Sincerity
Offered to No Barriers Zen on March 21, 2026
The following Dharma Talk was offered to No Barriers Zen on Saturday, March 21, 2026. The accompanying audio recording includes more than what is below, as I felt free to expand at various points during the talk. Whichever you choose, to listen or to read, I hope you enjoy.
Two months ago, I offered a talk on the Heart Sutra. The talk was inspired in part by Kobun Chino’s commentary on the same. I spoke about emptiness then, both in its own right and to illuminate the language of “mirrors” used in Buddhist texts and religious writings generally. Religious texts are mirrors, Kobun says; they reflect you to yourself. To study the Heart Sutra, then, is to study yourself. I wondered why and wanted to share one perspective with you.
“All things are marked by emptiness,” the Heart Sutra says. Another way of saying the same is, “all things are intimately interconnected.” When two things arise together, that arising happens when and through the two things coming-to-be blending or mixing with each other. Each becomes part of the other, influencing how each comes-to-be and, at the same time, subsequently reflecting the other, revealing part of its condition to itself—similar to a mirror.
Because I am intimately interconnected with all things, I show up everywhere I go. Wherever I go, there I am; wherever I go, I meet myself. These are ways of expressing the intimacy of my relationship to all things—and the intimacy of all things in their relationship to me. The intimacy is mutual.
Today, I want to continue in this direction and talk about “sincerity.” I notice that I frequently use this word in various ways. Last month, for example, Jikoji held its annual Nehan-e Sesshin, which commemorates Shakyamuni Buddha’s Parinirvana (that is, the passing away of Shakyamuni Buddha). The sesshin’s participants were “sincere practitioners,” I said (more than once). Also, I expressed gratitude for the “sincere practice” of those who sat zazen, listened and shared their experience, cooked, cleaned, pulled weeds, helped create and care for a safe space, and more. You could say that I am on a “sincerity kick.”
What feelings and perceptions am I attempting to bring together and highlight when labeling something “sincere”? How am I judging a person, whether their presence, speech, or deeds such, that “sincerity” is the word for which I reach? What are the characteristics of “sincere practitioners” who embody a “sincere practice”?
These questions are my focus.
Kobun Chino says in his introductory talk to the Heart Sutra
Consciously or unconsciously, the action of reading a sutra contains the courageous mind to face to yourself. When you pick up the sutra there is already a strong inner need to see yourself. It doesn’t have the sense of seeking enjoyment, though maybe in a deeper sense there is enjoyment. A sincere interest in your own reality, a clear eye to see your world is necessary. You think, “If I have made a mistake, I won’t ignore it,” or if I see goodness, I can say to myself, “I am good.”
Less important here is Kobun’s use of the word “sincere”; more important is all the other words he uses. Kobun, through words and phrases, is reaching for something as well.
You think, “If I have made a mistake, I won’t ignore it,” or if I see goodness, I can say to myself, “I am good.”
How many of us do both of these things and without discomfort or hesitation?
Not I. The first part of the example, “If I have made a mistake, I won’t ignore it”—this I do well. Perhaps I do this too well. The voice of the “Inner Critic” (this voice has many other names) is alive, attentive, and active within this body-heart-mind. And mine is supported by perfectionist leanings and a since-childhood desire to “be a good boy.” “I must do this (whatever “this” is) correctly! If I do not and I see that, or someone else brings a mistake to my attention, not only will I not ignore it—it shall not happen again!” I react to mistakes by taking a vow! “Never again during Oryoki will my chopsticks roll off the middle bowl!”
It is ridiculous; please laugh.
Being a sincere practitioner, having a “sincere interest in [my] own reality,” requires more than noticing and attending to my mistakes (whether there is an accompanying vow is beside the point). Kobun continues:
If I see goodness, I can say to myself, “I am good.”
Seeing and accepting something positive about myself is difficult for me. Usually, I deflect or, if a suitable deflection does not arrive quick enough, then I will minimize or search with fervor for some unnoticed flaw. Much of this behavior is automatic or unconscious—it “just happens” without consideration or deliberation—and certainly a product of causes and conditions known and unknown. And, I am currently afforded an opportunity to practice with it.
There is a gentle practice opportunity happening out here called “Fifty-Two Weeks.” Using a Dharma Teacher’s recent book on mindfulness, I am exploring my everyday life through a different mindfulness exercise each week, then sharing my experience on a message board. This is a year-long practice opportunity; you can join, if you are interested.
Week Six (in February of this year) the exercise was titled, “True Compliments.” Part of the instruction reads, “Become aware also for any compliments other people give you. Investigate the purpose of compliments and the effect on you being given a compliment.” After noting that some people are hesitant to receive a compliment, the author observes that “being given a compliment creates vulnerability” (my emphasis). Yes—and I want to say more. Receiving a compliment requires vulnerability. Specifically, I am required to open up to how someone other than myself see me, how my presence, speech, and deeds affect either them or someone or something else, and, finally, how these things collectively influence our many relationships. That is a lot, and it can be offered through just three or four words.
Saying “I love you!”, whether to another person or yourself, is a kind of compliment. It expresses a feeling and a judgment; perhaps a value associated with that feeling and judgment is included, too. In any case: how does it feel when someone says, “I love you!”, and you are ready to receive that? How does it feel when someone says, “I love you!”, and you are not ready to receive that?
There are the stories I tell about myself, with which I am familiar and comfortable, and there are the stories that others tell about me, both long and short, and most of which I do not and will never experience. But to receive any of them requires that I create space alongside the narrow conception of “myself”—the cozy construction in which I hide—and expose myself to connection with all things. In addition to vulnerability, there must needs be courage.
