Good evening, everyone. Good evening. So I want to talk about two traditional teachings tonight, the Buddha work and the ancestors. So I want to talk about them from teachings by Hongzhi Zhangzhui, who was a Chinese teacher a century before Dōbin. And this is from a book I did called Cultivating the Empty Fields, Young School. I have a few excerpts, but about the Buddha work. Masha says, Earth and death originally have no root or stem, appearing and disappearing, originally have no defining signs or traces.

[01:09]

The primal light, empty and effective, illumines the headstock. The primal wisdom, silent but also glorious, responds to conditions. When you reach the truth without middle or edge, cutting off before and after, then you realize one wholeness. Everywhere, sense, faculties, and objects both just happen. The one who sticks out his broad, long tongue, and that's a way of describing the Buddha, the one who sticks out his broad, long tongue transmits the inexhaustible lamp, radiates the great light, and performs the great Buddha work. from the first, not borrowing from others, one Adam from outside the genre. So this Buddha work is... Yeah, so the Buddha work, this is what we're all doing.

[02:14]

This is our bodhisattva job. This is what satsang is. This is what the various practices we do in the world all the time. That's what this is. We're doing the Buddha work. How do we do the Buddha work? Well, that's the question that we live with as practitioners. How do we do the Buddha work? How do we do the work that helps awaken all beings? That expresses kindness, and listening, and uprightness, and all the qualities of Buddha and of Zazen. So this teaching of the Buddha work that Hongzhi refers to in that passage is also important for Japa. A hundred years later, you can read a little bit from... This is from... So, I guess who has been finally teaching about which is.

[03:17]

Uh, 1 of the early teachings of. I would say is. Dogen's expression of the meaning, so I said, and particularly this one section that we sometimes chat called Jiji Usama in Japanese, or self-fulfilling samadhi, so maybe a little bit of this as it relates to the Buddha work. When one displays the Buddha mudra with one's whole body and mind, sitting upright in this samadhi, in this meditation, even for a short time, Dogen says, everything in the entire Dharma world becomes Buddha mudra. It becomes the gesture and posture of Buddha, and all space in the universe completely becomes awakened. This is not how we truly think about anything. How is it that just doing this, sitting like Buddha like this, even for a little while, how can that lead to all space awakened?

[04:21]

A little later in the same section, But the Sasa in person, without fail, crops off body and mind, cuts away previous tainted views and thoughts, awakens genuine Buddha Dharma, universally helps the Buddha work. In each place, as numerous as atoms, are Buddha Tatavatas teach and practice, and widely influences practitioners who are going beyond Buddha, thereby vigorously exalting the Dharma that goes beyond Buddha. At this time, because earth, grasses, and trees, fences, and walls, tiles and pebbles, all things in the Dharma realm and ten directions carry out Buddha work, therefore everyone receives the benefit of this. And all are imperceptibly helped by the one who is incomprehensible influence of Buddha to actualize the awakening of man. So, carrying out the Buddha work.

[05:23]

Zazen is carrying out the Buddha work. Our expression of the. Practices of generosity. And ethics. And patience. And effort. Meditative stillness. And wisdom. Expression of Buddha work. Sharing Buddha work. Carrying out the Buddha work. There's another phrase in that passage. Which is important. He talks about going beyond Buddha. So our practice is not to get to some other place called Buddha. Buddha is already here. You don't necessarily feel on your belief, but Buddha is over here, on your seat, right now. From the first time you sit down and feel the illness of tazma, Buddha is here. But then how do we carry out, how do we perform the Buddha work?

[06:30]

So this is not something, this is our Zaza practice of just being upright and present. Paying attention and breathing and feeling the ground under us. And of course it's also the Buddha work when we get up, go to work, interact with And our friends, neighbors, how do we express Buddha? And this isn't something that there's some formula for. This is something that's deeper than that. How to perform Buddha work, that's a job. But it's also our joy. How do we express this presence? The presence that we can feel in ourselves. Anyway, how do we take care of including work? So part of that is Dharma, studying with Dharma, studying old teachings and new teachings.

