going to be wearing this thing. So my name is Greg Fane and I'm here back in my home temple. I started practicing here 25 years ago and my wife, Linda Gallien, we're back here together as visiting teachers in Seems like our visit has been extended quite a bit. And that's marvelous for us. Hope it's okay. We're moving into, we're in the process of moving into 1929 up there above the community room. So it's really splendid and we feel so welcomed and taken care of. You know, we're just, trying to do our best to say that we love so much.

[02:01]

So, I've been coming back and reconnecting with BGC a lot over the years. You know, I've practiced primarily in Tassajara in Big Sur. For example, a year and a half ago, I came back for the last week in July, 2023 at Hozan Roshi invitation. He helped me. He mentored me in the process of giving Dharma transmission to my student, Curtis Fabens. So it was a group effort and Carol was there and Amira both received Dharma from me and Chris received Dharma from me and it was, yeah, there's a lot you could say about Dharma Transmission Ceremony.

[03:11]

I'll just say it's about the most intimate thing you can possibly do. It was amazing, joyful, so great to be here. And then I went back to Tazahara and On August 3rd, Zenju Earthland Manuel was there, with her students, practicing at Tazara. She gave a talk to me, due to the fact that a week later, on August 10th, Wendy Curtis passed away. Suddenly, unexpectedly, probably peacefully, in his sleep. Lifelong was living with this condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I was wondering if I'm pronouncing that correctly. He was 40, and it turns out that's the average life expectancy for somebody with that condition.

[04:15]

So I eulogized. Curtis had done that a lot, but I was destroyed. Yeah, it was mighty hard. And the thing is, Zenji's talk was about living with grief. So suddenly that talk became very meaningful to me. And I'll share a little bit of it with you. She said, grief can last forever. It is a persistent tenderizer if you can allow it to be itself. Allow it to sit with you and speak through the silence. Let it use you to talk to the heart of all living beings and forever speak of love.

[05:30]

Then I'll just read that again. Grief can last forever. It is a persistent tenderizer. If you can allow it to sit with you and speak through the silence. Let it use you to touch into the heart of all living beings and forever speak of love. due to the passing of her longtime life partner, Symbala Schultz, greatly missed. And she also went on to talk about, you know, the pandemic and everything all of us have been through together. Not really being able or having the wherewithal, the ability to process that.

[06:38]

And she said, you know, our society doesn't really have the collective rituals to address this much, which I think is accurate. And naturally, Hosanna Roshi, and the many ceremonies we've been doing. I was having a conversation with our tonto, Susan Marvin, and she mentioned that when Sotaro, she passed away, we didn't really do a lot of this because we didn't really have the ability to do these kinds of ceremonies, not to this extent. So I'm glad that we can. for Hosan. And this morning, another in the ongoing series of seven ceremonies, seven weeks, commonly referred to as 49-day ceremony.

[07:51]

And so I thought I would talk a little bit about that because I'm responsible. I requested, can we do this? If you're wondering why we're doing this, it's because I asked, can we please do this? Because I knew that it would help me. I knew it would help me. I suspected it would help other people. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback about that. It is a tradition in the Soto Zen School. This is a pretty commonplace thing, actually. These taiya ceremonies. multiple ceremonies. It's a little funny about it because I don't know very much about it. That's fun. Let's choose something to talk about that you don't know very much about. It was an inspiration. There's nothing like an impending talk or class to really get you studying.

[08:56]

Okay. to do a deep dive into this. It's from Esoteric Buddhism, Shingon, Tendai. And I want to just take the opportunity to thank my friend and real pillar of the temple, Jonathan Colts, who is very interested in Shingon in particular, which when I found out, I got interested. because Sotan Roshi went through a phase where he was really into Shingan, actually. He said, this is the root of, you know, rituals come from, most of our ceremonies come from Shingan, from esoteric Buddhism, because he said, quote, Zen is just Zen. You know? It's just, you know, set up right. Breath, posture, do the thing.

[09:58]

which, you know, there's something to that. But of course, we have lots, lots of ritual, lots of ceremony. And I think for many people that's what keeps them coming around, strangely, but I do think that's so. Even if you're not into it, I can see how the many different forms of ceremonies that we do in this school of Buddhism sort of create the framework for our practice, you know. And even Zazen is a ceremony, you know. Zazen instructions, Fukan Zazen Gi. Fukan Zazen Gi means universally recommending the ceremony of Zazen. Yeah, the Gi. Gi is ceremony. Zazen Gi, ceremony of Zazen. So, yeah, I had a lot of questions, like, why 49 days?

