I vow to take the truth of love as hard as it hurts. Morning. Morning. I'd like to welcome Blanche here. And it's really welcoming her back home. It must be at least 26 years ago that Blanche started sitting at the Berkeley Zendo And when we chant about the benefactors of this temple, both hidden and revealed, we're speaking about Blanche in many, many ways. She's, I guess, almost instantly to become the acting habit of San Francisco Zen Center. Thank you for your very kind introduction.

[01:02]

Actually, one of the great benefits to Berkley Gendo of my taking on this iron yoke with no holes is to give Mel more time to be here. Our loss and your gain. This always does feel like coming home to me, even though this is not the zendo in which I began sitting. Still, the community has the same feeling, and there are many familiar faces here. There is something about the Berkeley community that is always close to my heart, and I think it's The main thing is that almost everyone who practices here really feels an ownership in the practice here, really feels a responsibility for the continuity of the practice here.

[02:24]

There's no sort of group of professionals who were taking care of it so that other people can come and go. But everybody in the community make this song that happened, make this practice happen. And I think that was carefully crafted. So that first part was just expressing a lot of appreciation for Berkeley and for the sangha here and for the continuing effort of everyone in the sangha to take care of this practice together.

[03:25]

I'm always struck when we do the bodhisattva ceremony, which we just did, By the grandeur of the vision and the vastness of the vow which is embodied in this Bodhisattva way that this ceremony represents or puts forward, I'm always deeply moved by it. When we consider how we want to live our life, when we turn inward to see what our inmost request is,

[04:47]

This great vow to be one with all being becomes. First we hear it faintly. And as we sit Zazen, we hear it more insistently. And yet it's so vast. How can we do it? No, we can't do it. We can only face that direction and make our best efforts on each moment.

[06:05]

We have a ceremony for entering Buddha's way, which we call jukai, or receiving the precepts. And the opening lines of the ceremony are In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. What does it mean, in faith that we are Buddha? What is this Buddha that we are? All of the great teachers back to the very beginning, Shakyamuni Buddha, have assured us that from the beginning, we are Buddha.

[07:15]

We are awakening itself. We are wisdom and compassion. So as Kadagiri Roshi says, from the beginning, from all of these teachers, we have the verification that we are, oh, that wasn't the words that he used. We are. That was wonderful, we are. We are great beyond all human speculation. So we have this one sign that we are great beyond all human speculation.

[08:16]

And yet, when we sit still and study ourselves, we find many limitations. As Scott Fitzgerald said something like, the mark of a great mind is to be able to hold contradictory thoughts, two contradictory thoughts without being paralyzed. And when we really sit and study ourself, we find on the one hand this vastness of the human possibility, which we are. We find this

[09:20]

that we include the universe. There is nothing that is not included right here where we are. And we find also, the best picture of the other side of it is this wonderful poster that has a picture of a galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies. But this picture of a galaxy with these billions of stars and an arrow saying, you are here, points somewhere in there. So we have these two. When we really study ourselves, we experience both aspects of the reality of what we are. you know, we are one with the universe. It's kind of curious always seeing it.

[10:25]

We include the universe. And this is, you know, this is the vision of Indra's net, which is presented so well in the Avatamsaka Sutra. Of this vast net, you know, this infinite net, and at each crossing of of the strings of the net at each knot there is a jewel and each jewel reflects every other jewel and is reflected in every other jewel so this vast interconnectedness that we are and this inadequate, flawed, being in this beginningless sea of greed, hate, and delusion.

[11:32]

What shall we do? Nothing less than the actualization of this vow to be one with all beings, this vow to save all beings, this vow to end suffering, nothing less will satisfy the longing of our heart. We long to live a life of unconditioned love and we stumble And so again and again we renew our vow, beginning with the repentance, beginning with acknowledging completely all of our actions of body, speech, and mind.

[12:46]

Taking full responsibility for all of the actions of body, speech, and mind. Coming from this beginningless greed, hate and delusion. And we again and again renew our ceaseless effort to act from the inmost request of our heart to live with generosity and love and wisdom, seeing things as they are and not getting caught in this delusion of self and other, this delusion of separateness, this delusion of self-cleaning that we seek again and again.

