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. Good morning. You came at the right time. I almost missed it. One day, Master Zhao Zhou Gongshun was outside the monastery and an old woman came along carrying a basket. He asked her, where are you going? The old woman said, I'm going to steal Zhao Zhou's bamboo shoots. Zhao Zhou said, what will you do if you run into Zhao Zhou? The old woman walked up to Zhao Zhou and slapped him.

[01:02]

So a few years ago, two good friends of ours, Florence Kaplow and Sue Moon, had this kind of crazy idea that they were going to put together a book of koans or Zen stories featuring women. And they actually found over 100 stories in the Buddhist tradition going back 2,500 years or so. And then they had this inspired notion that they would ask 100 contemporary teachers from around the world to write commentaries on these cases. So I was invited to do one. I was very happy to do that, as a number of the Zen Center teachers were. And I can only imagine what it was like to try and collect all of that, get it edited, get it back, and so on. It was quite a feat, and by 2013 they had an actual book that came out, and it's a wonderful book called The Hidden Lamp.

[02:08]

Anyway, this morning I'm going to, once again I'm going to read the case that I just began with, which is the one that I chose to comment on for my offering, and then I'm going to read to you my commentary, and then I'm going to comment on my commentary. So that's my plan for this morning. I think it'll take about an hour or so. Anyway, this is The Hidden Lamp. Stories from 25 centuries of awakened women. Oops. Oh, just a moment. I lost my koan. Oh, dear.

[03:09]

There's a hundred of them here. I'm sorry. Ah, okay. The old woman steals Jajo's bamboo shoots. from China in the 9th century, this story. So one day, Master Zhaozhou was outside the monastery, and an old woman came along carrying a basket. He asked her, where are you going? The old woman said, I'm going to steal Zhaozhou's bamboo shoots. Zhaozhou asked, well, what will you do if you run into Zhaozhou? The old woman walked up to Zhaozhou and slapped him again. I must confess to finding secret delight in this story. How daring of a woman, and an old woman at that, to assault not only a full-grown man, but a full-blown Zen master to boot. It certainly goes against our training as women, and as disciples of the Buddha, to whack our teachers.

[04:12]

And yet we also know how tempting it can be. Not only to take a poke at the Zen masters who have trained us, but even more so at the entire tradition, which has seen fit through most of its history to leave us as women out. I think of how it hurt me as a child to discover from my parents, my teachers, and even my playground friends, how little value there was in being a girl. And so I made sure I didn't throw like a girl, walk like a girl, or think like a girl. because I had come to believe that to do so would be a great embarrassment for me. But this story is about a lot more than the failure to take women seriously in Buddhist history. For me, this story invites a deeper look at all exchanges between students and teachers of the Dharma, or even deeper still at how we face the world in each and every moment. Isn't that the reason we got into this Dharma practice in the first place? Didn't we come to the monastery gate to look for answers to great questions?

[05:18]

Every moment, each of us, man, woman, child, dog, beetle, cat, is met and made by vast networks of causes and conditions that sprout up like Zhajo's bamboo shoots, which are always lively, fresh, and freely given. And yet the old woman talks of stealing. How curious is that? And what about that empty basket? How often do each of us move through our day with a list, a wad of cash, an empty basket that we're longing to fill, enacting the Buddha's first and second noble truths? There is an aching in my heart. The aching is caused by my sincere desire that things be different, but especially better than they are. If only I had a few bamboo shoots to brighten the afternoon meal. If only my parents would stop quarreling. If only I wasn't growing old, getting sick, and about to die. If only. To the enlightened eye, myriad things fit perfectly together every moment, as if by magic, without regret.

