This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I always love this moment where everybody's sitting and everybody seems so serious. Seems like something's going to happen. My name is Mary and I am... I've been participating at San Francisco Zen Center since the summer of 2000 when I came to Tassajara and thought I'd be here for a few months. And I've come and gone a number of times since 2000, and most recently I live at City Center, and I find myself in the position of head of practice. And so before I forget, I want to thank Hakusho, who's the head of practice here, for inviting me to give this talk this evening.

[01:03]

It's one of the jobs of the head of practice, or Tonto, to invite speakers to come to our three temples to speak. So we have an exchange going. So I'm appreciative of being able to come here and talk to the students and to the guests. I've been here for about five days. And while I've been here, I've been having some conversations with students. And I thought this evening, one of the things I'd talk about was a couple of the questions that have come up in those discussions with students. And I think it applies to people that are here, perhaps on retreat and also maybe guest students as well. And one of the very... common questions it seems to be at this point in the summer maybe, and for some of us in this point in our lives is, why stay? And I think this can be applicable to people that are here doing retreat or as guests, and the question can be, why practice?

[02:15]

I think they're kind of the same question, actually. And It seems to me that finding an answer, even if it's something that resonates for a person for a couple of days or a couple of moments or a couple of months or a number of years, is a very important thing to ask oneself. Why stay? Why practice? And I think oftentimes we imagine that asking that question, once, and coming up with the answer is surely enough. That one answer, the right answer, is the answer that will last us, and it will be the right answer, and it will continue to be the right answer for as long as we live, sometimes even. And I believe that one of the things that I've found about practice

[03:19]

is that the question I've heard, asking the question, being able to ask the question, is probably the first step, the most important step. And then being willing to understand that asking the question over and over and over and over again, and sometimes not even coming to an answer, is... is the answer. So, in this particular valley, the question might be, A, what am I doing here? And why do I stay here? Why do I need to stay here? What's happening? And I think that One of the things that was apparent in the past for many people is no longer apparent today.

[04:27]

And I'd like to talk about that a little bit tonight. In my early 20s, I studied history for many years. I got to the point where I was teaching at the... university-level classes, extension classes to adults and to children and to seniors. And my area of study was Anglo-Saxon England, so very early English history. And one of the things that I was familiar with at that time was the idea of families working in professions through lifetimes. And this was a very common thing. So somebody's grandfather would be a blacksmith.

[05:33]

Their great-grandfather would be a blacksmith. Their father would be a blacksmith. They imagined that they would become a blacksmith. And from the age that they could start... participating in the forge, they would do so however they could. And this was something that most often wasn't questioned, and that system is called apprenticeship. So people worked, and they breathed the air of that trade. In this lineage, we call it warm hand to warm hand transmission. And I would propose that that's a fancy name for apprenticeship. And so you grow up in a situation where what's happening, your future, the training you're receiving, is something that's knowable, predictable in a certain way.

[06:40]

one learns by observation and by starting slowly and then getting more and more responsibility. So this wasn't something that happened only in Europe. I am a little bit familiar with carpentry because I was a carpenter and I took an apprenticeship and studied that way in Canada. The formal way in Japan for apprentices of carpentry was somebody would be gifted an apprenticeship, either through connection or family understanding. They would show up at a job and for the first year of that apprenticeship they were not allowed to speak and they were not allowed to touch anything. So their job was to observe the job site, to observe what the other carpenters were doing, to observe how things worked, to figure out how the connections were made.

[07:52]

And then once that year was passed, they would then be passed a broom. And the expectation was they had been paying attention for that year, and so they with that broom, they would know how to clean up. And the training progressed from that point. So this became the basis, was this understanding of immersing oneself in this work and not taking on responsibility, actually. Again, in Japan, in the apprenticeship of becoming a potter, I've heard that a very traditional method, and I don't know if this was followed all the time or just in specific places, but a master would take on apprentices, and that apprentice would be asked to make, let's say, a plate.

[08:54]

And the first plate would be handed to the master, and the master wouldn't look at it, and they'd throw it on the ground and break it. There was not a discussion. And this would happen with that same plate over and over and over again. And then on the 400th time that the student presented the plate to the master, the master would look at it and say, okay, let's move to a cup. And that same thing would happen over and over again. And this was how it was learned. So I think... This idea of apprenticeship, this idea of living in a place where there's something happening and paying attention to what that thing is, is not so common in our culture. We choose to go to a place, to a school, and we're given a curriculum and a set number of courses to take.

