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 think I see some new faces here. Is there anybody here for the first time? Thank you for... Raising your hands, any over in this area? And there's probably some people that are here, not for the first time, but I've been away for a while. I went to Japan for three weeks, and it was my first trip to Japan, which... Oh, by the way, welcome all of you to Beginners in Mind Temple. Amazing, since I started practicing Zen, 48 years ago that I didn't get to Japan sooner than this, but it turned out that's just the way it worked out.

[01:05]

So I thought I would share a few reflections I have on my short trip there, mostly just as a way for me to try to figure out how to synthesize it all. How's the audio here? Are we doing all right? Good? All right. First... Japan is a wonderful place to travel. Seems like everybody there has a deep commitment to service and kindness. Really amazing, the level of service you get. They have no tipping in Japan. I guess that's what improves the service level. It's really wonderful. You have to be very careful if you ask somebody for some help. You might be in the Kyoto train station and you're not quite sure. It's a very large railroad train station with subways and lots of things, you know, which track you're supposed to go to. And if you ask somebody casually, they just might end up stopping whatever they're doing and walk you for a half mile to that part of the station to get you to the right gate.

[02:12]

They're very, very helpful. And there's been a lot of tourism increasing in Japan in the last... eight years, it's quadrupled from where it was before. I think the yen has gone down in value, so it's much more affordable. And of course, Japan has beautiful, marvelous architecture and beautiful countryside, kind people, lovely place to go. And although it's quite easy to get around... even all the subways and railroad stations and everything, all the destinations will be announced first in Japanese and then in English, so you know where to get off and you don't have any trouble with that. But still, as easy as it is to get around, you basically don't know what's going on. I mean, this is basically true in life generally, right?

[03:14]

You don't know what's going on. But it's slightly more evident when you're traveling, and particularly when you're traveling to a foreign country where the language is so different from our language, and the characters on the signposts mean nothing to you. But it's more like there's some kind of paying attention that they're doing. Maybe it's because they all live so closely together they've gotten used to paying attention. So if you're a visitor there, they're sort of paying attention to you in all kinds of ways that you're just not used to. I mean, in America, we're just sort of like going on our own way. But all of a sudden, you notice people are just sort of like caring for you in strange ways. So that's one. And two, it's not just an intellectual thing. It's a body culture, which is quite different than our culture. People seem to move in their bodies. Maybe it's the fact that they have to move, so many of them, through train stations and on. streets but also it's I mean we had some friends there in Kyoto so we went to some no actors and saw some and this the level of being in their body that the most highly trained are is impressive many of the martial arts etc and Japan have that but there's just a sense in general in the culture that they're in their bodies in a way that's different and they move around in a way that's different so

[04:40]

So it kind of reminds you of that famous koan, not knowing is most intimate. Or as Zuckirashi would put it so beautifully, beginner's mind. You really have to sort of just try to be open, see what happens. And a lot of times things just sort of happen. A friend says they're going to take and introduce you to a particular abbot in a Rinzai monastery, and it's going to be at 10 o'clock, so you figure you'll have an hour there with them. But then that hour turns into two hours, and then that turns into a lunch, and then that turns into something else. And there's this kind of unplanned flow of things that just sort of seem to happen, which is also characteristic of travel in general, but in particular it seemed that way in Japan to me. So even though this was mostly just a vacation for my wife and I, because I have been involved in Zen so long, a part of me had a long laundry list of Zen places I wanted to go to, so I thought I'd talk to you about a few of them that I went to.

[05:53]

The three ones that sort of were most relevant were Rinsoen. Rinsoen is the temple that Suzuki Roshi came from. and Eheji, which is one of the two main training temples in Soto Zen, which was founded by Dogen. And also I went to Mount Hiei, where Dogen was first ordained. So the first thing I have to say about all of this is we are so fortunate that Suzuki Roshi came to America and established our practice here. I don't think, you know, I've always sort of realized how lucky we were that he did that. First of all, there's a blizzard of different kinds of traditions going on in Japan and just even sort through the Shintoism and Shingon and Tendai and all the different things and the many different forms of Buddhism and figure out what would be, you know, an appropriate practice is not so easy.