[11:07]

Turns out, nobody knows. As far as I can tell, you know, you can find sources that will say, well, it's in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. That's the amount of time that it's considered that the departed are spending in the bardo before their next birth. Other people would say, Well, it could be up to 49 days. And it's true that it's in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. However, they make it the source. This is also a common thing. It can be found in Taoism and Shinto, for example. So it's possible that this is just an East Asian thing that was obviously adopted by... traditions. Hard to say, actually. Jonathan pointed me to the Shingon practice of chanting and for the 13 Buddhas, Jusang Butsu, they say, which is pretty interesting and you can

[12:28]

learn all about that on Wikipedia, if you're interested. And the first seven in the 13th, Jusambutsu, is actually shorthand, because they're not all Buddhas. They're Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and in the case of the first one, our first service, we invoked Fudo Myo, or Achala Natta Vidya Raja, Neither Buddha nor Bodhisattva, actually. Fudo is a Dharma protector, a fierce, a fierce protector of the Dharma, a guardian deity. So I just call them Bodhi beings. So then there's, and then the next week, old man Shaka-sama, Shakyamuni Buddha. And then Manjushri is over there on the left side.

[13:29]

You might have noticed this morning that I moved Samatha Bhadra over there to be next to Hosanna's name because this morning we invoked the Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva of Great Activity. And next week will be Jizo, Chittikarva in Sanskrit, you know, the very popular Bodhisattva, Jizo, renowned for her great vow. And then the loving one. A Buddha, a future Buddha, they sometimes say. Yeah, his name, their name, it means the loving one. Maitri, being loving kindness, Sanskrit for metta, the Pali word, love. And then the last, the seventh ceremony, invoked Yakushi Nyorai, the great medicine Buddha. And I got really curious about that one because I don't know anything about Yakushin you or I. So I wanted to learn more about that.

[14:45]

No, I have to read it. Baisajaguru. Baisajaguru. It's got the word guru in it. speak Sanskrit. But that's the Sanskrit name for him. And in Chinese is yao shi or yao shi pho. The character is yao shi in contemporary Chinese. It means pharmacist. All right. Tracks. I was going to bring one in here, but it's too small. It's good size when the time comes. It's Linda's Buddha. from Nepal, I think. It's quite pretty. But Medicine Buddha is always holding pot. In the left hand, sometimes in both hands. It's always got this little, there's a word for gallopot in English.

[15:47]

What a strange word. It just means a little urn or something that can hold medicine. I guess it comes from alchemy. So you always They're holding things. Sometimes left hand, they're holding the pop to the medicine jar. And the right hand is touching down like this, touching the earth mudra. Or sometimes the right hand could be in a bhyaya mudra. Don't fear. One of my personal favorites. Mudra of courage. You can use two hands. do like this, mudra of courage. Left hand, right hand. Evidently, this story goes when Shakyamuni's evil cousin, Devadatta, sent a drunk elephant against him. Yeah, Devadatta got an elephant drunk and got it to charge at Shakyamuni.

[16:54]

And Shakyamuni just stood there like this. I'm a little tipsy, but you look pretty cool. Yeah, not fear, you know, confronting, being with, what's difficult to be with. Let's see. I've shared with my studies, according to the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, in the sixth century in Japan, Yakushi was actually one of the first Buddhists to gain popularity in Japan and has been the object of a popular cult in the centuries. And we, you know, I don't really hear much about Yakushi Nyōrai. Nyōrai means tattagata, thus come one. That's the Japanese for tattagata. And nowadays It seems that some of Yakushi's role in popular Buddhism has come to Jizō.

[18:00]

Jizō is really popular in Japan. You see Jizō is everywhere, everywhere. It's a little red bibs. But Anne still presides over Japanese Buddhist memorial services. Right, that tracks. Week 7, Yakushi and URI. for at least a thousand years in Japan. If you were sick, you'd probably be praying to Yakushi Myorai, an object of veneration. It's unusual for a Buddha to have a specific characteristic like this. Bodhisattvas, of course, you know, Samantabhadra is known for getting things done. Samantabhadra is known for, you know, wisdom and insight.

