Chōbun Nenzen Pamela Brown has been sitting with Santa Barbara Zen Center since January 2017. She is currently serving as Board President and Temple Manager. Nenzen took and received her Jukai vows from Sensei Gary Koan Janka of SBZC and Tokudo from Shoho Michael Newhall of Jikoji.

Pamela practiced law for 10 years before beginning a 15-year adventure homeschooling her two sons. Her family is still teaching her the art of listening deeply.

Full Transcript

Good morning, everyone. It's good to be together to see your faces. I love it when a Dharma talk begins with an old Zen story. So I'm going to offer you case 51 on the Blue Cliff record.

When Shui Feng, also known as Seppo, was living in a hermitage, two monks came to pay their respects. When he saw them coming, Shui Feng opened the gate of his hermitage with his hands, jumped out and said, "What's this?" One of the monks also said, "What's this?" Shui Feng hung his head and retired into his hut. Later, the monk came to see Yanto, also known as Ganto. Yanto asked him, "Where did you come from?" And the monk said, "From Rhinan." Yanto said, "Did you ever visit Shui Feng?" And the monk said, "Yeah, we visited him." And Yanto said, "What did he say?" The monk related what had happened. And Yanto said, "What else did he say?" And the monk said, "Not a word. He hung his head and went back into his hermitage." Yanto said, "Oh, how I regret that in those days, I did not tell him my last word. If I had told it to him, no one under heaven could have done anything against him." At the end of the summer practice period, the monk came back to Yanto and this conversation and asked him about its meaning. Yanto said, "Why didn't you ask me about this sooner?" And the monk said, "I did not dare to ask you about it sooner." And Yanto said, "Shui Feng was born on the same stem as I, but he will not die on the same stem. And if you want to know the last word, it is just this."

I like this koan a lot. It has more than the usual number of suspects. Most of the time, we just have a teacher and a student or a couple of monks. But this time, we have a whole cast of characters. And I also like that the story has this longitudinal aspect. There's more than one interaction, three actually over time. So there's development in the characters over time. I think this koan has something to say about sangha friendships and about time in practice. And that's what I want to talk to you about today.

Over the last year, the physical sense of how we've been practicing together has itself been in development, right? Now that we can start to imagine sitting in person again, I'm starting to see things in this longitudinal perspective. Our unintended year-long plus practice period looks like a bas-relief for me. Carved into my mind like a timeline. One of those bloody scenes that you see on ancient scenes of exile and departure, and also the promised land.

More than a year ago, we were all cast out of the Eden of sitting together into a new territory, exiled from sitting with each other. For me, at first, it felt like some kind of roller coaster purgatory. One day, I was happy to have all this quiet time reading in the hammock, puttering in the garden, talking to my friends on the phone. And the very next day, I was neither willing to be fully here nor able to go anywhere else. Of course, this settled down over time as I stepped into my actual life, this life, the only one there is, the only one we have right now, just this.

Looking back, I see that in our shared exile, friendship became increasingly important, and especially the special kind of friendship that we share, the spiritual friendship that is embodied in our sangha. When we were all unceremoniously shoved into this new dimension through the pandemic portal, some of us were not so willing. Some of us were kicking and screaming, some of us got depressed, some of us gained weight, some of us developed really big opinions about people based upon their face coverings, and most of us longed for things to return to normal. I don't know what normal is, so don't ask me. But the sense was we wanted to go back.

In our new dimension, I found relatedness in sangha deepening, opening, blossoming. Even though sitting in Zoomland is not the same as sitting in person, the distance seemed to amplify our interconnection. I felt like we were instruments being tuned differently, that we were becoming all ears. Each of us bodhisattvas of compassion. We would hear and experience each other's vulnerabilities, challenges, and joys with a texture and an immediacy and in a full context, because we really were going through something together.

We've been each other's witnesses for more than a year in a very profound and intimate way. I found the distance was only in one sense, as I noticed our hearts grow broader and deeper. Every Wednesday night and Saturday morning, I felt we all arrived ready to be with each other in this very intense way to share the extraordinary ordinary of each other. We each served ourselves up as individual ingredients in a deliciously interesting soup that we're still right now making together.

When we get together, I feel like we jump into a big pot, just as we are: wilted or fresh, disheveled or perky, weak or strong, tired, content, sad, frustrated, annoyed, hangry, hungry, happy. Every week I admire and cherish this interesting soup of us, and by us, I mean everyone.

So taking refuge in Sangha this last year, I really felt my vow expanded. For me, taking refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma was simply the heartfelt admission to myself and to you that this is and has always been my path. The Buddha and the Dharma are pretty consistently there and unchanging, so that admission was like an acknowledgement. But taking refuge in Sangha was for me like leaping off the 100-foot pole, because people, and by people I mean me too, we're not so consistent as the Buddha and the Dharma.

