of all sorts of leadership positions at San Francisco Zen Center, both on the ecclesiastical side and the administrative side. In 1993, we received Dharma transmission from our own teacher, Sojin Roshi, and Steve is and Mill Valley. He is married to Linda Ruth Cutts and has two children, Sarah and Davy, and they live together at Green Gulch Farm. Steve's life is about to become more complex. Well, Linda's life is about to become very much more complex, as she is slated to be the new abbot, one of the new abbots of

[01:01]

will be her, the spouse of the new Abbott. Let's see, S-N-A, spouse of new Abbott. So the sna is here to talk to us today about our complex lives. And then he's going to go to a soccer match this afternoon. I don't play soccer. It's my son's soccer match. OK. Thank you. Good morning. I had something I wanted to bring up and speak about, but then as I was over in Mel's office getting ready to come over, I was remembering a few things that I thought I'd mention first.

[02:12]

One of my first memories actually of practice at Zen Center I'm not sure exactly when, 1968, 1969, was driving over to Berkeley to attend the ordination ceremony of this guy named Mel Weitzman, who was being ordained by Suzuki Roshi. And it wasn't here, as you know, it was the place where Berkeley Zen Center used to be. I don't know where that is, actually, that way. It's an attic of a house. and Mel who was a very thin young man at that. There are pictures of this very skinny guy getting his head shaved by Suzuki Roshi. Different a little bit now. So that was one thing and then the other thing I was thinking was

[03:21]

that as David said, Mel was my Dharma transmission teacher for which I am very grateful. But even before that, or maybe I can't even separate it from that, Mel was a very, very important person for me. He saved my life. He saved my practice life. At a time in the 1980s, the early and mid 1980s, when due to various complicated karmic circumstances, there was quite a uproar at Zen Center, San Francisco Zen Center, where I had spent pretty much my adult life.

[04:31]

And there was a great deal of uproar in me as well, that at least in part expressed itself as a significant sense of discouragement disheartened meant. You know the phrase, keep the faith baby, right? It's very hard for me to keep the faith at that time. Not so much in the teaching, not so much in Buddhist teaching, but it was more keeping the faith in myself. And Mel, in his own inimitable, unobtrusive, humble way, actually provided for me a sense of encouragement that, as I say, saved my life.

[05:39]

So that was actually the beginning of a more intimate relationship that he and I had. So I think this aspect of encouragement, which actually I'm going to say more about, this aspect of encouragement is very, very important in our practice. You don't see it so much. You don't see it so much named as such, like in the Koan literature or in the perfection of wisdom literature or in the formal teaching. They don't talk about encouragement. And yet I feel that it's 50% at least. If 50% is insight or wisdom, the other 50% is encouragement. to find something that encourages our life.

[06:45]

Now I have a poem, not about encouragement, but about skill and means. Traditionally, the teachings, maybe that's one way of talking about encouragement, actually, come to think of it, is that there's the teaching, and then there's skill and means. So traditionally, or maybe in the most literal and simplistic sense, the stories go that when Buddha spoke to this audience, he spoke this way. And when he spoke to those folks, he spoke according to how they were, kind of talking the person's language, that kind of thing. That's what skill and means is. It means taking the essence of the teaching and giving it in a way that it can be digested and taken in. So here's my poem about skillful means. Wisdom ain't worth a hill of beans unless you've got skillful means.

[07:53]

That's the poem. So, not exactly the same. Maybe we could say encouragement is the same, you know, unless it doesn't rhyme though, so I can't use that in the poem. Wisdom ain't worth a hill of beans unless you've got encouragement. No, that doesn't rhyme, so I can't use it, but same thing I think. the elevated teachings of emptiness and the interpenetration of the absolute and the relative and so on and so forth and blah blah blah are all very true and very useful and very deep and very meaningful, but unless they communicate to us in some way that we feel, then there's some interesting philosophy. but nothing more than that.