[07:00]

But also I think Suzuki Roshi, for a variety of reasons, was just the right person to come to America. So maybe I'll say a little bit about that when I talk about Rensouin. By the way, for those of you who don't know, Suzuki Roshi was the founder of this temple, Zen Center, founded Tashara, and this building he was still alive and practiced in, and he wrote the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, so some of you may be familiar with it. Those of you who are not familiar with it, I would recommend it as a great beginning Zen book to read. Maybe the very best Zen book to read. I'm not prejudiced, of course, but I probably read it through many, many, many times. In fact, it's turned out to be probably the best-selling book on Zen in America and has been in

[08:02]

publication for almost 50 years. So Rin Suin was founded in 1493. How many years is that? 100, 200, 300, almost 400 years? So it's old. And it's set in a beautiful setting up against the hillside with marvelous hydrangea bushes growing around and beautiful gardens and lots of cedar trees and maples. Gorgeous setting. And, of course, built in a traditional fashion. So it has a marvelous large Buddha hall. It has a zendo. It has family quarters where the family lives. And at one point in time, it was a training temple. monks trained there, and there were many sub-temples that reported to it. Now it's more sort of like a village or town temple.

[09:05]

There have been 37 abbots of the temple, so if you go to the cemetery, you see their memorial stones all lined up. So there's a real sense of history there, and of course... Suzuki Roshi's memorial is the last stone there because his son, Huizu, has now inherited the temple from Suzuki Roshi and runs the temple. Suzuki Roshi started training there, became abbot of Rensuen in 1934, and his teacher, Soan, had passed it on to him, and it needed a lot of repair. So Suzuki Roshi did a lot of work during the time he was there, from 34 to 59, fixing up the buildings. And of course this was complicated by World War II. They had to melt down the bells in the temple to make war machines. Anyway, so he was a natural sort of builder and a person who had a kind of sense of building up a temple and making it a place for both laymen to practice and...

[10:15]

and monks to practice, which was something he was very interested in. Then he came to America in 1959. He just came to be the priest at Sakoji, a local Japanese temple. Who knew how long he would stay? No one did, but by 1966 there were enough Americans practicing with him that a decision was made to try to build a mountain monastery where traditional 90-day angos could go on. And Tassaro was found, and in 1966 a purchase agreement was put together. And at that time Suzuki Roshi finally made the decision that he would stay in America. And as he told one of his friends, these sincere Americans have made up my mind. I will stay in America for them. For them I will become American soil. Which he did. He died five years later. And this was not exactly a popular decision with his wife, who wanted him to return to Rensuen.

[11:20]

And it wasn't a popular decision with his son, who was only 27 years old and wasn't interested necessarily in taking over running Rensuen. But that was Sugiroshi's decision. He made up his mind, and that's what happened. And so Rensuen is now being run by his son, Huitzu, who is now 75. eight years old, 52 years of being the abbot, a wonderful, generous, kind man. And his wife, Chitosei, and his son, Shungo, and Shungo's wife, Kumi, and their two children live at Rinsuin. And it's like a family temple. We got up in the morning and sat zazen in the zendo with them. They have a wonderful zendo. And they do this every morning. They sat zazen every morning. Shungo, and then there's service, and Shungo is the Doan, and Huitzu is the Doshi, and there's maybe four or five or eight or ten, depending on what kind of day villagers that sit with them.

[12:24]

And then, of course, they go about their daily affairs. Shungo and Huitzu are in the city a lot, sometimes doing memorial services or attending various kinds of meetings. And the villages just sort of wander through the temple during the day. Some come up and work in the gardens. Other people wander up and do different things, and the family is just there, meeting them all, greeting them, sort of warm, friendly. I can't express what a warm, open, kindly, inviting feeling there is. Kind of like this place, like Zen Mind Beginner's Mind is on Saturday. We're warm and friendly with everybody, or at least that's my hope. And I think we picked that up from Suzuki Hiroshi, that kind of easy friendliness. Zen has friendliness. Maybe that's enough description about what Zen is. Zen is just being friendly.

