So, good morning. It's wonderful to feel the light rain in the air. It's so unusual now, you know, compared to what we've gotten used to over the last couple of years. And to have these kind of, some of the soaking rains, I really appreciate it. And If you ever hear me complaining about it, please wag your finger at me. So last week, it seems a little loud. It's like echoing a little bit. Last week, Sojin Roshi spoke about a koan from the Shoyu Roku, the Book of Serenity. It was case 12. You know, he prefaced it by saying essentially that there are terrible things going on in the world and that it has always been this way.

[01:10]

And for some reason it came to me that the Titanic is always sinking And we are always running around on the deck rearranging the chairs. Of course, there also are helpful and meaningful things to do. And they may or may not save the world. But the koan he spoke to questions the underlying the underlying perception. So this is a dialogue between, I'm not going to talk a lot about this, go on, I'm going to use it as sort of a jumping off spot, between Di Zhang and Zhu Shan. The teacher and the student, you know, this kind of typical thing where the teacher, student shows up, new student shows up, and teacher asks, where do you come from?

[02:21]

And, you know, the student kind of dumbly stumbles into the literal answer, I come from the South, you know, which may or may not have been what the teacher was asking. And Dijon said, well, how is Buddhism doing in the South? And Zhisan says, well, they're talking about it a lot. And Dijon says, so what do you think about that compared to what we're doing here, planting the fields and making rice to eat? And Zhisan says, well, Basically, he says, well, that's all well and good. What do you do about the world? And Dijon says, what do you call the world? So this is germane to me this morning because in a couple of hours, my son Alex and I were going to get on a huge tube of metal

[03:32]

that's going to go all the way up to about 40,000 feet and sort of circle up above the North Pole and stop in Dubai, where I've never been, and then continue to India. So this is halfway around the so-called world. Well, what do you call the world? And what do you do there? You can think of the world as this globe. You can think of the world as this thing that you circle in this huge jet at 600 miles an hour.

[04:37]

Or, you know, those are, we think of it as kind of the planet we inherit and we inhabit. But it's also, it's also, it's very simple. It's quite immediate. Ah! Right there was the world. Some of you jumped. Everyone came into focus. The whole world is right in that moment. The thing that is hard for us to understand is that it's always like that. You know, it doesn't take a startling shout to bring the world to us.

[05:42]

It's always available within us, around us, and we are it in a non-separate, not separate from it. It's just that we forget. So we can make a lot of efforts to identify the world, but the world is right here, right? As we're breathing, right? As we feel ourselves filling the room in our zazen, as we sit and face the wall, And I think in part, you know, I have to ask myself, well, why am I going halfway around the world?

[06:56]

You may ask that too, why is he going halfway around the world? Or you may also ask, what am I doing? What is each of us doing? And we do, what we do depends on our moment by moment awareness of this world. And sometimes wherever we are, there's always a moment to bring ourselves back, to take that step back and look inside ourselves. We need to have that capacity. if we don't have that capacity, which is what we're cultivating, it's the whole meaning of this practice, we don't have that capacity, we're lost in externals.

[08:04]

We think there's something, there really is no external, we think there's something outside of us and it calls to us and we just go to it, but it's a hopeless activity because we will never reach something outside of us. I spoke with Sojin yesterday informally, as I sort of wanted to get some reminders about his talk last week. He was commenting that, I think what you said was that all religion is in an effort to escape from

[09:11]

what we think of as our troubles. Is that accurate? Yes, good. You sure? You could extend that to, to me, I extend that to the whole project of civilization, of so-called civilization. That much of what we do is a way of getting away from difficult so-called externals. And we structure our religion, our beliefs, our activities, our politics, our nations on that endless effort. But I want to say, just parenthetically, that that's not all there is to life. There's love, there's play, there's creativity, all of which consciously or not embrace emptiness, embrace interdependence in ways that we can glimpse our freedom.

[10:37]

And of course, there's also practice in which we can do this. So I want to cite another koan that to me leads, at least in my mind, leads from the first. This is from the Blue Cliff Record, one of the other major koan collections. Case 14. And I'm just going to read the the case and not the pointer or the poem or comment. A monk asked Zen Master Uman, what is the teaching of the Buddha's whole lifetime? And Master Uman replied, an appropriate response.

[11:38]

So in an appropriate response, perhaps we have a clue or a pointer towards the world that we conceive and the world that we create. I found, as I was looking, a comment from Suzuki Roshi from, I think it was an unpublished lecture. I know it's an unpublished lecture. I'm not sure if it was ever edited into any of the published materials. But this is his comment on that case, on Uman's advice of an appropriate response. And what he says is this teaching confronts each, confronts each of us.

[12:54]

The teaching given by Shakyamuni Buddha during his lifetime was accommodated to each disciple's particular temperament and to each occasion's particular circumstance. For each case, there should be a special remedy. According to the circumstances, there should even be teaching other than the teachings which we were told by the Buddha. So let me read that again. For each case, as the Buddha is responding to his disciples. For each case, there should be a special remedy. According to the circumstance, there should even be teaching other than the teachings which were told by the Buddha. In the light of this, how is it possible to interpret and pass down an essential teaching which can be applied to every possible occasion and individual temperament?

[14:07]

So this is, in each situation, for each person, for each circumstance, presumably, we can at least, we can search for an appropriate response. You know, you could also say a response, whatever a response is, it should be the best we can do. So when he says there should be a special remedy, I feel like the language he's using, not like special like, you know, special like an announcement that would be in gold letters above the new bar of soap that you buy, but particular, a particular remedy. There's no universal prescription.

[15:18]

And he's also saying, which I find deeply encouraging, this line, there should be a teaching, even be teaching other than the teachings which are told by the Buddha, which says to me, The Buddha was a world unto himself. He lived in a world. He and his practitioners and everybody else, this is more than 2,500 years ago. They had their particular circumstances and the teachings that he gave were relevant to the circumstances that he encountered. Now, If we go back to Sojin Roshi's comment last week that there's terrible things happening in the world and it's always been that way.

[16:24]

That's true, completely true. But each moment, each circumstance of our life calls for a response that is fully embedded in the causes and conditions of this moment, including the causes of conditions that constellate as what each of us calls ourself. So like many things in, uh, Suzuki Roshi's teachings and the Buddha's teachings, all this sounds really good. You know, an appropriate response. Yeah, right, of course, an appropriate response. I don't want to give it an inappropriate response, you know. But how do we discover what that is?

[17:28]

So thinking about this appropriate response, I've also been thinking about some principles that I've been working with. I don't think I've talked about it much here, but in the chaplaincy training program that I've been working at Upaya Zen Center, they use These principles, they're called the three tenets of, and they emerged from the work of Bernie Glassman and Jishu Holmes in the mid-90s in the Zen Peacemaker Order. And it's kind of a reframing of traditional teachings. And so these three tenets, which evolve over time, but they're in essence the same. First tenet is not knowing. Now I'll go back through these.

[18:36]

Not knowing. And the second tenet is bearing witness. And the third tenet has kept keeps evolving. Loving action, healing action, compassionate action. And what I would suggest is for me, the third tenet, is not knowing, bearing witness, appropriate response. So, these are individual principles and circular principles. They're constantly feeding each other. Not knowing, to me, is the fundamental activity of Zazen. Each time I sit down, I really don't know what's gonna happen. And I must say, you can contradict me, because you might have different experience.

[19:42]

Each time I get up, I really don't know what did happen. And you know, it's not very important to be able to catalog the moments of Zazen. Interesting thing if we had like a, I don't know, some kind of notebook or some kind of device where you could note each thought. But we don't do that, fortunately. And the thing is, it's not necessary because What we're doing is just being with the flow of thoughts and perceptions, the flow of our life, and this is what Dogen called non-thinking. Non-thinking is very much like not knowing.

[20:47]

So we practice this in Zazen. We do this, some of us have, many people here, if I look around this room, you guys have been doing this for years. The collective Zazen in this room would be thousands of days, thousands of years of Zazen. It's like, ah, What a foolish activity. Why are you doing this? And yet some of us also feel it saved our life. I'm convinced of that for myself. So this is not knowing. And it's also what we cultivate in our practice is what we bit by bit learn how to bring into our lives. into our families and work into the difficult interactions that we have with, I would say, with ourselves and also with others.

[22:02]

And that brings you to the second principle, which is bearing witness. Means that kind of gentle, but aware watching. So there's the flow of thoughts and there's this activity that gently watches the flow of thoughts and releases them. But it observes. There is an observer that we cannot ever particularly locate. But that's actually, if we pay attention, that observer's always ready to help us. And that's also part of the being. I think that if you wanted to translate that more into clearly Buddhist principles, I think that bearing witness is akin to

[23:18]

the activity of mindfulness, the activity of lightly remembering, making connections, and observing what's happening, even though you have the spirit of not knowing, observing, but I don't, bring my settled opinions and views to it. I'm trying just to take in what's going on right now. And sometimes that is quite wonderful and relaxing. And sometimes it breaks your heart. And sometimes you want to run away because it's so difficult to see. There's a richness, for me, there's a richness in those words, bearing witness, that has a couple of different aspects.

