Good morning. And a special welcome today to those of you who are here for the first time. And a special welcome to those of us who are not here for the first time, but continue to come. We are all welcome. When we're asked to give Dharma talks, at the end of the Dharma talk, somebody asks, what is the title? How do you want your Dharma talk to be titled so they can file it in some way or however? So as I was mulling about that, I couldn't decide whether the title would be Grace in Practice or Trust in God and Tie Up Your Camel. So let's see what emerges, let's see where it goes. So really, my exploration is on grace, which interestingly enough, is not a word easily found in Buddhist literature.

[01:19]

If you look in indices of a hundred texts, you may find grace in the index maybe once or twice. I did a lot of looking. A few articles, one from 1967 in tricycle, mentioned or spoke of grace. So it's interesting that it's not a word we tend to use frequently. So I spoke with a few teachers, roshis, with a few priests to ask them their understanding. meaning of grace in practice and with lay people, and so it's been quite a lovely way to go through. So I was raised Presbyterian, and grace is a very frequently used word in Christian traditions, and it's central actually in Christian theology.

[02:28]

So everybody knows the old hymn, Amazing Grace, but not everybody knows the origin of this hymn, which is interesting in itself. It was written by a man named John Newton in the 19th century, and John Newton was a captain of a slave ship. He brought slaves carried slaves to the States on his ship, and he himself was a slave owner. And some perfect storm experience at sea and somehow managed to, with the help of everybody on board, to find a way to bring the ship limpingly to safety. For him, that was a turning moment.

[03:33]

And so he, what he called a grace moment, and he gave up his ship slave trade. He freed his own slaves. He became a minister, actually, and eventually an abolitionist. And he wrote Amazing Grace when he had become already a minister. The words of the hymn really indicate a point of view that was held that God gave grace to, and you could say, undeserving sinners he graced us no matter who and how we were being so the first the first verse which you all know I'm sure is amazing grace how sweet the sound if the wretch like me I once was lost and now I'm found it was blind

[04:57]

And now I see. So this is one understanding of grace. So to begin to feel into grace from a Buddhist perspective is challenging in a way, because grace is by its very nature, beyond definition or beyond definition. It's a little bit like the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. It's very hard to... It's this process for me in speaking of grace, because there's an element of mystery in it and its workings. And at the same time, as Katagiri Roshi titled one of his books,

[05:58]

You have to say something, so I'm saying something. So, felt experience of opening. It's like a, it is a shift, something that opens in us or surrenders or releases a clearing in that moment. It is not something that we can do or will or make happen. And we know this moment in Zazen practice when we have that experience that Dogen described as the falling away of body and mind, we know that moment, that experience sometimes, which may only be for a moment of full spaciousness, of non-separation, we know this.

[07:14]

We come into grace in that moment. Just to bring home specifically to our Sangha, and in this time, we've just come through a period with our abbot, Wosan, starting in mid-December, where he was hospitalized and at risk of life, virtually, of time, and then in a coma, and there was no clarity, no knowing at that time. what the future would bring or if he would be able to be of return in any way. And in that time, it was very painful for people, very sensitive impotence and anger for some and great fear of what might happen.

[08:19]

A lot of pain and concern. experienced by the saga and in that time and all the way through the medical teams of doctors and nurses and medical specialists in various arenas were giving their very best effort his family were steady, patient, loving, constant in the face of their own fear and suffering. Sangha, in that time, stepped forward in innumerable ways. So people learned new positions, people made soup, people

[09:24]

made visits, people cleaned the senalki. Chanting services were held, extra prayer services were held. There was this stepping forward, sorry, stepping forward on the part of the whole sangha. So in this time, along with this pain and fear, time, an unknowing time, was this coming together, this creating evermore the fabric of this sangha, interbeing, interconnecting, intersupporting, so that fabric has been hugely strengthened in this time. We could call this grace. Grace is manifested, takes form in many myriad ways.

[10:35]

One example that rose up for me is I have my first friend, when I moved here from Southern California, and as she is dying of pancreatic cancer, and she has well outlived her. all the predictions and diagnoses, but is now coming to the end of her time here. And she was a dancer. She's very delicately built and now even more so delicately built. And she has an enormously strong spiritual practice. She's an anthropocifist and her her teaching is very guided she is quite at ease in her process of dying but she asked me in the late fall she said she was missing being out in autumn and she wanted to go out so we went we did go out we laid down blankets with a tree

[11:49]

that had already shed most of its leaves, but not all, and we just were lying under the tree, and we could actually watch. Sometimes we could see the moment where a particular leaf would loosen from the branch and start its dance. And there was a slight breeze, so you could actually feel the process and see the process, and each leaf coming down came down uniquely. There were no two that did the same dance, some pirouetted and some salted and some, they danced down, some plunged to earth very directly. And we just were in silence watching and feeling the descent, the ease of it and the beauty of it. And I did a certain line there. a leaf fell, a brown leaf fell right into her hand.

