Fred Hill, David Field, and Emptiness is in the middle of their first practice period right now. So we're lucky to have her talk with us today. Yeah, there's great luckiness on various people's parts. Some of you know that my husband, Peter, Ho Ryo, his full name is Myoshin Ho Ryo, marvelous heart, Dharma companion, is the shuso under Sojin Roshi for the practice period. So it's good to get me out of the nest so that he can go ahead and lead class this morning without my pestering him like a mother bird. And actually today I wanted to talk about parental mind. And parental mind is one of the three minds that's highly recommended by Dogen Zenji.

[01:04]

The three minds are joyful mind, magnanimous mind, and parental mind. And I have various reasons for talking about parental mind today. Today, July 31st, is the 51st anniversary of my father's death. So he died when I was six and he just didn't come home. He was killed by a drunk driver on his way home. And July 31st has been a very powerful day in our family's history because When something happens that suddenly it leaves a very strong footprint or fingerprint on your psyche and my brother was hit by a car on July 31st many years later and my sister was in a very serious accident, also car accident on that day. So it's a kind of day that psychologists would call an anniversary reaction.

[02:12]

And it has a lot to do with this, what I'd like to talk about, cultivating parental mind. There's a way that these marks of childhood continue to shape our life unless we find a deeper place to respond from. I didn't, at the time that my father died and didn't come home, I didn't really know that it meant he was never coming back. And I couldn't quite understand at six. Now, having one of the marks that left was my investigation of this matter to become a psychologist and particularly to work with children and families. But I remember very vividly at the time searching my mind to figure out how I had caused this to happen. And it was a very serious thought. And I wasn't able to find the way that I had caused this.

[03:16]

You know, children believe they're the center of the universe and have all kinds of magical thinking. But the more I looked, the more I could see that I didn't have anything to do with this. Unfortunately, perhaps my sister and brother weren't so lucky, and that's maybe why they were more affected and had these anniversary reactions. But I did notice that when I had left home, where I grew up in Los Angeles and came to San Francisco for the first time to live, when I came to the Bay Area, that I was stopped at an intersection in a car and I was watching the crowd in the crosswalk cross in front of the car and wondering, as I watched, I was looking for my father. And even though some part of me knew, another part of me didn't know until that moment that I was still a child expecting him to come home. So this response that we have as a child in our lives can own us, really own us.

[04:26]

It's also not a coincidence that my first serious long-term relationship where I lived with a man, I was 18 and he was 34, the same age my father was when he died. So this kind of impression that's left on us as children is unavoidable. And I say for my sister and brother, it was unfortunate for them that they didn't maybe do the work. And on the other hand, I ended up here. So that was my karma to end up in Zen practice, possibly untying many of these impressions and knots. And I do believe that this is our work. That our work is to, as we become adults, to not be pulled so by our infantile response and our desire that our teacher and others around us parent us. So this is one of the reasons why I talk about this subject, because there's a very strong tendency, particularly in Zen practice, in Buddhism in general, but in Zen practice, because in Zen we're very much more dependent on the instructions of our teacher than in other practices that are more like in the Vipassana tradition.

[05:54]

there are very specific instructions, still dependent on a teacher, but in Zen we're very dependent on our teacher. And if we come to the teacher with our infantile needs, the chances are we won't really grow out of them. We'll just reconstruct the problem and live out our delusion. So that's one level of working on this. The other level had to do with some experience I had. Recently Sojin Roshi came up to do an ordination for my husband as lay teacher and also to lead a sesshin. So we had the experience of having the parent there and for me to be able to go through the various reactions one's tempted to do. Having been removed from the parental role and back in the child's role, it was a very interesting situation. How was I going to negotiate with him my adulthood?

[07:00]

Generally, parents don't give over that independence. Children have to claim it. So that was a very interesting negotiation. But something else happened which reminded me of my own role as parent at Empty Nest. We had actually just built an altar, not as handsome as this one, but pretty much the same style, and it had taken many years of working with the practice committee and collecting funds, and we finally found someone locally to build it. And we were preparing for Sashin, and on Friday afternoon, people arrive, and they start setting up the zendo, and I've been working all day, so I went in the swimming pool. and let the students take over. And while I was there, one of my students came to me and said, first said, oh, what a lovely sight, a Zen teacher floating in the samadhi of the swimming pool.

