extend my gratitude to my teacher, Tia Schroeser. Thanks to her teaching, I have grown so much as a person and as a Zen practitioner. So since this is Thanksgiving weekend, I would like to speak about gratitude. And this is not just a Thanksgiving weekend for us, because for the participant of our practice period, and this community is entering the week-long meditation retreat. In Japanese, we call it Rohatsu Session. Rohatsu means, Roh means 12, and Hatsu means eight. It's the date of... December 8th, and a session means collecting and unifying the mind, the mind that is scattered.

[02:08]

So December 8th is the day Buddha had an awakening. He realized the truth. So what an auspicious time to give a talk, and I feel so honored. I was watching the video the other day on YouTube. Sometimes I do watch YouTube. And this random video showed up on my feed. And it was just 30 seconds short, very short video clip. And this video, this YouTuber, young man, seems like American young man, pretending like he has no money. and he just goes to random people on the street asking for money. And, hey, excuse me, I have no money, and can you spare me a couple of dollars so that I can get on the bus?

[03:11]

And these people he's asking look like just regular folks, and they may be struggling, actually, financially, even some homeless people. But these people, this person, The first video I was watching was a woman. And she stopped and hesitated for a moment. But then she was like, okay, and she opened the purse and gave him a dollar. And this YouTuber was like, well, you know what? I'll give you back. And actually, I'll give you $1,000. And my first impression was like, wow, is this real? Maybe this is. This is staged, maybe. Maybe these people may be actors. But then it turns out it's very much real. And he has hundreds of videos just like that. And every video he creates is very short, like 30 seconds a minute.

[04:14]

And every video is the same format. He pretends like he has no money, and he would give a moral test to these people, right? And if they pass... then he would reward these people with like $500 or $1,000. And it sounds kind of cheesy, but I Googled him a little bit, and I found that he's a Christian, and his mission was to promote the simple act of kindness. And even this woman who gave him a dollar said, You know, I'm looking for a job, and I have five kids to feed, right? And when she received $1,000, she broke down and cried in gratitude. Another video was a man who's living in his car. He lost his home, right? And he was still kind enough to spare $5, and things like that.

[05:20]

And... And I ended up watching for like an hour, no stop. And I found myself, you know, with tears. And I noticed that my heart was warmed up and my heart was opened. I feel like going out the street and start talking to random people, you know. And now we are entering this retreat. And we'll be sitting on a cushion for many hours. And... Why did Buddha teach meditation is such an important practice? If someone who doesn't understand this practice of meditation may wonder, what are these people doing? They're just sitting on a cushion doing nothing. So not productive. Shouldn't they just do something or go outside the world and

[06:21]

to help people. So that's something I wanted to talk about today. The legend goes that after Buddha had Awakening on December 8th, at first he didn't want to teach people, teach his teaching, he's teach his wisdom to people because he thought people wouldn't understand his teaching. And then, I mean, this is folklore. One night, deity appears before him and pleaded with him to start teaching. And deity said, no, there are some people who would understand. And so Buddha agreed and started teaching. And the first psalm he gave is called Four Noble Truths, which is really the essence of his teaching.

[07:23]

And the first truth of the Four Noble Truths is life is dukkha. Dukkha means suffering or unsatisfactoriness. It means no matter how hard you try, if you have normal... normal state of mind. Life is never satisfying. And the second truth is the truth of the cause of suffering. The cause of suffering is clinging. If you cling to things, cling to what you want, it causes suffering. Because everything is impermanent. You cannot, you can never be satisfied. We try so hard to get what we want, and you might be able to get what you want, then this feeling of satisfaction will fade away sooner or later.

