Well, good evening. Here we are, just us folks, and the entire world. This is an unusual Wednesday night talk, as I'm sure most of you in the outside world know, we don't normally live stream the Wednesday night talk, but because we have closed, because of the coronavirus, we are offering our dharma through the Internet. So it's kind of an unusual talk. On the one hand, Wednesdays are usually just an intimate gathering, which it feels is particularly intimate because it's just the residence of the temple, and yet we have this wide world. I'm hoping that this talk will be encouraging for you. I actually find it a little lonely. here in the temple.

[01:02]

I wasn't used to so few people at dinner last night and tonight, so I look forward to the day when our non-residents can be attending fully the events here in the temple. As we said in our announcement when we decided to close the temple, all of us at the San Francisco Zen Center are holding all of you in our hearts as together we prepare to meet the current public health challenge. In times of increased stress and anxiety, the Buddha's teaching on the importance of a calming body and mind and practicing mindful attention to every aspect of our daily lives are ever more precious. We wish that you and your loved ones remain in good health. So, ha. We're in the middle of a three-week intensive focusing on work practice.

[02:03]

So that's the theme of my talk. And the question is, how do we make work a vital, joyful activity? I will use this case about being busy, too busy to frame my talk. This is a case probably familiar to many of you. Yung Yang sweeps the ground, case 21 from the Book of Serenity. As Yunnan was sweeping the ground, Da Wu said, too busy. Yunnan said, you should know there is one who isn't busy. Da Wu said, if so, then there is a second moon. And Yunnan held up the broom and said, which moon is this? So that's a fairly simple, straightforward koan. So I'll also read a commentary, a few. There's a long commentary on the poem, but I'll just read a paragraph on it.

[03:05]

Without upset, there is no solution. Without struggle, there is no expression. Here, as Yunnan was sweeping the ground, Dawu casually tested him. Yunnan said, you should know there is one who isn't busy. Good people, as you eat, boil tea, sow and sweep, you should recognize the one not busy. then you will realize the union of mundane reality and enlightened reality. In the Dungshan lineage, this is called simultaneous inclusion, naturally not wasting any time. So this is a very well-known Cohen in the work area. Yunnan was a ninth century and Dao was ninth century. They were both students of Yaoshan and they also studied under Bai Zhan, who was sort of the founder of our temple in Zen monastic rules. And Yunnan became famous because he was the teacher of Dengshan, the founder of Soto Zen.

[04:16]

So, Susan, is Susan here tonight? No. Susan, you asked, so Susan told me... when she invited me to give this talk and then recently reminded me again, since she thought I might forget, that I was supposed to share some of my work experience, both in the temple and in the outside world. She's watching on livestream? Hello, Susan. Thank you for inviting me. So... So I'm going to diverge from my usual practice of just rambling on about Zen stuff and talk a little bit about my life. Kind of a way-seeking mind, focusing on the work aspect of my way-seeking mind. A work-seeking mind, maybe, is what we have here. A bit of an experiment. I can hardly remember all the years I've worked. There's been so many of them.

[05:16]

So anyway, my father was raised during the Great Depression, so... He trained me to work hard as part of my upbringing. And I just motored on until I got my master's degree in mathematics. Actually, I also got a minor in physics. And then I was hit by the counterculture, which was a big movement that happened in the 60s and 70s. And I woke up to all kinds of aspects of the world that... weren't as I had hoped they would be. And the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, women's movement, the environmental movement. And also it opened my mind to other possibilities of possible freedom in the mind and joy. So I had both a kind of inner opening and an outer realization. And that all led me to going to Kassahara. as a possible resolution of this quest I had.

[06:23]

And so that was where I learned the first thing about Zen work practice at Tassara. At Tassara, you, as a beginning student, start with manual labor, digging ditches, washing dishes, sweeping the path. And there's something wonderful about the simplicity of manual labor. It allows you to actually learn what mindfulness practice is about. And at Tassara, they also tell you to pay attention to your mind, pay attention to your body, pay attention to your emotions as you're doing all of these manual, honest work. And so I did a fair amount of that. This kind of work gives you a kind of chance to have a relaxed efficiency. You're not doing so much thinking.

