I vow to face the truth of the Tathagata's words. I'd like to welcome Akin Roshi here to Berkley Zen Center. For the benefit of those who haven't been to Berkley Zen Center before, I'll just take a minute to tell you about us. Berkley Zen Center was founded by Suzuki Roshi in 1967 with the help of his disciple Sojin Mel Weitzman, who is the abbot here. Sojourn Mel Weitzman is at Tassajara at the moment leading the practice period down there. It's the Zen Center's monastery. We're a lay community. We have a daily Zazen schedule with monthly Sashins and classes and we encourage anyone who is interested in that form of practice who live in the area to come by and check us out. There's a bunch of literature on the shoe rack outside which you're welcome to take with you. In a nutshell, that's Berkley Zen Center.

[01:01]

I'd like to introduce Arnie Cutler. Arnie? Are you around, Arnie? There you are. Arnie Cutler. I have the good fortune of being able to publish this book, the first copies of which arrived from a printer this morning. It's called The Dragon Who Never Sleeps by Itkin Roshi, Verses for Zen Buddhist Practice. My training as a publisher began here 23 years ago. I started sitting with Mel Weitzman. Aitken Roshi is the patriarch of Americans in Buddhism.

[02:16]

He's also the co-founder of Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the abbot or director of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu. He's coming today from a month-long writing retreat in Ann Arbor, Texas, where he was with one of his many Catholic priest disciples. got the practice as it has been used in Zen tradition for centuries. The room is rather crowded, and you may have trouble seeing, but there's a table in the back. Sean Shoemaker has books available. And after the talk, you're welcome to obtain or just look at a book.

[03:20]

And Aitken Roshi has agreed to be available to sign copies. Thank you. Please sit comfortably, everybody. I'm very grateful to you, Ross, and to the Berkeley Zen Center Sangha for making this zendo available for our festivities this evening. My voice tends to be rather soft, so if those of you in the back of the room can't hear, please raise your hands. Okay. All right. There is one cushion and some floor space. What's the room up here? Roshi, is this light bright enough for you?

[04:33]

Yeah. I'm very grateful to Arnie for bringing this book out so beautifully. I'm grateful to Jack Shoemaker for his counsel. It was he who not only suggested Arnie for the publication of this trade edition, but also Greysides and Larkspur Press for the Fine Press edition which came out in 1990. This is a book of modern Gothis. And I should explain about gathas and about vows and their place in Buddhist practice from the very beginning.

[05:42]

One of the interesting features of East Indian civilization is the importance placed upon the spoken word, the acknowledgement of the power of the spoken word. If you have friends from India, you know generally how very articulate they are. more articulate in English than most of us, because they took their learning to heart. And this is the practice to the present time. There was, of course, a written language in the Buddha's time, but it was the language of commerce and administration.

[06:58]

religious texts were not written down, religious teachings were not written down for several hundred years after the Buddha's time. And at the great conferences, the first one immediately after the Buddha's death, Ananda and Mahakasyapa and Upali were responsible for reciting the Buddha's teachings of Sutras, Vinaya and Abhidhamma to the assemblies, so that everybody learned all of them by heart. These were, of course, the senior teachers And for monks and nuns and lay people, bits or aspects of the Buddhist teaching were formulated in Gathas, four-line poems that encapsulated aspects of the Dharma.

[08:37]

And the Dhammapada, for example, perhaps the earliest collection of Buddhist teachings, is made up entirely of Gathas. Not always translated that way, but that's the way they are. Then in With the passage of time, and the rise of the Mahayana, vows, which were also of great importance in earliest Buddhist teachings, and they remain so today, were joined with the Gatha form. You know, in Buddhism, the rod and the staff of God are not available, and the Buddhists cannot pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

[10:05]

So from the beginning, there has been much more personal responsibility for religious practice in Buddhism than I think we can find in other religions, particularly those that originate in the Near East. Indeed, the Eightfold Path sets forth a path of personal responsibility, of following the upright ways of right views, right thoughts, right speech, and so on. And we come to the seventh of the Eightfold Path, which is usually translated right mindfulness.