[08:33]

I remember when I bought a brand new car, I was so excited for maybe two months, and then I was busy. you know, thinking about something else and, ah, big deal. And I regret it, oh man, I'm on a debt, right? I was like, I should have bought some cheap car and yeah. Or it can be anything, right? It can be a new job in, you know, a new relationship. It may be exciting for a while. And then you start seeing the flaws in other people. so-called honeymoon period. And the third truth is the end of suffering. He says, there's a way out. The end of suffering is possible. And the fourth truth is the path that leads to liberation, which is the eightfold path

[09:44]

And I don't want to go into all this list because it just breaks down to sub-list. And you know, Buddhist is a full of list, right? Four Novel Truths, Eightfold Path, Three Precepts, Five Precepts, Ten Great Precepts, Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, and then Dogen adds even more list. Eight Means to Awakening. and things like that. Anyway, an Eightfold Path can be summarized to three groups, Prajna, Sila, and Samadhi, which means wisdom, ethical conduct, and meditation. So entering this retreat, we will be focusing on meditation. You know, he said, life is suffering, but he didn't, in this teaching of Honorable Truth, didn't really say the details.

[10:49]

So why do we suffer? Why life is difficult? Okay, everything is impermanent, right? I remember when I was a child, I used to just enjoy life, you know, just... playing with other kids, running around, riding bicycle was so much fun. And I remember when I was maybe third or fourth grade, I realized that I was one of the fastest kids in my class for running a 50-meter dash, you know, 50-meter sprint. And I remember I was proud of myself. And then running became... not just pure joy, but there was some extra attached to it. I wanted to be acknowledged as the fast boy, and I wanted to be acknowledged by other kids.

[11:58]

So that was when I understood the meaning of winning and losing. So the cause of suffering is caused by this identity structure. Koshi Uchiyama taught in his book, Opening Hand of Thought, how we identify ourselves. So you label yourself as maybe husband, and husband is defined in the relationship, relation to wife. customer in relation to salesperson and winners in contrast of losers and so forth. A few weeks ago, and I'm a baseball fan, so I was watching the World Series and I thought that was the best World Series ever.

[13:07]

That was so dramatic. The series went all the way to game seven. And that's the defining game to determine the champion. And the game was played between Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays. And the Toronto Blue Jays was so close. They were two outs away from winning the championship. And this is the end of the whole season. And it came down to just two outs away. and it just slipped away. Somehow Dodgers tied a game in the ninth inning, and they went to eight trainings, and Dodgers won the World Series. And that game took place in Toronto, so there were like 40,000 people in the stadium packed, and they were going crazy until ninth inning, right? They were so close, and the whole stadium became like a library, so quiet, right? And after the Dodgers won, you know, people in Los Angeles were going crazy, right?

[14:14]

So if you look at the situation through this zen lens, so to speak, it's interesting, isn't it? A bunch of people just wearing different uniforms, playing this game called baseball, which is completely made up, right? The rules are everything is made up. And after the game, one group of the people are jumping up and down in joy. And another group of people are crying. Like if you don't know the baseball, you would be just wondering. You would wonder what is happening here. And I'm not trying to criticize the competition itself. It was wonderful because those players played with such wonderful sportsmanship and respect for other teams.

[15:17]

And I love watching Olympics too. You know, athletes work so hard for four years and they'll do their best and to perform, you know, in kind of a once-in-a-lifetime situation, right? Trying to get the gold medal. But if you are so caught up trying to win, and what happens is that you are unconsciously creating this mind-made self based on the idea of winning or losing, right? So in a way, Winners cannot exist without losers, right? In this world of concept. Can you imagine the superheroes without the bad guys?

[16:18]

Can you imagine a Star Wars without evil empire? I mean, who would watch the movie, right? So if you shift your perspective, you can say, actually, winners are depending on losers, right? You need something to compare yourself to feel good about yourself if you are living through this mind-made self, which is really the ego. And our practice really shows us this mechanism of the self. And in our practice, we often say, you know, making mistakes is a part of that practice. Because when you're making mistakes, these yucky feelings come up, right?

