Morning everyone and welcome to our new member opening ceremony. I'm just going to briefly go over this ceremony and your job being here is to just open yourself up, your heart and your warmth to these new members that are joining us officially. Many of them you'll say, well he's been around. And they have been around, but this is their official entrance into BCC. So what we're going to do this morning is Sojin will open the ceremony with making an offering, and then I will make an offering. And I'll read a statement. And all the members, although they'll be muted, will be reading it along with me. as they're committed to BCC. And then the new members will unmute themselves, and each one will make an offering, and they'll go in the order that they came to BCC, and then they will introduce themselves.

[01:13]

And then Sojin will make a statement of welcome, followed by Hoseon making a statement, and then each member in that same order, will say something about themselves. And at that time, everyone, you know, except for those of us making offerings, please feel free to sit down. And then we'll have time for questions from the Sangha. So you'll be able to use your chat box or raise your hand. And we'll follow it up and end with our four vows and exit bells. Okay, so I think we're ready to begin. Sojin will open the ceremony now. Oops.

[02:57]

So please, new members, join in with me in your home Zen Do. In joining the Berkeley Zen Center, we undertake the practice of living an awakened life. We will study and practice the teachings of the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. We promise to continue this practice We humbly ask for the support of all the members to help us realize the way. So Jonathan will make our first offering. Would you like to introduce yourself, Jonathan?

[05:05]

Sure. I thought we were doing that after. My name is Jonathan Colts. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our next member. My name is Yoni Ackerman. Namo Buddhaya everyone. I am Ajay and I am from India. Would you like to make an offering?

[06:11]

Carol, is it my turn? Yes, it is, Heather. Okay, somebody else spoke, I was, sorry. Judy, could you put spotlight Heather Sarantis Heather is spotlighted. Thank you. Good morning, I'm Heather Srantis. Morning, I'm David Gil.

[07:40]

Welcome. Just looking for Taryn. Okay. It could be my eyes. I'm not seeing Taryn. Taryn, are you here? I'm not seeing her either.

[08:44]

Okay, well, let's, let's, yeah, I'm not either. Let's go ahead. Ajayan, I know you introduced yourself. Would you like to make an offering at your altar? yes you are you inviting me would you like to make an offering you at your altar do you make an offering I will do the next yes we could just bow to your Buddha yes we'll bow to you thank you thank you very much thank you very much Can you introduce yourself again?

[10:18]

Good morning everyone. I am very pleased to meet all of you here today in the morning. In India it is night around 8.30. Excuse me Ajayan, we've got one more person and then we're going to talk. Okay, we're not through with this part, but we wanted to make your offering and say your name. So we'll get back to you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And we have one, one new member. Hi, everyone. I'm Dan Harden. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Great. All right.

[11:35]

Well, I don't think Taryn showed up, so we'll catch her next year. Now, Sojin will make a statement. You have to unmute yourself, Sojin. Sojin, you're muted. This is like my wife telling me to turn off the alarm. It alarms me. So it's a great pleasure for me, on behalf of myself and the sangha, accept you into the Sangha as members.

[12:41]

I've been thinking a little bit about this, and it's such an unusual time. Of course, I don't have to tell you that. To do this ceremony on Zoom is pretty simple. But, you know, we don't have this contact personal contact. So I've been thinking about, you know, in normal times, we give you zazen instruction all the time. We adjust your posture, and because we're in the same space, we learn Zazen in a certain way. We say through our pores, through association and through training.

[13:47]

So I've been thinking that it'd be nice to often have short Zazen refreshers, like 15 minutes or something like that, focus on certain aspects of sitting, not the long, full refresher, but short ones, just paying attention to certain aspects of our posture and our breathing and so forth, and our mind, that we continuously are adjusting to and remembering how to do this. So that's one thing I'm thinking about that would help all of you and everybody else. So we've already been practicing with you for a while, all of you, but to have you commit yourself to this practice is a great pleasure for everyone.