[07:39]

But there's Sangha. How do we take care of Sangha? We practice together. So it's all challenging. How do we take care of something? This is performing a Buddha. and we get, you know, have some discussion about how we see the Buddha word. But I want to talk about this other aspect, this other practice, this other teaching from Manjushri. Manjushri, okay. So Manjushri, we chanted this song on the grass hut from another one of our ancestors, Shittar, who lived in the 700s. So this is this tradition, this teaching tradition, that Dogen expressed so wonderfully, that Shunri Shizubi Roshi expressed so wonderfully, goes way back. We have many teachers and practitioners in every generation.

[08:42]

He kept it alive so that we could see this now. So another passage about, this is about the ancestors, Strom Hoxha, from the 12th century, turn to the source and serve the ancestors. Those who produce descendants are called ancestors. Where the stream emerges is called the source. We can see that in Shakyamuni Buddha back in India, or we can see that as just retail. going back to see the source of our thoughts and feelings in the present. So this idea of the source and sense, important again, and a little ambiguous, a little bit difficult.

[09:46]

Anyway, Feng Shui says then, after beholding the source and recognizing the ancestors, Before your awareness can disperse, be steadfast and do not follow good or bad or past conditioning. If you do not succumb, let all beings and show the whole picture. Wake up and then turn the ground loose and the dusts are clearly cast off. Although empty of desires, the deliberations cut off, transcendent comprehension is not all sealed up. Perfect right understanding is carefree amid 10,000 images and cannot be confused. Within each just note, within each situation, within each aspect of everything we interact with, within each just note is vast abundance and 100,000 samadhis, meditations.

[10:47]

All gays are majestic, all dharmas are fulfilled. Still, we must gather them together and bring them within. To reach the time-honored, return to the source, and serve the ancestors. Join together into unity, scrutinize yourself, and go on. So, our practice is to join the ancestors. And there's lots of ways to think about this. Of course, sometimes we chant the lineage of ancestors. In the Zen tradition, from Shakyamuni to Bodhidharma, to the Sixth Ancestor, to Dogen, to Suzuki Roshi, and to us. So there's this particular lineage. But in each generation, there were many people. We're keeping this alive so that we could be practiced in this strange 25th century.

[11:51]

We also have a list of women ancestors because even though in the patriarchal cultures of Asia, they recognized female teachers as the ancestors. There were some women teachers who became ancestors, but anyway, they were always practicing, keeping it alive. But this idea of ancestors is very rich. So we have our Zen lineage of ancestors. But we also have genetic ancestors, cultural ancestors. So sometimes ask how many people know something about you, any of your great-grandparents. So I asked them, do you know something about any of your great-grandparents? And a few people raised their hand. Some people didn't.

[12:55]

But I think in our post-Turbanian world, you might all agree, even if you don't know anything about your grandparents, great man-gods. They're part of who you are. And we also have many cultural ancestors. So if you like music, there are many great ancestors, musician ancestors. If you like literature, there are many great writer ancestors. If you like martial arts or athletics, there are many ancestors in each tradition. For the psychologists here, there are many ancestors in the study of the mind. So how do we serve the ancestors? How do we take care of that which we have received?

[13:59]

How do we express that in our lives, in our practice? So there's another section, a conclusion that expands this a little bit. Fully appreciate the emptiness of all darkness, that all minds are free and all dust dissipates in fundamental buildings, shining everywhere. transforming according to circumstances. Meet all beings as your ancestors. I'll come back to that, but I'll finish the passage. Subtly eliminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality, clear and desirous, the wind and pines and moon and water are content with their elements. Without minds interacting, wind and pines or moon and water do not update one another. Essentially, you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly.

