Honoring Zen Ancestors: Generosity in Daily Practice

In a dharma talk given at Beginner's Mind Temple in San Francisco and recorded on October 17, 2026, Shundo David Haye reflected on the moment right after completing dharma transmission, the traditional process through which a student is formally recognized in the Zen lineage he practices in. He did not dwell on his own milestone. He turned toward the ancestors: the Buddhas who came before the historical Buddha, the generations of teachers who carried the practice forward, and the people who sweep, cook, ring the bells and quietly hold a temple together every day. Through a borrowed black robe, a three-week wait for his knees to recover, and a daily ceremony built around a passage by the thirteenth-century master Dogen, he made a single argument: gratitude and generosity are closely bound together, and the gift we have received from those who came before is something we are asked to take up in our own bodies, not merely admire.

The talk opens the way a good Zen talk should, with a small joke and a larger reversal. Shundo David Haye asked who in the room was there for the first time, noted the many hands raised, and then reminded everyone that the building's name was no accident. "This is called Beginner's Mind Temple for a reason," he said. "So if you have no idea what's going on, that's just fine." Then he offered a line that carries the whole talk inside it: "You never know what's going to happen. So 27 years ago I happened to come to this building to meet someone by chance. And now look at me."

What Is Dharma Transmission, and Why Give a Talk Right After?

Shundo David Haye explained that he had just finished a process called dharma transmission, and that it is traditional for the newly transmitted person to give a talk immediately afterward. He also noted, with some humor, that it took three weeks to get him on the schedule, and that the delay had helped his knees recover from the many prostrations he had been doing. Prostrations are not a side detail in this context. They are physical practice, repeated bowing that asks the body to take part in what the mind is learning, and the talk keeps returning to that link between body and understanding.

He also pointed listeners toward the Zen Center's talk archive, which he said he helped maintain, and mentioned that he had recently listened to a talk by the central abbot, "remembering Darlene Cohen." The archive, he suggested, is a way to hear how others have described this same passage in their own lives. For a listener who has never encountered the process, that is a useful reminder: transmission is not a single dramatic event but a long chain of people who went through it before and who left their words behind.

How Did a Borrowed Robe Become a Lesson in Generosity?

The most concrete thread in the talk is a robe. Shundo David Haye described his black outer robe, the koromo, and recalled that on his ordination day, 17 and a half years earlier, his ordination teacher Paul had handled the fabric and remarked that it felt like a plastic bag. The robe, he admitted, does not handle heat well. Because he had been doing prostrations on the hottest day the area had seen in two years, he was overheating and asked whether anyone had an older koromo tucked away in a cupboard that might let him sweat less.

What came back was far more than he asked for. As he told it, someone offered a brand-new koromo from Japan that had never come out of its box, still pinned and basted into place. He treated the gift as a teaching. Gratitude, he said, is "very closely connected" with generosity, and he described the image he had been holding: "the open hand of giving. The open hand of the perfection of giving."

"I feel, you know, very strongly that I have been, you know, the recipient of so much generosity during this process, during my 27 years of being associated with the Zen Center. And I want to appreciate that and express that appreciation."

— Shundo David Haye, dharma talk at Beginner's Mind Temple, San Francisco Zen Center (2026; approximately 6:00 into the recording)

The point is not that a robe is precious. It is that the ordinary objects and favors of a practice community are carriers of something larger. A neighbor's spare garment, a set of benefactors who helped him through three weeks away from work, the people who organized a fundraiser: each is a small act of the same open hand that the tradition calls the perfection of giving.

What Does "Perfection of Generosity" Mean When You Feel You Can't Practice It?

Shundo David Haye was candid about the doubt that arises when Buddhist language talks about perfection. He admitted that a voice in his head responds, "Wait a minute, I can't even do the imperfection of generosity. I can't even do the imperfection of wisdom. What are we talking about here?" He did not dismiss that voice. He used it as a doorway. The practice, he said, asks us to go beyond our limited ways of thinking and to recognize that ourselves, everyone else, and this moment we are living are "much more than we're ever going to think of, or ever going to know about, or have stories or opinions about."