[08:58]

So what I was going to speak about this morning were some words that I found to be encouraging, encouraging words. Here they are. This is said by someone, this was actually in an article in the Windbell, which is Zen Center's periodical publication some months ago, and someone who I study Buddhist text with brought this to my attention, so it kind of just came to me, came in front of me, So the person who said this was a woman named Rachel Carr. And you know when there are articles in magazines, there's a bio about who the person is who's written the article and so on and so forth. I don't have the slightest idea who Rachel Carr is, except for what she describes in the article, I mean her story, which I'll tell you in a minute.

[10:17]

But I think she's not some great Zen teacher or something like that, she's just ordinary folk like you and me. Anyway, here's what she said, part of what she said. The Zen masters with whom I studied in later years taught me that the spirit of Zen is feeling life and that Zen has no doctrinal teaching, no formal program of spiritual development. Its philosophy develops a clarity which permits one to absorb the sufferings of one's life. We can, with the proper use of will and mind, come to know just who and where we are in the scheme of things.

[11:23]

So the story she tells in this Windbell article is a powerful one and I'll share it with you in its overall form. It's a story of her own life and karma and also a story of, it's a story about how a fixed idea, something held onto very strongly, adamantly is released The title of the article is The Agony of Hate. So Rachel Carr begins by saying that she must be a person in her 50s or older, that she was in Shanghai during the Second World War. and she says that she doesn't say too much about it, just that she experienced cold and starvation during the time she was in Shanghai, I assume when she was a child, at the hands of the Japanese who had invaded China and occupied Shanghai, I believe.

[12:49]

I don't know the details of it too well. So coming out of that experience she developed a very strong hatred of Japanese people. These were her persecutors. Nevertheless, later in her life she found herself in Japan and began to practice Zen or thought of practicing Zen as a way of working with feeling that she had. So she went to a Zen temple and spoke with the teacher there, the abbot there, and described her situation and he said, well, you've come exactly to the right place, let me tell you my story. His story was that during the Second

[13:53]

his family had been killed by American bombing. I think it was his parents, and I think he had three brothers, three siblings, who were all killed. So he's telling this story now, and the abbot is telling this story to Rachel Carr, and he said that coming out of that experience, I was devastated. and had this enduring enmity toward Americans who were responsible for this. So I began to practice Zen as a way of working with this very painful suffering that I felt around this. The teacher who he studied with, take in American disciples. So although the abbot really appreciated studying with this teacher, whenever he saw one of these Americans he would have some response to it.

[15:04]

So now the teacher, next step is the teacher is leaving, and this guy who's now the abbot, back in the past, is becoming the abbot. And the day that he's going to become the abbot, his teacher kind of moves through skillful means, arranges things, so that he's sitting in this room with this big American, gaijin, you know, that's a foreigner in Japanese, you know. and he's sitting there and they're sitting together and talking about things and one thing or another and eventually the abbot-to-be, who later is telling the story to Rachel Carr, you get the sequence there, says, you don't? Well, I think you'll get the point anyway, tell me if you don't. He says, so it comes out, you know, He says to the American about his experience and how filled with anger and hatred he is toward Americans.

[16:15]

And the American says, guess what? The American says, oh really? Well, let me tell you my story. And then the American tells his story. And his story, if I remember correctly, his story was that his father was tortured and killed by the Japanese. and he went to start to practice Zen to come to meet that experience or the residue of that experience for him. So at that point there's a kind of a happy ending and the abbot kind of by has some kind of realization and this very hard fixed idea that he has about how terrible Americans are goes, you know, kind of dissolves and the American's fixed idea dissolves and then he becomes the abbot and then years later Rachel Carr comes and she also has a good time.