[13:54]

So there is nothing to do but to renew this vow and to continue this effort throughout our life, moment after moment. Our practice, as Suzuki Roshi says, is making your best effort on each moment forever. There is no end to our effort to live with our next request. We simply have to return again and again to cultivating awareness so that we are aware of our actions on each moment. And when we find ourselves regretful to next time. Just to return to our vow and be more conscientious

[14:59]

continue to cultivate the possibility of being aware in each moment before we have stumbled into some action which is motivated by creativity. So our life is in the midst of This contradiction, our action, the actions of our life are in the midst of this contradiction, from the longing of our heart to act based on generosity and love and wisdom. And they're getting caught up in greed, hate, and delusion. So again and again, we simply sit on the cushion Cultivate the possibility of awareness. Get up from the cushion. Enter into activity. Lose track of it.

[16:04]

Lose it. Come home. [...] This is our life. As we notice both this human desire that the very basis of our humanity is this connectedness with all beings. And as we notice the difficulty of living in concert with or in peace and harmony with our own most request, our compassion for all beings grows. The more we see our own perfections, the more compassionate we can be for the suffering of others. So this, you know, we have this vow to save all beings, and it's so vast, and it's so awesome, and at the same time so inspiring.

[18:01]

What's it mean to help beings? Well, Kadi Geri Roshi said, you know, helping beings can just be using toilet paper carefully. Don't expect helping beings to be some big deal. If you're aware of what you're doing when you're using toilet paper, you can be aware of what you're doing when you're doing a lot of other things. Just cultivating awareness on each moment, whatever you're doing, helps to bring your mind right here, where you are, so that you don't find yourself in some action that you regret later. Because you're paying attention. This business of paying attention on each moment is not so easy. Our mind can distract itself just endlessly. We're so skillful at distracting ourselves.

[19:05]

If we could do anything else as skillfully as that, we'd be great. But one of the things, when I think, you know, when I try to think, well, what has helped me in my life? Well, I think of noticing, you know, one of the things that turned my life around was before I met anybody having anything to do with practice. But somehow I noticed in the midst of my political activity that I was fighting for peace. This is odd. Where's the peace? There isn't any here, where I am.

[20:10]

And it occurred to me that somehow, I mean, I would My peace activities at that time were so mixed up with hatred of the people who disagreed with me. I can't tell you what a contradiction it was. But when I saw the contradiction, I immediately realized I have to do something about about finding peace here because there's no way that someone that's motivated by anger and hatred the way I am is going to produce any peace anywhere. So then I started searching around for who understood anything about any of that.

[21:18]

And in the course of it I met Suzuki Roshi. And Mel, I met Suzuki Roshi and the thing that impressed me and just kind of blew me away about Suzuki Roshi was as far as I could tell, you know, he was talking about this Buddha thing, and as far as I could tell, whatever it was, he thought it was great and he saw it everywhere he looked. He just saw Buddha everywhere. It was astonishing. Whatever that is, it was... He would say, before he would say things like, you're perfect just as you are, you have everything you need, there's nothing to gain. But he would look at me as if he, you know, he was talking about me too.

[22:21]

It was astonishing. And he said sasen, so I said sasen. And then I met Karigiri Roshi. Karigiri Roshi, who's... If you've ever read his book, Returning to Silence, you know, his language is so... When he talks about repentance, he says, repentance is about opening your heart, just opening your heart completely to the vastness of the universe. He talks about Buddha is the spirit of the universe, and Dharma is the teaching of the universe, and Sangha is the harmony of the universe.

[23:33]

And his slogan is peace and harmony. He's always talking about peace and harmony. And it's wonderful to always be talking about peace and harmony, but there he was, you know. Mr. Wholehearted himself, you know. Everything he did, he did with such wholeheartedness. Such total devotion. And, you know, you used to talk about throwing yourself into the ocean of Buddha, but you could just see him doing it all the time, in every dasho, in every bow. He was completely doing what he was doing. And for me, when I think about what inspires me to keep plodding along, making my effort, whatever it is, on each moment, hopefully my best effort, and sometimes I wonder. But anyhow, what keeps drawing me into practice for the last 26 years is meeting people who are making

[24:43]

their best effort on each moment. And seeing someone who's doing that. I think, oh, well that's the way they helped me. Maybe that's a way to help beings. It's just each one of us making our best effort on each moment. Moment after moment. Each one of us tuning in to our inmost request, listening to our heart, hearing this yearning of our heart to live in peace and harmony with all beings, and turning toward it with the confidence that this is the fundamental nature of our humanity. This is what we're here for. That's what we really want to do.

