Let's come along and join the band. All right, join the band. People, come and join the band. Bop, bop, [...] bop You should always go back and read the original texts and listen to the original singers. So these qualities that I mentioned about playing in a band, attention, cooperation, diligence, and joy, lo and behold, they all have poly words that represent them.

[01:05]

So attention is sati, mindfulness. And cooperation is samanatata. And I'm going to talk about that a little more in a moment. This diligence or energy is what Kika was flagging as virya. And joy is mudita. generally there are other words for joy but mudita is something like it's one of the four brahma viharas it's something like sympathetic joy or appreciative joy it's just the joy it's the joy that rises in you when you're doing something together with people or when you see somebody else thriving It's just that natural joy. So how do we, and the thing about together action also is it's something very ordinary and it's also something special.

[02:19]

We lose sight of it because we're doing, we live in a mass society where everything and everyone is thrown together. But we're not really paying attention. It's more like we're bruising each other as we bump up against each other. But the Sansanim talked about, the metaphor he talked about was this is like how you clean potatoes. You put all the potatoes in a bucket of water and you just stir them around with a stick. rather than taking each potato and scrubbing it, if you put it in a bucket of water and stir it around with the stick, the potatoes clean the potatoes. You can try this. And that's what we're doing here. We're a bunch of potatoes sitting in this room and

[03:25]

we're stirring ourselves, and Sojin Roshi's been stirring us for 50 years, and we kind of gently rub up against each other, and we clean off the dirt. And that's what our practice is like. And our individual practice is You know, when you do that, when you're doing it all together, then the potatoes get clean. If you think of the poor potato sitting alone in the pot, just alone, you know, it's like it's not necessarily going to get clean, you know. I need another potato to rub up against me. So, and it's also true moving away from this metaphor that, or extending it, that when we, when we're practicing by ourselves, it's very hard to see ourselves.

[04:37]

When we're practicing together, Each potato has a very clear view of the other potato. So I may not see myself directly, but you can see a lot of things about me. And I see things about you. And in the course of our various practices together, that is revealed. we begin, we see ourselves through the eyes of the people that we work with, in part because we see the difficulties we may have, we see the difficulties we may have working together, but we also see the great pleasures we have working together. And just this rubbing up against each other is is really good. I think sort of in my cultural background or setting, I came up with the idea that we should be able to talk about everything and work everything out with words.

[05:55]

And I have taken me a really long time to discover that actually that doesn't always get it. Sometimes it does. It's important to be able to talk. That's another form of rubbing up against each other. But sometimes some difficulties are not susceptible to language, words, or process, but they are healed by together action. They're healed by us working together and practicing together. So, it's also true that Practicing together carries us along. There are quite a number of practices where the bulk of your meditation, say, is solitary.

[07:04]

or you may come together to chant, but then you go back into your hut or your kuti or your cave and you practice on your own. And there's something powerful about that, about facing yourself. But it's also, for some of us, it's difficult. I think what I responded to right away when I came here was that we were all sitting together. And that the method is about sitting together. We sit together, usually we sit together facing the wall, but we're still, we're sitting next to each other. Each person in this room is supporting each other person in this room. In Zazen or in Sashin, we sit side by side, and even though you may not exchange a word with somebody for a week, you become so intimate with them.

[08:17]

You know how they move, you know how they get up, you have a very clear sense of how their legs are aching. You know each other in a very intimate body to body way. that carries us along. That's the thing, this together action carries us along in a wave that for me makes it a lot, it makes it easier and it makes it richer than just experiencing myself directly as an individual if I were upstairs in my room facing the wall. So I want to say something about what are the aspects or the elements that make up this practice that we're doing together. The first one is Zazen, and that's everything returns to Zazen.

[09:29]

And so we had last evening, for those of you who were able to be here, Sojin Roshi gave a really good overview of how we sit, how we sit with our bodies, how we engage our posture, our breath, our mind, and how we include Everything that arises within us and everything that comes from so-called outside us, there's really no outside, all of that is folded into this vast practice that we call zazen. And again, as I said, this is something that we do together. We sit together and we have a really, we're very lucky here because we have this kind of treadmill of practice.

[10:36]

We're here six days a week. We have Zazen two or three times a day on all the weekdays and we have this half day. on Saturdays, and then we have Sasheen, and we have classes. We have other Zazen opportunities, but we have a very steady program that you can count on. You can just show up. Somebody came last week that I hadn't seen for, I don't think I'd seen for five or 10 years, who had been a very regular practitioner and had moved out of the country and came back and just showed up at Zazen. And I realized, looking at him from the back and said, oh, that's Richard. Wow, I don't think I've seen him for years and we were talking afterwards and he was just, he was noting that you come back after 10 years and the same thing is going on.