[17:16]

So it's a very nice story, you know, and has a very happy ending, and I believe that this happened. I believe it's true. It doesn't always work out quite so neatly as that. Anyway, that's the context in which this person, Rachel Carr, says, the Zen masters with whom I studied in later years taught me and that Zen has no doctrinal teaching, no formal program of spiritual development. Its philosophy develops a clarity that permits one to absorb the sufferings of one's life. So I want to take this apart, kind of, and speak about different pieces of it, starting with that Zen has no doctrinal teaching, no formal program of spiritual development.

[18:26]

So when Dogen returned from China, Dogen is the Zen master who was one of the founders of Zen in Japan, and who now traces his lineage back, I trace my lineage back, Dharma lineage, the Soto school traces our Dharma lineage back through Suzuki Roshi and through various teachers and his teacher and his teacher and his teacher and his teacher, back to Dogen, 13th century. So he went to study in China because the Buddhism he found in Japan, he felt that going to China would give him a more kind of authentic hit of what the essence of practice was, what the essence of Zen was. And indeed he had, according to his writing and so on, he had quite wonderful deep experiences there.

[19:33]

He received Dharma transmission with his teacher, Ru Jing, and had various other experiences. When he returned, he was asked, well what did you learn in China? nose vertical, eyes horizontal. I don't know how the people who heard this responded, but it would not be surprising, even if they didn't say it, they might have thought That's what you learned in China? This is this big experience that you had? You learned that the nose is vertical and the eyes are horizontal? I already knew that. I want to find out something else that I didn't know.

[20:35]

to say that it's obvious that the nose is vertical and the eyes horizontal is kind of an understatement. Wouldn't you say, you know, it's kind of, sort of everybody knows that, you know? Why would you say such a thing?" And yet, that was what he said. He didn't even say, probably in English we say, the nose is vertical, the eyes are horizontal. I don't know, but the Chinese characters are more abbreviated than that. It was probably just four characters. Nose, vertical, eyes, horizontal. That's it. That's the Zen teaching that I accrued in China. That was what I absorbed. So, you know, in some sense you could say, well, this is the doctrinal teaching of the Zen school. The nose is vertical and the eyes are horizontal. Not too much substance there to the old doctrine, you know. It's not too much stuff going on there. So what is it?

[21:39]

What could it possibly mean to say such a thing? And, you know, I don't know. I haven't ever read an interpretation of it, but here's my interpretation of this, you know. is that he was referring, without knowing it, he was referring to Rachel Carr, who lived 800 years after he did. The spirit of Zen is feeling life. And I think, who knows why he chose to say that, but it's almost like he chose the most obvious thing you could possibly imagine. among the most obvious things you could possibly imagine. Not because Zen is a matter of some new insight and flash of white light and then you're going to be enlightened and everything's going to be groovy from then on. No. It's actually the difference between alive words and dead words. It's the difference between feeling life and an idea about it.

[22:42]

When we say, well, I already know that, when we say, I already know, nose, vertical, eyes, horizontal, mostly I think we mean it's an idea that we have. This is a concept that we have, an idea that we have, and it's the most obvious concept and idea in the world. But can we make that into something alive? Can we make that into feeling life? So the the direction, the motive force of practice is not some new idea, some new fancy idea that's going to solve all of our problems, but actually staying with something that's seemingly obvious and investing it with more of ourself, more intimate contact, more immediate contact with it. That's why there is no doctrinal teaching, because it's not necessary to come up with some fancy new doctrinal teaching.

[23:57]

It's already right there, right there in something as obvious as nose vertical, eyes horizontal. So the spirit of Zen is feeling life and Zen has no doctrinal teaching, no formal program of spiritual development. So there's lots of stories one can tell, but one of the ones that I thought of was about Joshu, a Zen master, Zen teacher in the, I don't know exactly when, 7th or 8th century, who was a wonderful, very down-to-earth kind of a guy. You get that from listening to his dialogues with people, very straightforward, very unassuming, kind of everyday sort of a guy.