[15:11]

without being ignored, like spring blossoming, like the river reflecting, forms, amid all the noise, spontaneously emerged from the simple ground. So, once, I promise you can be very poetic. I could read that whole thing again if anybody wants, but maybe we may accept this request. Okay, I'll read the whole passage again, but the key phrase, in this talk is meet all beings as your ancestors. There's something in Tibetan Buddhism where they say that every person you meet was in some past life your mother gave birth to you. This is related. Meet all beings as your ancestors. Everyone you meet, even the people who are difficult, difficulties, but are your ancestors and are supporting you. So I'll read that whole passage at the end of it.

[16:14]

Fully appreciating the emptiness of all dharmas, fully appreciating the emptiness of all dharmas, that all minds are free and all dusts dissipate. The original ground, the fundamental ability that's shining everywhere, transforming according to circumstances. Meet all beings as your ancestors. Thoroughly eliminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all dualities. Clear air and desire elipse the wind and the ponds, and the moon and the water are content in their ponds. And then out lies a directive, being that ponds or moon and water do not impede one another. The moon is very poetic. It's this wonderful nature. Essentially, you exist inside of those and have the capacity to respond out of it. without being annoyed, much trained, possible, that the mirror-reflected forms amid all the noise spontaneously emerge from the signal.

[17:25]

So, this sense of doing the Buddha work has a lot to do with serving the ancestors. Appreciating the ancestors. Taking care of the ancestors. This isn't just Chinese Confucian ancestor work. This is about all the causes and conditions that support our love. Another way to think about this I have an article called Meeting Your Ancestors of the Future. Meeting Your Ancestors of the Future. So right now, we're here in 2023. I've been watching all this time travel, science fiction shows, so I get confused, but

[18:33]

You know, we're not practicing, of course, just for ourselves. This isn't a self-help practice. Of course, we all benefit from practice and from the dark. But the point of our practice is not to, you know, I don't know what, get a better job, better grades. We practice for each other. practice for all beings in my Bodhisattva way is universal awakening. So our practice here in Lincoln Square Zendo is not just for all of us here, although it is for all of us here. We each benefit each other just as we sit here together, breathe the same air. But also, we are practicing for people in Lincoln Square unreassurance. so that we can have, that they will have a place to find this practice.

[19:37]

But practicing for people walking by on Lawrence Avenue 500 years from now, whatever that would be, 500 years from now, the practice for beings in many times. So those beings, a hundred years from now, 200 years from now, are looking back at us. In some sense, they are our ancestors. They are looking back and encouraging us. Do what you can to take care of them. Do what you can to find peace and avoid war. They're concerned. They're having a hard time. We know now that they will be at it one more time. But there'll be somebody here. How are we practicing for Ancient Fathers Endgame 50 years from now, 20 years from now, 170 years from now?

[20:53]

Or you have grandchildren's grandchildren, or you don't have children for How are we taking care of the world? So serving the ancestors is doing the Buddha work in all space and all time. Just to add a little bit, there's an issue in American Zen now that goes back to both sides of this, performing the Buddha work. When one person sits, all space awakens. The sex, the first time the sex doesn't, whether you conceived of it this way or not,

[21:59]

That was it. Of course, a practice develops, a practice deepens, or a practice of generosity deepens and opens up, a practice of skillful means, a practice of patience, and so forth. But in some ways, just to take this position, it's completely worked. The other side is respecting the ancestors. To study some of the teachings of the Sixth Ancestor or or Dogen or Suzuki Roshi, they nourish our practice. So we look back and respect and serve the ancestors.

[23:15]

But practically speaking, in terms of American zombie, there's a tension there. How do we recognize that each zombie member is brutal? How do we listen to everyone? And also how do we respect experience and training and practice experience and that the ancestors have given us something. So practically speaking in some communities, the tension there is between, you know, I mean, in America now we sort of have this idea of democracy. We've never really had, one person, one vote, but we have the idea that each person, you know, so when we make decisions, should we just have everybody in the soccer boat and that decides it?

[24:17]

Or do we respect the ancestors? Do we respect the experience of practice, teaching? Many people on this room have practiced long and hard, you know, really practiced through difficulty. That is, that is wisdom. So, you know, in traditional Zen in Japan and early American Zen, you know, the abbot, the teacher who had this great authority, I remember when I first came to San Francisco Zen, would decide, you know, there were numbers of buildings, numbers of rooms. It was up to him to decide what color came true. We have to do that. But still, how do we respect authority and at the same time respect that each person is each being spiritually?