[06:24]

Like the big bang and reverse. Old woman, old man, empty basket, bamboo shoots, and spring, kapow. When Jajo asks, where are you going? I think the old lady is being challenged to respond. So the old lady checks out his humanity with a smack. This koan is a cliffhanger. Does Jajo meet the old woman freshly and openly or has he forgotten for a moment who she truly is and that without her, without the bamboo shoots, without the spring, without the empty basket, he would have no life at all. Not just this woman, this meeting at this moment, all meetings, all moments, all women They've known each other, loved each other, slapped each other before. After all, she must have changed his dirty diapers a hundred million times, and that slap she gave him was a doozy. Maybe she thought that if she hit him really hard, his loving heart would open to her once again, as it had those many lifetimes ago.

[07:29]

Mom? Sweetheart? Darling? We don't see the word love so often in the Dharma. In fact, there seems to be a fear of it. in particular the body of it, the lovely body at every age, of the child, of the woman, and of the man. But if what's happening in this story isn't love, including, dare I say, sex, then I am a monkey's uncle. Do we think he hit her back? I doubt it. I think he laughed his goofy old head off, and so did his silly old girlfriend. They, like us, hand in hand, will keep traveling the pathways together, delighting the children and rattling the cages of the frightened young monks. Boo. So, now to comment on my commentary. So there are a number of thoughts that occurred to me after I reread this, and I hadn't read it for a few years, so it was like, the first thought was, did I really write that?

[08:30]

I couldn't recognize it as my own, which is, not an unfamiliar feeling. When we look back on our lives through old photographs or old writings, it's like, really? Is that really me? Is there some relationship between that picture or that writing and this person sitting here right now? It's pretty hard to tell. So after that, I started to wonder, well, what have I learned in the years in between then and now? What is it I have to talk about today? What's fresh? What's likely? Well, I don't know. I really don't know. And at the same time, because I don't know, I really want to find out. Not knowing is not the end of questioning, it's the beginning. It's the beginning, it's where we start from. I don't know and I want to find out, I'm deeply curious. So,

[09:32]

This kind of leads me to think of like a pilgrimage, that our lives are a pilgrimage that's always starting again, always now. Today's the first step on the path. Once again, as the path weaves its way back and forth through what we think of as time and what we think of as our life. This way, that way, forward, back. Trying to find out what it is we don't know. So there's also another Zen story about this very thing. Ditsan asked Fayyan, where are you going? Fayyan said, around on pilgrimage. Ditsan said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayyan said, I don't know. Ditsan said, not knowing is nearest. So as I said in my commentary, and I still feel it's so, you know, I think... we came to the monastery gate looking for answers to great questions.

[10:36]

That's what brought all of us here, maybe all of you here today. So I'm really grateful that I came here, and I'm grateful for all the people who've helped me for so many years, the many teachers, my fellow students, all of the guests who come here, all of you, all the people who, come to the monastery gate looking for answers to great questions. I'm also grateful to my family and I'm grateful to my friends and I'm grateful to my dog and my cats and those half-eaten rodents that they leave on my living room floor. Every day a new lesson, something fresh. So I also feel very grateful to Florence and to Susan for providing us with a whole new way of being grateful to these women teachers from the past who all would have vanished by now because no one had collected their stories. So I think this is a tremendous gift to all of us to have these all in one place and for a mere whatever it is, $19 or something, you can have it too.

[11:48]

And of course, this isn't over. Our life of wonder is only just beginning, you know, moment by moment. We begin again. Life full of wonder. Don't know, but let's find out. So I actually asked the students last year if they had any good ideas, you know, or any answers, if they post them on the bulletin board out there. Because, you know, sometimes they feel they kind of leave it all up to the person sitting up here, like, oh, here's the answer. I don't know. So I think you all together, we probably know a lot. So really, if you have any good ideas or answers, if you post them on the bulletin board, we would all appreciate it very much. And I'm not kidding. Because we really do need help. And no one person can possibly understand what's happening here or how we can help by ourselves. Pilgrimage in the Buddhist tradition isn't taken alone. It's a well-trodden path, as the Buddha said. He simply rediscovered the path.