[24:58]

In fact, one of the most well-known stories having to do with Joshua is when he was a student, actually, before he became active as a teacher, and in his conversation with Nansen, where Joshu says, what is the way? Nansen says, everyday mind is the way. So this is pretty well known. In fact, Norman Fisher, whose Linda is becoming the abbess, is becoming the abbess. I'm the worse half, she's the better half. She's becoming the abbess, and she's becoming the abbess because Norman is stopping being the abbot. So he's stopping, and he told me he was starting, various people have encouraged him to do so, so his non-profit organization that he's beginning is called EverydayZen.org.

[26:00]

You can look it up on the web, everydayzen.org, not dot com, dot org. So anyway. And Norman, as some of you may know actually, his practice when he came to the West Coast, his practice started here at Berkeley Zen Center with Mel also. Anyway, so Joshu took this to heart in some sense. His teaching as a Zen master was very much everyday Zen, everyday mind, everyday life, his practice. So when a student many years later asked him, what is my own true self?

[27:13]

He said, well, did you have breakfast? Again, what the student may have said or thought is not really said. All that's said in the story is the student said, yes, I had breakfast. If I was the student, I probably would have thought, well, I had breakfast, but so what? What has that got to do with what is my own true self? The student said, what is my own true self? Joshu said, have you had breakfast? The student said, yes. Joshu said, then go and wash your bowls. That's the end of the story. So the formal program of spiritual development in Zen is that when you have breakfast, clean up. at the heart of why there is no doctrinal teaching.

[28:34]

And by the way, no doctrinal teaching includes no doctrinal teaching of no doctrinal teaching. The reason why there is no doctrinal teaching and no formal program of spiritual development in practice, the essential reason is practice at the heart of Zen understanding, perhaps one could say, is a deep faith in nothing. Both of those elements are important, the deep faith and nothing. So Green Gulch Farm, where I live, as David mentioned, a few years ago had its 25th anniversary, and of course we therefore had to have a t-shirt commemorating the 25th anniversary, and on the front of the t-shirt is this wonderful little whimsical Bodhisattva who's hoeing the fields, and on the back is the Green Gulch motto,

[29:54]

This is the point of practice. We work very hard to accomplish nothing. It's a very unusual kind of thing, don't you think? We take nothing very seriously. We take nothing very seriously and we take nothing very seriously. They kind of go together. Okay, it's very rarely one kind of leads to the other, codependent. So I think it's unusual because there are many programs of spiritual development where you really take things very seriously and then you get results. pages of Yoga Journal or various other, New Age Journal or so-and-so, you see page after page of advertisements where it says, this is the formal program of spiritual development and if you follow this formal program of spiritual development, good things will happen.

[31:23]

You will be calm, you'll make a lot of money. Usually they don't say that, but that's like this. Many years ago, I was in the hospital for a couple of days for a knee operation because I had a very fixed idea about zazen, about the way to do zazen. My fixed idea resulted in a destroyed medial meniscus cartilage. That was the result of my fixed idea. So I was in the hospital to have it operated on. And I was reading these Buddhist texts and stuff, and the nurse was kind of curious about it. Oh, what are you reading? So I said, I'm reading this. I can't remember what it was. Maybe it was the Moolamajamika Karikas. I had never read the Buddha Vajrabhika Karkas, but it was something. He said, the nurse said, well, I practice Buddhism also.

[32:27]

Zen is pretty good, but the Buddhism that I practice is better. All right, well, let's hear about it. I don't remember the exact form of Buddhism that he practiced, but the reason why it was better was because with his Buddhism you get stuff at the end. If you want things, you do certain practices and then you get them. They come your way. So when I told this to a friend of mine at Zen Center, he said, well, it was actually you chant certain things, right? If you chant, then good things come your way. Cadillacs are out of style, right? So Mercedes, right? BMWs, come your way. SUVs, come your way. If you chant. So then I told this to my friend, Robert Lytle, and Robert said, well, you should suggest telling him to chant to end his greed.