[13:27]

Okay. So I also, after visiting Rinsuin, I went to Eheji. How many people know about Eheji, just out of curiosity? Quite a few people. How many people have been to Eheji? One. Good. You can actually go there as a guest. They have a wonderful guest student program where you can sign up and go and sort of follow the schedule. Not exactly like the monks do because you don't sit with the monks in their zendo. They have a separate zendo for guests, but you do get to join them in the morning for service, which is a true phenomenon to see. They were in summer practice period when I was there, so there's 150 monks training there. They're all young men who've come from various temples all over Japan to train. It is pretty strict.

[14:35]

A little, I'd say it was a little, their training is a little tighter than it is here. People think we're a little bit too involved in forms. You should see the way they step on a tatami mat and turn when they have to go to a place on the tatami mat. And as my wife said, when they did service, 150 of them in this magnificent Dharma hall. And they had introduced a new, most of the chants are familiar to us because we follow the same order of service here. but they had introduced a new one for the summer practice period where they got up and sort of did a circumambulation around in various ways. And the quality of movement, my wife said it reminded her of the old choreographed movie musicals, you know, with huge stage settings and everything. Just beautiful sounds and precision, just really something. I think there's a good side to that, which is it's just magnificent, and there's a kind of quality of tension. But these are young men that are being trained in a very short period of time, a year or two.

[15:41]

It's like a finishing school for Zen priests. They really turned these young men into wonderful priests. So I had great appreciation for it. I had a chance to meet with the current Kanan afterwards for tea, who's a... I guess Kanan is like the number two abbot at AAG. He takes care of all the administrative things. And we were talking about some of the differences of service, and it just reminded me of one thing. He had come here about six years ago on a trip and had done service with us and was surprised when we did nine bows. When we begin service every morning, we start with nine bows. At AAG, they only do three bows. And it turned out that Suzuki Roshi introduced the idea of doing nine bows early on at Zen Center, and apparently it was, as the myth goes, because he thought we were too stubborn.

[16:42]

But I was reading recently in The Crooked Cucumber, the biography of Suzuki Roshi, that it turned out that his teacher had told Suzuki Roshi, you're too stubborn, you should bow nine times. So actually, I think we picked up the nine boughs from Suzugiroshi's teacher. So I think we owe a great deal of gratitude to Renzu-in and Suzugiroshi's style of coming from a village temple and to a Heiji, which is where Suzugiroshi picked up the formal practice that we follow here, all the forms of doing a 90-day ango. And of course... I think Suzuki Roshi always had a love of zazen. His teachers always emphasized zazen. A lot of times if you train in Heiji, you might go back to your local temple and you might not sit zazen much anymore. A lot of temples, they don't do that. But Suzuki Roshi's teacher always emphasized sitting zazen and Suzuki Roshi sat zazen all the time.

[17:49]

And of course, that is our primary practice here. One of the other things about Japan is there's a tremendous reverence for and time spent making offerings to the ancestors, much more than in America. We don't think much about our past, but in Aheiji, every day at the Founders Hall where Dogen's remains are buried and there's an image of Dogen there, they offer sweet wine and water. and goodies to him. They make an offering every day. We make an offering to our founder, Suzuki Roshi, once a month. Here we do a little offering ceremony once a month. They do it every day. And it made me think about the past and to what extent having some relationship to the past is good and to what extent it's just a burden.

[18:54]

I mean, it takes a lot of work to make these offerings up. They're done very formally. And in different parts of Japan, it's even more time spent. At Mount Hiei, slight diversion, which is a Tendai school, their founder, that place was founded in the 9th century. They have a large temple area where the founder is memorialized, a mausoleum. And apparently a monk, if he's qualified enough, gets to volunteer to take care of that. They live in the area and they make offerings to the founder every day and sweep it and take care of it. And the only thing is they have to commit to living there for 12 years and never leaving the place. For those of you who feel that Tassara 90 Day Ango is a bit confining, just imagine... 12-year commitment to living in something the size of this first floor.