[07:24]

It's more just focusing on the task at hand. There isn't a feeling of rushing through things to get to a more important activity. And I found it a great relief and a wonderful practice. Sweeping your mind. Notice the ways we get caught by our mind. and practice letting go. So that's basic Zen work practice. And we have various things that we do at Tassara that help us with this work practice. We practice mostly in silence, called functional speech, because chatting and working isn't the best for each other. If you want to have a conversation, it's best if you're not working at the same time, and if you're working, it's best if you're not... just chatting. So you get more depth in a conversation if you focus on just that. And we do things like bow in and bow out of our work.

[08:27]

We have a work circle to begin our work practice, which helps us build community, which is a part of work practice. And we do things like putting our tools away after we finish doing our work. What a nice feeling it is to go into the kitchen after dinner and see all the dishes in the right place and all the knives in the right place. It's the way you can actually survive as a community. I'm convinced it's one of the reasons Zen Center as a community has survived for 50 years when so many other hippie communes during the era that I was failed. That is in addition to sitting zazen every morning. I think the other characteristic of work that we would call Zen work is generosity. If you do your work as an act of giving with an attitude of purpose for the work as a benefit for others, if you're contributing to cleaning the street instead of proving how great a street cleaner you are, you'll have a better feeling about your work.

[09:38]

Everyone worked at Tasara. Suzuki Roshi worked at Tasara. In the hot summer sun, he moved rocks and built his garden. He said, I don't like food trips, but I like work trips. He loved Paul Disco's buildings at Tasara. He was interested in all of that. And he was always around when we were working. The 70s were very sort of powerful places work time at Tassarara City Center and Green Gulch. We were building a community, and everybody was excited about doing that. Most of the rock walls you see down at Tassarara were actually built during that period of time. Richard used to say, we're building our pathways to last 100 years. So after four years at Tassarara, I came up to the city center to be vice president of the businesses. which was a newly created position at that time.

[11:00]

We had just started the Tassar Bakery and the green grocer across the corner where we were selling groceries from greens from our farm at Green Gulch. And we were about to start Elias Stitchery where we were making our own Zafus and Zabatans and we were sewing fashionable things like work robes and... these kind of robes. We were gonna set a new style for clothing in America. And then we were just beginning green. So about nine months after I came up here as vice president, the previous president, Ed Brown, was reassigned to help Nancy Wilson Ross in New York, and I became president and vice president at the same time, because it's just much more efficient to communicate that way, between president and vice president. And we were starting Greens at that time, so I was also head of the Greens project.

[12:02]

And so the first thing I learned is that I could not do that job alone. So I met weekly with Reb, who was the Tonto at the city center at that time, and the treasurer, and Karin, who was the manager of the front-to-be at Greens. And so I had this weekly meeting where I shared the responsibility of the job. I guess that's the first thing I've learned. about work over these years is the most important thing, if you're in a leadership position, is to build a team, to have other people that you can work with to work on the problems you have, because there's always a lot of them. And I think we probably, by the time... When Greens opened, we had Greens, which had probably about 50 people working in it, and we had started also a bookstore down at Fort Mason. We had the grocery store, the bakery, Elias Stitchery. We probably had over 100, probably more, students working in our businesses.

[13:07]

So we had a lot of new students that had a very early understanding of work practice. And one of the things I remember best is at Greens we were... We had just lines out the door because we were sort of the first high-end vegetarian restaurant in anywhere, and certainly in San Francisco. And we were losing money. And part of that, we were trying to figure out why we were losing money. And part of it was that even though there were lines out the door, there were all these empty tables. And there were all these empty tables because our busboys, which were the newest students in Zen Center, were setting the table like it was tea ceremony. It was like very carefully. It had no concept that you could actually be careful and move fast at the same time. So Ed Brown, who was a senior student at Zen Center at that time, the Tassara cookbook he published, he became the head busboy to teach them how to...

[14:09]

bus tables, and that plus 99 other details that we had to figure out, we were able to turn greens into a profitable business. So this was a new sort of idea of work practice. So when I was at Tassar, work practice was, you know, sweeping the paths, washing the dishes. This was figuring out how to work in the world out there that's competitive, and the restaurant business in San Francisco is fantastically competitive. always has been, make a profit and still make it be work practice. And at that time, we spent a lot of time discussing and thinking about how we could make all of that be work practice. And it was an exciting and interesting time. So, you know, work practice started with Bai Zhang in the 8th century in China, who established the monastic rules. And he was always very insistent on working every day.