[11:09]

but it can also be translated right recollection, recalling that all things pass quickly away and everything depends upon everything else. in the many circumstances that we meet in the course of our days. And so we find in the purifying practice chapter of the Hawaiian Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, the last great achievement of the Mahayana, dating from the 6th to 8th century.

[12:15]

A whole chapter of 139 Gatha Vows These follow a very lengthy question to Manjushri as to how the Bodhisattva should practice. Two pages of a single question. And he answers by delivering himself of these 139 gatha vows, four-line vows. And let's look a moment at this term bodhisattva.

[13:22]

As most of you know, it is made up of two words, enlightenment being. Thomas Cleary translates bodhisattva as enlightening being and this is very instructive. It is not correct, I think, to translate bodhisattva as enlightened being. The being who is enlightening herself or himself and enlightening others. Dogen Zenji says, Zazen is itself enlightenment. Thus stressing the complementarity

[14:25]

of Enlightenment as a state and Enlightenment as a practice. The two are one. So these 139 gatha vows present each in their own first lines the circumstances. The circumstance, each of the vows presents a circumstance. Entering the meditation hall, sitting down on the cushion, arising from the cushion, and so on. And also the circumstances, the various circumstances of pilgrimage, seeing a river, seeing a bridge, seeing a tree, meeting a fellow mendicant, and so on.

[15:39]

And then the second line, is the vow itself, which I translate, I vow with all beings. Those of you who know Japanese, Tozan Shujo, it is the refrain It is the line that links all the vows together. I vow with all beings. And then the third and fourth lines are what is vowed. For example, from one of the Hawaiian vows, this is the book, by the way. Incidentally, the woodcuts are by to him for his wonderful and creative and imaginative woodcuts.

[16:53]

Five Buddhas and somebody else. Oh, I should mention, you know, the Dharmapada, one of the gathas in the Dharmapada that you're all familiar with, I'm sure, Renounce all evil, practice all good, keep your mind pure, thus all the Buddha's taught. This comes down to us to the present day in the three pure precepts, the sixteen bodhisattva precepts. The third line is changed and the fourth line is dropped, you know. Renounce all evil, practice all good, save the many beings. In one of the Gathas in the Hawaiian is, when I see flowing water, I vow with all beings to develop a wholesome will and wash away the stains of delusion.

[18:04]

Translation is problematic, as always. Word for word, the Chinese original reads, if sea, flow, water, then vow, all beings, gain good intention, desire, cleanse, dispel, delusion, dirt. Really powerful. It is important that we take to heart the Bodhisattva role. If indeed the Buddha's teaching was practice, then we take the archetype of practice

[19:17]

the Bodhisattva, for example, the Bodhisattva Guanyin, or Kanzeon, as our own. My own ancestor in the Dharma, Haradaroshi, used to ask, how old is Kanzeon? There's a good koan for you. Don't say ageless, please. I'll read you a bit from my introduction here. Making the vows my own is in keeping with the innermost purpose of Mahayana practice, especially Zen practice. I make the reality of the Buddha's teaching my own. We are here only briefly and we depend on each other. This reality is my own.

[20:20]

Even more personally, this very body is the Buddha, as Hakuin Zenji declared. This is my truth told of my own body spoken for me. We were speaking of this kind of, of the derivation of this kind of prose at supper tonight. Everything is affected each time I make a move. here in the grand net of the universe. And as I rediscover my own Buddha nature, my vows are naturally the vows of the Buddha, that all beings be freed from their anguish. I vow with all beings is my compassionate vow. I vow and I yearn that all beings might vow with me It is my invitation that we enter the noble way together.