[19:55]

But really, the past is part of us. Our parents, our grandparents, the first fish that crawled out of the ocean, that's part of us. The stars that produced the carbon that we're made of, So we're really part of the strength, and recognizing that we flow from the past gives us strength because it gives us some sense that we're standing on some foundation, a foundation that's not just something we made up today. So I'm going to divert slightly from travel telling and introduce a famous koan. This is... Case 49 from the Book of Serenity, about making an offering to a founder. So this is the case. Dengshan was presenting an offering before the image of Yunnan.

[21:03]

So Dengshan is the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, and he was making an offering, offering incense and sweet water to Yunnan, his teacher. And as part of doing this service, he retold the story of... Before about depicting the reality, a monk came forward and said, when Yunnan said, just this is it, what did he mean? So Dengshan had told the story about how Yunnan had said, just this is it, and a student came up and said, what did he mean? And Dengshan said, at that time, I nearly misunderstood my late teacher's meaning, which is a kind of an interesting comment. And the monk said, did Yunnan himself know it is or not? Did Yunnan himself know it is or not? And Dengshan said, if he didn't know it is, how could he be able to say this? If he did know it is, it is, how could he be willing to say this?

[22:08]

Now that's a mouthful, so we'll kind of deconstruct it a little bit. Um... So first of all, the story, where did this saying, just this is it, come from, which is an important part of the story. So when Dung Shan had studied with Yunnan for 20 years and it was time for him to go off on pilgrimage or start his own Zen group, he met with Yunnan, probably over tea or something like that, and he said, after your death, if someone asked me if I can describe your reality, How shall I reply? If someone asked me, how can I describe your reality? How can I describe your understanding of life? How shall I reply? And after a while, Yin-Yang said, and I like that, after a while, probably pause for a while. This is probably his last meeting with his most senior student, and the student wanted to say, you know, give me the goods, the best summary of what your understanding is.

[23:17]

And Yunnan said, Just this is it. Just this is it. Dungshan sank into thought. And Yunnan said, You are in charge of this great matter. You must be most thoroughgoing. Dungshan left without saying anything more. And later when he crossed a river, he had a great insight. So what does just this is it mean? What is a teaching just this is it? Just this sitting together, just this connection between us, that's the meaning of Zen? Or just this moment, just being present in this moment, that is the meaning of Zen? And what does that mean? Can it just be all completely in this present moment? Can the entire meaning of your life, the entire sense of the whole world be in this moment, the depth of this moment, the suffering of this moment, the whole variety of ways this moment appears?

[24:35]

But this moment you're in is only one moment. So there's a teaching there. There's a teaching that this... present moment is impregnated with much, if we're open to it. So anyway, that was the story, and the student interested in that said, when Yunyan said, just this is it, what did he mean? That was the question the student had. What did he mean? Really, what did he mean? I'd like you or his... You were a student. You've thought about it since then. What did he mean? And Dung Shan said, at that time, I nearly misunderstood my late teacher's meaning. I think that's kind of nice. Showed some humility. I nearly misunderstood. I think that happens a lot. A teacher will say something to you or you'll have an interaction with somebody and you go, something's there.

[25:41]

I know there's something in that. I don't know what it is, but it sort of lingers with you. Maybe you read a koan, not knowing is most intimate. That was the koan I mentioned earlier. What does that mean? And it runs around in your head for a while, like 20 years. And you go, oh, now I know what that means. Or just this is it. Now I know what that means. So that's also true. Sometimes you think you know what it is, but it takes a while before you know what it is. And that certainly was the case for me with Suzuki Roshi. He said things and did things that took me 10, 15, 40 years to get any sense of. So I think that's a truthful answer, which is good. And then the monk said, did Yunnan himself know it is or not?

[26:43]

I mean, this is one of those things, you know, we say things, but do we have any idea what we're saying? I mean, we started repeating things our mother said to us when we were young, and we got the idea if we said food, food would come, and after a while we started learning other words, and pretty soon we repeated other words people said, but do we have any idea what the words we're saying mean? Well, most of the time we don't because we're just babbling along in conversation. We're not even probably mostly aware of what we're saying. So that's a problem in and of itself. But here we're going for something a little bit more interesting. Did Yunnan himself know? That is, can you know anything? Is the thing that Yunnan was trying to... tell Dungshan about something that you can know, like an idea that you can hold on to, a feeling you can hold on to, an experience, something that you can get.