[15:12]

As you know, when he was old, he persisted in working, even though his students stole his tools. So he couldn't work. He said, I have no virtue. Why should others work for me? And he refused to eat. And he said, a day of no work is a day of no eating. And that, through probably Suzuki Roshi's love of work and our effort to be self-supporting in Zen Center, evolved into this massive set of businesses in Zen Center. So I sort of say work practice is part of the DNA of City Center and Green Gulch and Tassar. I would probably just also mention that part of what was going on at City Center or Zen Center in general at that time is we were the sort of leading light in Zen practice in the Bay Area, if not America.

[16:31]

And there was an enormous amount of intention given to us. So we had lots of people streaming through Zen Center. Governor Brown spent a lot of time here and much of his cabinet. were related to Zen Center. So it was a very active political time for Zen Center. Okay, now on to our koan. Yan Yan was sweeping the ground. So I've just spent some time describing what sweeping the ground is. You've got a feeling for sweeping the ground. And so there's a little koan here related to sweeping. One day, Zhao Zhou, said, a monk asked, the master is a great worthy, why are you sweeping? And Zhao Zhao said, dust comes in from the outside. And the monk said, it is a pure temple, why then is there dust? And Zhao Zhao said, oh, there's some more dust. So we may be sweeping our minds and bodies of all delusion as we clean the sidewalk and we become one with the broom and the sidewalk and all beings.

[17:42]

but soon there'll be more delusions that we have to sweep away. I think this is one of those kind of wonderful things you learn after a while. The problems continue. The dust is never there, but we still, we sweep it away. We clean every day the temple. I remember Ed Brown was telling me he was in a sashing with Suzuki Rishi where he said, About the third day, and those of you who have been on a sesheen for three days know it, that's like the problems you are having now, and Ed Brown remembered thinking in his mind, will be over with in just another day. And Sikorshi said, will continue for the rest of your life. So our practice is not to get rid of problems and not to get rid of the dust, but to continue to practice with the problems and the dust we have. Dao said, too busy.

[18:47]

So what's that like when Dao and Yunyun were brothers, actually, and they were good friends. They practiced together for, I don't know, 30 years. There's many stories about the two of them. So it's kind of like one of you would come up to someone else and say, you're looking too busy. You don't look very Zen calm with your sweeping of the mind. You look distracted, you know. So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I think it is a good thing. I think it's wonderful if we have friends in the Dharma that will wake us up to what we're doing, or at least test us. I've had many good Dharma friends who have come up and told me, Ed, you know, I remember I was head of the shop at Tasara, and the Eno came up to me, and it was, I don't know, you know, and I thought I had to get some truck fixed or something, whatever. And he said, you know, Ed, you might consider coming to the Zendo. Well, that's a nice friend, a suggestion.

[19:54]

You might consider putting your work down for a while and coming to the Zendo. So I think one of the other wonderful things about work practice in a temple like this is you can have friends that will actually know you well enough to be able to kindly assist you in your practice. And that's what Dao was doing, kind of asking Yunyan, are you really practicing? And so Yunyan said, you should know there is one who isn't busy. Strong statement, don't you think? Even though I look busy to you, Dao, inside of me, there is a calm, centered, composed Zen student. Can't you see him? I mean, he could have just said, no, I'm not busy, I'm very calm.

[20:56]

But he said, there's one who's not busy. And I would ask you, do you have one who's not busy? I will put this forward. I will claim there is always one who is not busy in you. You just don't see that person. You forget that person, the one who's not busy. You get so involved in the busy person that you think that's all you are, is the busy person. And I think it's essential to have some sense of that. We get a sense of that when we sit zazen. Sometimes when we're sitting zazen, we actually feel quite calm, quite composed, and not busy at all. And I would say one of our work practices, an essential work practice, is to try to bring that not busy person into your daily life, to train yourself to find that not busy person.

[22:05]

And what I mean by this is I don't mean that you're just sort of like nothing bothers you, you're calm all the time. I mean that even in the midst of tremendous difficulty and anxiety, you have an in-touchness with some part of yourself that is fundamentally calm. Calmness in the midst of incredible activity. And I think all of you have had some sense of that sometimes where you have, no matter, you've sort of, even, you know, it can be even an emotional thing. You're emotionally, you're grieving, you're in some pain, you're dark, there's something, but some part of you is settled. And usually for me that happens when you go into what you're experiencing, where you don't separate yourself from whatever it is that you're involved in, but actually become kind of one with it. then there's a kind of relief because you're who you are.

