Good morning. So this is day two of our spring session. We're on the cusp of summer. I think tomorrow is the first day of summer. Amazing. So some of us are already quite settled in our sitting. And some this morning are no doubt coming up to the high wall of Sesshin practice, which can involve pain. It can involve resistance. It can involve thoughts about being somewhere else. anywhere. And what I'd like to do is encourage you just hang in there, just be here, follow the schedule, keep

[01:08]

keep silent and respectful in your interactions. I had a whole other talk conceivably ready to present, which was going to be more on the matters of birth and death, which probably everybody's really tired of, but I'm sorry. But I've been thinking about questions that came up yesterday after in the Q&A about thinking about how does love show up in Sashin? I think the bottom line is pretty simple. It's that it shows up by including each other

[02:15]

including all the complexity and challenges that each of us may personally be feeling and recognizing that everyone else is meeting their own challenges, and cooperating gracefully and gratefully to make Seixin work. That's one way to express to manifest love in this setting now of course there are probably some of you in the room who have fallen anonymously in love in Seshin. This is not so unusual for these kinds of attractions to arise. I have experienced it. And we may feel that we have actually met our life partner who is sitting right across the Zendo from us.

[03:29]

And if we are wise, we try to keep this passion to ourselves and we repurpose it to Zazen. It's good if you can do that. Sometimes it's more insistent than that. But really, this is not such an unusual experience. We also may have discovered our profound dislike of a fellow session participant, which is solidly based on the way they walk or the way they breathe or the way they place the serving pot in front of us. How could they do that? So likewise, I encourage you to keep this passion to yourself and repurpose it to Zazen.

[04:43]

In either case, love or hate, if you need to say something, speak to one of the teachers and he or she will, at the very least, they'll listen and it's quite possible they will commiserate. So I'd like to suggest that Dogen Zenji has some instructions or some direct teaching about how to express love in Seshin or actually anywhere else in our everyday life and work. And parenthetically is someone someone complained to me this week, I'd have to own that it may seem that our way is the cult of Dogen.

[06:01]

And I don't worship him thoughtlessly myself, and I don't even necessarily pretend to understand him all the time for all that he says, but I pay attention. because I find there's, I dig deeply, I get to these real wellsprings of wisdom and experience. And that's not an abstraction, that's actually it's wisdom and experience that I can apply to myself. So I encourage you in that direction. Anyway, the first teaching that I feel is relevant here is from something I've spoken of frequently, Bodhisattva Shishobo, which is the Bodhisattva's Four Embracing Dharmas.

[07:08]

And the word, that word embrace, I think it points us to the centrality of love in this teaching. This is how bodhisattvas meet and relate to each other. This is how we as developing bodhisattvas practice so that we can really arrive at that state of being where we can actually naturally manifest these practices. So these four embracing dharmas expand on ancient practices that are frequently found in the Pali suttas and in many of the Mahayana teachings. I suspect they're probably even an earlier Indian set of teachings that were folded into the dharma.

[08:19]

And they're very simple. simply named. Dogen, to translate from Dogen's presentation, these practices are generosity or dana, kind speech, beneficial action, and what Dogen renders or what we translate from Dogen as identity action. I think the Pali word is samanatata, which actually, I think that there's the root of the word same. Is that true, Linda? And really, it's the practice of sameness. which is the practice of cooperation. It's recognizing identity action means being in identity or sameness as someone else.

[09:24]

Equal, yeah. So, all of these four embracing dharmas operate in Seijin. Although I should say we soft pedal kind speech a bit since we're supposed to make every effort not to talk unless it's necessary. But we speak with our bodies. You know, it's where kind speech and beneficial action come together. You know, every time the server meets us, we bow. And we, you know, in the monastery, every time we pass someone on the path, we stop for a moment and we bow to them. And so we're always doing what our late friend Darlene Cohen spoke of as body-to-body practice.

[10:32]

And that speaks for itself. And some of us may have learned that we place a great... Speech is really important. How we communicate is very important. And at the same time, everything will not necessarily be susceptible to resolution by speech. Sometimes it's just that bow that will crack through what one feels as a difference with another person. So we think of love and cooperation. That's what we're doing here, particularly during Sashin. We're always doing it. But during Sashin, we're sitting together,

[11:35]

We're following, you know, kind of every, we notice every grimace that the person next to us or across from us makes. We notice how straight they're standing, how straight they're sitting. We chant together, we follow the Kokyo's lead. We are encouraged by the Doan's bells. We kind of line up with the Fukudo's beat. We have these complex human activities of cooking and serving and eating. Three universal realms of love. And simply showing up with an awareness that Our presence makes a difference. Each person being here adds their own ingredient into the soup.