[14:59]

The newer people really inspire the older people. I mean, not the older people, but people who've been around a long time. And vice versa. So if you have any problems, let us know. Don't hide yourself. That's my wish, is that you present yourself and be out there, and don't be afraid to ask questions. to have interviews. That's part of our practice, and it really helps, especially in this day and age. So we're all here to support you. That's good.

[16:04]

Okay. Carol, I see that Taryn has joined. Hi, good morning. I'm so sorry that I'm late. Where are you? It might highlight me if I talk. Is it picking me up? Just one moment. Hi, good morning. I am so sorry that I'm late. I'm really happy I made it here. Good. Did I miss everybody introducing themselves and making their offerings? Probably. You did. You did. But you can do it. OK. Well, that's OK, Sharon. Why don't you make yours now, and then we'll hear from Hozon, and then we'll we'll proceed. So we'd love to have you make your offering.

[17:08]

Okay. Can you remind me really quick? I woke up a little disoriented from the smoke. Um, what it's one vow or three. You can, you can do one. Okay. Introduction. I'm Taryn. I've been practicing. Oh, sorry. So that's okay. Just introduce yourself. We're still, we'd like to hear from Hosan. So this is, just introduce yourself. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Taryn Elliott. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to ask Hosan now to say something.

[18:10]

Thank you, Carol. And welcome to Jonathan, Yoni, Heather, David, Taryn, Ajayan, and Dan. We have this wonderful new crop of ripe apples in the sangha who are smoke cured and virus tested. And so I really feel that I just even though we're not sitting together. And I think that Sojin's point about refreshing and refining the points of Zazen is really important. I'm deeply moved by the fact that people are coming regularly, that you guys have strengthened and established your practice in this period of time.

[19:26]

uh, and are here regularly with, with all of us. It's a Sangha is really the thread that weaves us together. Uh, even though we, we have the Buddha, who we emulate, and we have the Dharma that we aspire to actualize, all of that takes place in the context of the Sangha. And so this morning we welcome you. It's not we welcome you actually. We acknowledge that you are part of the Sangha. You know that we've we've been seeing you here. Particularly through the pandemic and. I'm just, all of us are grateful for the opportunity of being able to practice together with you.

[20:31]

So I offer you this welcome and embrace. And I know that All of the Sangha members, and that includes Sojin and myself, are available to you to help and support your practice and to help you do the work of saving all sentient beings. So thank you and good morning. Thank you, Hosan and Sojin. We'd now like to hear from the new members and we'll start with Jonathan. We're just going to go in the order that people joined. Hi all again, my name is Jonathan Colts. Let's see, I grew up in Brooklyn and I've now been in Oakland since 2009.

[21:33]

I live here with my wife and my daughter. And let's see, I first came to Zen practice pretty shortly after I moved to Oakland. I started at Green Gulch Farm, and I have practiced on and off the intervening years, but came to BCC in, I guess, about a year and a half ago. I'm very glad to be here. I don't know. What else can I say? Maybe that's enough. Hello, everyone. My name's Ioni Ackerman. I'm from Ames, Iowa. I came to BZC about a year and a half ago, which was the beginning of my Zen practice.

[22:37]

Um, right now practice for me, uh, means, um, is, well, it means a lot of things. One of the biggest things on my mind is, is right livelihood and finding, uh, ways every day to put my effort into, um, helping all beings, uh, which I think is a very challenging, endlessly challenging thing. Um, and I, I continue to appreciate all the support I've gotten from Sangha in that search. So thank you all. Morning, everyone. I'm Heather Sarantis. I live in Berkeley with my husband and my 10-year-old son. And I came to BZC in January.