[21:28]

It is also my affirmation of the Buddha's wise teaching of harmony. I vow, and with the universal affinities uniting everyone and everything, all beings join me as I vow. Compassion and wisdom thus blend and are one, as I repeat, I vow with all beings. Now we in the modern Western world, I should mention one other thing here, that these original Gathas of course, were for monks and nuns in the Tang period. And they had no gathas for noticing a billboard advertising Jim Beam Kentucky Sour Mash Whiskey.

[22:39]

As lay Western Buddhists, however, we pick our way daily through an agglomeration of compelling reminders to pamper ourselves and to serve no one else. Our task is harder, it seems, than the one that faced our ancestors. Somehow we must cultivate methods, perhaps including Gathas, to follow the noble path of the Buddha as fellow citizens of Jim Beam and his acquisitive cohorts. Moreover, we in the modern Western world are children of Freud, as well as of the Buddha. Classical gathas do not deal with human relationships or emotions, just as the Japanese haiku form of poetry leaves that side of life alone.

[23:43]

I find myself wanting gathas that show the way to practice and realize interbeing. when I am angry with someone. I want gothas of impermanence when my plans don't work out. What do I do if I am made to wait for someone? How should I respond to an offer of meaningless sex? Accordingly, I find that many of my gothas are rather like Senryu. the Japanese poetical form that uses the same syllabic count and line arrangements as haiku. Senryu verses deal with parents, spouses, children, in-laws, neighbors, work supervisors, economics, and politics. The metaphors are as complex as the situations, full of irony and satire. This is human life which I want my gothas to address.

[24:51]

Finally, gothas must be reckoned as poetry, and in this respect the classical gothas are rather thin. I don't find much ambiguity, irony, paradox, doubt, humor, playfulness, chance, absurdity, frustration, However, they inspire my practice, including my writing, and for the devotional occasions of stepping into the meditation hall, bowing, reciting sutras, and settling down for zazen, I hope that my gathas will tend, for the most part, to be as straightforward and simple-hearted as my models. Waking up in the morning, I vow with all beings to be ready for sparks of the Dharma from flowers or children or birds.

[26:04]

Waking up in the morning, I vow with all beings to listen to those whom I love, especially to things they don't say. Watching the sky before dawn, I vow with all beings to open those flawless eyes that welcomed the morning star. With tea at the start of our session, I vow with all beings to let each breath hold my koan, each bell be a call to return. Taking my seat in the zendo, I vow with all beings to acknowledge that here is the sacred, this bottom, this body, this breath.

[27:20]

When I sit in the interview line, I vow with all beings to turn my face to my koan and forget my scenarios. So, for some other aspects of our lives. When I powder my baby's bottom, I vow with all beings to freshen my innocent senses and jingle the toys of the mind. When the children get cranky and whiny, I vow with all beings to stop what I'm doing and cuddle and show them I know times are tough.

[28:30]

When children fight in the car, I vow with all beings to show how the car doesn't move unless all of its parts are engaged. Preparing the garden for seeds, I vow with all beings to nurture the soil to be fertile each spring for the next thousand years. When green leaves turn in the wind, I vow with all beings to enjoy the forces that turn me face up face down on my stem.

[29:40]

This gatha, like many of the gathas here, were written when I was in Cordoba, Argentina at the Vimalakirti Sangha there of Augusto Alcalde Roshi. I was there to give Transmission to Alcoa de Roche, and I had a few responsibilities. I gave a few take shows and a few public talks. But generally, I treated it as a writing retreat and really put the book together there. And I was sitting in the front patio of the Zendo there, the Shobolan Zendo. and noticing a tree. I don't know what kind of tree it was, but the leaves seemed to actually twirl on their stems without falling off.