[12:46]

Just really tasty. Some may be sweet. Some may be sour. Some may be salty. All of these are tastes that meld together when cooked properly. You know, when you eat a soup a half hour after you put all the ingredients together, it kind of hasn't all taken shape. You can still sort of pick out the individual elements. But by the time we get the lima bean soup that Naomi's cooking for us for lunch, My assumption is that it will all have come together. So I could go into greater detail, but it's important to recognize that Sesshin is something that we create ourselves.

[13:55]

We follow an ancient way in the modern world. And the whole enterprise is based on our effort and our relationship. You may have noticed there's no outside staff taking care of us. We take care of ourselves. It's not what I like to think of as an exoskeleton decision. It's all It's all coming up. We're all the bones and flesh of Sachine. Each of us is doing our best. Important to remember that. Sometimes it may not seem that way, but each of us is doing our best. We may have some weakness because each of us is a work in progress.

[14:59]

In one moment, we may feel joyous and light and in love with everybody in the room. And so miraculously, how could I love everybody so much? And in the next moment, somebody says something that rubs you the wrong way and you snap at them. This is exactly what we can explore in the depths of Zazen. I think about what came to mind as I was putting this together. I was thinking about a section in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King. It's a sermon on the gospel of Matthew's instructions to love your enemies. Dr. King writes, there's a recalcitrant south of our soul revolting against the north of our soul.

[16:14]

There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, there's enough stuff in me to make a gentleman and a rogue. Yes, enough stuff to make a gentleman and a rogue. That's each of us, partly settled and partly awake and always in the process of awakening. What we're listening to, something I've also spoken of frequently, is what the sixth ancestor calls the sentient beings of our mind.

[17:27]

They are these parts of us or beings, uh, that speak from us. It's like the six year old child that's still alive in me, the 17 year old boy, the 35-year-old guy who thinks he's still inhabiting this 71-year-old body, or vice versa, I'm not sure which way it works. The being that is needy, the being that is happy, the being that is angry, each one of them calls out for attention. In Sashin, I think it's safe to assume that everyone is so constructed.

[18:40]

And so, we should be, first of all, we should be kind to those beings of our own mind. The Bodhisattva vow that Huining has in the Platform Sutra is, sentient beings of my mind are numberless, I vow to save them all. So we take care of these beings. And if we recognize that everyone is constructed in just this way, we should be as kind to everybody as we wish them to be to us and also as we wish to be to ourselves. Sometimes it's easier to be kind to somebody else than to yourself, but we should be kind to ourselves. So when I'm talking with somebody about how they do their position, how they hold their position at BCC, I very often ask them, pay attention, pay very close attention to the person or the persons that they're working with.

[19:55]

Do that, pay that attention rather than focusing more single-mindedly on the job that needs to get done. It's true, sometimes things need to get done. Or sometimes we need to do them. But if that comes at the cost of relationship with a fellow practitioner, the cost is too high. That's not what we're trying to do here. And this is an important point from both sides. The seniors or practice leaders or teachers need to be kind to the people that they're working with. All of us need to remember we were once in that position. I can remember very, very keenly. And the so-called juniors, who actually may have a whole lot more years on the planet than the people who are instructing them, should be respective and attentive to the people that they're working with.

[21:23]

But at the ground level, this gets back to what Linda was just offering as a translation for Samanatata, at the ground level there's essential equality. Each of us, we have this as a dictum, each of us is Buddha, each of us should be regarded as Buddha and should regard others as Buddha. So there's another teaching that comes to mind. I've been studying in recent weeks. I'm preparing to do a five day session at the beginning of August at Upaya Zen Center. And our text is I'm sharing the leadership with another priest Petra Jubeling who is from the Zen Peacemakers.