[17:24]

Maybe feeling of embarrassment, right? Or maybe you feel like you're not good enough. Something in you feels damaged. What is that? Is that really you? Is that who you really are? Here at the City Center or San Francisco Zen Center, we practice many forms. As you know, Zen has so many, particularly in this Soto Zen has many forms. There's a particular way of doing things and how we move. Like entering in Zen though, you have to step with your left foot first, right? And then go to your seat, bow to the seat, turn clockwise, not the other way around, clockwise, right? And then bow towards the inside of the zendo and sit down and so forth.

[18:27]

And this is something, you know, last Wednesday, I was just so give a talk about care, right? And paying attention to little things that help you to be mindful. And also, you know, it's such a wonderful practice to be aware of whatever arises in your system when you make mistakes. And we have so many opportunities to practice that. And this is true outside of Zen, outside of temple as well. We can do this practice in your everyday life. But in our Zen temple, like Doanryo, a group of people who lead the ceremonies, like a doan who, you know, hit the big bell. You know, we have the instruction, right? And you hit the right time. And yet we sometimes make mistakes and we receive feedback. When I was at Tassahara, Doan Liu has a very intensive practice.

[19:33]

Every day we have so many ceremonies and we give feedback like two or three times a day. And I was at Eno, and I wanted to give feedback to Don Liu. And since I was Eno for two years, I realized there's a pattern almost always when I gave a feedback. A lot of times people had some kind of resistance. And it's so hard to say. Yes, I made a mistake. End of story. There's always something extra. Oh, I thought the instruction was this way, or I thought that today the assembly was off the pitch, or the person distracted me, or whatever. Kind of wiggle a little bit. It's so hard to drop your defensiveness. And before going to Tassara, year before that, I was at the Japanese Zen temple in Japan, and they don't have any instruction.

[20:46]

They will just demonstrate things once to you, and they throw you into a role. And I saw this young man from Germany. He was a good student because he wanted to do everything right. He, you know, so he was so nervous hitting Han in the morning. And Han is a wooden board that you hit before Zazen to call the community to come to the Zendo. And there's a particular way to hit, particular sequence, right, to hit Han. And so, you know, he created a cheat sheet because he didn't have an instruction and he couldn't remember everything at once in only one instruction, right? And he had a cheat sheet, and he was hitting Han. And the abbot of the temple walked by, and he saw that, right? And the abbot snatched the paper from his head, crumpled it, and threw it into the garden, and walked away without saying a word.

[21:51]

And the poor guy, you know, he was kind of shocked. And, of course, now, with that cheat sheet, he didn't know how to hit Han, so he made mistakes, right? Um... And later on, he received feedback from the senior Japanese student, right? And he was all angry and defensive, right? So Japanese monk was like, well, number one, you can't have a cheat sheet. Number two, you made mistakes. And so, you know, understandably, the young man, this German guy was... upset and angry, and he was all defensive, like, of course I made a mistake, how can you remember everything at once? And so, you know, the Japanese won't go, that's why I'm giving you feedback now, so you can do better the next time. You know, everything was like that. And of course, you can't, you know, that works only in Japan, right? You can't do that here. I mean, I can't imagine...

[22:57]

Like, you know, doing that. I think if you know that, I think he'll be grilled in a meeting later. Yeah. So the motivation, that shows the motivation for this student, the German student, to do everything well was coming from the fear of not... Fear of making mistakes, therefore fear of looking bad, right? That's really the source. No one wants to look bad, right? We all want to look good in front of people. But those Japanese senior monks, they are not really concerned about skillful feedback. They're very direct, right? But it's just culture is so different there. like you have to beg to enter the monastery so that these young monks, you know, they know they're not in a position to complain about things.