[08:03]

So I immediately smelled a rat. So he's a very nice man, but usually not quite so poetic. Then the next remark was, do you know where a hammer is? Now we're starting to see a little fudge around the kid's mouth, you know, like, I haven't been in the cookies. So I said, a hammer? Yeah, I know where a hammer is, but what do you need a hammer for? And he said, Well, there's something broken in the Zendo." And I did an immediate scan over what possibly that could be, you know, what could have fallen down, and I couldn't come up with anything. So then I said, what's broken in the Zendo? He said, well, someone, no names mentioned, someone thought that the front panel of the altar opened like a door and they pulled it off. And so this sort of parental position, you know, I'm sorry, I took the car out to get a Coke and, you know, wrapped it around the telephone pole, came up for me and I said, well, first took a few breaths and said, well, I think that the back of the altar is the same as the front and it'd probably be better not to hammer on it.

[09:29]

So why don't you just turn the altar around and put the panel behind it, you know, So then I just prayed that they weren't going to start hammering on it and finish my swim. And then I really had to laugh to think about, I couldn't stop laughing actually in the pool because I was thinking about what must it have been like to be so certain that this door was going to open and then have it come off in your hands. you know, which is our life. You know, we often don't realize our mistakes until we're looking at them quite directly, and then we have to say, what was I thinking? What was I thinking? And then I also thought about what it must have been like for these, there were probably four or five people in the Zendo, to decide who's going to tell the beast. And this kind of, you know, whatever they did, draw straws, or Mikey will do it, you know, but they sent the session director. That's after all, he's the one that handles problems.

[10:33]

So, it just reminded me of how much opportunity the teacher has to understand what it's like to relate from both sides, from teacher and student. And another point, maybe Leslie will help me with this. When I was in Japan, I had a really wonderful opportunity to go to a Hakuin exhibit. And in the Hakuin exhibit, I bought this Norin. Hold that up. So this kind of hangs in the entryway of Empty Nest. It says, parent, oh yeah, and then some further clarification about our relationship to the parent. And all during the session, thanks, all during the session, I was watching people come in and out of the Zen Do.

[11:38]

I had not yet told anybody about the translation of this new Norin that I'd brought back. I mean, it goes really well with the zendo, you know, with the tatami and the black mats. So, you know, it's very funny, actually, with these kinds of characters, because when you look at them, they're kind of pretty in their art. And yet, they actually are words to people who can read them. And I noticed this when I picked up a bag at Koyasan, a pilgrim's bag, which I kept my rakusu in. And I was wearing it in Kyoto. I was using it for something in Kyoto and I was wearing it. And people kept coming up to me and saying, you went to Koyasan. And I said, well, how did you know that? He said, well, it says so on your back. It's like I just came from McDonald's, you know. So it's a kind of interesting experience, you know, that we relate to the calligraphy as art and it actually says things. So I was watching people. I had actually gone to a woman that I studied Japanese with in Fresno to get the translation of this parental Nyorin.

[12:47]

Noren, but I hadn't told the group yet. So they were coming in and out of this parent without knowing what it meant. And so it occurred to me that this was a very important topic for us to talk about, especially as I described to you what the Noren says. It says, parent, and this is Hakuin's calligraphy, which has been copied onto the Noren, and Hakuin lived from 1685 to 1766, and it says, taking care of the parent, the children find happiness, and then one more, Oya, and something about Fukuden, this field of happiness, this interconnected life, the parent is this field of happiness or there is the pouring of seeds and happiness blossoms.

[13:49]

So I thought that I would explain that a little. In addition, beyond the Norin, as I look through the Norin from my seed in the Zendo, There's a mountain, Shaddai, and I thought a lot about the poem about the mountain, the child and the parent. The blue mountain is the parent of the white cloud, and the white cloud is the child of the blue mountain. All day long, they play together without hindering each other. So there was that level, and of course our deepest level of Zen practice is, as described by the founder of our particular style of Zen, Tozan, the host and guest, form and emptiness, and the white cloud and the blue mountain. And also in the koan of Master Zuiyan,

[14:51]

Master, are you in?" Do you know that koan where he asks himself over and over again, he calls out to himself, Master? And then he answers himself, yes. And he says, are you there? Are you in, Master? In other words, have you stopped reacting as your little child? Are you really in touch with your deepest mind? Master, are you there? And then he says to himself, don't be fooled. by any circumstances, which really means don't be fooled by yourself. Don't project on anybody. And then he says, I won't. So when we examine this parental mind and everything in between. It's quite a rich study. I wanted to start with talking about this Hakuin's view of parent because it's very basic. Hakuin, the most wonderful thing about Hakuin was not just that he revived Zen in the century that he lived, it's the 18th century,

[16:04]

but that his way of teaching was for everyone. And so even if you couldn't realize enlightenment, you could at least respect your parents. And he said, he wrote to someone, a childhood friend. I understand that you have recently gotten into the bad habit of not listening to your parents and that you worry them a great deal. This is certainly disgusting. You should know that there are such things as the laws of heaven and divine retribution." So there's a level in this Norin that is really just what it is. At least if you can't be enlightened, try to behave yourself. But I wanted to just share with you Hawkwind's genius for double entendre and reaching people. At the time he lived, all sutras were written in Chinese and he wrote in the Japanese vernacular so that everyone could appreciate it.