[12:50]

He didn't invent it. He said, oh, I found the path. I found the way. It's been here all along. I just was overlooking it. It's right under your feet in every moment as it is under ours. There's an image in the Buddhist tradition that preceded the internet by a couple millennia of the way that all of us interlock with our wisdom and our good works. There's an interconnection It's been happening and is happening right in this room right now if we're simply aware of it. We're all connected to each other. And the connection is called Indra's net. And the image is of a net of jewels, of awarenesses, awakened awarenesses. And each one of them is reflected and reflects all the others and thereby saving the whole world. That's all we need to do, just hook together our good works and our compassion, our wisdom. and we'll get it done. That's our prayer.

[13:51]

So the next thing I noticed when reading my commentary was this fundamental clue to the workings of the mind, my mind in particular. So it's amazing to me how these single images, a basket, bamboo shoots, an old guy, an old woman, and a slap, that's really all I had to work with, turned into a long story. that I spun a rather elaborate tale. And the Buddha calls this spinning that we do mental elaborations. You have one little thing, one little moment or one thought or one little look on someone's face and you can make up a whole story about what it means and how bad it is. Excuse me. So I know that sounds familiar. I know we all do it. We're very good at it. Spinning tales, telling stories. And that's how the koan works.

[14:55]

You know, they just give you a little dribble of something. Does a dog have Buddha nature? Moo. I mean, that's it. And, you know, you spend 20 years trying to understand it. And there was nothing to understand. Does a dog have Buddha nature? Moo. I mean, what's the problem with that? So I noticed in my commentary that I not only mentioned women's liberation, I mentioned teacher-student relationships, shopping, the Four Noble Truths, the Big Bang, sex and love. Bamboo shoots, an old man, an old woman and a slap. Amazing, huh? So the mind and its elaborations to me are kind of akin to the way ice crystals grow or bear trees in winter. You know, you can see how they start to spread out new connections are made, and so on. You kind of forget where you started pretty quickly. So I often tell this story, which some of you have undoubtedly heard because I often tell it, about a visit we had from Gregory Bateson, a well-known Ecology of the Mind, author of Ecology of the Mind, who was a frequent visitor to the Zen Center, and he...

[16:07]

I'm not sure how that happened, except I think we were sitting, says Sheen, and he came in, which is probably why I remember this story, and spoke to us, and he told us a story about stories. He said, we've now invented a computer that thinks like a human. And to test the computer, we asked it a simple question, do you think like a human? And the computer responded, after a pause, very human, that reminds me of a story. So stories are pretty much the core of our human life. You know, whether we're at home or in the car listening to NPR or talking with friends or thinking by ourselves, you know, stories, stories. And I've been noticing it's so exciting having some new babies around because you can watch them begin to learn how to tell stories. We're training them, you know. We're teaching, right now they're learning nouns.

[17:08]

Rock, tree, dog, cat, and then dog chases cat. So pretty soon they're getting some verbs and little by little they're telling stories of their own. In some cases, you know, they're lying. Which is, you know, seems to be inborn. I don't think we taught them that. You know, say no when the answer should be yes. Is that a rock? No. You sure? No. So pretty much all no at this point. So the real challenge isn't so much about the fact that we tell stories, it's that we don't realize that that's all we're doing. It's just a story. Just a story. It's very liberative to learn that. It's just a story. It's a good one, but it's just a story. Don't get too worked up about it. So I do want to confess that I kind of liked my commentary, which is one reason I chose to read it, you know, because I figured most of you didn't have the book and probably hadn't read it yourself, so it's a big chance to get it out there.

[18:19]

But at the same time, you know, in looking at it, I just, I'm going over again and I'm saying, like, really? This is all that was in there? Not so much to go on, and yet on I went, you know, just really fast and with a lot of confidence. just started to work that machinery. So I think my gratitude to the time we spend sitting in the zendo quietly, you know, like we did this morning, we sit for about two 40-minute periods each morning, and it is the opportunity to watch your story-making machinery at work because it's on all the time. You'd think we were all sitting here silently, wouldn't you? Well... I don't know about everybody else, but I'm just like . Wonder what those people are doing, wonder what they're thinking about. On and on and on. And I'm really used to noticing what I'm thinking, because I've spent a lot of time noticing.