[24:06]

And this Japanese monk was telling me later, you know, it's so interesting to see these cultural differences, you know, because that was a very typical reaction from Westerners. And also he was so upset about, you know, instruction cheat sheet being taken away and it felt like his boundary was invaded right and that's another concept that's very strong in a western culture is this sense of boundary and during the day they work really hard on the field they have rice field and a vegetable garden because they are self-sustaining temple and i was working on rice field And since they're a really poor temple, they use everything to make it work. And their fertilizer, too, they use human waste. But at the time, it was summertime, and they would pump up from the tank, from the basement of the toilet.

[25:18]

They were not fully processed. It was so bad, it was stinky. And the Japanese monk would use the fire pump and using actually the hose that you're supposed to use for firefighting to pump up this nasty water into the rice field. And then we were ordered to go into the rice field and the weed under the water. And this senior monk, it was a nun. She didn't speak English really well. But then she learned this line from the Star Trek movie and started yelling at us. Resistance is futile. Resistance is futile. It's not going to kill you. Just go in there. And then we were like, oh my gosh.

[26:23]

Go in there. And the mud was so thick and deep that, you know, the water goes above your boots, right? And the water goes inside the boots, and I was like, oh my gosh. And it's all good memories now, you know? Yeah, everything was like that. They're not really, they just give you their feedback, right? But if you have this attitude to welcome the feedback, it might help you, right? And I really appreciate my teacher, Tia, as well, because she doesn't shy away from giving me direct feedback. And sometimes, you know, sometimes the feedback feels like colonoscopy, right? It can be painful and invasive. But...

[27:25]

If you're welcome to receive it, it may save your life, right? You can find a cancer in you. Yeah, and sometimes the feedback comes as very noisy with a lot of static, meaning the person may be really upset with you, right, emotionally, angry at you. and they tell you something. But if you have this attitude to really, you know, wanting to grow, then, you know, once the Tanto Atasahara, Greg Fain, told me a good analogy. It's like tuning into a radio station. First, you hear this static sound, and as you dial into the radio station, you start hearing the DJ, right? the static is this emotion around it, this angry, upset emotion.

[28:27]

But if you really listen to it, you may be able to pick up something, some truth. There's always some truth to that feedback. I thought that was a good analogy. And also, So this practice of making mistakes and, you know, experiencing this arising emotions, negative emotion, is part of the practice. And many years ago, when I was at Tazahara, Ryushin Paul Header gave a talk, and I remember one thing he said, life is difficult and constantly pecking the shell that's protecting you, right? constantly pecking and creating cracks and dents. And then your practice is precisely let a break and see what happens.

[29:31]

What's the worst that could happen? But in reality, we are constantly repairing and fixing inside the shell, right? And Tenshin Reb Anderson said, our practice is sitting upright in the midst of hardship and suffering. Not to distance oneself from hardship and suffering. And that is the practice of sitting in the midst of flames, right? So while sitting in meditation, you might experience fire within you. You might remember the past, or something just happened, upset you, right? And you're in a reactive state And our practice to simply let it be, not to resist, not to distract yourself. You know, with a normal state of mind, you might grab alcohol or do drugs, right?

[30:41]

Many years ago, for me, it was a plain video game. It's a total act of escape from reality. But these days, many people are addicted to social media and phones, right? It's so uncomfortable, but then this practice will allow you to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And the more you do this practice, it expands the space to hold these flames. But a lot of times, you know, when bad things happen, we forget that practice, right? I was listening to podcasts the other day, and this famous female author, she writes about conscious eating, mindful eating, and healthy diet and spirituality, that kind of thing.

[31:48]

And she shared about her story of losing all her life-saving. Like 15 years ago, there was... biggest Ponzi scheme in history, it's a fraud. And all her life saving was gone one day, all at once. And when she learned the news, she was just trying to hold it together. And her friends, close friends said, hey, nothing of value was lost. And then she snapped. Now is not the time to be spiritual. Don't give me that. I'm going to lose my house. What am I going to do? I might end up on the street. She recovered since then, so now she's laughing about it. But that's the common reaction for many of us. We do this practice for years, and yet still...