[17:07]

And so here is one of his little ditties that he wrote. It's called Prescription for Penetrating One's Nature and Becoming a Buddha Pill. He would write these things to help lay people, for example, a pharmacist. So this one is for a pharmacist named Yusuke. My name is Yusuke Odawara. I've been a pharmacist since before my parents were born. Although soliciting is prohibited in this country, listen to me for a second about the effects of a certain medicine. The pill I'm talking about is called Penetrating One's Nature and Becoming a Buddha. It's got direct pointing at human mind in it. If you take this pill, you'll get rid of the diseases of four sufferings and eight sufferings. You can rest easy, far from the drifting and sinking of the three worlds, and get relief from the aches of going around in the six realms. The medicine is Prince Siddhartha's." And on and on it goes. So he had a wonderful sense of humor, and that is a certain fun in the things he did.

[18:09]

While I was at the exhibit, there was a really wonderful painting of a man and a woman, and the man was bent over with bare butt, and the woman was kind of examining his rear end with some kind of scary instrument. And I had the good fortune of touring this Hawkwin exhibit with Norman Waddell, who's the foremost translator of Hawkwin in the world, really. And he said, what's happening is, as he read it, and I don't remember what the Japanese words or even English words exactly is that she's treating him for his hemorrhoids. But the word hemorrhoids that Hakuin used and the treatment had something to do with just the greed that people have in general. So in some way in treating his hemorrhoids he was going to get over his cravings in the world. So he had this wonderful way of combining the ordinary and the transcendent. The first level of understanding our role as children is fairly obvious, but then when we become adults, we are still, when we're around our parents,

[19:26]

the child still comes up, and when we're around our teachers, the child still comes up. And so the advice of Dogen, and this was his advice to the one cooking for the community, was to cultivate a joyful mind, the joyful mind being, wow, what a pleasure it is that we can practice, what a gasp. And magnanimous mind, which means everything that you encounter is your life. There isn't a separation of me in subject and object, but just everything you encounter is your life, it's your karma. So applying this joyful mind and magnanimous mind, then parental mind. Parental mind means to respond to everything as if they're your children. This is ultimately, as we cultivate this parental mind, we first maybe are not enlightened, but we practice not being a baby and not demanding that those in authority in some way be perfect or imagine some way that they need to respond and that we take responsibility for helping them just the way they've taken responsibility for helping us.

[20:42]

Here, this following is a passage from the Lotus Sutra. The three worlds are mine and all sentient beings in them are my children. In other words, this parental mind is awareness that the whole world is one's true self, is the foundation of Buddha Dharma. And this is from Ujjyama Roshi's From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. You know, I was listening on my way over here to an interview with a woman from Uganda who had lost her daughter to the rebels who kidnapped the children. They've kidnapped 25,000 children in Uganda. And her daughter was in a girls' school, and all the girls, there were 139 girls in the school who were kidnapped. And the boys are kidnapped to fight in the army, and the girls are kidnapped to become sex slaves and just slaves in general for keeping house. This woman lost her daughter when her daughter was 14 and she heard word that her daughter was still alive and her daughter just returned to her at age 22 and so with two children.

[21:53]

And the interviewer was asking, naturally, how is your daughter after all this? And the woman said, well, she's a little depressed, but we love her a lot, and so we think she'll get better. And she lost the use of one leg. She can't use it quite properly because she had a beating of 200 strokes at one point. And she almost died when she delivered her first child because she was so young. And then, The interviewer asked the mother, at one point, the rebels said that if you would stop your international campaign about this problem, they would return your daughter to you, and you wouldn't do it. And she said, well, we're all one family, and it wouldn't be right for me to get my daughter back and not help everybody get their children back. So then he asked her, how do you feel now that you have your daughter back? And she said, It's like having a drop out of the ocean.