[19:03]

Seeing right through to the core. And over there, the Lithuanian Sopridi is standing. Avila Piteshvara, of course, she's known for her great compassion. Jizho, her great vow, etc. But it's unusual for a Buddha. to have some characteristic like this, like Yakushin Yura is known for healing medicine. And don't we need that? So I hope these are helping.

[20:22]

Like I said, I knew it would help me. Linda and I have done this similarly. We've done also at Tausahara. Just top of my head, Blanche Harmon. Of course, you know, you can do this on your own. Anybody, you know, I could do my own personal services for my mom. A friend of mine lost their baby. You can't imagine. You can't imagine. What has happened to you? I cannot imagine. The grief, the pain. They did... It was a natural service for 49 days. It chanted the Daishindarami for 49 days.

[21:26]

Every day. You know, whatever it takes. It helps. It helps. Yakshi nyorai. It's here to help. To help the healing. To help the processing. And... Yeah, I like to talk about these bony beings as though they're beings. Because they are to me, you know. With a sword. He's got a lasso. Fierce. Keeping me honest. You better straighten up and fly right. You better do the right thing. Sit up. Don't move. Actually, Fudo is... The name means immovable.

[22:36]

I'm not budging. I actually went through a phase in Tassara because, you know, as I've said quite a few times before, It was a real struggle, a challenge for me to sit still in Zaza for a long, long, long time. And Roshi, you know, I just have to look. It's just like, okay, whatever it takes. But Fudo helped me. So, yeah. And also, if you know me, I sit Kaze on all the time. Something bad happens or shocking news. It helps me. I relate to these Bodhisattvas. They're in my life. They're part of my life. And I'm so grateful for that. I think that a lot of, I'll just say, Buddhists are often dismissive.

[23:46]

about some of these things, about devotional Buddhism, about, you know, what you might regard as mumbo jumbo or, you know, there's this big dependency on logic. Science, you know, that's the true faith, that Buddhism fits right in with, it's a nice match. We can talk about psychology and we can talk about neuroscience and yes, yes, this devotional stuff. Not so much. Not for me. That's okay. But I would like to point out that everyone here chanted so beautifully this morning. Shosanyo Kichijo Durrani and the Daishin Durrani. These magical spells. We don't know what we're chanting. We just chant it with vigor and we do it, you know. And it helps, you know. Certainly you can learn more about these Taranis, a bit more, if you're interested.

[24:51]

It might be something more than just a jolly pleasing noise. But I have a lot of faith in the fact that people have been doing this for centuries. And that factor for me imbues it with tremendous meaning and tremendous power. And I want to be part of this. I want to be part of that. I want to be part of this tradition that has this meaning and this power. There is way too much in life that we cannot figure out logically with our powerful frontal lobes. You contrive, and I wish you luck. Yeah, I wish you luck in that endeavor.

[25:52]

As for me, no. I gave up a long time ago. I was able. So, What's in the jar? Hey, yuck, senora, what'd you bring me? What's in that jar? What you got there? And, uh, you know, I've been thinking a lot. The world, whatever you call the world. Um, and, uh, How it just feels like the three poisons, greed, hate, and delusion are just running amok.

[26:55]

Here's Yakshin Yurai. He's got a little jar of medicine. What's in that jar? This is the part that I'm completely making up, okay? Pay attention. I'm making this up. This is just my fantasy. It's just my imagination. You can't find people saying, oh yes, the antidote to the three poisons, Buddhism's false list. So yeah, what's the antidote? Greed, generosity, hate, love, delusion, clarity. So that's my story. That's my story about what Yashin Yorai is bringing. in the jar. Generosity, love, and clarity. And I've been talking a lot about what we can do, how we put this practice into action.

[28:05]

I've spoken a lot about love. What the world needs now. The song goes. Sorry if I put an earworm in your head. for one day sitting. Not great. And the world also needs generosity and clarity. You think about how much accumulation and consolidation of wealth and power that's going on in this country right now. I don't want to turn into this. I'm not going to make this a political talk, even though my teacher is just sitting over there and talking like this all. I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do that. But I think probably we can all understand that greed run amok hurts everybody.

[29:17]

And the antidote to that generosity. It's the first in the six paramitas, right? In the list of the six perfections, practices that bodhisattvas do, number one in the list is dana, dana paramita, practice of the perfection of generosity. It's not a mistake, it's not a coincidence. It's first in the list because you can't practice the other paramitas if you don't have a generous heart. In fact, I think maybe you can't practice the Buddha way if you don't have a generous heart or work on it, you know. I mean, it's not like, oh, now you have a generous heart. Yay! You know, these are activities. This is what we do. That's why we're always talking about practice. Buddhism is what you do. Zen is a religion of action.