[12:54]

And we were quiet together for a moment and then she turned to me looking at the leaf and said, yes. That felt like grace. Let me get this a little higher. Okay. So, favorite time of the week in this Sangha is Monday mornings because I love Wayseeking Mind talks. It's my most favorite event. So wait, for those who may not know, Wayseeking Mind is when somebody from the Sangha shares how they came to practice, how they came here to practice. And no two stories are anywhere in your life.

[13:59]

They're very unique, just like the leaves falling, very unique. But there is a moment that I experience as I've listened to the talks. There's some sense in each talk of somebody, the person speaking, having followed some kind of a call or some sense of yearning that went past their daily lives, something past that, perhaps not named by them, perhaps not recognized directly in that way, but something that was like a through line of yearning, a call in that sense. Each journey has many, many threads, and it's sort of like following the breadcrumbs in a fairy tale in a very real sense, but some sense of guidance, but also of yearning is the word, some pull that needs to be responded to.

[15:17]

I call this divine, in my languaging of this, I call this divine yearning. Sojin Roshi said that Suzuki's training led him to understand that what brings us to practice is our inherently enlightened mind. That is, that we are at one level already enlightened. Sojan further says that we tend to confuse the concept of no gaining mind with having no aspiration or goal. And he corrects that to say that gaining mind is associated with a selfishness or a self-centered seeking. I'm quoting him. Enlightened practice is to stop seeking enlightenment and to practice for the sake of practice, which matures for oneself and others as well.

[16:32]

So, with this inherently enlightened mind, once we are here, in practice, we may have the sense of recognizing something that's already somehow familiar to us and true and trustworthy, even if we don't fully understand that yet. There's some sense of rightness, truth. And we do ours as in practice in a regular way, a faithful way, we can say, And then openings happen. There is this experience of the falling away of body and mind. What develops over time, I think, is a trust, a trust in the Dharma and in the very practice itself. So that in, somebody used the phrase last week, I think it was Jerry, talking about we place our heart upon.

[17:47]

We pace our heart upon practice and in the Dharma. So there is a connection between yearning and grace. The Persian mystics could be your Hafiz and more, use the language speaking of the beloved and a yearning to become one with the beloved. We have a different languaging for what the beloved is, but nevertheless, they speak of this yearning to become one with the beloved, and they speak sometimes in sensual and close to sexual uh languaging that they speak of caressing the beloved of kissing the beloved on the mouth and we could say from our languaging that they're speaking of or describing this yearning for oneness this that we have that we may not have a name for for oneness for non-separateness for this

[19:16]

spaciousness that we can touch into some of the time so Hafiz there are many of these poems but I went from Hafiz on this topic of yearning he says we are like lutes once held by God being away from his warm body fully explains this constant We'll say it again. We are like lutes once held by God. Being away from his warm body fully explains this constant yearning. Even if we aren't fully aware of it yet. So from another quarter of the world, This is T.S.

[20:19]

Eliot, Christian practitioner in his time, who wrote this extraordinary poem, which I recommend you to read in it, The Journey of the Magi. And he is, so he is describing the Magi, the three kings, three kings of R, E, and R. He's describing them coming from their kingdoms of luxury and power, and let's make it up here, dancing girls and wondrous foods and power in general. And each of these three from their kingdoms are cold, we'll say, or follow some light. They follow the star apocryphally, but they're cold. call to this in some way, some yearning.

[21:20]

And he starts the poem by saying, a cold coming we had of it. And he describes this journey where they're traveling through climate zones that they're not accustomed to, into countries where they're not necessarily welcomed in their process, mosquitoes, camels rebelling, Camel drivers running away. A challenging journey, following this light, and they eventually then come to the, oops, I just undid myself. Oh, that's why, thank you. My arms is good, okay. They eventually come to the stable, to the light. See this new light-filled babe. They offer their gifts, and then they are returning home.