[19:23]

Oh, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm just thinking. How interesting. No, not really. It's mostly like total gibberish. It's random, this jumps around and everything. So anyway, that's the first point I want to make this morning is it's just a story, including what I'm saying now. Lest I forget. It's just a story. And the second point I want to make is that these stories are very powerful. And we shouldn't underestimate the power of stories. And maybe we don't. Maybe we know that very well. Especially when we put words like, I hate you, I love you, or I don't know if I like you or not. This is called greed, hate, and delusion. And these are feelings with which we animate our stories. Now we've got a real powerful combo. How I feel about my story is what drives my life. So these three flavors of feelings are called greed, hate, and delusion.

[20:27]

I like you, I don't like you, I'm not sure if I like you or not. Attraction, repulsion, and confusion. That's basically what's going on with us all the time. The elaborations are the stories we make up about how we feel. I don't feel good, therefore it must be you. And so on and so on. We convince ourselves very quickly that the object is the problem. Not just that I have that feeling. I have a feeling. I take care of my feeling. One of the little guys who lives here told his mom that he didn't like his little brother. And she said, why not? His little brother's adorable, right? Looks just like him, too. And he said, because he's always smiling. You know, I understand that. You're not feeling so good, and there's a little baby around that's always smiling. That's not a very happy thing. So it's the baby's fault.

[21:28]

I don't like that baby smiling all the time. So the Buddha taught that there are basically five elements to a human being that make up what we are and how it all works. He's trying to help us analyze the problem, the problem being each of us. So he called these heaps the skandhas, the five skandhas. And the first one is is the form of our body and of the material world. Things that can be grabbed with our hands or that we can run into. The solid materiality of our life. So that's the first one, Priskanda. And basically it's things we can get a hold of or that we can buy or sell. The whole transactional world of stuff. Basically stuff. Then the other side, the other four have to do with things that we can't get a hold of, that are extremely important in our lives.

[22:32]

We can't buy, like respect and love and happiness with our jobs and so on and so forth. So the non-material elements of our life. So this skanda of form is always accompanied by these other four skandhas, which I'm gonna name. So there's form, the body, And then there's these feelings, which I just mentioned, positive, negative, neutral. I like it, I don't like it, I'm not sure. So the feelings, that's a very big component of what we are. The next one is perception. Perception is what I think I see. Like right now, I think I see a lot of what I think of as people. Looking at me. Which... If I think about it, it makes me very nervous. I will ignore that that's happening. The perception is what I think I see. Impulse is the action I want to take based on what I think I see.

[23:34]

I have an impulsive action. I'm going to do something. That's action. I have an impulse. I have a perception. I have an impulse. And then the whole thing is wrapped by consciousness. It's kind of like a bigger wrapper that goes around the whole package. So the body and the perception and the feelings and the impulses. So that's all five. Form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness. So far so good? So you can just check in with yourself. You've got all five of those. If you forget what they are, just kind of do a little review of how it is. So... this transparent, I think of it as a kind of transparent bubble that moves around with us wherever we go. And it kind of takes the shape of wherever we are. So right now I'm in a bubble that's shaped like a square and full of, as I said, a lot of people looking things. And then there are some holes in the bubble, which leads me to believe there's something else out there, but I'm not really sure, because I can't see.

[24:40]

All I can see is what's right here. I can't see what's back here, or you can. I think there's a statue, as I recall. But, you know, so we're basically in our bubbles all the time, and they go around with us. Sometimes they're shaped like the inside of your car. Sometimes they're shaped like your spouse. You know, it's the bubble of awareness. And it's interesting, during the Middle Ages, I was fascinated. Someone used this phrase one time with me, said, homo bulla est, homo with Latin, meaning man is a bubble. And in the Middle Ages, a lot of paintings had bubbles in them. They were called the vanities. And there were bubbles, there were skulls, there was a rotten fruit. And those nicely painted images represented transiency. These are all things that are going to dissolve, disappear. And the bubble is the human life. And when it pops, these paintings were designed to scare you. So when it pops, you're going to be confronted by you-know-who deciding whether or not you get to go into heaven.