[24:25]

It means bearing, bringing yourself to the act of witness, bringing oneself forward. It also means bearing in the sense of enduring, being able to endure what one perceives and still know where your feet are. And the third implication of it for me is to carry that witness to others, to our friends, to our community. There's an aspect of that in the adage of speaking truth to power. But you can see once you're bearing this witness to another person or another community, then

[25:41]

you're moving into the third tenet, the tenet of appropriate response. And there's not an instruction book for this. And there's also, it's an appropriate response. It's not necessarily a correct response or, you know, because one might be and often is mistaken or one's understanding is not complete. So for me, an appropriate response is sometimes just what arises naturally recognizing that may be the best I can do in this circumstance. I can't quite remember the, uh, quotation from one of our teachers, Kobinchino Roshi, there is something to the effect that looking at the world as it is, naturally, and with all of its challenges and difficulties, the natural response is just to sit down.

[27:07]

So that's to come and sit zazen for me is an appropriate response that sets the whole cycle in motion again. And I know many times in difficulty, it's been the only thing I could think of doing. I mean, I don't know what to do. And we have this urge inside ourselves, I have to do something. And the only thing I can do to settle myself in whatever turmoil or suffering that I'm experiencing is just to sit down. And there's something about that act of sitting down You know, I think I spoke with this, I may have spoken, I don't remember what I said.

[28:17]

But, you know, there's this verse in Dogen Zenji's Fukan Zazenki, the zazen I speak of is not learning meditation, it is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. And, I really puzzled over that line for many years because it didn't feel so blissful or restful. But on a deep level, I had this intuition or faith that this was an appropriate response for me, even if it was really, really hard. And over time, I find it has opened up into something that is deeply restful and restorative.

[29:32]

And it doesn't solve my problems. And it doesn't solve the world's problems. But perhaps it gives me some capacity to meet what is difficult and some courage even. And I believe in that. I believe in that deeply. To go back to what Sojin was saying, religions are, by and large, an effort to escape from the troubles we see outside of us. I like to think that's not what we're doing. I don't think it's what I don't think it's what the heart of this practice is.

[30:40]

I think the heart of this practice is to accept that there are always troubles. And there's also always the possibility of freedom. And they come up together. And we have a choice of what we do with our bodies in our minds, we have a choice of how we meet each person in each situation and how we meet ourselves. Sometimes we don't think we have a choice, but the practice of zazen is actually moment after moment, choice after choice, not knowing. bearing witness and finding the appropriate response.

[31:43]

The appropriate response might be to stay in your place. It might be to get up. I'm thinking, it just occurs to me, Wednesday evening, we were sitting Zazen, And we looked deep into the period and it was pounding really loud on the door. And it jolted everyone. And it was interesting, I didn't think, I just kind of jumped out of my seat and went to the door. I was actually in a fairly calm state of mind. I was jolted, but I went to the door, and I was, you know, anybody can knock on the door, and weird stuff happens in our cities.

[32:52]

It turns, you know, immediately, I opened the door, and it was the UPS guy. And he said, and he peeked around me, and he said, I said, it's okay, how could you have known? And we did our little transaction. But when I was thinking about it, I could see how different a response I might have had and probably how different a response I would have had, say, ten years ago. Fortunately, in this case, it was an appropriate response. I don't assume, actually, that my next response will be appropriate.

[33:53]

I'm just glad that it was that time and that I didn't confront the guy because he was just knocking on the door of the house. So what is the teaching of the Buddha's whole lifetime? Inappropriate response. And this is the koan. The koan itself presents us with a question that we can carry with us. We can carry with us in whatever we call the world. And recognize that that world is, it's different every moment. It's changing every moment as are all of us.

[34:58]

Some of this work we do together, And at the same time, we all have our tasks before us. We all have our world. So, it just occurred to me, there's another answer that Uman could have given. When asked, what is the teaching of Buddha's whole lifetime, he could have said, one continuous mistake. We walk right on that line. An appropriate response

[36:02]

one continuous mistake. So I think I will stop there. As I said, I'm leaving for India with my son, which is a really exciting prospect. And I'll be back on 31st of this month. That's to say I've been working with these Buddhist communities, Dali Buddhists, excellent, touchable Buddhists, mostly young people, and doing some teaching and mostly just raising money to help them. And we'll be back. I wanted him to have a glimpse of that. And so we'll see you when I get back, and we have time for some questions and responses.