[11:51]

I mean, maybe that's, we're not getting anywhere, you know. But the other side of that is we're not trying to get anywhere. So as I made up a model for Berkeley Zen Center, it says, accomplishing nothing since 1967. But this nothing includes everything. And that is our zazen. That's the core of what informs all of our actions. So the second thing that we do is we work. We work together. We have a short period of soji, of temple cleaning after every morning zazen. We have a work period.

[12:53]

We had a work period this morning. We have work periods during seshin. We have work days. And this is one of the things that I love about the Zen tradition is that if you go to a monastery, what you find in a very compressed form is the entirety of life. You have meditation, you have eating, you have resting, taking a bath, and you have work every day. And we work together. And this work together is very rich. And that's, again, infused with the spirit of Zazen, with the spirit of all those bodhisattva qualities that we're going to study for the next month. They are part of our work. It's our generosity, our effort, our patience,

[13:58]

and so forth. All of those apply to our work. And the third aspect is that we have study. We study the Dharma. And this is one of the things that, again, I really appreciate about Berkeley Zen Center. There are lots of Zen centers where actually you're discouraged. At certain points in your practice, you're discouraged from studying because there's kind of the fear or concern that you're going to be susceptible to a kind of intellectualism. Just to say what I appreciate about this practice is I don't feel that it's anti-intellectual. And even what Dogen spoke of, our illustrious ancestor, he talked about the importance of thinking.

[15:09]

Well, in order to think, you also have to have the subject matter and the education to have a framework for what you're thinking about. And so we study. We study the old texts. We study Buddhism, actually. And from the moment that I came here, quite a long time ago. I remember when I first came here, a lot of Sojon Roshi's classes and lectures were on basic Buddhism. They were on the systems of Dharma. They were on the factors of enlightenment, the hindrances, the perfections, and so forth. all of these elements of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, all these elements of essential, the grounding of Buddhism, that quite honestly, you don't always get in a Zen context.

[16:23]

But we do, and we persisted in studying that. So we have zazen, we have work, we have study. And then the fourth aspect that I want to underscore is we have the tradition and the opportunity of working with a teacher. We're very fortunate to have quite a mature community here. We have a lot of people who've been practicing for 20 or 30 years. We have our founding teacher who meets with people. I meet with people. And I feel like we don't say enough about this in public. I guess I got the message very quickly when I came here that this was a really critical element and opportunity.

[17:34]

But I think we need to emphasize it every now and then and remind people that this is a place where two potatoes can meet. you know, and they need to rub up against each other. The only way I'm going to get clear or I'm going to get clean is really in a relationship, not just in the relationship with Sangha. The relationship with Sangha is incredibly important and so is the relationship with teacher. Because as you develop that relationship, What you're developing and creating is a context in which people can be honest with each other. A teacher can tell you what he or she sees and act as a mirror, not act as a boss, but act as a reflecting surface.

[18:46]

And they can do that directly, they can do that indirectly. You know, we learn a lot indirectly in our relationships without a word having to be said. But you have to make yourself available in that location to do it. You have to come to meet with a teacher. And I would say the other side of that, which we've learned through difficult lessons in our society in general, is that it's not just that the student is accountable to the teacher, but also that the teacher is accountable to the student, which means, and I think that I think we have a profoundly ethical ground of community here and that's something that you can trust and rely on but you have to test it out for yourself.

[19:59]

It's got to feel that way to you and the only way you can find out is actually by engaging with a teacher. So this is one of the things that we're emphasizing in aspects of practice, although we emphasize it generally, is that if you're doing aspects, please try to meet with one or more of the people who are leading it in the course of this month. I think there's a, is there now like a roster out on the, Okay, so it'll be up in tomorrow or Monday with slots when people are available and who's available and how to contact them. And I always have, I have a Docusan calendar on the porch right outside to the left of the door. And my house and my schedule is open.

[21:01]

But it's important. This is one of those, critical aspects of our practice. So those, I think, are our four dimensions of this together action. Zazen, which flows through all of it, work, study, and meeting with the teacher. And this is not something that I'm just sort of drawing from the air. This is really a pretty traditional framework for what Zen practice is. So, There's so much more that I could say, but maybe that's enough for this morning. Maybe these are simple, straightforward points.

[22:05]

So I really encourage you to work with them. And we have this wonderful context of the Paramitas that help unpack all these activities. And that's one of the things about study that is really exciting to me is that when you study, you begin to see it's not like this system and this system and this system. It's that they're all completely interpenetrative. They all really flow in and out of each other, there's redundancies, but there's no contradiction. They're just constantly opening that hand of practice for us. So I think I'll stop there and take some questions and discussion. Yeah, I know.