[25:44]

So the encouragement there was to be good. When your bubble pops, if you're not, something very bad is going to happen to you. So these bubbles... Anyway, that was a transgression. Anyway... So anyway, the Buddha basically used these particular elements to help us to study... how we move around in the world. And basically he said, so here's an example. I'm in my body and I'm walking down the street and I see David coming. I don't like David. So I crossed the street pretending I didn't see him. And then I realized it's Joe, who I really do like. So I cross back across the street and tell Joe the funny thing that just happened because he doesn't like David either. That's how it works. Form, feeling, perception, impulses, and all of that within consciousness.

[26:53]

So the secret to the outcome, one of the other things about these processes that the five skandhas are producing as we move around is that these intended actions that we take, that I intended to avoid David. So that intentional action creates what's called karma. I now am in the realm of karma. I'm intending things which set in motion certain kinds of responses later on called the fruit, consequence of my actions. The consequence being next time that... Was it David I didn't like? Next time David comes down the street and avoids me, which isn't very nice, I have to remember why he's doing that. What started that? Who started this? So we can learn about how karma works by noticing in our intended actions, the outcomes are... Another law is good actions come out of good... Good results come out of good actions.

[27:57]

Bad results come out of bad... I mean, we kind of know this, but we really know it when we're willing to reflect on our own intended actions, particularly when they're not ones that we're particularly proud of. So one of the other keys to practice is that we have to be honest with ourselves. Did I start this? Did I have something to do with this thing that's going on here? Or am I just going to stay in denial that it's all about them? When am I going to engage in my own life stream, in my own karma, in the outcome of my own actions? There are many intended actions that are going to result in very bad consequences. They're named as the Buddhist precepts. Killing, lying, stealing, sexualizing. It's kind of the chronicle every morning. What's listed there are intended actions that cause very bad outcomes for the person doing them and the people all around them.

[28:58]

Hippies used to say, you know, it's bad for your karma. And they're right. It's bad karma, bad juju. So it's not easy for us, it's almost impossible for us to recognize what's going to happen in the future. Like, the fact that the fruit of our actions, the rotten fruit is going to show up for our negative actions in the future, we can't really see when that's going to happen or in what form it's going to take. So we're kind of blind to the future. The way we can learn best is by reflecting on the past. How did this come to be? When 9-11 happened, the Dalai Lama famously said, don't look for blame, look for causes. How did this happen? Any of us responsible for that? Did we have anything to do with it at all? Maybe it's embarrassing if we start saying, yeah, I think so. Maybe we have to start looking back and looking back a long way, because it's been going on a long time, stealing, lying, killing, slandering, sexualizing, and not reflecting on, did I start this?

[30:11]

Is this something to do with me? Let's be honest. Let's be honest. So karma is kind of like a coach or an instructor that can help to guide us through this stream of consciousness as it moves forward very quickly, you know? Actions and their consequences happen rather fast. So I like the image of that guy in the boat with the megaphone, the cockswain, is that his name? Who's yelling at the rowers, like, no, stop, or go faster, or watch out. He's the only one who can see. But they're going backwards as fast as they can. So you gotta trust your karma. You have to trust the messages that are being sent to you from what we used to call our conscience. Jiminy Cricket. Don't do that, don't go over there. If we don't listen to that, we go over there and we know what happens. It's swallowed by a whale. Guaranteed. So I once told, I was telling the people in the practice period that I heard a story about a young Zen teacher, very bright guy, very talented, very,

[31:25]

well-trained, who had a lovely family and started a group and was doing very well. And then his board of directors called him in and said, is it true you're having an affair with one of your students? Something he promised his wife and his board of directors he wouldn't do. And his response was not yes or no. His response was, who told you? So I got this feeling he wasn't really listening to his conscience. He actually was denying or disallowing that good voice to come in because he wanted something. He wanted to do something that his conscience could have told him, that's probably not a very good idea. And it wasn't, and it kind of ruined a lot of stuff for him. As far as I know, I hope he's okay, but pretty bad. So this really is an important step for all of us to be willing to take is to line ourselves up with being honest, telling the truth.