[22:25]

And the poem with this phrase, we returned to our places, these kingdoms, but no longer at ease here in the old dispensation. with an alien people clutching their god. I should be glad of another death. And the death part has many layered meanings, but one of them, of course, is this dying of the old and letting go of, or the death of this old way of, and in effect, that's not undoable, and that's recognized once it's started. So we can say that yearning fuels our journeys. We have the, we leave the familiarity of what we've known, what we call our homes, what Joseph Campbell called leaving the castle, and however we do that, we

[23:42]

there's a leaving process that takes place. In a secular way, because this is in our language, not even talking at the spiritual level, we know these phrases like, you can't go home again, or how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris. We have this in our thinking, in our language. So, at the level of our wayseeking here, there's a recognition, I think, in us all of some dissatisfaction or dukkha and this yearning for what is beyond what we can even define. So however it is that we come here in our wayseekingness, we come, we arrive here to practice and we do practice. Hopefully, to whatever extent we can, mind.

[24:49]

And then there are these moments of arriving home into an experience of the absolute, of the unboundaried, of the spacious. Briefly, and I recall that being graced, we are graced. We are ingraced. Now to the trust in God part. Okay, so trust in God and tie up your camel. This is for me, if you have any other definition of practice, this is my definition of practice. Trust in God and tie up your camel. Get to it. According to the Islamic scholar Al-Tiramidi, this phrase is attributed to the Prophet Muhammad who at some point, apocryphally perhaps, saw a Bedouin leaving his camel without tethering it, not tying it up.

[25:58]

And so Muhammad queried him about this and the Bedouin said that he was in Allah and therefore had no need to tie up his camel And Muhammad replied, trust in Allah and tie up your camel. So when we come to practice, I believe what we do basically is tying up our camel. We study the precepts, we study the paramitas, we study various wisdom texts, we read books, we... study together in various ways. We chant, we do daily Zen practice, and even when it feels too difficult to do it, we do it. We may decide to take Chukkai to commit into a process of following the precepts.

[27:03]

We do our best to understand Kham, the peacemaker, Three peacemaker tenets of not knowing, bearing witness, and appropriate action. We open to try to see what is wanted, what is needed in this moment, and we step as well as we can. And then we surrender. We release control, or the illusion of control, And then we continue to practice, not in charge of grace and hopefully of grace when it comes. So our practice is tying up our camel, which feeds into our opening-ness. So here the trust in God

[28:07]

and grace are a fine connection for me. So many of us, probably most of us, have heard the prayer that is said in Alcoholics Anonymous programs throughout the world, the Serenity Prayer, which certainly fits here, it seems to me. Fill in with my care for yourself. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of practice as pointing ourselves to the star.

[29:09]

So we use our intention and our goodwill and practice, and then when we fall off that trajectory, when we fall off that path in some way, we turn toward it, we allow ourselves to see, adjust in some ways, perhaps to atone if that's needed, and then we place ourselves back on the path again toward the North Star. Arrival is not the point, rather the depth of intention. So just as we say in our vows, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them. This is sort of like the North Star in a way. Still, we keep on practicing, doing our body practice. and then we surrender to the rest.

[30:12]

So this is how we tie up our camels in our practice. As for the trust in God part, I've been enjoying reading Sojin's found in this sentence, the two sentences that just enchanted me, he said, we are breathed by the universe. Everything. Breathing, sorry. Breathing is just happening. Let me see it again. We are breathed by the universe. Breathing is just happening to you. This is a wonderful mystery. So when I read this, it made me laugh because we use the phrase, I'm breathing. Is she breathing? We say. And it sounds as though we're sort of in charge of the breathing process. So... This cartoon came up in my mind of sort of the opposite of that. So, okay, Penelope, breathe in.

[31:15]

Okay, not Penelope, breathe out. Like this, before we were running the machinery of the breathing process, rather than this wonderful, we are being breathed in the universe, and even here. And just now, we are all breathing together. We are being breathed. You don't have to do anything, but receive the breathing. We're being breathed by the universe together. So we have practices within our practice that support us in the process of surrendering and entrusting, sort of trusting in God, so to speak. And one of those practices is a total opening and acknowledging and releasing all holds and entering the dharma, entering the space, entering that process.

[32:24]

It's a surrendering to that. Even our basic zazen practices of being with the breath when we find ourselves thinking, which we all do, and then there's this moment of, as Thich Nhat Hanh referred to it, we come back to the home of the breath. This is actually a practice I use all the time, so when wandering mind plays, that I simply use that phrase, return home and come down. fully into my breath again, over and over. So I think that we go from thinking, we're in thinking moment, and we become aware that that's happening. That moment, I would call a grace moment, because it enables us to release and come back home.