[25:47]

So let's just keep plugging away at it. And how do we help ourselves do it? Well, sitting on this little cushion. Slowing down, sitting still, paying attention, cultivating this possibility of being aware of body, speech, and mind. moment after moment, so that in fact, our activities of body, speech, and mind will really be in harmony with our heart. Again and again, returning to this, Dogenzenji says to study Buddhism is to study the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things.

[26:50]

To forget the self is to realize your interpenetration with all things. To realize that you are all things. If we're too busy running around, following our distractions, it's hard to notice what our inmost request is. It's hard to notice how we distract ourselves, how we get pulled off our intention by greed, hate, and delusion. But as we sit still, and cultivate the possibility of being aware of our actions and our motivations, we can bring ourselves into more harmony with ourself.

[27:59]

And we will feel the joy that comes with being able to express our true humanity. moment after moment in our lives. And I didn't bring a watch, and that's kind of what I wanted to say, and so I'd be happy to talk about anything you want to talk about. I don't know what time I started, or what time I'm supposed to finish. Is it good at all? Yes? Ten minutes. Well, I have a question about personality and mature practice.

[29:10]

It's on the theme of what you're talking about, our endless potential, but the limitations that we live with. You know, some of us just come into the world quite clear, and others of us come into the world with many personality difficulties. And If we practice patiently for a long time, what happens to those personalities? I actually think that the most encouraging people are the people who come into the world with a lot of difficulties and you see You see them working with them, or you see how they have worked with them. I mean, Suzuki Roshi had a terrible temper. You know? When we hear about Suzuki Roshi's temper, you talk to Hoitsu about Suzuki Roshi. He picked me up and threw me in the pond when I was nine years old.

[30:14]

He, and, you know, he blew off, he blew off his temper a few times with us. You know, one time, Mel actually rang the wake-up bell an hour early for a thing. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's an hour early." And people went back to bed. I wasn't there, Lou was there. We took turns. One of us would babysit and one of us would sit the sashim. So Lou was at the sashim. So he said, well, I'm up. I'm just going to go on down to the zendo. I can't go back to sleep. So he went down to the zendo. He was down there. And one other person who, anyhow, one other person and Lou were in the zendo. And Suzuki Roshi came down and started to sit. And then when it was time, they all went around and rang again. And people came down to the zendo. And everybody got seated. And Suzuki Roshi started to talk.

[31:15]

And he said, when you hear the bell, get up! Go to the zendo! And he got down and he started hitting everybody. Bam! [...] But, you know, I think that some of the really encouraging part of seeing Katagiri Roshi, when I first met Katagiri Roshi, he may be been practicing, maybe he'd been practicing for 20 years. And by the time he died, he'd been practicing for 40 years.

[32:15]

There was a tremendous development in him between 20 and 40 years. I mean, what was really encouraging to me was to see if this effort never ended and this transformation was continually happening. But, Katagiri Roshi was always Katagiri Roshi, you know, Mr. Sincere. intense both intense effort and if you see a picture of him smiling I mean the whole sky lights up you know he he was uh and if you see him frowning you know he's like this with the mouth like a like a vent carrying pulling on it he says you were having a difficult time he's talking and says Shane your legs are hurting your back is hurting I'm sorry for you. Pretty soon you'd be dead. You know, I think the personality we have will continue

[33:39]

to continue to be recognizable as long as we live, probably. My mother lived until 93. She was always on her deathbed. Literally, when she was dying in the hospital, she was still completely who she was. Your mother's getting on, too. She's probably still completely as you remember her for years. I think she was flirting with the doctor. She was the hostess. She was introducing the doctor to each new grandchild who came into the emergency room to see her die, you know. She blew them a kiss when they went out. She's completely the southern belle, right up until she's 93 years old. And I'll probably be an optimist till the end of my days, and Lou will probably be a pessimist till the end of his days. But there's still, there's some change. Don't you think so?

[34:44]

Don't you notice? Even though people's personality is still quite recognizable, still there's some difference with years of practice. it in others. What are some things that distract you from your life? The one that I'm struggling with right now is this whole realm of ambition, which has gotten me to the point that I'm about to be happy at a Zen center, and I'm kind of horrified by it. It's... Something about wanting to be special, or wanting to... I don't know.

[35:55]

It's really... It's so... I feel so ashamed of it, but there... If I don't admit it, I'm in worse trouble than if I do admit it. I mean, that's why we do repentance. That's why we do repentance. We really need to acknowledge where our self-cleaning is. There's no way to work with it unless we acknowledge it. I get distracted by... I really like good food. So someone waves a Japanese tea cake in front of me and I go, It's mashed rice with beans in it." I said, yeah, it's got sugar in it, too. We had this wonderful time over in Japan, you know, and I would get these Japanese tea cakes, and half of the people would like them, and half of the people would say, how'd he cook it?