[32:30]

I mean, telling the truth really is the saving grace. It'll get you on the right track. If you just tell the truth, then you have to remember the elaborations you made up. I remember getting caught in a couple of those when I was a young woman, lying about why I wasn't able to go out with somebody and then they'd run into me somewhere else and I'd be like, oh God, I wasn't supposed to run into you. You're supposed to get away with this. So it's awful when you get caught. So maybe just be honest. Take the pain up front. Get it over with. But I don't want to go out with you. Ah! I'm sorry. Anyway. Don't want to hurt people. So we say. So... I also am very, very fond and often repeat this teaching from the Dhammapada, very old teaching of the Buddha.

[33:31]

And I think one reason I like it so much is it's simple. It's easy to remember and it's easy to understand. This is, I think, written about the third century. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. He beat me, she robbed me, they cheated me, he lied to me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. He beat me, she robbed me, they cheated me, he lied to me. Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. For hate is not conquered by hate, hate is conquered by love. This is the eternal law. Those who do not know this, I mean those who do know this, do not fight against each other. So the Buddha was a teacher of peace, of nonviolence. And it's work. It's a job. It's hard. So the last thing I want to mention about the story of the old woman and Zhaozhou and the bamboo shoots is that Zen stories really are about relationships.

[34:45]

It was one of the big shifts from the kind of the old writings about Buddhism, which had a lot to do with instructing you on how to meditate, how to become free of your entrapments in your own thinking, which is a very important thing to know and to do and to learn. The kind of re-emphasis that happened in later centuries was toward the relationship between one person and another. As we're doing this work on ourselves, we need to have it checked out. There's a famous story of a... A yogi who has been meditating for 30 years up in a cave and he comes down to the village and this mangy dog rubs his leg and he kicks the dog. So his teacher says, you know, 30 more years. So it's really important that we are working with other people and checking out, have we really gotten past that tendency to our reactivity? Do we have the training to actually be patient when things are difficult and we get irritated?

[35:46]

Not so easy. So the primary relationship that we're cultivating is friendship with each other. So friendship between old men and old men, old men and old women, women and women, men and men, cats and dogs, world round. How can we help to cultivate friendships to one another? So Ajajo and the old woman have known each other and loved each other and slapped each other a million times, again and again, breaking open their love in these daring gestures of intimacy. And I think that is the primary teaching of the Buddha, that each of us needs to learn how to be friends to one another. Maybe not just friends, but devoted and thoughtful friends. That we are aware of the impact that we have on each other, and that we are aware of the impact we're having on where we live, in our homes, in California, on this beautiful and fragile life-giving planet.

[36:52]

And how do we take care of this world? How do we take care of ourselves and our children and those children beyond the generations to come we wish? there to be generations to come, and what are we doing now to make that likely to happen? So I thought, well, I guess we all have to start today. Maybe by the time I end talking, we could start. Changing the world by how we take care of each other, by looking for ways to be kind and useful to each other. Maybe it's just opening the door, paying back for a muffin, or whatever you can do. It's just like, what can we do? to lighten each other's lives. We all have difficulty. So how can we help? How can we be there to catch each other as we trip? This is called big love. Big love.

[37:57]

In the Buddhist tradition, big love is called the bodhisattva vow. And it's a very simple vow, and you can take it anytime you want. You can take it inside of your own mind and see if it fits you, if it's something you like, if it's something you want to cherish and keep and maintain and use as a kind of generating system for how you go, how you behave. And it simply says, I vow to live for the benefit of all beings. That's it. I vow to live for the benefit of all beings. It's just an old idea and it's just an old story. That's all. So thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[39:02]

For more information, visit sfzc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:11]

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