[27:49]

Wouldn't that be nice if the secret of your life, the secret of Zen practice, could be just handed to you in a three-word saying? That would be good. Make it much simpler. We wouldn't have to sit all this zazen. But it isn't like that. It's not something you can just get. So he's saying, is it something you can get that way? Is it something I can have? Or is the understanding something a little different than that? And then Dungshan's answer, which is also beautiful, he's kind of going both ways. If he didn't know it, how could he be able to say this? So he's saying something. There must be something there. It may not be real knowledge that we talk about in terms of something you hold on, but something he has, some somethings going on there. And on the other way, if he did know it, how could he be willing to say this?

[28:54]

If he actually understood life, he would recognize there's nothing you could say about it, so he should probably just say nothing. Right? Isn't that true, too? You know, how do we say anything about what's going on here? I mean, we follow a schedule here in this temple. So on Saturdays, there's a schedule that says somebody sits up on the seat and says something. And so our traditional way is we, oh, because it's schedule says we sit up here, we say something. Does it make any difference? Does anybody understand anything? Really, what changes you? What can you feel like there's something that needs to change? There's some sense of wanting something.

[30:00]

But what... creates that change? What is transformative? What can create more freedom in your life? So, of course, that's a question one could say, you know, practice Realization. Every moment of your life, practice and Realization are happening. Every moment of your life, everything is there. But unless you have something you do, you can't understand how to make sense of that. So that's why we have all these practices here. That's why we sit zazen, because maybe zazen is transformative. And I believe zazen is transformative. For those of you who have sat long periods of time, you certainly understand to sit there and... Try to follow what's going on in your life as a revealing practice.

[31:08]

We say to study Zen is to study the self, or Dogen said that, a famous saying of his. So studying Zen is not some external thing, not some learning 50 volumes of text or a bunch of rituals or a bunch of things like that. We have all those things, and we study many texts, and we do do rituals, but it's all as a vehicle for you to reflect on your own life. Why would you want to reflect on your life? And I have a feeling, sort of a general feeling, we would call this spiritual, that all of us, somewhere deep inside, really wonder what is the meaning of our life. What is it we should be doing with our life? How should we make a contribution to this world?

[32:15]

Should we make a contribution to this world? What way to make a contribution to this world? What to do with this thing called being a human being? This is a deep question. And to ask that question is to, from a Zen point of view, reflect on who you are. Because being a human being, you know more about being a human being because you are a human being than all the books you could read about being a human being. You just need to be a human being. And one way to be a human being is to actually quiet yourself down enough so that you're not busy. I mean, we do have to feed ourselves and build things and do things. That's a very important thing. But to actually observe ourself for a while, we will see some things. And one of the things we'll notice is that an enormous amount of our thinking and feeling and mental activity is around self-concern about you, about me.

[33:21]

Oh, why did that person disrespect me? Oh, I'm embarrassed, I feel bad about what I did. It's just an interesting thing to observe to the extent to which most of your mental activity, most of the narration in your mind is organized around the idea of yourself. And the second thing to notice is that most of your suffering comes from the fact that most of your thinking is organized around the idea of yourself. So to study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. In that sense, to study Zen is to forget the self is to start to forget about your self-concern. What would it be like if we put down for a little bit all of our concerns about ourself? Even for a few minutes during Zazen, what a relief.

[34:24]

What a... What a chance just to let go of all that, to put all that baggage down and just rest in what it means to be alive as a human being. So that's a comment about zazen, which is the sort of central part of our practice here. It's always interesting to me that I have all these pages I print up when thinking about doing a lecture. And here it is, three minutes to go, and I'm halfway through. Maybe I'll just sort of skip to the end here.