[23:02]

She said, there are 25,000 children and I'm very thirsty. So this is really a true parental mind where all the children and all the people and all the rebels are still your children. Ujjyama goes on to talk about what it is we need to do and how people misunderstand the Zen state of mind. Zen is often thought to be a state of mind in which you become one with your surroundings. There is an expression which says that mind and environment are one. Enlightenment is understood as falling entranced into some rapturous state of mind in which external phenomena become one with oneself.

[24:14]

However, if such a state of mind were the spirit of Zen, then one would have to steal one's body in order to achieve it and never move. This is not realistic. This is an idealized notion and it has a very detrimental effect on our practice and on our relationship with our teacher. There is not some rapturous enlightened state of mind that we fall into. There is just one activity, one activity after another. Sometimes it's enlightened and sometimes it's not. And on our cushion, we spend our time on our cushion, really working to uncover what does it feel like when we get underneath all of these footprints and handprints and fingerprints from our conditioning and our difficulties, and we find some state of mind, some place where we have access to composure and clarity.

[25:25]

When we have that experience on our cushion, occasionally we can find it again in our life and interact with others. But most of the time, we pull that alter front off and then look at it and say, what was I thinking? And then go to a deeper state of mind. So I think my message today is very much about how it is in every situation and with every relationship you find parental mind in order to overcome projections and conditioning to work with your teacher and students who are around you. There's only one way that we relate, in fact, and that is to take care of each and every person that we encounter as if it's our life, because it is.

[26:28]

So now I'll let you ask some questions. Before we came in we were talking about how when we first come to practice there is this way you have to Maybe not, but it seems like there's this place that you have to go with your teacher, which is, for lack of a better word, I submit to you. You are my guide. I will do what you say. And it's kind of like that. They don't really tell you your experience, but they say, stay in your own seat, you know, Master, yes, and not go to... So can you say something about how we can do that, or if we need to do that?

[27:30]

Yeah, yeah, we do. We need to venerate the parent, but not with our eyes closed. And that's a really important point, which is we need to, in order to have some understanding. We're so wedded to our own delusions that we need to make a choice in the very beginning in this practice. Which do I trust? Do I trust my impulses or am I going to trust this teacher? And so we do need to trust that the teacher is going to lead us, but we can never close our eyes. And so as we trust, we always trust with open eyes. And Zen is that way. Zen is very much based on faith. I mean, how dumb is it to come and sit and face the wall and not do anything when you have a very busy life? You must have faith that something is going to happen. So it requires a great deal of faith. But it's not the kind of faith that's required in other religions where you believe in a whole system constructed somewhere in the sky.

[28:36]

You need to have enough faith to sit down and do this. But shortly after, if you don't have an experience that verifies why you're sitting there, you're going to leave the practice. So it is faith that also grows based on experience. And the same with trusting teacher. The trust in teacher can only grow when it's based on experience that validates it. And so as we continue to practice and our faith deepens, also our composure and clarity deepens. So when there's a clinker, we ought to be able to hear that. And mature students need to be able to do both, which is consider, first of all, that it's your problem. Always do that. That's the best policy. When something goes wrong, always think that it's your problem first. And when you're done considering that it's your problem, now look around and see what else is going on.

[29:44]

Take your responsibility first. Take the charge out of it, the anger and the blame. And then, when you've done that, now look again. So we can't stop looking. when it seems fairly obvious that one is in more of an unenlightened state of reaction or whatever, how to, I don't know, how to respect that, how to honor that. Exactly where you are? Yeah. Without puffing it up? Without puffing it up and without shrinking it. Mm-hmm. Well, there's no substitute for awareness. Wherever we are, being intimate with that is our practice.

[30:47]

And so, sometimes we can start to feel we're being pulled around, and sometimes we can't. So, the first thing is to develop your awareness. and understand that the awareness isn't about something up here. It's about right here, you know, right here where you are. And to be with that is deepening your awareness. To be right where you are is deepening your awareness. The other thing is that you, the Buddha, when asked by one of his students, he said something like, the Buddha way is very dependent on, or it's very important in the Buddha way to have friends in the Dharma. And the Buddha said, no, it's not part of the way, it's the whole thing. So we have to, unless we have people to help us, we're dependent on ourselves. We're dependent on our impulses and our undeveloped mind. That's a scary thought. So the more we realize how truly frightening that is, the less we want to trust our impulses with our life.

[31:55]

And the more we seek having people to check in with who we respect, then who will tell us the truth. Yes, Muffet. I believe, if I remember correctly, that Haakon was an orphan? Was a what? Orphan? No. No, he wasn't. Quite a number of... Shh.