[30:18]

What we do, so practicing, cultivating a generous heart. Cultivating a loving heart. Cultivating love. The things that connect us. There's so much division. There's so much hatred. There's so much othering going on. It seems to me, again, you know, I don't feel that right now. And I'm feeling a lot of love and connection right now. And I'll remind you all, the internet is not a real place. Still, there are things going on and forces at work that are affecting and will be affecting all of us. And, you know, we don't have to just be Dormats.

[31:23]

Sometimes, as they say, bodhisattva speaks first. Sometimes right action is called for. Clarity. It seems like, yeah, in the spirit of The internet is not a real place. I just feel like there's been so much misinformation, disinformation, outright lies. People don't know what to believe. There's no such thing as a consensus reality, it seems. It's wild. I remember, I don't know why I want to tell this story, but I'm going to tell it.

[32:32]

Speaking of right action, I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, quite a few years ago. I think maybe 2018. It was about the time, you know, the time of kids in cages. And there's a big military installation in Forest Hill, Oklahoma. They make it into a detention camp, specifically for children. And it became a Buddhist event because the great Bodhisattva, someone very meaningful to me, Hugh Ken Williams, It was a lot of educating about the Japanese internments in World War II. Forest Hill was also an internment camp for Japanese. And actually some Japanese lost their lives.

[33:38]

Shot by guards for no good reason. So we were there. It became kind of a Zen thing. So I flew into Oklahoma City. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm in the airport there. It's a pretty good-sized airport, walking in the terminal. And I walk by in this hallway, like, at eye level. This is a giant screen. It's, you know, . mounted to the wall, blaring a certain television network. And I saw these three Girl Scouts. They were really cute, in full uniform, wearing their Girl Scout uniform. They stopped and they were staring at it.

[34:41]

And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I must have scared them a little bit. Because I was like, you have to learn to think for yourself. Please, remember these words. Because this thing is going to just pour ideas into your head and tell you what to think, if you let it. I think that critical thinking might be becoming something of a lost art in this country. I fear that. People have to learn to think for themselves. People have to learn to see, to trust the information of your own senses. And, you know, there's this expression that gets used a lot, gaslighting, you know, what's really happening. No, what you see, what you hear, that's not what's really happening.

[35:46]

People have actually said that, you know. It's quite disturbing. So, yeah. These are the specific medicines I think we can apply internally, externally, for oneself, for others. Love. clarity. Yeah. I feel a certain sense of urgency about it. But you know, I also feel a lot of faith. Especially good at looking out for each other.

[36:48]

Especially when times are hard. Yeah. And, you know, this is a one-day seminar, lots of zazen. This is our main practice, in some sense. So, would've been a good thing to talk about zazen for this time of talk, but I wanted to talk about, I don't know if she did these ceremonies. It's important for a lot of reasons. And one reason that I just want to highlight today is that zazen, I'm always saying, stay present for whatever arises, right? My zazen instruction in five words, stay present for whatever arises. We do that over and over and over and over again.

[37:49]

All the sentient beings in our own mind, all the thoughts, concerns, whatever it is, they all just come up. They're there. And they sit with it. Sit with all of it. What the Dharma teacher Mary Mosin sometimes refers to as your bucket of stuff. Sit with your bucket of stuff in Zazen. I feel that doing this practice over and over again gives us the courage to face what's difficult to face. We cultivate the capacity to face what's difficult to face, to be with what's difficult to be with. Feel the feelings that are difficult to feel. And as my friend Hack says, you have to feel it to heal. You got to feel it to heal it.

[38:52]

Yeah. Yakushim Yorai, Medicine Buddha. Help us to heal and help us to heal one another. Hmm. So... Somebody on Zoom just put a little heart up. I just caught the corner of my eye. A little heart went up. Aww. How do y'all do more? Uh, gee whiz. Senju says, it is a persistent tenderizer if you can allow it to be itself. I think that's the crucial thing there. And that's, Zazen gives us that power to allow it to be itself, to just completely feel. what we're feeling. So we can feel it and heal it.

[39:58]

Maybe that's the... I think I have time to talk. Thank you very much for your attention. What time is it? Oh my gosh. Sorry. I guess we're out of time. Is that true, Joe? There can be Q&A till 11.10. So that's a few minutes. Yeah. Sorry. On and on. Vosplam! [...] And I'm asking because I realize it's a mystery. The way you were talking about Fudo, and you're going to sit upright and sit still. A lot of people that come here, they don't have .