Taking refuge in us means taking refuge in people like me. Fallible, changing, inconsistent, subject to passions. As the Zen haiku poet Kobayashi Issa said, "where there are humans you will find flies and Buddhas." For those of us who have been conditioned and aspired to be self-sufficient and independent, even though of course that's completely ridiculous, taking refuge in Sangha, in beings that are constantly changing, requires some personal work. It's a real commitment, at least it is for me.

We vow to watch and take responsibility, not only for our own responses, what triggers our reactions, but also for what we're fabricating with each other. We vow to walk with each other. Nothing happens outside our perception and our relationship to it. It's hard to accept the depth of that responsibility, but there it is anyway. And quantum physics seems to agree, telling us in a myriad of ways that what we think of as reality is actually a dynamic system of relationships.

An electron has properties only when it interacts with something else. When it's not interacting, the electron is devoid of velocity, trajectory, even position. The latest thinking is that the electron's properties are real, only for the object it's interacting with, not for other objects. Things are only real in context of relationships. As theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli said, "Facts are relative. Physics does not provide an objective third-person description of reality."

So if facts are relative, if we are co-creating our reality, then I don't know what else we can do but to be responsible for how we live usually in a bewildered confusion, in the illusion of things. But there is a reality. We, in constant fluid, porous relationship to ourselves, to each other, to everything, we are that reality. If we experience this, we know that we are nothing, and in being nothing, I think we may be everything.

Suzuki Roshi said this to say about the relative, our own individual experience of reality, and the capital A absolute. He said, "The relative form and color that you see now are the conditioned attributes of the unconditioned, the constant, the absolute. The absolute is the eternal unconditionality which gives rise to the conditioned relative ways of practice. Your practice."

So what we experience with these eyes, this body, this mind, is the conditioned reality of this moment arising from the unconditioned absolute. I find this really helpful. It helps me perceive that the accumulation of everything that's ever happened to everyone everywhere is right here. It's not mine. And each moment bears the full meaning of that absolute. Every thought that arises bears that full meaning. It's all already here. There's nothing to go towards or wait for. There's nothing to go to. There's nothing to go away from. There's no one to be that doesn't include at all.

Sangha provides a place to swim around in this soup of our relative observations and reactions arising from the absolute. It's challenging and wonderful and if you're willing, by the way it's happening even if you're not willing, just saying.

Bill Powell taught me that the root of the word Sangha is song, which means stickiness, to stick together, to adhere together, to gather together. Sangha is really a sticky business as if you didn't know this. I guess this means that we're stuck together, stickily connected in an inevitable mysterious way. I really can't explain how I got into this room with you people here. Can you?

The Buddha has something to say about Sangha in one of my favorite stories about the Buddha and Ananda from the Pali Canon, Upadasuddha. Ananda enthusiastically is endorsing Sangha friendships and says to the Buddha, "This is half of the holy life, Lord, admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie." And the Buddha said, "Don't say that, Ananda, don't say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life."

In the Sambodhi Sutta, the Buddha says, "If wanderers who are members of some other sect come and ask you, 'What friend are the prerequisites for self-awakening?' This is what you should answer. Where a monk has admirable friends, admirable companions, admirable comrades, this is the first prerequisite for the development of the wings to self-awakening." Friendship is a prerequisite to awakening. We can't do it alone, folks.

In a stanza from the Dhammapada, we're given some ideas about what constitutes an admirable friend, and it may not be exactly what you had in mind. Sorry. "Someone who points out your mistakes, declares them as weaknesses and condemns them. Think of such a person as one showing you a treasure, associate with people of that nature." Wise people of that nature are in this room. We observe and support each other. We ask questions and we openly offer ourselves to inspection. I find that sometimes just saying my truth out loud in sangha is enough to cast my own responses into doubt and give me a new place to explore. Maybe that's what's happening right now.

Sangha is an adventure. Whatever is happening with this person, whoever she is, is not coming from the outside. Being in sangha allows us to get feedback, to recognize and work with what one's own and everyone else's energetic expression. And being a friend has its own prerequisites, and this I think might be the hardest part for most of us. One first must be a friend to oneself. Finding a way to drop the relentless self-judgment, to drop the self-criticism, to drop the mic on all the noise, and then listen to one's natural responses, not analyzing, but listening from the gut, a place where it gets its news from different sources. What do the kids say? False news? It's not false news.

Being one's own friend requires this radical acceptance, a trust of one's own sense of things. I think this is what is developed in practice, not as a goal, as a byproduct of sitting, of telling the truth to ourselves. And that truth is already here. It's right in your lap.