[25:27]

So this is a question for us, and it has to do with how do we serve the ancestors and how do we perform the good work? So maybe I've said enough. I'm interested if your comments, questions, and responses, whether you're online or whether you're here at this presentation. So David, maybe you can help me call on people Jerry, you can talk to some people. It's a little dark over there, distance. Nicholas. That was a beautiful talk. I don't even know why I'm so emotional, but I just really heard the truth in what he was saying. Tells it very deeply. You know, they're saying there's no crime in baseball, but there is crime in Zen.

[26:31]

So thank you for saying that, as I believe you could hear. You know, Ancestors, I'm lucky because... My grandmother's people documented their ancestry very well. They were abolitionists in southern Indiana, and they ran the Underground Railroad, and we have these great stories where one ancestor, she chased the slave catchers out of the house with an axe one time, and another ancestor would just, would not buy products that were made by slavery. I didn't do slavery. And so he had to bribe his horse, you know, many, many, many miles away until he came back one time and it was frozen. It's a horse, you know, it's a saddle.

[27:35]

I mean, it's a chitimab. And some of the people working there are Indians. And it's just great to have these the blue charm three years later. So, yeah, the blue work. So as I say, you know, no self, no problem. And I've been thinking about that a lot. And I think for me, the blue work is really seeing that it's truly, emptiness is a real thing, you know. It's not a thing exactly. Well, it's just, it's not like some weird theory. It's like, it's just reality, right? Reality. Yeah. And so what I have left is my conditioning, my epigenetic conditioning, all my conditions, all my reactivity. And so for me, that's,

[28:37]

What I can do to the people immediately, family, friends, world, city, whatever, is look up here. I go, you know, like, okay, great. Tell us all the things. That seems to me to be the work. And then it plays out in different instances, here, home, or wherever. And also the thing about the ancestors, everyone is our ancestor, literally. Genetics, we're the same species. We're so much more alike, even if we are different. And that's a beautiful theory, and it's sometimes hard to remember.

[29:44]

There's other people, but then we can have a beautiful stuff like this, and it all just cracks open. It's just a relief. So thank you so much. Thank you, Nicholas, and thank you for telling us about your wonderful ancestors. Gosh, you know, we are living in a time where Some misguided politicians promoting cruelty are now saying slavery was a good thing. Anyway, but I wanted to, this thing about genetic conflict and ancestors, it's really interesting. My favorite television show is Finding Your Roots by Henry Louis Gates. He's a great scholar and has a wonderful staff who explores histories of his guests and finds all these interesting stories way back. It's a wonderful history list.

[30:44]

And it also explores DNA. Yeah. Plus, amazing things like Johnny Cash is related to Angelo Best. And sometimes, I don't know, anybody else in the show? It's probably in your roots. I know there's dates on PBS. You can look up back episodes. But sometimes at the end, he'll provide this wonderful family tree way back. Sometimes somebody they took back to Charlemagne. And some black people, he actually finds the person who came from Africa Usually that's not possible. Sometimes it's only a couple generations. It's possible. But sometimes at the end, well, there's stories about ancestors. Sometimes at the end, he'll say, oh, look and see this next person.

[31:48]

And there's somebody who's been on before who. Through DNA, they know it's related. It's a cousin. I want to keep this brief. Ed Norton, a wonderful actor, and Julia Roberts were on one episode. And Julia Roberts had... abolitionist ancestors and slave owner ancestors. Edward Norton was a direct descendant of, is a direct descendant of Pocahontas, and also has, from people who came over on the Mayflower. And then in the end, they showed the person who they related to, and they're related to each other. So we're all related. This web of ancestry. You know, it's also, it's true through the Zen lineages and Buddhist lineages and all the different branches of Buddhism, which all interact. Anyway, but I do recommend that show. It's a great history lesson. Thank you, Nicholas.