[22:28]

And we're going to give teachings on instructions to the cook, the Tenzo Kyokun. So I've been reading that with really fresh. I haven't read it in a long time. I found my copy of the Uchiyama book, which used to be called Refining Your Life. What's it? From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. It's like really bad editing of a title, frankly. Refining Your Life was pretty good, I thought, but the book is the same. I found my copy of it and see that I bought it at Tassajara the first time I was down there. It has a date in it, which is actually, I probably met Laurie that same week. but I think I paid more attention to the book, actually. But then, then, not now. So, the Tenzo Kyokun is part of Dogen's Eihei Shingi, which is his pure standards for the Zen community.

[23:48]

And that's his detailed instruction for the management of the Zen community he was building in the remoteness of Fukui Prefecture, which is now called AAG. And this is going back to the middle of the 13th century. There are a couple of passages that leaps to mind. as I was thinking about this for a couple of passages. When making a soup with ordinary greens, do not be carried, do not be carried away. do not be carried away. A dish is not necessarily superior because you have prepared it with choice ingredients, nor is a soup inferior because you have made it with ordinary greens. When handling and selecting greens, do so wholeheartedly, with a pure mind, and without trying to evaluate their quality, in the same way with which you would prepare a splendid feast.

[24:58]

He says, the many rivers that flow into the ocean become the pure taste of the ocean. When they flow into the pure ocean of the Dharma, there are no such distinctions as delicacies or plain food. There is just one taste. It is the Buddha Dharma. The world itself as it is, In cultivating the germ of aspiration to live out the way, as well as in practicing the Dharma, delicious and ordinary tastes are the same, and not two. We're not talking about, he's talking about food, but we're not just talking about food. We're talking about our community, We're talking about however we work.

[26:01]

Bernie Glassman talks about this in his book, Instructions to the Cook, which is basically an extended commentary on Tenzo Kyokun. Bernie often talks about preparing the supreme meal. and doing so with just the ingredients that are before us. That is elegant or crude vegetables, that is people of various temperaments, conditions of hot or cold, combining them skillfully Not just the teacher combining them, but actually we do something very complicated. We have collaborative cooking.

[27:04]

We're cooking together. We're all of us offering our ingredients, our life into the pot. And, you know, every day in Sashin, we have different people. And every day, the soup tastes a little different. So at the end of Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen speaks of three minds necessary for practice. And this is not just for the Tenzo, but for every stage of practice. I found a a section from one of Suzuki Roshi's lectures where he talks about this. Dogen Senji says that, first of all, the cook must have a big mind, a magnanimous mind, daishin, a mind to accept criticisms and complaints.

[28:12]

He says he shouldn't smile. You cannot even smile because if you smile, the monks will be even more angry. So just accept what people say and understand human nature. Big mind must be as great as a mountain and as wide as the sea or else you cannot take responsibility for kitchen work. As I said, not just a kitchen. This is the mind that we have here and now this week. The next thing is kind mind, Roshan. Even though the food you cook may not be such a good quality, you should take care of the vegetables and fruits with great care.

[29:15]

Um, even though we are of uneven quality, some of us are still ripening. Some of us may be overripe. We have, we have different, different natures and different qualities, but, uh, this kind mind, uh, just welcomes it all. The third point is to have joy in your work. Suzuki Yoshi says, I was not like this. Certainly, it seems like in the practice, he became like this. Joyful mind, kind mind, and the great mind.

[30:21]

These are the three minds that Dogen Zenji speaks about. So this joyful mind, to me, I think about it like singing. Some people think they can sing. Some people think they can't sing. But my feeling is that children are, they unlearn their natural ability to sing. They unlearn their natural ability to dance. We are taught to put a lid on the ebullience and joy that naturally bubbles up and In time, we lose touch with it.

[31:23]

We think we don't have it. But it's there. And for Suzuki Roshi to say, I was not like this, it's quite obvious from, if you listen to, many of you have listened to the tapes of his talks, you can hear the joy. It's just bubbling up. And I find that surprisingly to be, it's happening in my life. And I see it happening in people around me. When I was in my 20s, my father asked me, are you happy? And I took that as a kind of accusation. And basically I said, ah, You know, it's like, I don't want to be happy. I want to be useful. And I, it's, wow.

[32:30]

He was right. I wasn't wrong, but he was right in that question. And if we get out of the way, if we take the lid off, we can let that magnanimity and that joyfulness and that kindness bubble up and then we'll be a really tasty ingredient in the soup. So that's what I have to offer into this lecture soup today. and leave some time for questions. Yeah, Gary. The schedule is the pot. In order to make a soup, you have to put everything into the pot and turn up the heat, right?