[33:31]

That would kind of take care of the whole thing right there. So, I thought that we should have an advertisement about Zen called, you know, Zen formal program of spiritual development, colon, no results, period, guaranteed, exclamation point. No results, guaranteed. No money, you won't be any happier, you won't be any more peaceful. Suzuki Roshi said, one time he said, if you practice zazen, soon your mind will be calm and your life will become peaceful.

[34:33]

And this was wonderful to hear. What he didn't say was, how soon. Soon is. And that's actually very important. Well, I actually mean that in two ways. We think it's important, right? We think it's important because soon better mean really soon, like five minutes, you know, or two weeks, or maybe two months, you know. Well, I've been practicing zazen for two months now and how come I'm not in bliss?" We think it should be soon, but from his perspective, it didn't matter how soon Sun was. One minute, one kaupa, one millennium. because actually he was emphasizing the practice before your mind becomes calm and your life becomes peaceful.

[35:39]

Soon, yes, your life will be calm and your mind will be peaceful, but what about now? So, Zen practice, I think, is founded on deep faith in nothing. And the person who wrote the Mula Majamika Karikas was a guy, a man, a teacher named Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna expresses this sense of nothing, was a brilliant philosopher and his philosophy actually is kind of the foundation. Zen is in some sense Nagarjuna's philosophy actualized in everyday life, you could say.

[36:46]

So Nagarjuna said he had what's called the fourfold The first negative is, not is, or not being, not yes. And the second one is, not no, not non-being. And the third is, not both being and non-being. Getting the idea? And the fourth is, neither. No, it's not neither. being nor non-being. So what does this mean? What it means is that usually when we think something, when we have some idea about something, some idea that actually controls our life, that actually sets our life in motion, our life is framed by our conscious and unconscious ideas about things.

[37:53]

it always falls into one of those categories. Is, this is so, that's not so, I'm good, you're bad, this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is beautiful, this is ugly. And he logically cuts the rug out from under it, from all of those. What he's saying there is, he doesn't say it exactly this way, maybe later it's said this way, is that actually our life cannot be contained in those concepts, cannot be contained in any concept. And he very logically pulls it away, pulls it away, pulls it away, pulls it away. So we need some practice, some response to our life that incorporates this paradox, the paradox that our life is completely inconceivable and yet we operate continually in the realm of conception.

[39:07]

Our life is completely non-discriminating, and yet we continually operate, always operate, in the realm of discrimination. So how do we respond to this kind of thing? Norman Fisher once said, you can't put the ocean in a bottle. What he meant is, you go down to the ocean, you know, you have your glass jar, right? And you take some of the water and you put it in the glass jar and then you put the cap on, you take it home, you put it on the shelf. There's the ocean. But that ain't the ocean. The ocean is beyond, beyond human speculation, Kadagiri would say. The ocean is totally beyond likes and dislikes. It's totally beyond our ability to contain it. But this is what we always do. We always want to stick it in a bottle and say, oh yeah, that's the ocean. This is this way, that's that way. Now I know. But our life is way, way beyond anything we can know about.

[40:15]

So putting the water in a bottle is like having a fixed idea. Opening ourselves to the vastness and inconceivability of the ocean is like letting go of a fixed idea. So deep faith and not fixed idea. This deep faith is a very powerful, powerful thing. Usually out of fear we attach it to a fixed idea and then it has all kinds of powerful consequences, like Pizarro. It turns out, you're all familiar with Pizarro, the Spanish, I was going to say Maybe that's gracing him with too kind a word anyway, this crazed thief and despot or whatever he was.