[33:27]

Those are moments to me of grace each time. That happens, and there are many, of course, in a day. Some of us in the Sangha write poetry. I do too. And writers may have had this experience. of when you write a poem, you're crafting it, you have this idea kind of where you want to go and what wants to be said, and you're doing that, you're crafting, changing the order of the sentences, picking out something, adding something, and you're crafting. Sometimes a quite wonderful thing may emerge from product, so to speak, may emerge from that process. And sometimes there's this experience where you're writing and all of a sudden, a poem comes through you, and it's very clear you're not writing it. It arrives, and you're sort of the scribe, putting down the words that are past you, but come through you.

[34:37]

Musicians describe this often, so when they're playing music that they've played often, including when they're playing a riff that they have played before and rehearsed, So it's familiar terrain and good, and they're doing it very well. And then there are these moments sometimes when they may start a riff or an improvisation, and the music takes them and they are virtually not in charge of it. They just sort of the following music being led, so to speak. Sometimes grace comes to us in a chastening, sobering form. And when that happens, sometimes it's difficult to identify the experiences of grace. So for some of you who have been in Dokusan or meeting with your teacher, if your teacher has gotten to sense at you, know you well,

[35:51]

I've had this experience with my teacher who sometimes will say something very unadorned, very, very difficult to hear, and it's sort of like the sword of Manjushri arriving, so to speak, and it sort of shocks your system almost. It's so waking up in a very strong way, and it goes in very deep. And you may know someplace in yourself that there's a truth here, even if you can't quite get a hold of what it is yet. This is also our grace, these forms of teaching that are so clear that they cut through all the dross and you just receive the teaching and are changed, hopefully. So what prepares us? of grace. So I believe that we get signals of grace all the time and we don't see them or hear them necessarily until there's some awakening or some opening or some readiness.

[37:07]

Just in the same way that we speak of that we're already enlightened but we don't know this we don't operate from that place necessarily nevertheless it is thus so the work is to so to speak is to continue practicing in good faith and to grow into that knowing that grace is there and is always there not on our time schedule but is always there even as we are already graced We are graced, even if we're not fully aware. And we don't do this grace. We can't make this happen. We can't will it. We can't force it. We can't assert, I will be braced on doing all this practice. Where's my goody? I want some grace here. I want me some grace now. It's that we, in right time, are graced.

[38:13]

It comes this way. Not that way. It comes this way when we open. So, one more thought here is to connect. Oops, I'm over here. I wanted to connect grace with gratitude because I think it's an important piece of this, so I'll say it quickly. I'm quoting from an article in Tricycle on Grace, yay, called Let Grace In. And the author is David Veda Brazier. Grace is a circular blessing. The more grateful you are, the more easily grace seems to enter. Grace is a circular blessing. The more grateful you are, the more easily grace seems to enter. idea with that is to have an intention to be open to be aware of grace moments and shifts as they happen and as a practice perhaps learning how not always catching them but when one does to be able to say grace grace for grace thank you

[39:39]

I'm going to say one more quick thing. As I was preparing this talk, I had so many memories and moments and experiences that rose up of how I have been graced in my life. I mean in general, but also more specifically in terms of this journey while I'm together at some level. Out of the many, this one came up, but there are many others I could have said. I was a clinical psychologist, and when I was getting ready to close down my practice, it was a four-year process to stop teaching at this university, to stop supervising, and to not take new clients. So it was about a four-year process, so to speak. There was this open space, big open space, and right just then I had to have some major surgery.

[40:52]

So I had that surgery, and then I was living at the Zen Center in L.A., and I was in bed for a month and then some healing. And a very dear friend of mine came to visit as I was now up and about somewhat. in chaplaincy training for two years and telling me almost every day about his adventures and how much he loved chaplaining and so on. And I was assisting and supporting and glad for him. On that particular day, he came in, he was all dressed up, and I asked where he was going, and he said, I'm going to chaplaincy. And I said, can I come too? And I heard myself say it. I'm like, why am I even asking this? He looked puzzled and he said, sure, I guess so, why not? And so we went to this chaplaincy luncheon and listened to a talk by a coach talking about Google AdWords, which is fairly familiar to me at that point, but it was a very nice luncheon and I talked with chaplains afterwards.

[41:57]

And then the head person who supervised a vast terrain of chaplaincy training, et cetera, came over to us and Sean And this chaplain said to me, what brings you here? And ordinarily, I'm socially trained enough to say, oh, well, my friend John invited me, and I thought it would be nice to come in here. I could have done that. But I was virtually, it was one of those moments where I could feel the answer, and I finally said, what brings you here? And I said, I have no idea. And she held out her hand and she'd like to take my hand, it's very clear. And she said, come with me. And an hour later, I had entered the program. Because she saw, she lasered in and just cut through the dross and saw what I was not yet seeing, but was, many people had said to me before, but I wasn't ready to hear.