[23:39]

I started practicing in the early 1990s and did so intensely for a number of years and studied with Meili Scott through a program at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. And then took an extraordinarily long pause on Buddhist practice and then have been working my way back towards this feeling like I've been clearing out obstacles and then landed at BCC in January very intentionally. And I have to say the ability to connect to the Sangha through the pandemic has been a lifesaver and a soul saver and a source of inspiration and the highlight of my week or however often I can get here. So I'm very grateful. In your notes it said, Carol, what do you find challenging about Buddhist practice?

[24:41]

And I just want to name out loud that my greatest resistance or challenge is still with a regular zazen practice, just with being a mom and working and other things, establishing a regular practice. So I take inspiration from all of you and welcome the idea of regular tune-ups as we go along and welcome your encouragement as well. Thank you. David Gill, born and raised in Oakland, currently living in downtown Oakland, and have long been curious about Zen as part of the larger kind of Japanese culture and aesthetic and have dabbled with

[25:55]

uh zen and zazen over the years but have finally circled back to it more seriously through by way of yoga and mindfulness meditation and realized that zazen practice is really resonating with me and so started coming to the bcc at the end of last year to help particularly during this pandemic. Thank you. Hi everyone. So again, I'm Taryn. I'm originally from San Diego and I've lived in the Bay for about 10 years. I moved up here to go to college and then stayed. And I've been practicing at BCC for about a year. What brought me to BCC really was that I am a classroom teacher. I taught high school for five years.

[26:58]

I'm middle school now. And confronting the challenges of being in a classroom where you're interacting with, you know, upwards of 100 different people throughout the day who are all coming in with all of their different, you know, ideas and problems and needs. I had started exploring meditation as a way to try and be a more effective teacher. And I didn't even realize that this was a thing people did together. So after a couple of years of kind of developing a meditation practice just in my living room, I discovered, hey, this is a thing I can go do with other people. And that brought me to BZC. And I've been really happy to be here and be learning with everyone since. Good morning, everyone.

[28:02]

I'm Ajain. I'm from India. I live in Kerala, one of the southern state of India. I'm very, very happy and pleased to be here and be part of the Sangha. I have been introduced to the Zen practice by Hossan Allen and Jill James. Jill is living in Australia. I have met Venerable Alan and Venerable Jill in India several times when they used to come to India for a delivering lecture regarding the Zen practices and other social activities. So that I have been introduced by both of them and I like to be part of this Zen practice and Zen tradition. So I am following that tradition and I am reading the basic beginning books of Sen Kis by Thich Nhat Hanh and Sen Mind and Beginner's Mind. Just I am reading and beginning to follow and practice Sen Sazen and the spiritual resources.

[29:11]

I am very very happy to be part of the Sangha and I'm very very happy to meet all of you. Thank you very much. Hi, everyone. I'm Dan Harden. I live in Berkeley with my wife, Lauren. We've been here for probably about a year and a half in the Bay for maybe three years. This is the first place where I've ever really been practicing seriously. I'd been kind of interested in Buddhism and Zen for a very long time, at least since high school, and had sat at a Zendo once and it didn't really quite click. All that I got was sore legs out of it. But you know, it's been you know, a long time since then. And I tried to kind of keep up and occasionally sit myself, um, and do some reading and studying.

[30:17]

And, you know, it's been a very difficult year, I think. And, uh, back in February, I actually lost my father. Um, so it was already kind of a difficult year. And I found that the things that I'd studied from Zen, the things that I'd studied from Buddhism, uh, were a great comfort to me. When March rolled around and unfortunately, you know, the lockdown started, it kind of popped into my head that maybe there was, you know, such a thing as Zoom practice. And so I started doing that in the beginning of March. And it's been just a really wonderful experience to meet you all and sit with you all and feel very welcomed. So thank you so much. Thanks to all of you. Now it's time. We do have some time.