[37:01]

You know, my self-cleaning takes different forms all the time, but those are two, for example, that I bump into so often that my nose is getting a little mashed. Wanting to live a long time, Fairly common, ordinary kinds of distractions, but we share a lot of similarities among us. My distractions more often are in the realm of greed than they are in the realm of anger.

[38:15]

And I used to think, You know, that's nice. After all, a greedy person is very friendly and loving because they're trying to get something. If somebody gets in the way of me getting what I want, guess what's on the other side of that? I guess the biggest distraction I work with is I want everybody to love me. You know that one? It's not possible, but it's okay. I want to make everybody happy, so one of the things I did was I volunteered to be the head cook at Zen Center for a while because I figured that'll earn me, you know.

[39:24]

There's no way to make everybody happy. How many tensos, or ex-tensos are good? I mean, if you make a meal and half of the people like it and half of the people don't like it, you're just about right, you know. Because when you live in a community together, as we do, Don't you have any thoughts about being a female Abbott? An Abbott who's a female. I'm a female and I'm going to be Abbott. Other than that, I have no ideas about it. I did feel, one of the kinds of things that got me into this fix was I felt actually a fairly strong request from some people that there be a female Abbott. And I do not have any interest in being seen in that way, officially.

[40:33]

If it's encouraging to the practice of people, for me to be at a time, but I spent from about the age of six to about the age of 56, being a very militant feminist. Somewhere about there, I realized very clearly that to identify myself as a woman in the way that I was doing, that is, I am a woman, i.e., not a man, in that dualistic way, was limiting myself to less than the totality of whatever is here. The totality of whatever is here does not have characteristics like gender. And that became very important for me not to get caught and stuck in that. And I think most of my feminist friends thought I was a

[41:38]

What do you call someone who's a traitor to the cause? A turncoat. A turncoat. I don't know, whatever. Betty Arnold instead of Benedict Arnold. But it's really... That was a very important realization for me. I've never been a militant feminist, and so I There's no getting around that there are models like you quoting Suzuki Roshi and Kategori Roshi. And so I'm appreciating that you just, because of the Abbott, will provide a female role model. And they're not great. They're pretty scarce. And I'm appreciative of that.

[42:45]

I want to tell you there's Joe Quebec and those Maureen as a great teacher. I mean, there are a lot of great women teachers around. I think there are a lot of role models around. I have role models. I mean, these are my role models. It's undoubtedly true that my style will be different than the styles that have gone before me, but that would be true. Norman's style is going to be different than Rem's style, in the sense that I'm lucky to know them. Whoever succeeds Mel, may it be a long time hence, will be different than Mel. And will be similar to Mel, because they will have studied with him for many years. A disciple always has to find their own way to express the Dharma that they learn from their teacher.

[43:49]

If you learn well from a teacher who's really learned how to completely express himself or herself through practice, what you learn is how to express yourself through practice. We come up then with what the question that Meili brought up. You express the particular jewel that you are in this Indra's neck. Each of us is a jewel, but each of us is a particular jewel. There are these two aspects of particularity and universality, you know? And they get expressed at this place and in this form, this way, and at this place and in this form, this way. And that's the kind of wonder of it all. Yes? You talked about the inner penetration of all things. Well, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about seeing in anything you pick up, seeing how other things are included in it.

[45:19]

Let's take toilet paper. You pick up toilet paper, and you see the tree in it, and you see the water in it, and you see the people who work to make it, and presumably if you're using recycled toilet paper, you see the people who recycle their paper in order to... and so forth, you know. Anything you pick up, you can see that it's... it includes so much else that made that happen. Anything you touch includes, you know, this includes The rain and the soil that the tree grew in, and the person who cut it down, and the person who built the altar and painted it, and years of offering incense at it, and so forth and so on. Anything you touch includes so much.

[46:19]

But you use the term, all these. Yeah. We have to. We begin where we begin. We begin seeing this is not just a cushion. This cushion includes, and we see what it includes. By extension, we begin to. The actual experience of our connectedness with all beings is a gift. You know, it's just totally a gift. Aitken Roshi is always saying, realization is an accident. It's not as if it makes you accident prone. It's done. I'm getting tired.

[47:14]

@Text_v004
@Score_JH