[41:34]

Anyway, it turns out that he went to the Incas in Peru with this very small group of Europeans and this very tiny group of Europeans, maybe 150, 200 people, were able to overwhelm the Incas, who were like 80,000. How did this happen? And there's various explanations to it, and part of it is that, as you know, the Europeans brought horses and the Native American people had never seen anything like that so they assumed it was, you know, these people had supernatural power and so on and so forth. But actually right there in the details of it is this fanatical holding on to an idea. Namely, when he had invited the ruler of

[42:38]

to something. And then there was this Catholic priest there, and this is not, what I'm saying is not, I'm not intending to be anti-Catholic or anti-Christian, it's just this is a historical example of this kind of thing. It happens all over, not just in Christianity. So the priest went up to the ruler of the Incas with a cross and was expecting him to bow down to the cross, demanded that he bow down to the cross. Of course, this totally mystified the Inca king. And then he also gave him a Bible. And the king was looking at the Bible and then, you know, obviously to us could not make heads or tails out of it, right, and threw it on the ground. And this so incensed this priest that he began screaming and kill the heathens. That was when the king was murdered and that whole ruling group was murdered and began this conquest.

[43:50]

So holding on to a fixed idea is just tremendously powerful. 200 people can kill, conquer 80,000 if you're holding on to a fixed idea strongly enough. So our way is the deep faith part and not the fixed idea. That's what nothing means. It means no fixed idea. It means taking away all the fixed ideas. So Baizhang, in another one of these Zen masters in Tang China, he was very fond of saying things like, don't make an assertion, and don't make not making an assertion an assertion, and don't make Not making an assertion, an assertion, an assertion.

[44:56]

He could go on like this for quite a while. It's very hard for me to kind of get the rhythm of it, but you know, pulling the rug out. Don't hold onto a fixed idea. Even the fixed idea of not holding onto a fixed idea. But this is a frightening concept for us. This is a fearful thing for us to do. We really like to adhere to a fixed idea, to a formal program of spiritual development, to doctrinal teaching. Yes, sir. 1110. Fine. David told me this earlier and I was curtailing my talk. I am really astounded that it is 1110. right at this moment.

[46:19]

So how do we meet 11.10, you know, right? With the nose vertical and the eyes horizontal. Is really, are you about to end? Suzuki Roshi in Sokoji, he didn't experience this directly myself so much, but there's a story that one of the older students tells of They were sitting and [...] sitting some long, long period of zazen and occasionally he would leave the zendo because his apartment was right next to the zendo and he would leave and go and do something, you know, and then come back and he was the Doan. He was the one who would ring the bell to end the period of zazen.

[47:26]

So he went off and they were sitting maybe an hour or something like that and then he came back after a while. People thought, well, he's going to end the period of zazen. walked around the zendo and kind of made little noises to indicate he was there and then left again. Well, where is he going? Doesn't he know it's time to end? It's 1110. We've got business to do here in the world. Anyway, it went on like that. Eventually, he did come back and ring the bell. So let me see if I can summarize what I want to say in these last few seconds before we finish. So basically, if we can approach our life and loosen up our fixed ideas, then what we're left with is the spirit of Zen is feeling life.

[48:30]

We're left with our actual life without the fixed ideas blocking the way, without all the notions stopping us from actually experiencing. our life. And this means our life, maybe the most obvious way, and a great pleasure in practice, is just our sensory experience. You know from sitting zazen that if you're sitting there, well suddenly you hear the birds, or you feel the pain in your leg, or you feel your hair. draping over your forehead. I don't. But you might, you know. In some new way. Oh, this is the same as nose vertical, eyes horizontal.

[49:32]

It's been there all the time. Those birds have been there. The sun's been rising every morning. We just have to notice it. Without. Not exactly without, because I don't really think there's a without. but with our fixed ideas loosened up. Kadagiri Roshi used to say that practice is like massaging the mind. He'd come up with these wacky phrases that were just great, you know? It's like massaging the mind. This mind that's all tight and is all tightly wound up around various notions that we have. our practice is massaging it. That doesn't mean the muscles no longer function and everything is just blah blah and it's all laying out in some very miscellaneous way. No, it's not that.

[50:33]

But it's not quite as tightly wound up. Okay, thank you very much.

[50:43]

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