[33:50]

Here we are. You know, this is the pot. And, you know, the vegetables or the chicken doesn't leap out and say, too hot for me right now. I'm going to go and lie down, you know. It's really good to stay, if you want to be fully cooked, you have to stay in the pot. Yeah, Judy. I noticed yesterday when I was playing with the video, we were chanting the Daishinderani. I've memorized a little bit, but not all of it. And so as I was playing, So I, and even if I did, it's a little hard to navigate all that.

[34:56]

So I had to let go. And I was listening and all that. I had to let go of trying to chant the actual syllables. And what came to me was I would hear certain voices that sounded like were really on the beat. And it was like borrowing their chanting as if it were my chanting. And what it reminded me of was a story that Frank Ostasyski told when he had a heart attack. And he was in the ICU. And he was with a mentor of his. And he was really starting to panic because he couldn't find his breath. So I was wondering if you could say something about that in terms of the song of practice.

[36:07]

Well, I think that this is, it's a different kind of cooking. It's what we call, we call cooking, playing music, you know. I watched the other day a, a live recording session, a video of a live recording session with Quincy Jones and the big band with Frank Sinatra singing. And it's like, you know, I've just I've been working with some people in the recording studio and it's like slogging it out, you know, like it's hard. You know, it's hard to get something that sounds natural, but these guys were cooking. You know, they knocked out a complicated song, a beautiful arrangement, and they were really swinging. They were totally tuned to each other. So that's cooking. So each person in an ensemble, each person is simultaneously

[37:11]

riding and driving the beat. I think Sojin speaks about this. You know, you are totally responsible for the beat, especially if you're the Mikugyo, but each of us is also totally responsible for the beat as we chant. And we do this together. That's togetherness. That's the nature of practice. Wow. Chuzo. Well, that's where you have to, that's where maybe language gets ahead of reality. I don't know if anyone's overripe. Sometimes people are too full.

[38:16]

Over-ripeness can be not over-ripeness in practice, but just too full of themselves. So they are not able to blend, but it's, you know, it's language. I think that you know what I mean. Yeah. Yes. I thought about that. I thought it's like, oh, rotting on the vine. Well, actually, some people can be like that. It's not here. I don't feel it here, but some people stay in the monastery too long. You know, and they lose their essence or their potentiality by just staying in an environment like that too long. We're tempered, I think, by the reality that we encounter.

[39:18]

So I don't feel that way. Yeah, Lori. It feels like we are very good at pointing to these mind that we're trying to cultivate, and it feels like we're also very good at creating situations that provoke other types of minds, which is great. Can you give an example? I think part of the deal is that you trigger things so that you can sort of chew on them, you know? Well, we structure that, but our life does that. Right, but I guess what I'm wondering is, I'm not sure how, you know, we've developed how to get things triggered in such a way, you know, and then get into joyful mind.

[40:28]

It's like, I think we go to a practice discussion and you just sit with it. Well, I think that is why you meet with the teacher, because this relationship is there's a mirroring in it. That's why it's good to have teachers, not necessarily one teacher, but teachers can reflect that. And you can learn to reflect it for you. You can learn to reflect it for yourself. You know, you can learn if joyful mind As joyful mind arises, when these afflictive states of mind arise within one or within somebody else, you can actually learn to be amused by it. You can laugh at it, which means holding it lightly rather than operating from the fact that this is the truth.

[41:35]

You know, just there's some transparency there. Our teachers help us to do that. They really do. And essentially it's work that we have to do ourselves. Oh, I don't know. I mean, I don't, it's just, again, this is an expression. Fully cooked. I think human beings can accomplish something, for lack of a better word, that we call maturity, you know, which doesn't mean that they're not children or, you know, subject to to shortcomings or anything, nobody's perfect.

[42:41]

I mean, I think that we're supposed to think that the Buddha was fully cooked, you know, but, you know, in the Zen tradition, even the Buddha's only halfway there. So, yeah, you know, we should be al dente. You know him, he led a band in New York. It's like a little. Yeah, I mean, the thing about al dente is great. It's just like a little piece of, you know, you can see the whiteness, a little slightly undone. It gives it a chewiness. It gives a good texture. Cook your pasta that way. James. Thank you. No, that's true. Do you vote?