[30:49]

And that's what inspired this particular poem. When a car goes by late at night, I vow with all beings to remember the lonely bakers who secretly nurture us all. When a public utility fails, I vow with all beings to take up the obvious challenge. It's time that we planted more beans. Raking the leaves from my yard, I vow with all beings to compost extraneous thoughts and cultivate beans of the dawn. Watching gardeners label their plants, I vow with all beings to practice the old horticulture and let plants identify me.

[32:01]

When Buddha appears in a dream, I vow with all beings not to deny or dismiss it, my authentic dream in a dream. When Buddha appears in a dream, I vow with all beings to take heart at this deep revelation of the ancient, the timeless for me. When roosters crow before dawn, I vow with all beings to acknowledge each voice in the chorus. There you are. There you are, Frank. We can have some questions. Yes.

[33:25]

There's a conspicuous absence of cats in the book. Cats? Yes. Yes. It's true. Not particularly purposeful, I think. Are there dogs in there? I think there are. Is the dog barking or something? Three years ago I wrote this book and last week I found out I was going to give a talk at my book signing party, so I didn't have much time for a review. I apologize to the cats. It's just the next row. I'll write another one. Don't confine your questions to what I've said.

[34:42]

Yes? Were the Gathas written by many individuals, or were they primarily relegated to a specific group? We don't know, you know. The sutras themselves, after the Buddha's time, are all written to begin with the words, thus I have heard. Quoting Ananda, you know, at that first conference. Well, these sutras might have been written 1,000 or 1,500 years later, but they still begin, thus I have heard, they don't have an author, author's name that is, and they are all written as though they were the Buddha's words, as in fact they are, of course.

[35:57]

So, we don't know who wrote the Gathas. Yes, yes. Now, you know, I'm not enough of a scholar to know whether the original Avatamsaka Sutra, which I think has largely been lost in the original Sanskrit, included a purifying practice chapter. I don't know. But certainly there is the tradition in Indian Buddhism for the gathas and for vows and for gatha vows. But the sutra itself appeared in various editions around the 7th century.

[37:03]

and were obviously intended for Chinese monks and nuns. Yes? The bell you rang at the beginning of the service to me was so beautiful. I want to ask if sometime during tonight you could ring it again? Oh, we will. Yes. I was reading, in Tricycle, your writing on suffering. Yes. I read it several times. It really seemed to strike something in you. And you chose the word anguish as a synonymous word rather than the usual unsatisfactoriness or other terms.

[38:12]

I wonder if you could expound on that writing. Yes, with pleasure. It's one of my favorite topics. of unsatisfactoriness. That is indeed the usual kind of Hindi-English translation. It is accurate, you know, but it doesn't have the doesn't have the vigor of some other words we could choose. When you look at, who is it that wrote what the Buddha taught? Rahula, yes.

[39:15]

He carries on for several pages about how the word suffering is an unsatisfactory translation for dukkha. It doesn't really seem to reach the point there, in that long discussion, that suffering is an ambiguous term. It means to experience pain, all right, but its primary meaning is to endure, to allow, or even to permit. You know, in the King James Version of the New Testament, Jesus is quoted saying, suffer the little children to come unto me. Let them come, is the meaning. We all of us suffer

[40:18]

We suffer, I'm suffering aging. Other people are suffering adolescence. I really don't think the Buddha wanted to eliminate suffering in the world. He died suffering a bellyache. Now, when we see others experience suffering, you know, when we see other people, animals, plants, suffering pain, we want to alleviate that, you see. But I don't want to alleviate my own suffering.

[41:24]

I want to get rid of my resistance to suffering, which is anguish. I don't want to get old, you see. When I feel that, I feel anguish. In a sense, I'm suffering, of course, but there's a difference there, you see. When the Buddha says, Dukkha, Dukkha, all is Dukkha, or Dukkha is everywhere, I think that he meant that people are in anguish over their suffering. And we have to help them. We have to help them to be free of this anguish.