[32:49]

Other comments or questions? Yes, husband. Thank you so much for touching a few things that I've been just now starting to see. All right. I realized recently, you know when the say or chant things, or sometimes they pick up on your meaning? Yes. And I feel like the merit, we dedicate this merit to our ancestors, you know. That assumes the meaning of dedicating our work to somebody else, if we're able to, also. And it also made me think because, you know, we do say that to say our women ancestors are our ancestors. And that connected to other things that I've been thinking recently, but I don't know how to put it together. One is you talk about the lineage, and that is linear, right? Whereas when we talk about the women ancestor, I see them more as a cloud that goes throughout horizontally, and it's a different island.

[33:51]

Then you touch the future ancestors of them. It's also very important. It's our future selves that are being present. Again, you know, it's all connected as the same. I can feel that. And it all connected also, I don't know in which way, but it resonated with what you said with last week's Sufugas talk about drifting, I think drifting in the American Zen events, so recently we heard one of the talks by Sun Tzu Kiroshide on the website that talks about the American way of Zen Buddhism, which is we are to find it's going to look different. And we, you know, and they also connected to maybe him going to Sokoji and that drifted away in Japan and all that. So I don't know what to make of all of it, but all these puzzle pieces that we might be presenting ourselves here, and he particularly resonated with the fact that Hiroshi is going to make a way of Buddhism, of which I know nothing and I don't know nothing about our ancestors. But it feels like I don't feel the possibilities a lot.

[34:56]

And as much as tradition, as a person who, you know, came out 21 years ago and I was 15, if I were to follow the ways of my mom, in that sense, the way that my grandma saw it, it wouldn't have necessarily been the best thing for me or for the people that I touched in my life, right? So I took a new path with that, and eventually... I think it is fortunately what we needed. It had to be realistic, etc. So I wonder what that would imply. But then I think it's really good that we have this type of possibilities. Thank you for touching all these very complex issues that have no commonality. Complex possibilities. That's good. And... Just one point, when you're talking about the XANA lineage, we say one name after the other, but in each generation, it's more like ranches and stocks, you know, because in each generation,

[36:00]

Well, maybe not. Maybe in some generations there was one student with one teacher. But usually there's a number of teachers. Like Suki Roshi's studying with his transmission damage and so on. But he also studied tissue cell or EM a lot. So both of them. And, you know, in my own practice I have many teachers. So, although I had attention, I just didn't want to teach it. But anyway, so it's not just one person. This is what I wanted Ancient Dragons Endgame to be. And we have in the room a number of teachers that practice the version. And I recommend you to talk with them and learn. I was going to save this for announcements, but I'll just say it now. I'm going to start doing dopes on here. If one of the squares endo. Before Sunday morning or before Monday evening.

[37:07]

I'm six 631 and 837 today, so but by appointment, so email me and. I also will continue being available for phone and Zoom. But yeah, we all learn from each other. We're all each other's ancestors. Mike's hand is up. Oh, Mike. Hi. Hi, Tegan. Thank you for your talk. I'm thinking about your talk and what Simone just said, and it made me think of this idea of chosen family. And so as LGBTQ people, and not just LGBTQ people, but a lot of times LGBTQ people especially will... separate themselves from their biological families for whatever reason, whether or not their biological families might disown them because they're not comfortable with whatever their status is, or vice versa.

[38:21]

A person might intentionally make a choice to not want to be a part of the family that raised them. And so I think about, okay, which I think is good, but then those people who you've distanced yourself from are still your ancestors because you have their genetic material as part of you. And so I think about how we chant our ancestors in Zen Buddhism And I wonder, you know, obviously, usually, you know, if a person studies with a teacher, they usually have a good relationship with that person. But I wonder if they might not like, you know, someone who's two or three rings up the lineage, be like, oh, I wish that person wasn't in my lineage, you know, or, you know, I wish I could, you know, disown myself or, you know, separate myself from them in some way. And so it makes it, I don't know, I don't know what I'm trying to get at. I'm thinking about how There might be situations where people, for whatever reason, might separate themselves from people who are their ancestors, but we still learn from that, and that still shapes who we are, that separation.