[23:16]

And who you are is a human being alive, which has a kind of calmness to it. So then Dawu said, if so, there's a second moon. So that seems pretty clear. Well, first, moon is a metaphor for enlightenment. You know, well, are there two moons? I mean, normally we just, well, we know now there's 10,000 moons. I mean, how many billions of moons out there? We only have one moon. Well, recently somebody said we had a second moon going around the Earth. It was caught briefly. Did somebody see that article? Every once in a while some big asteroids come in and get caught by the Earth and spin around for a while before they spin out again. So maybe... Maybe right now we do have two moons, and maybe we had two moons back then. But anyway, I think what he means in this story is you say you're an enlightened person, a calm person, and you just look like a very busy person to me.

[24:19]

How can those two be the same? He's testing him a little bit. And so this is also a kind of a... How can we be totally involved in the relative world and have some sense of the absolute? How can we be totally involved in the relative activity of our life and have some sense of our deep connection to everything? Or even a sort of a simpler way to think about it, how can I remember that I'm alive? This is actually really going on. This is not some dream I'm in. I'm actually alive as a human being on this strange planet around this solar system and trying to figure out this complex work problem I have. It's kind of a marvelous, wonderful thing. And remembering that you're alive is part of what centers you in your work.

[25:21]

It keeps you from getting too distracted by the problem aspect of it. Anyway... then Yinyan, being pretty good, holds up his broom and says, which moon is this? So you think I can't be both awakened and absolute and relative at the same time, that I'm not able to be not busy and busy at the same time? So I'm going to demonstrate that I can be that. So that's kind of like a question. It's kind of like a koan. Which moon is this? Which moon are you? Are you the busy moon or the not busy moon or the busy and not busy moon at the same time? So maybe I've got a few minutes. I'll just, you know, wander off for a little bit here.

[26:25]

When I was thinking about this koan, I got... carried away by the moon you know the moon is a metaphor that's used a lot by dogan and other people so just uh bear with me while i quote a little something from dan leighton's book just this is it in east asia the moon is usually thought of as the full round moon kind of like that super moon we had two days ago wasn't that a magnificent moon monday super moon means it's close to us it was wonderful a glowing image of wholeness. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, it also indicated as a reflection of the inner light of wholeness and the inner serenity of the Buddha, or of those who, through meditative awareness, have realized the one who is not caught up in busyness. Holding up his broom as a pointer, yunyan is invoking the perfect round moon beyond all separation. So, I mean, in these koans, it's interesting.

[27:30]

I mean, they could have used something besides moon. But they picked moon because in China, the moon is such a... All those calligraphy images of the moon shining through the clouds. It's wonderful, isn't it? A wonderful image of something whole, something complete. Some kind of feeling of not busyness. So Dogen adds a verse comment, who sweeps the ground and also sees the moon? Holding up the moon, his sweeping is truly not in vain. Dogen also says, why has our ancestor Yunnan's which moon is this suddenly appeared as a round sitting cushion? For Dogen, the realization of total non-duality and wholeness represented by the moon glows when expressed in upright sitting practice.

[28:35]

This is wonderful, beautiful, that Dogen. He's reminding us, you know, Sitsazen. Total nonduality and wholeness represented by the moon glows when expressed in upright sitting practice. That's the case. Now to a little bit of the commentary. Dao Wu bore down on Yunnan. Without upset, there is no solution. Without struggle, there is no expression. Without upset, there is no solution. Without struggle, there is no expression. I think Plato said something similar to that. Necessity is the mother of invention. Right? You know, without hardship, you can't figure out what to do. Without struggle, there's no way to do something. And so I'm going to, again, tell a few stories.

[29:38]

After I left Zen Center as president, after having been in Zen Center for 10 years, I went into high tech, which was just beginning then. They had just launched the IBM PC, so it was a good time to get in the microcomputer software business. And I started as a chief financial officer, because I'd had all this experience running businesses and restaurants and grocery stores. It made a lot of sense. Anyway, one of the things that I learned in high tech is that everything changes. Oh, I think I learned that in Zen Center, too. But... I really learned it in high tech because everything is changing all the time. The platform upon which your technology is built is changing. The market you've entered is changing. The competitors you're competing against are changing. It's all changing really fast. And so what did I bring from Zen practice to negotiate the 20 years I lived in that very stressful situation?

[30:44]

high-changing society. And I thought about it this afternoon, and I thought the six perfections. We all practice the six perfections here, right? For those who are not familiar with them, these are practices of generosity, ethical conduct, patience, or sometimes called tolerance or endurance, joyful energy, meditation and wisdom. Those are our six practices as bodhisattvas, as Buddhists, that we practice. And surprisingly enough, or maybe not surprising, those practices, when carried to the wide world of high-tech competitiveness, actually worked pretty well. Some are obvious. I mean, obviously, if you're in a major crisis, you need... Tolerance or patience or the ability to endure the difficult thing that's just happened, right?