[44:07]

You might be nuts anyway. But there's this, I'm filled with admiration for all of you. There's just this wondrous joyous I think it goes on for your talk and for what you're showing us here this evening. I also appreciate you, James, for your kind and open heart and your words. My question maybe relates a little bit

[45:11]

But it doesn't spontaneously arise. Part of me thinks we still act as if. That's an ingredient. That's an ingredient of yourself. I would not necessarily say you would act as if you were joyous. But what I would say is you try to manifest your composure and treat everything, whether you're feeling good or not, treat everything and everyone respectfully. you know, and that's a way of getting out of your own way rather than indulging your own anxieties or your judgments of yourself.

[46:39]

Yeah, Helen. You know, I don't know how it would be because I've been sleep deprived for 35 years. No, it's not an important question. One thing I will say, I don't know, it's, when I'm in, I think Sashin at Upaya, the days, maybe it starts at six, and the ordinary, the everyday zazen is like at seven. And it's like, is that right? I've got to say, I'm not sleep deprived there.

[47:54]

And I don't think it detracts from my practice. I mean, the reason that we start early is because everybody has lives that they also need to attend to. I don't think there's any virtue. I think there is something wonderful about getting up early with the day. you know, but in a monastic setting, it's somewhat different than, you know, in an urban setting. On the other hand, here we've got, so they're in a monastery at Upaya, so they can set their own schedule. And, you know, everybody's going to still be there for Zazen. If we had Zazen at 7 instead of at 5.30, a lot of people couldn't come. But Sachin, Maybe it's a discussion for days to come, but no, I don't think it would necessarily detract from the quality of Zazen.

[48:57]

But I think what does help is really just a full immersion in Zazen. That's all. Would you say maybe effort is an ingredient and the early, early rising maybe is why? Effort, effort is an ingredient and you know what we're doing in the context of Sachine by creating this this pot or this cauldron is we're somewhat artificially putting ourselves up against the limits of what we like or what we're comfortable with, you know, and what we're not.

[50:03]

And we're doing that in a way that we can actually really see it and really feel it. And, you know, I think about something that my teacher, Hirata Roshi, was working with some men, a number of people on Death Row. And, you know, what his feeling about that was, They are really up against the question of life and death. Their situation is such that it puts them daily in that position. And that is a big time exoskeleton, you know, of social control and judgment and so forth. Mostly we don't have that.

[51:05]

We have certain conditions in our lives that are difficult, but they don't necessarily all come into focus. But if we're here doing it all together, they're all in focus. And we're all experiencing that the same way. Hey, Go. I just wanted to say that it strikes me as the artificial situation of this hard practice, even just coming twice a day or whatever during practice period, these kind of things. Yeah. Right. And so so many things become easier by the strain of a workout. It seems to me that's why we're the artificial creation. It's not like masking or matching life. Well, but there's something else that happens, which is it can happen, which I felt during practice period. It's like, oh, this is really easy.

[52:06]

It didn't feel like walking uphill with a heavy backpack. And Sashin, the second day of Sashin often feels like that. The fifth day of Sashin, you know, you may feel like there's balloons that are attached, helium balloons, big ones attached to you that are lifting you. Maybe one or two more. We've got to end. Yes, Carissa. That's okay. Yeah. Because I was doing the 5 to 10 schedule instead of the normal 6 to 9. And I was getting really frustrated by how painful it felt. So I asked him. It was like an optional morning. It was pretty cool to see who showed up. Thank you.

[53:25]

Well, it's interesting though, you know, a lot of places they have, in Sishin you have yaza, which is evening sitting. After the bell rings and after you bow out, people can stay in the zendo and sit as long as they want. And Sojin has never, he doesn't appreciate that. He basically, and I think that, I don't know that they did that with Suzuki Roshi. Yes? Uh-huh, okay, yeah. Anyway, his feeling is you follow the schedule. And that's the form. that would probably affect your whole day, like, oh, if I want to do this, or I'm being so good because I'm going to do bad, or who showed up.

[54:34]

Whereas I think Sojan always is expressing this exoskeleton, whatever you were saying, that just says, just do this, and you have You know, you just do it. And then when it comes to the end, you just stop doing it. You go to whatever is next. And that gives you permission not to think about it. Right. It's simple. You don't have to make an evaluation. Do I feel like sitting yawns? I mean, it's a decision to make. We really need to end. Is there anyone who hasn't asked a question that wants to? Okay. All right.

[55:31]

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