[10:02]

We take those courses, and at the end of a certain amount of time, somebody gives you a piece of paper, and you leave. And whether or not you really understand what just happened, you still have that piece of paper. And so, what I'm proposing is this warm hand to warm hand tradition that we, as teachers, Soto Zen students in this lineage are immersing ourselves in is something foreign to most of us when we first enter these gates. There's this idea that we carry with us in our bodies that we need to be right, and the first time we're asked to do something, like ring that bell, that we should know how to do it. That's what we bring to us. That's what we bring with us. That's what we carry when we walk in these gates. And that is not the system that you're entering, actually.

[11:04]

The system that you're entering is a system where you are asked to sit behind that bell and you can actually make as many mistakes as you do because you keep doing it and you keep making the mistakes And at a certain point, you'll realize that you're not making the mistakes anymore because they weren't mistakes in the beginning. It was you learning. These are very different things. And this happens in this kind of training over and over again. I became an ordained person, and I started wearing this robe. I don't know how many yards of fabric I'm wrapped in. And learning to move and walk and bow and eat orioki in these robes is really no joke.

[12:11]

It's like soup, you know. And then this overrobe called the okesa, we're not supposed to wash it. And nobody really says to you, or nobody actually said to me, this is how you do these things. And people say at Zen Center, the best place to be as soon as you ordain is Tassajara. Because what happens is you have to put on and take off the robe and take off your clothing and put on your clothing, I don't know, 50 times a day sometimes. It feels like that. We have a joke in my household, and it's called Zen Barbie, because we're running back and forth and changing all the time in and out of these clothes. So sometimes I'm amazed at how many times I have to change.

[13:13]

And what that does, actually, it has made me very familiar with these robes, how to wear them, how to take care of them, how to move in them, how to bow in them. This is not, I don't think, something that somebody could have told me. And I actually don't think that's the point. But when I first started wearing them, I desperately wanted somebody to tell me how to do those things. I wanted information that I believed that I could translate into some body practice that would help me. And again, what I'm proposing is that isn't how it works here. It is believing that these things will come to us and that we can be gentle as they come to us, that we can not know how to do something and it's okay, that we can say, I've never done that before and feel that that's okay.

[14:18]

And I think that that's radical. I think in our culture, saying you don't know how to do something, it's kind of demoralizing often. So the training over and over again at this place, it seems to me, is to accept how many things we don't know and to be okay with the fact that we're learning beings all the time. So, as part of my carpentry apprenticeship, you get hired on with a company, and I worked with that company for ten months, and then I went to school for two months, and I wrote some exams, and then I went back to the company and worked for them for another ten months, and then I did another set of exams and a practical test.

[15:22]

And I did that four years in a row. And at the end of that four years, there was a provincial test, there was a practical test, and there was a Canada-wide test. And I remember talking to one of the gentlemen that I had a very close relationship who was a part of the apprenticeship board, and I said, just before going in to write those exams, Murray, I actually don't know most of what I need to know to become a carpenter. And with this very gentle laugh, he said, Congratulations, Mary, you've just passed the test. And it wasn't anything that I expected because I had come from this other system where... knowing the right answer, being able to produce what other people thought was expected was the most important thing, was the right answer.

[16:30]

So this apprenticeship that I'm talking about is a different way of thinking. It's coming to Tassajara or City Center or Green Gulch and opening up to the idea that it's okay to learn, it's okay to be afraid, it's okay to have doubt, it's okay to change your mind. It's okay to want more, to feel like we deserve more. And I think that this place is gentle enough to allow all of those fears to come up in us.

[17:47]

to allow the space for quiet. And this is getting more and more precious. I think for those of you who are here for a few days as guests, I don't know how it is for you when you come over the ridge and your cell phone no longer works. I don't know how it is for you when you come over and you realize that you're not allowed to plug in your computer. I think that it's precious and it's also possibly extremely painful. If what you do in your life is spend a lot of time on computers or are in contact with family members or loved ones or friends or colleagues all the time on your cell phone, being here, I imagine, is quite uncomfortable and also at the same time relieving.

[18:51]

Unplugging is no joke anymore. And for some of the younger people that are working here for the summer, this might be the first time that you've ever not had access to a phone, quick access to your friends, quick access to Google to answer a question, or answer, I'll look that up. So this is a very different way. And it's, as I say, it can be extremely uncomfortable. And I think that it's not common for us to feel that being uncomfortable is okay. Because I think mostly we get the message from everywhere that if you're uncomfortable, you can do something about it and fix it. that it is fixable, that if you make a couple of good decisions, you will be comfortable, that things will work out, that you'll be happy.