[42:30]

And the way is a full path. Now, you have all probably known or known of people who have experienced almost dying or very severe illness. and have seen or have heard about the character transformation that goes with that experience. I'll tell you about one such person I knew. His name was Ichini Narumoto. And when I had my first job, which was in a community association made up mostly of second and third generation Japanese Americans, He was the president of our association. And later, since his job was an insurance agent, he became our family's insurance agent.

[43:42]

And he was always super kind to us. And I know that he was super kind to everybody. And we can say he was a real bodhisattva in his life. When he was in his sixties, he had a severe heart attack and very nearly died. But he recovered and went back to work. And when I went to see him, I found that he was completely transformed. Whereas before he had been this very kindly man, he was somehow a saint, a saint. and he only lived another 10 months. But those 10 months, he was really, although not particularly a practicing religious person, he was really fulfilled as a human being, you might say.

[44:53]

But we can't afford to take a chance, you see, that we're going to have a near-death experience. So the Buddha laid it out, how we can practice to rid ourselves of our self-preoccupation. How I was, how I am, how I will be, it's all unreal. So we practice the bodhisattva role, we practice a life of giving, the life of dana, life as an offering.

[45:57]

as John Tarrant used that term to me the other day. And in so doing, you see, we are freed from concern about this one. We have to take good care of it, you know. We have to give it plenty of sleep and food and adequate shelter and the rest of it, otherwise we can't function. We can't function as bodhisattva. And I'm speaking in very lofty terms here, you know, which I don't live up to myself. But that's the notion anyway. And suffering is very much a part of this path.

[47:09]

Why does Guanyin weep? Why does Canxian weep? How can I save the many beings? How can I live up to my first vow? My life is very short. My talents are very limited. So, I must somehow find the place where I can be not only reconciled, but I can take joy in my suffering. Basho has a wonderful poem journeying through the world to and fro, to and fro, cultivating a small field. He took joy, you see, in his cultivation of a very tiny field.

[48:23]

It was only 17 syllables long. So, I had a talk with, oh, I talked first with someone who knew only something about Buddhism from Germany. And she told me that the translation for dukkha in Germany was angst. Well, it turns out it's not. You know, I thought it was, I took her word for it, I quoted her, but it's not. They use suffering too, the equivalent of suffering. I feel like a lonely voice here. But I'm convinced that we need to be crystal clear about what the Buddha wanted to do. to free people from their resistance.

[49:33]

To be both at the same time, you really have to be neither. There is a big difference between Christianity and Buddhism, and that is the Buddhists don't believe anything, and the Christians have a belief. Don't misunderstand me, the Buddhists find inspiration from all kinds of arcana, you know, old teachings. They find inspiration from the 10,000 things, as Dogen Zenji said. They find inspiration from the various bodhisattvas. And I remember Soen Roshi, one of my teachers, saying, of course there are angels and bodhisattvas living up in the sky. But I think the Buddhist at bottom understands it's all metaphor.

[51:03]

The teaching is all metaphor. Can the Christian acknowledge God is a metaphor? If the Catholic priest or the Catholic sister can acknowledge that God is a metaphor, then she, he can do as Pat Hock does, Father Pat Hock, redemptor's priest for 25 years, who gives contemplation retreats and sessions, and the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, he says. And you go into his office, and here are our icons. He's very fond of Russian icons on the wall. and also a poster that says, absolute zero. That's where he's coming from, you see, and that's why I trust him to be a good Zen teacher.

[52:11]

He's a good Zen teacher because he takes people where they are. If they're Christian, he takes them where they are. If they want to do Sikhs, he takes them where they go. Not all Catholic priests and sisters who are teaching Zen are able to accomplish this. But give them a break. I think they're on the way. They'll learn from their own tesshos, you see. I always remember a woman, not a Catholic, but an Episcopalian, who came to Doksan in tears, sobbing. And when she finally calmed down, I said, what happened?