[23:06]

So Sojin, do you have anything you want to add? Thanks. I know, yes.

[24:26]

Yeah, that's... And then we have the story of polishing this stone to make a mirror. That's another story. But don't try to polish a potato to make a mirror. That's really unlikely. Other thoughts or questions?

[25:30]

Hey, go. I was going to talk about the teacher relationship and the non duality that arises in the practice. feeds it back, and we work on it, I don't always agree or like what I did, and so on, but it's challenging and thought-provoking. But the fruit, or the follow-on of that, is that over time I'd have a question in my mind about the moral, or lots of different questions come up in practice, and I think, oh, I'll ask Sojin Roshi. And in that moment I recognize the bond or the unity that I've generated with Sojin Roshi over time, and I get a response like, oh yeah, that bologna, you know what I mean, or get with it, you know, which is sort of okay, you know. And then my side is, oh, like this. But we have a relationship that is non-dual and always present to the degree that I'm not delusional about it.

[26:38]

So it's an opportunity to practice non-delusional and Yeah, thank you. Um, Jerry? Right, and I would say that that intention in a sense is, well, we have intention and the other side of intention is impact or effect.

[28:11]

And so we set an intention, and then we need to observe what is the effect of applying that intention? What's that effect on us, on oneself? And what is that effect on others, on the community, on those around us? So it's really important to recognize that intention is not in encapsulated thought. It actually, when you set an intention and when you enact that intention, it has an effect on oneself and others. So you can keep that broader context in mind. to racial issues in our society.

[29:16]

I was reflecting on it when you sang that song about joining the band, and it reminded me of our practice phrase, I don't know. I gave all the context I thought was appropriate. That's what I was trying to do. I gave context. I honestly don't feel what I was doing was cultural appropriation, and I need to think about it.

[30:21]

I feel as long as you have and are articulating respect for a culture, music belongs to everybody. So we could argue about that. And at the end, the last thing I said was, you should go and listen to the original. It's like I can't do any more. Other than that, if I'm not… Everything we do comes from a culture. Everything, everything I read, everything I sing, what the hell are we doing here? It's completely, somebody could walk in and say, this is complete cultural appropriation and to me, Yeah, I hear, I'm trying not to be defensive, but it's not a matter, my response is not, I don't feel defensive, I feel strongly.

[31:52]

And I also would include the fact that I, may be not completely seeing everything, I may be possibly partly mistaken, but I truly believe, I mean, I've been living in a musical environment of such deep respect and awareness and attempt to, you know, it's so, so I feel like, yeah, with the proper, with the proper messaging, music is music. You know, anyway, we can, we'll talk about it more. Rondi, we have to end soon, so.

[32:56]

Sure. Yeah, what do you do? That's really helpful. Yeah, that's a really good question. So you may have read something about dokasan and whatever you read about it is probably not what's going to happen here. When you read about it, it's like, you know, you come in and somebody hits you or you say one bird and they say, no, and they ring the bell and you're gone. No. So for us, bring a question. If you have a question, bring a Dharma question. But Dharma, I would configure widely, our whole life, if we're looking at it that way, our whole life is Dharma.

[34:11]

So bring the question, and if you don't at that moment have a question, sit for a moment there with the teacher, breathe, breathe together, and say how you are right at this moment. and see what comes from that. So it's your, the thing is when you come to the practice discussion or dokasan, the person coming, it's their time. It's not the teacher's time. It belongs to the person entering the room. So please bring what's in your heart. For me, I'll just say, and I know it's true for everyone, and it's true for Sojourn Roshi, being able to meet a student like this is what gives us life.

[35:17]

It's an opportunity. It's an intimacy that is so precious. And it feels like a privilege to me to be able to participate in that when you come in the room. But yeah, be yourself. See if you can set aside your fears or your anxieties and just be yourself. Yeah. How do you How did the white person become the black person?

[36:31]

The relationship, more than one, you can't have a relationship unless you have division. and to have the intimacy Can I add something?

[37:55]

That's really good. So you can think of prajna as intimacy. And so in that sense, in the sense of the paramitas, prajna, when Suzuki Roshi talked about dana in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, he talks about dana prajna paramita. And what I saw from reading that and reading other things is prajna is the activating element in the paramitas. Without prajna, the paramitas are essentially mundane virtues. But with prajna, with intimacy, they become something else transformative. That's a really good place to end. Thank you.

[38:54]

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