As we've gathered this last year, I see how much each person in sangha has something to offer, and that each offering is unique to each of you. We bring to each other our tiredness, our dejection, our contentment, our hope, our warmth and caring, without demand or investment in any outcome. I feel like we've met each other like siblings or grandparents. Fill in the blank for your warm sense. We meet each other with a devotion. Not as we, the subject, helping another, the object, but naturally more like meeting each other and responding to the whole of what's in the Zoom room, appreciating this soup, this exchange, this co-creation is it, just this.

When we sit, we gather the ever-changing versions of ourselves and give them some breathing room, setting aside the judgment, having a gentle hand with ourselves, not clinging to any of the more than 31 flavors of this one being we call ourselves. I know when I sit down, Tazazan, I sit down as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a Zen student, a friend, a woman, but being in the soup of sangha helps me to loosen the grip of those identities.

Sangha exercises our understanding of all relationships, and this is where we cook our practice. Bernie Glassman wrote, when Dogen asked the Zen cook in the Chinese temple why he didn't have his assistants do the hard work of drying the mushrooms in the hot sun, the cook said, "I am not other people." In the same way, we have to realize that this life is the only life we have. It's ours right now. If we don't do the cooking ourselves, we're throwing it away. Keep your eyes open, Dogen says. Wash the rice thoroughly. Put it in the pot, light the fire, and cook it. There's an old Zen saying that says, "See the pot as your head and the pot as your head."

Over the last year and a half, I've watched our soup develop flavor. I've seen my reactions and your reactions, and I thought, oh, this is what is actually happening. This is the place we're practicing right here. Sangha hands us this rich opportunity to take full stock of the reality we're making and experiencing together. It's not always easy, but we are stuck together. And so we reinforce our bonds. We affirm these connections with admirable friends right in the middle of this shared experience, this place of difference and no difference. This soup right here, right now, is where we wake up.

What I've tasted in the soup of our pandemic is that this is actually not a place of exile. It's the promised land right now, right here, just this.

So circling back to the case, which we have done again, we have two anonymous monks and two teachers. It's a kind of sangha, and both the changeability of those people practicing together, just like us, and the dynamic of their relationships are in play over time, just as it is with us. I think that this case points to the fact that we need each other. We need sangha to challenge our understanding. We need sangha to teach us, and we need to teach too, not by trying to teach, of course, but just by showing up wholeheartedly to be in the soup. Without sangha, I think practice would be infertile. This path is not designed to have us avoid messiness. It's not designed to bliss out. It's not designed to avoid this interplay of real, alive people and their problems. It's not designed to indulge. Confrontation of ourselves and each other can be an extremely loving act. The tangled interactions are us. You are us.

In the case, remember how the first teacher, Shui Feng, or Sepo, he says, "What is this?" And the visiting anonymous monk mimics him exactly, says, "What is this?" Shui Feng hung his head and went back into his hut as if to say, "People, do you? There's only one you. Don't imitate someone else." Remember how the second teacher, Yanto, asked, "Why didn't you ask me this question earlier?" And the monk said he didn't dare ask it earlier. I think the monk was cooking like we're cooking, learning to respond from the gut. I think maybe the monk thought it was presumptuous to ask his teacher earlier. Instead, he waited a practice period, 90 days, to ask again. I think he needed that time to practice with his teacher, to watch his teacher's conduct. And not until then, and maybe only then, could he actually hear what his teacher was going to tell him. Because cooking takes time. It takes us time to practice together, to illuminate our interdependence. No instant soup here. It's a crock pot, or maybe a pressure cooker sometimes. Awakening takes time and practice, and it requires friends. Our big questions have to cook in the soup we make together. Everything and everyone is inside this soup.

At the end of the case, Yanto says, "Shui Feng was born on the same stem as I, but he will not die on the same stem."

I think Yanto was saying that we are each responsible for our own path, and that is what you, and only you, have to offer. You have something to offer. And by you, I mean everyone. No matter how weak or small, how great or proud or invisible or monstrously huge we may sometimes feel, you have something to offer, which is the truth of your life. Please don't waste it. You're the only one who can bring what you have to offer. And our Sangha really needs you, and we really appreciate your life.

So what I've seen in this last year, from this exile to the promised land of right now, is that we've been showing up for ourselves and each other, and that act is so inseparable that we have made soup. It's been a different experience of Sangha in this exile, and if we had to be apart and alone, I'm so grateful I was apart and alone with you.

So sticky mates, I count on you. I need to observe what you bring to Sangha, both intentionally and unintentionally. It shows me what I bring to Sangha, both intentionally and unintentionally. I thank you for jumping into this pot. The soup is warm, as Yanta would say, this is it. And that's my last word, too. Thank you.