[35:33]

I started by saying my trip to Japan made me really appreciate how Suzuki Roshi shaped the practice here to fit our American culture. And he was really brilliant at it. He came to America in the 60s, and first of all, he brought authentic Soto Zen practice here. First... monastery established outside the Orient that had a 90-day ango, a very formal way of practicing. But also, when he did that, he adapted to the American culture, so men and women practiced together at Tasara. Zen Center leadership and chances to be ordained and mature in practice is equally held between men and women. He also adapted to our food. You know, in Japan, even now, people were showing me the speed with which they do Oryoki and Nirenzai temples.

[36:35]

You can't get enough rice in you to feed yourself. I mean, and here we have these marvelous meals, and people think our Oryoki pace is fast, but it's actually quite relaxing and you can get enough food in you. He also had a very clear feeling that the lay practice and monk practice were the same. you could have as deep an understanding of Zen as a lay practitioner, as a priest. And he talked a lot about how, oh yes, tasar practice is wonderful, but city center practice is good. So he had a way of adapting to an American culture that we aren't exactly priests and we aren't exactly lay people. We're something different. And he used to talk about that. And he also was very involved in the times at that time. I mean, that was during the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the women's liberation movement. There was a sense of turmoil and cultural change that was going on in Zen Center at the time that this organization was established.

[37:41]

And he let that be established as part of the genetic components of this organization. And so we still, to this day, are faced with the challenges and questions of how we make sure social justice exists both within our organization and an expression of our organization. And Suzuki Roshi was a builder. I mean, he had renovated Renso Inn, and so his natural... to build something was there. He worked hard at Tasara and we actually built Tasara. I mean, we bought it and there were a few buildings there, but the amount of work we did was impressive. And the buildings that we have, the three temples, Green Gulch here and Tasara, it's very nice that we have these buildings and that we have these refined practice schedules and ways of practicing.

[38:44]

But Suzuki Roshi, I think it was a lecture he gave in July of 1971, the year he died, maybe almost the last lecture he gave at Tashara before coming up here. He talked about a koan, a big koan called, it goes this way, Fuketsu said to the assembled monks, if one particle of dust is raised, the state will come into being, If no particle of dust is raised, the state will perish. This is a famous koan. Particle of dust would be doing something. Do you pick up a part? Do you do something like start a monastery like Tashara? Or don't you? And Sikuroshi in that lecture talked about many Zen students come to Siddhi Center or go to some other center. Is this something meaningful or not?

[39:46]

If something good happens at the same time, many bad things will happen. Most likely if one good thing happens, 10 or 12 or maybe more than 20 bad things will happen. So we should think when we pick up a speck of dust, whether it is a good or bad thing to do. But if you don't do something, nothing will happen, he laughs. This is also true. What will you do? Will you pick up a piece of dust? or not pick up a dust? Will you leave everything as it is, without saying anything? He says, many people choose to let beings suffer. Let them go in the wrong direction, saying, this is not our problem. Let them go as they go. I cannot do anything with you. That is, we will not pick up any dust. But if you want to do something with them, or if you want to help them, at the same time, many bad things will follow. This is very interesting, very real.

[40:49]

It's true. If we're trying to do something good, all kinds of consequences follow that you cannot keep track of. But that should not stop us from doing something. And the key thing he said in this lecture is... The most important point in our practice is always try to do something with big mind. When you do something with big mind, if there is no need to do it, you will not do it. Only when you have to do it will you do it. You know big mind? Big mind is the opposite of small mind. Small mind is the mind that's busy with all your self-concern. Big mind is... the mind of a Buddha. Big mind is the mind that's with you all the time, but you don't participate with it or see it because you're so busy with your problems.

[41:55]

But if you can rest in the midst of your problems, you can see the entire landscape of your life in this present moment and all the ways it's connected to everything. And Suzuki Roshi, so at the end, even though he was saying, yes, we should build a temple, And yes, we should take care of all the temples that we have and the people that come in. We should not give up our fundamental practice of shikantaza, of understanding big mind, because if we do that, if we give that up, all of this will be for naught. So his sort of last parting words were, pay attention to your fundamental practice. If you do that, If you take care of your fundamental practice, the rest will fall in line, even though many problems will happen. So I believe I've slightly gone over.

[42:58]

Thank you very much for your time this morning. It was a pleasure seeing you again. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:32]

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