That is a useful reframe for anyone who has ever hesitated to call themselves generous or wise because they fall short. The talk suggests that perfection in this sense is not a grade. It is a direction, and the evidence of it is found in how we receive what others have offered and how readily we pass it along.

What Is Dogen's Passage on Actualizing the Buddha Ancestors?

The center of the talk is a quotation from Dogen, whom Shundo David Haye described as the Japanese founder of this lineage. The passage comes from a chapter of Dogen's major work, the Shobogenzo, which he translated loosely as the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, and it is written in the 1200s, in the first half of the thirteenth century. The quotation is not decorative. It is recited as part of a ceremony the community performs every day, which begins with the passage, moves through a list of ancestors, and closes with the passage again. He had recited it every day for three weeks as part of his transmission.

"Now, actualizing the Buddha ancestors means to bring them forth and look at them respectfully. It is not limited to the Buddhas of past, present, and future, but it is going beyond Buddhas who are going beyond themselves. It is taking up those who have maintained the face and eye of Buddha ancestors, formally bowing and meeting them. They have manifested the virtue of the Buddha ancestors, dwelt in it, and actualized it in the body."

— Dogen, Shobogenzo, as read by Shundo David Haye in his dharma talk at Beginner's Mind Temple (2026; approximately 7:57 into the recording)

Shundo David Haye said that when he spoke these lines, he felt he was invoking the Buddha ancestors, from Vipasyin Buddha and Shikhi Buddha to Visabhu Buddha, the Buddhas before the historical Buddha who lived two and a half thousand years ago, and "every single Buddha in between, every single ancestor in between." The word that matters most in the passage is "actualize." It is not enough to know the ancestors or to hold them in reverence. To actualize them is to embody their virtue, to "dwell in it," and let it show up in the body and in conduct. The ancestors are not a finished archive. They become present through what we do.

That is also why the talk returns so often to the body. Prostrations, robes that overheat, knees that need weeks to recover, the physical labor of ringing bells and putting out mats: these are not obstacles to the teaching. They are how the teaching gets actualized.

How Do Monthly Memorials and Offerings Keep the Lineage Alive?

Shundo David Haye described a set of practices that give the ancestors a regular place in the life of the temple. He spoke of making offerings to other teachers, and of a monthly memorial the community holds. In the ceremony he performs, he said he goes through a list of names and chose to add four more of his own to it. The gesture makes the ancestral line personal. It is not a generic recitation of distant figures. It includes teachers he knew, teachers who shaped him, and people whose lives touched his.

He also referred to the way Zen teaching has long insisted that the self is not the center of the story. He spoke of the "deluded simple self that thinks it" is in charge, and described a practice of connecting the whole temple through ritual. The memorial is one of the ways a community declares, in public and together, that it is part of something older and wider than any single member.

What Does It Mean to "Honor Their True Being"?

The talk builds toward a request. Near its close, Shundo David Haye asked, "So, can we do our part?" and then offered a line that works as a summary: "Let us honor their true being." The question is not whether the ancestors were generous. It is whether those who inherit the practice can be generous in return, so that the dharma remains available to the people who come after, including those who will someday watch this recording and find that its present moment has become theirs.

He framed the talk as a small lesson rather than a final word. He invited listeners to reach out with questions afterward, and acknowledged he had to leave town quickly that day because he was officiating at a wedding. The brevity itself carried a message. A lineage is not sustained by long speeches. It is sustained by the daily, unglamorous acts of bowing, cooking, cleaning, reciting and receiving.

Where to go from here

If this talk stirred something, there are several natural next steps. Read the passage from Dogen's Shobogenzo in full and notice how the word "actualize" recurs in his writing. Explore the San Francisco Zen Center talk archive, which Shundo David Haye mentioned as a place where other people who completed dharma transmission describe the same process in their own words. Browse the practice calendar at sfzc.org/calendar to find sittings and offerings near you, and consider the Zen Center's newsletter for updates on talks like this one. Most of all, consider the question he left in the room: what would it look like to take up what the ancestors have given you, and to bring it forward into the body and the community you share?