[33:04]

that at some point at least one needs to grow up as one's own individual self, as one's own child, one's own parent. And it's a long time, I think, for me, anyway, to realize that one's self is that. One sees it and works toward it. And yet, this aspect.

[35:02]

That the most important thing is not what we believe, but to actually experience this. to actually penetrate self-nature where there is the source. Because parent really is the source, that's what it refers to, is the source. And there's a place that we can access through meditation that is an actual experience of this source, this source of oneness. And when we do that, then we don't have much discussion about it. It's an experience. So, even though we have a lot of models and beliefs, it's not necessary. There is a support. One can feel. One can experience. Experience, yes. Did you want to say something, Claire? Thank you, Grace, for your talk. You talked wonderful image of the Blue Mountains. Yeah, we can't, we would, there are many times we would very much like to boot the child out.

[36:48]

but it just turns out that we can't. On the other hand, being in contact is our humanity. Being in contact with our neediness and our playfulness and our impulses just gives us more compassion for everyone, and it really is the basis of our humanity. So it's not going to go anywhere, so we might as well give it its proper place. Thanks for reminding me, though, because I wanted to in addition to sharing that poem about the white cloud and the blue mountain, give you a poem from a woman's perspective, an eighth century female Buddhist practitioner, Lady Otomo no Sakanoe. Sakanoe. Do not smile to yourself like a green mountain with a cloud drifting across it. People will know we're in love. So that is a little more about how it comes out as somewhat theoretical in some of the male teachings, but it's very real, the connectedness between the cloud and the mountain.

[38:04]

Yes, Sue. Yes, thank you, Grace. Can you say something about your grandmother mind? Well, you know, I thought that I had died and gone to heaven when I became a grandmother because the labor was so painless. And the babies were just as wonderful. And not only that, they didn't keep me up at night. But I realized very soon into the process that the problem of attachment was just as vivid that when you love this, you know, the love between the green mountain and the white cloud, when it comes up, it's so strong that we tend to get attached, you know, to what mommy's feeding the baby and how everything gets done, which creates a lot of conflict in the family. So now I am working with just what Claire and I were talking about, you know, how that human love

[39:06]

arises and yet, and I enjoy it, and yet I don't let it pull me to try to control or own the situation. Yes? Yeah, it's a little tricky though. One of the reasons why babies come tiny is because they would destroy the universe if they were full grown, you know, with all of their impulses and rage and so on.

[40:08]

So as we mature, there's a place for the child. And fortunately for all of us, everybody has a belly button. Everybody's been through both sides of this. But it's important as we mature that we don't glorify or attach to what the child was, but celebrate our humanness down to the core, right through there. Are we ready? There's one more. Yes? I always felt that as the parent gets older, The child becomes a parent. Yes, yes. Eventually it does happen, doesn't it? Even when people haven't been trained. But the sooner the better. The sooner the better. I remember this wonderful conversation which I related at other times that I had with my mother, who was a very difficult person, and for a while I just really didn't relate to her. And finally I realized, oh,

[41:10]

I'm the only one who can be her middle daughter. And so it was very important for me to give her that. So I started relating to her again. And one of the ways was to, for Mother's Day and her birthday, she always complained endlessly that I didn't spend enough time with her. So I said, okay, here's the deal. I will spend Mother's Day and your birthday with you, but I will not entertain any further complaints. This is a kind of behavior modification therapy for the parent. And so on Mother's Day, I took her down to Palm Springs. Sitting in the car, she turned to me, and she started in one of her harangues. She knew she couldn't complain directly, because here I was taking her on a trip. But she said, oh, you are so lucky to have had two sons. And I just turned to her in the car, you know, one of my practices with my mother is just catching hot potatoes and not throwing them back. And I said to her, Mom, do you know who you're talking to?

[42:16]

So the sooner we realize that our parents are the way they are and we just need to work with it, the better. Yes, Alan? And then we're not trained to be parents to our parents as they become children, which is what Lori and I are experiencing now. In this container, in the container of Dharma, the whole thing is training. The whole thing is, we have an opportunity to train here, which then becomes our training for our life. Right, and I think that really makes clear what I've been talking about, which is unless there is some systematic way of working on these issues, we're making it up as we go.

[43:29]

And you're at the mercy of your impulses and your conditioning and whatever you make up. And with a little luck, as we work here together systematically and methodically and honestly, we can bring some clarity to all of our relationships. Beings are numberless

[43:54]

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