[32:51]

something happens to you and your practice goes out the window. And actually, that's precisely when you should be spiritual. So, wow, it's already 10.50. Yeah, I wanted to speak more about mechanism of the suffering why we suffer so we i talked a little bit about how our mind-made self is made up of thoughts and feelings and beliefs right so by their nature thoughts and emotion ephemeral and fleeting when you live through this mind-made self this feeling of identity the basis

[33:53]

for your identity is precarious. And that's why the ego is always struggling for survival, trying to protect itself or expand itself by having more things. It can be having more money, power, social status, more knowledge, more ability. because everything is based on this idea of duality, good and bad. Having more makes you feel better. I mean, it's not really you that your ego feels better. Like myself, being able to run faster than other kids, that became the part of my identity. And it's endless, right? And once you get what you want, it's never good enough. So you start looking for something else.

[34:55]

And it's not good or bad. It's just what the ego does. It doesn't know any other way. So how can we link up the ego? And that is a practice of meditation. Dogen said, shikan taza, just sitting. It's a practice of non-doing. simply being. And also, like Rev. Anderson said, sitting in the midst of flames, it's part of that too. Whatever's happening within you, just let it be. Don't do anything. Don't push it away. Don't suppress it. And the space that allows the flames to be is the essential, formless dimension of who you are.

[35:57]

Just like this space that allows everything to exist, including us. Without silence, there could be no sound. Without space, nothing can exist. And without this awareness that who you really are, you cannot experience anything. So when you catch yourself thinking so much, you can ask this question, who is experiencing these thoughts? Our mind is so habitually, it has a tendency to kind of return to loop back to a thought, thought about me, right?

[36:59]

Thought about me, thought about me, thought about me. And by doing that, you are overlooking something vital. You are overlooking the sense of being the subject. That's the awareness that you are. There's a famous story in Buddhism. I don't know if it's a true story or not. There was a woman named Anya Datta. Anya Datta was a woman known for admiring her own beauty. And one morning she looked in the mirror and suddenly she couldn't see her head. Terrified, she believed she had lost it. And she ran around the town crying, help. I've lost my head. And the people around her tried to reassure her that her head is there, but she refused to believe them.

[38:00]

And finally her friends tied her down, where she was going crazy, and then tapped her head with a little stick. And then she realized that her head was there always. It's been there, right? This story is the example of how we think in our mind. We are so trapped in our thoughts. And believing that's who you are. So... Can you feel gratitude by practicing Zazen? Once I did a solo retreat, it was a long, long solo retreat.

[39:04]

It went on for like five weeks. I was sitting in a tiny RV, and I don't think I was ready for that. Although I was alone, I felt like I had a roommate. and that was my own mind you know and all kinds of stuff came up and and I couldn't sleep all night and I was crying in desperate it was a very very difficult night and and somehow I was able to just sit and and all these thoughts disappeared. And I went outside and saw the sunrise. And I felt this crisp, cold air. It was December. And so the dew drops on the leaves and birds started chirping.

[40:16]

And I was like, this is good enough. I feel like I was coming out of the battlefield. All night long, I was trapped in my thoughts, crying, struggling. So in this practice, gratitude appears when you let go of clinging, when one thing dissolves. When you hear the word gratitude, you think of being grateful for something, right? You can be grateful for your health, friends, opportunities. But in our practice of non-doing, it's a kind of subtle situation. gentle gratitude that comes forth or appears that's been always inside you.

[41:26]

And Suzuki Roshi said, you should be grateful for the opportunity you have to practice in this moment. Gratitude for the practice itself. And Dhammapada Buddha taught the same truth. Contentment is the greatest wealth. So in this kind of gratitude, you don't need anything extra, anything external. You just simply sit in silence. And you realize something precious that's been always inside you. And you feel content in that moment, and that's good enough. Thank you.

[42:36]

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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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