[31:49]

You just launched your product into the market. Of course, your competitor got there two months ahead of you and there's no market for you, right? That's difficult, especially after all that money you invested in that product. And we learn about patience and tolerance in sashines, don't we? I'd say one of the major strengths of patience of a sashin is you definitely learn patience, endurance, tolerance. You need a kind of joyful energy if you're going to work. When I was in high tech, there were times, I would say, there were times I worked 70 hours a week. No, there were times I worked all day long, every day for two months, because that's sometimes what you had to do. I had one company, I was selling it to another company, things were going on. That takes joyful energy to address your work. Generosity. If you don't have a generosity of spirit, you won't build a team.

[32:52]

I mentioned earlier that one of the things I learned at Zen Center is you always have to have a team that you work with. And in business, that's the same way. And that comes from a generosity of spirit. You share your work with other people so that they're part of your work. And that's also true with people you do deals with. I found that you can do a fair deal. A deal can be done if you have a generous sense of making sure the other person is benefiting like you are. And, of course, ethical conduct. Surprisingly enough, if you conduct your affairs with integrity and honesty, other people will... conduct their affairs with you with integrity and honesty, too. Now, you need to be smart, because sometimes some people will take advantage of you if you're naive, but still, basically, I think that is worth it.

[33:57]

And that's, of course, wisdom and meditation, to have some composure in the midst of all of the complexity that's facing you, and have some ability to look at things clearly. So I found the Pyramidas, which we study to be very useful in the world of high tech. And I'd be happy if anybody wants to ask me sometime about particular examples or what we would call war stories, I'd be happy to share them with you. And I'd say the other guiding light which I took from Zen Center when I went into the busy world out there, was the Genjo Koan, the koan of everyday life, remembering that every moment of your life is an opportunity to practice. Every moment of your life is a chance to live life fully and to make a contribution.

[35:02]

So I found life much more workable than my fears. Even when things looked really bleak, if you just sort of took one step at a time and worked through it, usually you came up with something pretty interesting. And when I look back on it, out of most of my biggest disasters came my biggest successes. You made a great effort to do something and it failed. And then you really thought through why it failed. And out of that you found something creative. So this is going back to without upset there is no solution. Without struggle there is no expression. So if you're willing to... Well, you all have this experience. Sometimes when life gets really difficult... when you really have to face a difficult situation, if you face it, something creative happens.

[36:29]

There's some kind of capacity we have to excel under stress, if it's not too much. I mean, sometimes it can be too much, but most times, surprisingly most times, we can find some freedom and creativity even in the midst of our most complex situations so of course this is easy to say and not so easy to do and right now many we are here in this temple facing the difficulties that are coming from The virus that's spreading has a pandemic. Apparently, somebody told me that. I was busy all day. It's been declared that by the World Health Organization. And I know many of you out there are struggling with this. And I'm hoping that together, our practice will allow us to keep composed and trust that we will work our way through this

[37:44]

And I think if we work together, we certainly can work our way through this. Simultaneous Inclusion. Good people, as you eat, boil tea, sow and sweep, you should recognize the one not busy. then you will realize the union of mundane reality and enlightened reality. In the Dungshan lineage, this is called simultaneous inclusion, naturally not wasting any time. The union of mundane reality and enlightened reality. So, sort of every moment is both wholly and totally ordinary. How do we remember that without, like, making it some holy fantasy or, you know, some, oh, well, this is just dishwashing.

[38:52]

How could this be holy? It's holy because you're doing it, and it's the only thing you're doing in this moment, and you're alive. And yet, let's not get too carried away. I'm Jesus washing dishes, you know. It's both having that sense that every moment of your life has that capacity to carry those two things together. So what I've been sort of just pointing my finger at a little bit, pointing my finger at the moon or something, is that can we experience the depth of our lives in every moment of our life, and especially in our work life, and I think part of that is to look at work as an expression of love, as we should look at every activity of our life as an expression of love, a concrete actualization of the love we have for our life and for the life we have and our love of all the people and beings on this world.

[40:07]

So, I don't think we have any time for any questions. Thank you very much for your patience and time this evening. I wish you all well out there and in here.

[40:30]

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