[20:07]

And I think what's happening down here is that people realize that they thought they'd made the great decision to come here and get comfortable, and they're actually down here really uncomfortable. And then what happens? And one thing that pretty well all of us have done over and over in our lives is we do this thing called the geographical fix. So if we don't like where we are or doing what we're doing, we change it. Because that next move will make us happy. And so settling into a place where you're really not happy and you know it can be super interesting. Many practitioners talk about the idea of checking that out, leaning into this idea of not comfortable, being willing to feel

[21:26]

uncomfortable, exploring it, talking to other people about it, and even admitting to the fact to their friends that they are uncomfortable. Because I think sometimes in our culture, it's okay to be kind of sarcastic and quirky, funny about being uncomfortable, but you don't really want to admit that you're in your life not happy because it means that you're making the wrong decisions. So this place turns that really on its head. It allows us to say to ourselves for sometimes months or years on end, wow, I really don't like being here, but I'm going to check this out for a while. I'm going to feel uncomfortable and feel what that feels like in my body. I'm going to explore that to the depth that I can to see if that's really what's happening or if that's the message I'm telling myself.

[22:40]

So to rest in one place for a while and see what it is we're telling ourselves, what the messages are. I remember years ago, a fellow named Steve Stuckey, who was an abbot here, said, we come to Tassajara to learn how to change our minds. And I think that happens in many, many different ways. And I think that it's a very underused idea, this learning how to change our mind. Mostly, I think the message that we get from our culture is that if you're right, you don't ever have to negotiate that.

[23:49]

that there's a right answer. And you can find it if you're smart enough. So the practice here, I believe, is to be given a set of... to be given a schedule, for example, and... to wake up in the morning, sometimes happy to be up, sometimes tired and grouchy, sometimes super angry, sometimes very willing. All these things are possible. There are a range of the emotions that we have. To actually feel those, to explore the fact when you're angry that you're angry, and to explore when you feel joyful, that you're joyful, and to be good about all those things.

[24:56]

To learn to believe that these emotions are actually happening in your body, and that they're wonderful, and that we don't need to, like, stuff them. Which, for some people, is pretty radical, including me. then bump up to a schedule that's there and seems to be unforgiving and see how that affects us, how it lands, what adjustments we need, to learn to ask for what we need, which also is pretty radical for some people, to take up a little space if you're a person that's not used to that. to take up less space if you're a person that's used to taking up a lot of space. So to play with who you think you are in the world, to find the ground that you're standing on.

[26:00]

This is part of this system called apprenticeship, I think. This is part of this warm hand to warm hand. This is part of living in community. So many people, they... They have the idea that they like living in community, so they come and move into a community. And then they imagine, or in conversation they say things, well, I thought it would be better. I thought people would like me more. I thought that other people would be kinder. So again, it's this opportunity to live in a setting that in your mind you imagine to be a certain way, and then finding out actually what it's like.

[27:06]

And I think that, again, from my history, I understand that Not so many hundreds of years ago, small communities with about, I've heard that about 150 is a very good size for a community, with about 150 people was extremely common. And that allowed for the right amount of connection, the right amount of individuality, the right amount of family support, the right amount of independence. It was a very, common size of community. And when it got bigger than that, people would break off and go somewhere else. This is no longer part of our world. So there's this idea, there's this feeling I think that a lot of us carry that we would like to be a member of a community. But again, we don't have the experience of doing that.

[28:11]

So then coming and living in a community is a learning. It's not a knowing. And the pain of that learning is real. Having an argument with somebody on a Tuesday and then finding yourself sitting across from them at breakfast the next morning and then taking a bath with them when you're both in the nude standing at each other is a new experience for a lot of people. And how do we do that? And how do we do that? We do it with a lot of patience. We do it with a lot of kindness to ourselves. We do it with a lot of forgiveness. We do it with a lot of conversation.

[29:17]

And we do it trying to understand that these are not things we should know already. These are things that we're learning. And that at any age, they can be good things to learn. So this exploration takes us into practice. This curiosity takes us into practice. This wanting to turn our imperfections very, very slowly and kindly and gently into perfection is the job of living in Sangha. It's a very slow process. I always think of this sign that I saw many years ago, and it said, pay $30, take 30 days, and lose 30 pounds.

[30:41]

And for me, that sign, it's... kind of what our culture is. And this experience of what's happening here or in practice is the opposite of that. You're not paying money, generally. You are — some of you are. Believe me, I know, some of you are. You're taking the long view. Practice needs the long view. And again, this is not something that we're used to. We're not used to the long view. We're used to a very quick answer. We're used to texting our friends and getting a response within about 30 seconds.

[31:47]

I think that being in a community of practitioners is an extraordinary opportunity, whether you're here for a day or whether you're here for years. I think it demands everything you've got, everything we've got. And for those of you that are here, I hope that you can treat yourselves ever more gently and with more kindness and that the long view becomes more important than the short view. So thank you very much for coming tonight and listening, and thank you for supporting Zen Center the way you do. and taking care of yourselves.

[32:58]

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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[33:19]

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