[31:19]

Yes. If anyone would like to ask a question about any of our new members, you can use your chat box, the chat box or your blue hand. That might be the easiest. And, you know, you can go into gallery if you'd like to see everyone as well. and Marvin has a question there. Well, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Actually, I don't have a question. I just wanted to say congratulations and welcome to all of you. I feel so moved. This ceremony is always

[32:21]

moving in the Zendo, but somehow, oddly, it's even more intimate today. And for me, perhaps coming from the board meeting, community meeting last night, where I was rather speechless, it was a beautiful segue into this, this kind of harmonious meeting of of Hozon and Sojin and the community and now welcoming you new members. You know, these are really precious days. I mean, our days are always precious, but somehow we kind of know now how precious they are. So I just want to say welcome to each and every one of you. I'm so moved by you being here. Thank you. Raghav, would you like to say something?

[33:37]

Raghav, do you have a question for someone? Yeah, not really a question again, but I just want to say I feel very encouraged by all the new members, and I look forward to some of you I've been practicing with already, and I look forward to practice with you all together. Welcome. All right. Jacob, would you like something? Good morning, and thank you to the new members for joining us. One of the things that I found challenging and most rewarding is overcoming obstacles in pursuit of a regular practice. And I've heard each of you more or less say that you're aware of that.

[34:40]

I'd be interested to hear what was the last obstacle, because there will be more. But if anyone has a sense of they finally hit that obstacle and said, okay, I'm going, I'd be interested to hear. So if any of the new members want to comment, thank you. Would any new member like to say something about that obstacle that you hit? I can. Terran, was that you? Terran, yeah, I can. Okay. It's not seeing if I get spotlighted. Um, I don't have like one particular day or something, but it was after my fourth year of teaching where every single year I'd have this period where I was like, I can't do this. I'm going to quit. I, I just, I can't keep doing this. It's too hard. And I had tried and tried and tried to make it different. And then the same thing would happen. And so after four years of that, I was like, well, I want to keep teaching because I think this is important, but I can't keep doing it the way I am.

[35:45]

So I need to find a way, and it's not getting different. So I have to figure out how am I going to be different so that it doesn't affect me so much. And so that led me to be more interested in meditation in general. And then a colleague of mine recommended checking out BZC. She's practiced at San Francisco Zen Center. And so it was like three days after the end of the school year when I kind of feel like I just looked around and was like, I have to go there. I have to do something about this or else I'm not gonna make it. That's good. That's very good. Any other new member have anything they'd like to add to that? Sojan, would you like to say something? Yeah, I would like to ask Ajayan, what do you do in India? Thank you very much, Sojan. I'm a student. I just completed my M.Phil in Buddhist literature.

[36:46]

So literature that my submitted paper was regarding the Thich Nhat Hanh novel, one of the novel, Old Path, White Clouds. Right now I am waiting for my PhD in Kerala. So when I was doing my MPhil, I was curiously interested to study the Buddhist culture in South India. especially Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We had a strong, a very historical, cultural background in Kerala. Everything is missed. So I am, personally, I am focusing on the iconography studies, how the Buddhist iconography is related to the Hindu religion. This is my personal interest. So we have found a lot of the iconographic evidences from Kerala. This is my activity I'm doing. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Sarjan. Thank you very much. Okay. All right, thank you. Gary, would you like to ask a question or comment? Gary? Hi. Well, I have to say that, you know, you guys don't know how much it matters to older members to see such a youthful group come in and connect with us.

[38:04]

And I just have to say, I can't wait to get you into Zendo. Okay, I love you all. Thank you. No question, really. I have a question for Andrea Thatch. Andrea, where are you going? Hi Sojin, I just arrived at work. Okay. We've been watching you drive. Yeah, I hope it hasn't been too distracting. I wanted to extend myself and since you allowed me to unmute, I wonder if I could just, I've been wanting to raise my hand but couldn't do that and keep my hands on the steering wheel. Yeah. So I just want to say I know a number of our new members of people who just threw themselves into the needs during the beginning of the COVID crisis and really extended themselves to the sangha and to the wider community.