[37:03]

Peter. You can't know, what it says to me is you can't know that response, you can't identify that response before it comes up. It comes up from all of yourself. And that's where, that's the hard place to look. Yeah. And it's an aspiration. But what it points to, to me, is that we all have that capacity.

[38:08]

There's not a single person on the planet who hasn't adjusted their pillow or their head as they're sleeping and has any question about, do I deserve for my head to be comfortable? We have that instant response ability and what the koan points to as well is that the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara has cultivated his or her capabilities to the point where all difficulties in that instant way. That's an aspiration. Sometimes we can do that and sometimes we can't, but we keep reaching in that direction.

[39:15]

Thank you. Ross? I began my practice with Bernie 32 years ago. He had the same inspiration to save all beings. And I couldn't grasp what his teaching was, and I left after a couple of years. And since then, I've been reading and studying, and I'm reading Daikon Edo's teaching, saving is saving the beings in your own mind and going to India to work with the Dalit community, helping the beings here at our temple. You know what immediately comes to mind to say is, paraphrasing the line from the poem that Sojan was commenting on,

[40:28]

That's the way I think of it. Sometimes my mind, those sentient beings in my mind, this is an important teaching for me, what you're talking about. It's really the teaching of winnings. So, no distinction between Well, let me put it another way. To the extent that my eyes see, or whatever my eyes see, it includes what I see is included in my mind. Who I see is included in my mind. And I carry that with me. So, I don't have a direct answer, but I just feel like our mind is, yes, we need to attend to our mind and work, but recognizing that all beings are also constantly inhabiting our mind.

[41:47]

To start, yeah. Denise. So I love that you're going to India. I see absolutely no separation from there's a question that's really challenging for me within the Dharma world. And it arises, so I wish for your help on this. There's unspoken and overt plans in different Buddhist temples, I know of at least three or four of them in the Bay Area, where the Dharma transmittees are the sons and daughters of the people who have been practicing at the temple. It brings up for me some combination of things like trust and also the issues of power and also a little bit of tribalism because a lot of times

[42:58]

of transmitting the carrying on of temples through a family lineage versus seeing, like for example, if you were going to India, would you take any of the other people in this room with you to go, would you have asked them, for example? Sure. I would love to have asked them. But I'm lazy. And it's very difficult to think of leading a group through the chaos of India. But you know, my friend Viradhama, who is at the San Francisco Buddhist Temple, he does that every year. Well, I wasn't asking about the meeting of people to India for that purpose, but for the purpose of teaching the Dharma. I'm not quite clear on the question.

[44:17]

First of all, I may do some teaching, but mostly I go there to learn. I'm learning from them. But, you know, the short answer, I think, if this is your question, is that I would not I'm not interested in a hereditary – I don't really believe in a hereditary tradition for this country. And it's troubling to me, but I'm not quite sure if that's your question. Yeah, that is my question. I don't know what the appropriate response is. Yeah, certainly we can talk about it. I don't want to get too tangled up in it. But no, I mean, it's like we don't ordain our spouses or our children.

[45:24]

We don't Dharma transmit them. I don't. Not we. I don't. And that would just be kind of a rule for me. Lori should have had dharma transmission before me, but not by me. Gary? In the koan, the question states that it's the summation of all Buddha's teachings. Am I right in saying that? Yeah, and I think that's what Suzuki Roshi was saying, that he's saying it's not so much, you know, you have to have this teaching and apply that, but it's an appropriate response. Is that okay? Okay, one more back there. What's your name? Yari. Thank you for the talk. Really, I guess my question is, is there a way to learn about appropriate response without doing a whole bunch of inappropriate responses?

[46:32]

Basically, I guess what I mean is that because every context is different, And really, they really truly are. There really is no context. I don't know of any other way and I'm sorry. And I think that one of the experiences that is pretty general in Zazen is like the feeling that people have, I can't do this. Oh, I failed again, I failed again, I failed again. And the actual instruction, the, Something at the center of it is actually the process of returning, losing your balance, coming back, losing it, screwing up, coming back, figuring out is there a way to reestablish that balance.

[47:47]

I think if there's a better way to learn, Maybe. I mean, you just think of a musician practicing, that they have to practice a difficult passage and screw up again and again and again. But it becomes the higher, there are circumstances in which the stakes are really high. And so it's scary. But I think that's the way. So thank you all. I'll see you in a few weeks.

[48:19]

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