[41:00]

But taking on or adopting the ceremonies and rituals and the iconography is sometimes puzzling. The contextual thing, America versus Asia, that sort of stuff. So how does the fundamental city get supported the other things that are brought into our practice? Well, I don't see them as other things that are brought into our practice. I see it as one practice. I've been involved in quite a few years now and doing all the things. So what I've noticed when I was trying to get across in this talk is that all those things have supported me and I suspect supported other people. When I look at, I can think of two examples of the Harford Street Zen Center in the Castro in San Francisco.

[42:03]

Just started out as the gay men's Buddhist group and was sort of pan-Buddhist. Little by little, it became a Zen thing. Same thing with Houston Zen Center. A Houston Buddhist group decades ago, just some like-minded people who got together and sat and so forth. And little by little, they started going more towards Zen. What did I think? Well, actually, an elder that I spoke to at Harper's Tree Zen Center, he said, oh yeah, it was the ritual. It was the ceremonies. That's what kept people coming and kept this going as a cohesive whole. And that's been my experience. And the more I do that, the more I experience it as, yeah, that actually these body beings, you know, however you want to think of it, it's fine with me.

[43:04]

You can believe in anything you like. But my experience is, it has helped. Thank you very much. Yes, so, Chie. I'm sorry, no, I'm not looking at you, Lisa. Chie. Chie, yeah, okay, good. Thank you, Brandon. Nice to see you, Chie. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. It was very illuminating. By the way, I grew up in Japan, so the 49 days, Shishu Kunichi, now I'm actually kind of enlightened because The shizuku-ichi contains the two words that if you say shi and hu, that means death and suffering. So during seven days, seven times, that's 49 days, that's the end associated with a particular grief because of the person's loss. But you said it came from Tibet, so it doesn't make sense now.

[44:09]

No, no, no, no, no. I didn't say it came from Tibet. I said, one source I looked at said, oh, it was from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But I don't believe that's true. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is also a part of this tradition that is like, it's not clear. It's just like East Asian culture in general, you know, and it could have come back to Tibet from China or, you know, we can't really say it because it's just that ancient. Just, yeah, thank you. So Shiju Kunichi is very important because, you know, the summering is over, ritualistically. But my point about your, like, you know, Lighting Yashin Rai or Funo Myon-san, in Japan, people go visit certain temples that have, you know, those rafikas, medicine gods, and they don't really idolize, they don't idolize, but they more like, sound like they're visiting a friend, or visiting just the right person to be healed by, Jesus said, I'm going to go see this particular Jesus, he's my friend, or something like that.

[45:22]

So it's not just a typical idol worship, and it just comes from the deep part of your personal history with it. Like the Ursula said, that if you let it be. So I'm sorry, just taking the time, but I started to recreate a collage using the retabola, which is a wooden piece of saints and angels from Santa Fe. And Santa Fe is a spiritual place for me, so I'm not a Christian, but... So it goes with anything. It doesn't have to be Zen. I'm from Japan, but that saints talk to me. So I think I encourage everyone to look deep and think, what thing, what God, what thing is going to heal you?

[46:29]

then unapologetically go for it. Yes. I think that's what you're trying to say. That is what I'm trying to say. Thank you very much. Especially, Chie, I really appreciate what you said about what I would call this warm-hearted feeling. I'm going to go be with a friend. That warm-hearted feeling, you know, that's a good response to Ross's question too. That's what I'm talking about. If I can jump in too, in much the same spectrum, part of the spectrum, you use the word imagination. And I think that's key to making something human. It engages our don't know mind. We don't know, but we gravitate towards something where we have a model. Or we see somebody do something for the first time and then, oh, I can do that too.

[47:32]

It's a way to embody something into the unknown. And engage in that is, I think, a piece of the medicine. That's what's in the jar. Thank you. There's imagination in the jar. There's creativity in the jar. Many, many things for our healing, our collective healing. Thank you all so much. So, guess what? There's a little time around the corner of this screen. It says 1110. Is that it? Is it? Yeah, cool. Thanks for listening to my talk. at this time, but we're in a one-day retreat, and so we're not doing that.

[50:50]

And if you're not participating in this one-day retreat, it's time to go and come again another day.

[50:58]

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