[53:19]

And she said, I realize God is only a concept. She didn't leave her church, you know. To understand really to the very bottom of the power of God in that sense, you see, is to be Yes, hi. We've been trying to work with the idea or metaphor of the Buddha field when talking about nuclear waste. And what do you mean by Buddha field? So that's the question.

[54:20]

Trying to think about how we look at ecological issues as a transformation of mind rather than action outside or separate? And where would that concept go down to absolutely zero? Yes. The language isn't worked out yet. Yes. I think it's very difficult to approach this subject metaphysically unless there is an actual experience of the 10,000 things confirming me. in Togensenji's language.

[55:24]

That is to say, confirming me in the way the Morning Star confirmed the Buddha, in my own limited, with my own limited talent and my own limited capacity. So certainly, this work must go hand in hand with practice. And with folks guiding each other to be sure that the words used are actually true. to the experience. Otherwise, it gets very fuzzy and very... Sentimental.

[56:36]

And doesn't convince anybody. I think that it is not only a matter of practice on one's cushions, but in this instance it's practice in the wilderness, practice of the wilderness. Very hard to do in the city, I would think. Maybe if I can get a little bit past the slogan we were talking about. It seems that many of our ecological efforts at this point are within a certain paradigm.

[57:43]

Yes, yes. So it's neat the way the Thais ordained trees, you know. I don't know if you've seen videos of this, but going to a village and all these trees have robes around them. And when the robes get tattered, they put new robes on for the ceremony. If we can find equivalent kinds of ceremonies and rites That expressed from within, so to speak, the truth of the Buddha field and the Buddha forest. I don't know how to do that. Give me a signal, somebody.

[58:48]

How are we doing? Well, we're doing fine. I feel good. I know that you're traveling on central time, so it's a little bit later for you. Oh, that's all right. I'm traveling on a lot of energy from this trip. I think that we'll probably have a number of books to sign, and it's going to go longer, so maybe the time has come for us to... No. We can practice the elimination of anguish. And this is why I resist the use of the word enlightenment. And I resist the use of the translation of Bodhisattva as an enlightened being.

[59:54]

Our practice is a path And in Zen Buddhism, it is said the Buddha himself is practicing somewhere on the top of Mount Sumeru, perhaps. And he's only halfway there. So I've just come from a writing retreat in which I put together a major part of my study of the paramitas, you know. The paramitas are the perfections. And I make the point in the first paragraph of the introduction that perfection is a verb. its practice.

[61:00]

Now, we can hold perfection as our ideal, and it can be the light on our path. I remember saying to my teacher, Yamada Roshi, when we were sharing students, I said, that student tends to be a little perfectionistic, I think. And he says, well, what's wrong with wanting to be perfect? We have this desire, we have this bodhicitta, see, for enlightenment, for perfection. And it's perennial. It's not just Buddhist. I was reading the other day, that the Hopi see the world in two aspects. One is reality and the other is what they call hope. What is hope but bodhichitta?

[62:07]

The desire to make it real, to make this reality a part of our everyday consciousness. And it's a constant process. So, it's a constant process of freeing ourselves from our resistance to suffering. We have to appreciate anguish. Yes, yes, yes. Anguish gives us a hard time, you see. So, it was the Buddha's goal to help people to liberate themselves from anguish as much as possible.

[63:12]

But I see Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi as still a process. understanding or seeing as it is. Not changing it. You are talking about a kind of Hinayana and Mahayana kind of mixture. And Dogen is a Mahayana teacher. He is saying Samsara is Nirvana. Yes, yes. But you see, when you say we need just to appreciate anguish, then what are we about? You see? It's not merely that we see that indeed Dukkha, Dukkha, all is Dukkha. It's not merely that we see that, but we do something. Yeah, we could be inward about it, or we could be awakened about it. Yeah, yeah.

[64:14]

And when we are awakened, then comes the second Noble Truth, and the third one, and the fourth one. Right. I think that we could reach an agreement, but it might take some time.

[64:29]

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