[39:36]

So it's like another way of learning from your ancestors in some way. So I don't know. It was a thought I had. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. There's a lot there in what you said. Chosen family. Saga's kind of like that. You know, the people here choose to show up here. And we're family, you know. Sometimes there's family troubles, you know. But we, you know, we work things out as family. And that's important. I want to go back to something, though, that Simonis is talking about American Zen. And Tsukimoshi is talking about American Zen. We don't know what American Zen is. Or I could say this is American Zen right here in this room. But, you know... Chinese Buddhism became really Chinese at over, you know, four or five hundred years.

[40:40]

So we won't know what American Zen is maybe for 50 years. Maybe. So we're making it all up in some real way. This is not, you know, it may feel like we're following all these archaic Japanese forms or something, but this is nothing like Japanese Zen. But that's okay. We've benefited from that. Anyway, I'm sorry. Dylan, hi. Hi. So I really love this question of, you know, how do we do the Buddha work? And there's, you know, hopefully a bajillion answers to it. But two that, like, come to mind to me of, like, the ones that I wanted to bring up were challenging and planting joy.

[41:41]

Wow. Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, I'll go with Planting Joy first because it's almost like a Bodhi Safa report. When I was on the train going to Texas to bring the girls back to see their dad, the woman that ran the dining car um was would get on the the microphone and just you know talk to you as if you'd been in a conversation with her go hi oh that's nice well anyway we're gonna open the dining car i mean she would do this every time and it would like It was plantain oil. I should also ramble off like five dad jokes. And so I actually won a lot of points. And then when I went to the dining car, she had all these buttons on her that said free hugs. Amber had given me this assignment to go in and get cream cheese for our bagels because we remembered the bagels were

[42:48]

forgot to bring cream cheese. The kids wanted cream cheese. And so I was like, hey, you know, we got some bagels. Could you give us some cream cheese? And she said, I can't actually. You have to buy the bagels in order to save the day. And I said, okay, that's cool. And so I, you know, bought something for Amber and me, Amber and I. And then she made this call. I was like, do I have a surplus of cream cheese? And somebody on, you know, on trade staff I know, affirmative, dude. And so then she just, like, showered me with cream cheese. What an image. And so I was, like, walking dark to the other seat, and I just felt it in my heart. I was like, that was a bonus act. That person, like, just somebody that's reminding me, you know, to whatever you're wrapped up in, to just kind of let go of that and remember the joy of being alive. Yeah. So planting joy is being part of both south and south. And then in challenging, like, I'm thinking of this line from Good Will Hunting, which is, since I grew up in Boston, was, like, required viewing.

[43:55]

One of my favorite films. Yeah. And so Robin Williams, Matt Damon asks Robin Williams what love is, and Robin Williams says, And that's been a poet that's lived in my mind since I was a teenager. And there's a lot of different dimensions of what that means. I'm thinking for Amber, she'll tell me to go for something. That challenge of, hey, we could do this. We should go for it. The challenge of that. I think we challenge each other. Here, I was thinking about this after your talk, since we were like, you know, that's part of what we're doing together is we encourage each other to sit in an uncomfortable position for 35 minutes, and we, you know, will each other to do that. And then there's also the challenge of, like, someone who's close enough to you and cares enough about you to let you know, like, hey, you know, this is going a little bit, you know, like, I think you might be running up against the rails a little bit. And giving you the opportunity to be able to be like,

[44:56]

you know, wow, I think I was being a little unfair. I had that moment with Amber, yes, on Sunday, where, you know, I got a chance to say, I think I was being unfair about this. And how much love there is to let somebody, you know, that induces that kind of connection. How to carriage through that kind of care. So just a couple of examples. That was great. Thank you. I'm not sure how much more time we have. Maybe we should start to wrap up. Thank you for all the comments. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for performing through the work. Thank you for respecting all the different kinds of ancestors.

[45:49]

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