[39:17]

And I just want to acknowledge how both inspiring and encouraging that has been to me as an older member to have young people really get the heart of the practice from the very beginning and be wonderful role models and aids in a difficult time. Welcome, everyone. I'm so encouraged that you're here. Thank you, Andrea. I do have a question from Mary Jury to each one of you. First of all, she wants to welcome everyone. Mary's our president. And she says, this is a very moving to hear you and see you. I wonder if each person could say which aspect of the practice sustains you most in these challenging days? What aspect of the practice sustains you most? Would one of the new members begin, like to begin?

[40:21]

I guess I can start. Generosity, the practice of trying to be generous towards and with other people. I can go next. Yes. Aspects of Sangha definitely support me a lot. Seeing especially more seasoned members live their lives provides me with a lot of encouragement and I get a lot out of the relationships from Zen. Um, I can go next.

[41:30]

So, um, just knowing that all of you exist keeps me going. Just knowing that this is a stream of reality that I can tap into is very motivating. Um, the conversations, whether it's a Dharma talk or the classes are really, really profoundly sustaining. Um, And I love that there's this whole universe of email flurry that happens after a talk or, you know, there's some sort of exchange. And then there's always just a couple of little follow-up emails. Thank you for this. I appreciated that. I just, I really love that kind of engagement because it keeps the conversation alive for me throughout the day. So anybody can email me anytime. I love it. Um, for, for me, uh, returning to the cushion each day for grounding is, has become essential.

[42:45]

And, and what I found unexpected was the comfort knowing that I'm not alone doing that. Uh, knowing that the Sangha is supporting me, whether we're on zoom together or whether we're not, and I'm on the cushion and I know that you are also on the cushion with me. It's very comforting. Thank you. I agree with what a lot of other folks have said that I think the presence of this community has been really helpful. kind of coming back every week. I've been meeting with the Young East Bay Zen group and that's been this like sustaining kind of practice throughout this whole period is as I got completely over zoomed and I stopped going to a bunch of these different zoom gatherings that were happening. That was the one that stayed and I was like, I go to this every week. I have to go to this.

[43:46]

This is really important. Um, and then coming to Saturday program and hearing the talks has been really sustaining. And I think also, um, from the beginning, the framing of, I don't know who I talked to or where this idea came from, but just being like, okay, you were attached to this idea of what the world was supposed to be like, and it's kicking you and showing you, no, it's not like that. And then as this has continued, and it just repeatedly is like, oh, this is what you thought was going to happen? Nah, that's not it. And feeling like I have some sort of framework to be kind of okay with that, or to just accept that I think has been really helpful. And so every time I start to feel like I'm struggling with what's happening. I'm like, no, you were, you were holding on to one idea of what you thought was supposed to happen. And that's not what's going on now. I, uh, I think for me, um,

[44:48]

Just the idea of even just compassion in general, seeing self as other and other as self, there's obviously a lot that's always important, but it's been a good thing to remember to keep in focus now. And just for me personally, the Penelope's Channing service on Tuesday, that's something that I've really, really been enjoying and something I look forward to every week and just kind of helps me, I guess, focus and keep that in mind. What I felt from this Sangha, it is very spiritually connected group, what I felt from this Sangha now. And the brotherhood, what I feel, that brotherhood is very strong over there and very helping nature.

[45:52]

Whenever I ask any doubt and when I ask any help, immediately I get response. So it is the bolding of a spiritual friendship is very rooted in the Sangha. So I experienced a few things from this Sangha. Thank you very much. Well, I just want to thank everyone who's come and our new members and just let people know there were four that couldn't make it. Hopefully next year they'll be able to join this ceremony. So. Thanks also to Carol and to Judy and to Kika who kept the wheels turning throughout this ceremony. Thank you. Thank you. So as we say, keep coming back. It is very nourishing here. It's home.

[46:53]

It's what we call home. It really is your true home.

[46:56]

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