[43:06]

until I was ready to hear. And then it was so obvious, it was so true, and so bright, and it changed my life. Coming into Chaplaincy was a great grace and gift for me, for which I'm always grateful. So I think I want to... we have left. I want to invite anyone who has thoughts. questions, experiences of grace, thoughts about grace. I've been in this odd angle and you've been seeing the side of my face. We'll put you in a gallery view, how about? That's much better, I prefer gallery view. So there's a microphone for people and then for people online. Just please raise your hand if you would like to talk. Are there people in the community?

[44:07]

Yeah, there are some. Are they showing? They will in a second. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Gallery. So, thank you. Let's start with Sue. Ellen's phone. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'm so moved by your talk, and you represent grace to me in so many ways, gracefulness, full of grace. I'm grateful for you to be here. My mother-in-law, Gordon's mom, was Madonna Grace of Hitchford, and she married So I never knew she was Madonna or it was something sort of mentioned with some embarrassment, but Grace was what we called her.

[45:19]

And whenever we used to go to the little Adirondack church that some family friends, she helped swell the thong and that was a very odd, different experience for this Jewish Buddhist. But I could follow sight-read music well enough to do that, and they had good voices, and they would sing Amazing Grace, and she just winced. And my former son-in-law, who died in December, is one of his sisters saying, Grace, the first verse, the tribe, at the graveside. And I have a lot of, I just love grace. I love the topic, and I love my mother-in-law, and I love what you have to say, like a sort of crack in your poetry.

[46:30]

So thank you. Ellen's phone and Ellen. You're muted, Ellen. Hi. I'm sitting right outside your apartment. I feel like Grace is what brought me here today. That's all I want to say. Thank you. Sorry, yes. I don't know your name. Kaya. Kaya? Kaya. Hi. Hi. This is my fourth time to be here.

[47:33]

Thank you for having me here. So I'm very beginner with Zazen. Very? Very beginner with Zazen. So, can I ask you a very beginner question? We're kind of, we all are, it's okay. You're in good company. So, I'm reading the book of Suzuki Shoshin. So, during this time, I thought too much about it. So I understand that practice is important. So this is my most time. So I have to continue to understand. In Buddhism, I understand that attachment, shujaku in Japanese, creates suffering.

[48:42]

And attachment to anything, um, you lose or gain. Sometimes we don't notice that attachment until something happens. Then it will shock you and don't know what to do. Then emotion takes you over. Um, so doing the Zen will help me out. But reading the book, it seems to be, you shouldn't expect, no expectation, no achievement. You just sit there. I don't know if this is a question, I'm just wondering. So I'm just, no level I kind of understand, but I, I feel like it's contradicting.

[49:44]

So may I say back what I'm hearing is that you are wondering about the concept of attaching and not attaching and then having that expectation on ourselves that we should not be attaching and how to be being, is that...? It seems to be that... that then you shouldn't make a goal, not non-achievement. Well, I think maybe it's also helpful to take the should out. We're sort of being invited, I think, to notice how, as we go along, how attachment in any form over time can get in the way, can clog the system, can prevent flow, movement, growth.

[50:47]

It's not that we shouldn't be attached, because all of us have some attachments, because we're human beings here, all of us, and so we have them. And so it's a question of waking up, attending to, becoming awake to over time with practice, and how that is, just noticing it. And eventually, over time, with practice, attachments, some attachments begin to loosen or fall away or don't have the same valence strings. Practice, how do you get this? How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. The way to practice is To put your faith in it, if that becomes a righteous path for you, is to see if you can allow yourself to entrust the process even if you don't understand it at all, or not fully yet.

[51:54]

And just continue, because there's an unfolding that's organic when we're practicing. It happens, and we are graced. Thank you. Lisa Albach has her hand up online. Who? Lisa Albach. Lisa, you're the last person. Hi. Good morning. Good morning, Luminous Heart. Hi. Thank you for a very beautiful talk. In so many levels. And I'm interested in how the tying up my camel. got brought in. And actually, I think it's a very big part of your talk. And then you just were speaking toward it. Yeah. You take care of the camel. You give the camel and it's pasture, but you tie it up as part of also opening and saying, I have no idea.

[52:59]

And then it comes. The whole talk was very, very spoke to my heart. Thank you. Do you mind? Thanks. Thank you all.

[53:15]

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