Judy began her Zen practice with her first teacher Enji Angie Boissevain at Floating Zendo San Jose and received the Precepts in 2018. She is a regular practitioner at Jikoji Zen Center and currently serves on their Board of Directors. Judy has dedicated her life to helping others. She works for a local non-profit agency as a program administrator of two residential care homes and has cared for adults with developmental disabilities for over 40 years. Judy is currently sewing a rakusu and okesa for priest ordination and studies with Jikoji guiding teacher Paula Jones.

Full Transcript

So, good evening everyone. I just wanted to update you on the fact that I am not the regional director any longer for Northern California for my company. I've gratefully stepped down. I run two homes, I'm a manager of two homes. The regional director position was actually quite stressful for me, and I am so grateful to be back in my administrator role where I can really work with the residents in the homes and their families and my staff.

Recently, the past week or so, I've been thinking about music in relation to this talk. So, if you can imagine being part of a symphony, each of us being a skilled player of an instrument where we make beautiful music together. There's the violins, the cellos, violas. You have the clarinet, the flute, piccolo, saxophones. You have the piano. The horn section with the trumpet, French horn, trombone. The percussion section with the timpani, the bells, snare drum, the cymbals. Maybe even a harp. Maybe even a singer or singers.

So imagine we're making beautiful music. To me, this is very much like being here tonight where we're sitting together just for a 30-minute sit. Or a week-long sesshin where we're all sitting together, breathing in harmony. And then, when we get up, we have a job to do, we have something to do. So if we're in sesshin, you might wash the dishes, ring the bells, sound the han. This can even apply to a sports team playing together, or a family that's eating together, laughing and talking. It can even be like driving and merging onto a freeway, entering into the lane with the other cars that are going.

So if you imagine from that Symphony Hall where we're playing music to the Zen temple, we'll zoom in just a little bit to our surroundings. Maybe notice the squirrels, the ants, the deer, the birds in the sky, the trees playing overhead. Now we're going to zoom out just a little more, and now we're looking beyond the Symphony Hall where there are people driving around, there's people eating at restaurants, there's meetings being held. People are doing their thing while we're in the zendo or while we're playing music in the Symphony Hall.

We zoom out even more. We see the whole cities, rural areas, oceans with all the myriad beings, the continents, the Earth. And zooming out even more, picturing the Earth and the Moon and the Sun and the galaxy.

So when we sit, I want to bring this back to our sitting practice. My experience when I sit is that I experience this what I describe, what I like to think of as spaciousness, where we let our thoughts go. We're just sitting, being ourselves. And then while we sit, Dogen tells us to drop our self. He says, "Just sit, dropping off body and mind."

From Uchiyama Roshi in "The Wholehearted Way": "Practice zazen single-mindedly and drop off body and mind. It is said that to practice zazen is to drop off body and mind. Some people say that we should gain satori in order to experience dropping off body and mind. However, it should not be misunderstood as a kind of satori experience where our body and mind seem to disappear. In Hokyōji, it is said that dropping off body and mind is zazen. Just to sit wholeheartedly is dropping off body and mind. When we sit letting go of all thoughts that reify abstract concepts, all things fall off. This is dropping off body and mind."

And for me, this brings on the flavor of emptiness where everything is contained. As my teacher Angie would say, we're all part of the soup. I add: the soup with no bowl. It's boundless, with everything contained. Good and bad, light and dark. I like to add everything in between.

I want to talk a little bit more about actually driving. We all drive, maybe most of us all drive. The way I see driving, for me, I see my car as a zendo. I'm sitting in the car that is the zendo. And with the mind of zazen, just letting go of thoughts, it's a lot like meeting someone with no expectation. Driving and being around other cars, you're trusting that they're not going to veer in front of you, although we need to drive defensively. But that is the way we drive. When we are in a good mood, we go to the car. Everyone will go, follow the rules, and go with the flow.

So what happens when we are cut off? Through my zazen practice, I've learned to see that person and not have any thought except for "I do not know what this person is going through." I don't say, "Oh, that's so and so." I don't get mad. I don't want to flip the person off. I actually have compassion for that person because they may be in a situation that we just don't know. And this is actually a very helpful idea or a helpful tool to use when interacting with others, people you don't know and people you do know, to see them as if for the first time, dropping your idea of them no matter how well you know them because we never know our friend or our brother or sister, mom or dad or spouse or loved one or even a stranger. You do not know their mindset. And so it's important to meet them as they are, as they present themselves, just like driving a car. You don't know what their situation is, to meet them with kindness and compassion, and not react if it's a way that might be startling.

In "The Wholehearted Way," Uchiyama Roshi says: "When we drive a car, when you drive a car safely, we do not handle the steering wheel and the brake pedal after thinking in our brain that we have to deal with these various things, right. So we drive basically on automatic. Naturally and freely we keep away from other cars in the opposite lane or push the brake pedal when we see a pedestrian. This is the way our brain functions in life. We should drive our life safely in the same way we drive a car. The eye of thought is like driving a car with tension. For example, since I have no experience if I drive a car, I will be tense and even frightened, fearful of what is happening. It is dangerous, so I do not drive a car. On the other hand, if you negate your thought and leave everything to God, it is like driving a car with your eyes closed. This is also dangerous. Driving a car by letting go of thought means putting your brain as life into full function. When we sit zazen, our brain must be wide awake instead of being spaced out. Yet we should let go of thought and drive freely. We have to drive our life in this way."

So funny how it all comes back to zazen. And how fortunate for me, I feel that I have found this practice. The way that I interact with others and even live my life now, I am so much more at peace. But I will say that it is not that I started sitting to get this way. You have to remember there is nothing to gain by sitting zazen. We are not trying to get supernatural powers or to be happy all the time. We are not trying to get anywhere with our zazen. We just sit zazen. We are sitting zazen with nothing to gain. You might find that in time, you too are changed. Softer, wiser, more compassionate.

I have a poem that I would like to end with. This is a poem by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel:

He listened to, understood and acknowledged despite different views.

He accepted for who they are in this moment.

He allowed to live without fear of having their lives taken away or their bodies violated.

May all beings be well in its broadest sense.

Be fed, be clothed, be treated as if their life is precious.

Be held in the eyes of each other as family.

May all beings be appreciated.

Feel welcomed anywhere on the planet.

Be freed from acts of hatred and desperation including war, poverty, slavery and street crimes.

Live on the planet housed and protected from harm.

Be given what is needed to live fully without scarcity.

Enjoy life without living without fear of one another.

Be able to speak freely in a voice and mind of undeniable love.

May all beings receive and share the gifts of life.

Be given time to rest.

Be still and experience silence.

May all beings be awake.