So, I suggest that part of what I am reaching for when I describe someone as “sincere” is vulnerability. There is a willingness to be exposed and, unguarded and bare, meet the whole of (your) life, however it is. This person—all of you, by the way—shows up ready to meet the whole of themselves.
“If I have made a mistake, I won’t ignore it,” [and] if I see goodness, I can say to myself, “I am good.”
And since it is not all about good and bad or right and wrong, lest you feel boxed in by these ever-present dichotomies, here is some poetry to encourage a pivot. From W. H. Auden:
It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens
Hearing the frogs exhailing from the pond,
Watching traffic of magnificent cloud
Moving without anxiety on open sky—
Season when lovers and writers find
An altering speech for altering things,
An emphasis on new names, on the arm
A fresh hand with fresh power.
But thinking so I came at once
Where solitary man sat weeping on a bench,
Hanging his head down, with his mouth distorted
Helpless and ugly as an embryo chicken.
So I remember all of those whose death
Is necessary condition of the season’s setting forth,
Who sorry in this time look only back
To Christmas intimacy, a winter dialogue
Fading in silence, leaving them in tears.
And recent particulars come to mind:
The death by cancer of a once hated master,
A friend’s analysis of his own failure,
Listened to at intervals throughout the winter
At different hours and in different rooms.
But always with success of others for comparison,
The happiness, for instance, of my friend Kurt Groote,
Absence of fear in Gerhart Meyer
From the sea, the truly strong man.
A ‘bus ran home then, on the public ground
Lay fallen bicycles like huddled corpses:
No chattering valves of laughter emphasised
Nor the swept gown ends of a gesture stirred
The sessile hush; until a sudden shower
Fell willing into grass and closed the day,
Making choice seem a necessary error.
A moment ago, I said, “In addition to vulnerability, there must needs be courage.” Kobun says much the same in the excerpt we are exploring:
Consciously or unconsciously, the action of reading a sutra contains the courageous mind to face to yourself. When you pick up the sutra, there is already a strong inner need to see yourself.
Yet courage is said in many ways and its causes and conditions vary. So, what is this “strong inner need to see yourself” that, when co-arising with vulnerability, co-creates sincerity?
Ostensibly, Kobun is talking about the Heart Sutra and reading any sutra or religious text generally. I suggest, however, that his focus is the whole of Zen practice.
We had a Zazenkai, a one-day retreat, last Saturday here at Jikoji. There were about twenty-five participants, and for many of them the retreat was their first time at the temple and probably their first time sitting silently and facing the wall for about five hours. And, it was a clear-sky, sunny, and warm Saturday. Koun Misha Sensei, who led the retreat, remarked in her talk that “you could have literally been anywhere else today.” She continued, “So, why are you here?” I wondered the same: “What called these people here?” Whatever the call’s content, I considered them brave. To face to yourself requires a courageous mind.
Then, I remembered my early days of exploring Zen practice. I was living in Atlanta, GA, at the time and suffering a lot from, in a way, direct experience with loss; in another way, initial confirmation of impermanence as a mark of existence. Meditation, and eventually Buddhism and Zen, seemed a healthy or wholesome way to meet this suffering and be in relationship with these emotionally, physically, and psychologically challenging experiences. But for the next three years, I mostly read about meditation, Buddhism, and Zen on my couch.
Aristotle observes in one of his writings on moral excellence that we do not become just, temperate, or wise by simply sitting around and reading about these character traits, however. We become just by doing just acts and temperate by doing temperate acts; we cultivate these qualities by practicing them in our day-to-day lives. Where have we heard that before?
So, when I moved to Santa Barbara, CA, I found a place and a community to support that practice. To a house on a quiet street one Sunday morning I arrived. On the door hung a small wooden sign that read, “Zazen. Come Inside.” In I went to a dim hallway, smoke from an incense stick floating in front and above me, with a single, orange-redish dot at its end—the top of the incense stick, no doubt. Looking through a doorway to my left and past a kitchen I saw a humble zendo. And there sat, I would learn, a man named Tony Johansen, one of Shunryu Suzuki’s students in the 1960s and 1970s. He waved me to come sit. The rest, I say, is history.
What encouraged me then, about fifteen years ago, was the same that brought those who were here last Saturday to this place. It is the same that moved all of you to be here today, whether it is your first time, fiftieth time, or some greater number. Often, we call it “Bodhicitta,” an “awakened heart” or the “drive to seek enlightenment.” Kobun Chino describes it as “a fire which, once lit, you cannot stop.” He continued
[…] when it burns, your surroundings, the immediate people around you, are affected by how you life. […] What do you do with your life, then? Some people keep a monk’s life, a single life. Some live as an ordinary person, except that you keep a monk’s mind within, but your wife is next to you, children are with you. But still something is burning within you. So it is something to do with continuous burning and feeding of way mind. Unless you feed it, you can’t satisfy yourself.
This way mind includes an almost painful recognition of independence. Not necessarily aloneness, rather, it is being born alone, and passing on all alone, that kind of realization. You do depend on others, others depend on you, you know that, but it is an essential independence and essential caring, coming from an independent person toward another independent person. In this sense, each one of us is absolutely equal. You can say that before the Absolute all are equal, but there are not two, but one person, who is you.
Bodhicitta, I suggest, this “continuous[ly] burning [moving principle],” sometimes sparked through meeting directly the truth of transiency (that “everything changes”), gives us courage to show up and sit zazen, read sutras, and support others in community, what we call “Sangha.” That courage supports our being vulnerable; when vulnerable, we are well-positioned to meet the whole of our life each day—including compliments we receive from others. And all of this together—the courageous, awakened heart in intimate connection with its life—whether present in simple presence or demonstrated through thoughts, speech, and deeds, is (apparently) what I call “Sincerity.”
If you benefitted from this offering, you might consider the following:
