I am proud to teach the truth. I have, first of all, I want to say that we have a little competition with the chainsaw today, so if anybody in the back wants to move forward, you can sit on the floor, move your cushion to the floor if you want, and move forward. There have been several things on my mind which I want to talk about, and I don't really know if I can talk about them all today. I want to at least touch on them. One is I want to talk about the mandala of our practice. And the other thing I want to talk about is priest's practice, what it means to be a priest.

[01:09]

Since In this particular zendo, I've always been the only priest. And so most people's idea of what a priest is comes through their observation of me and my position. So I think it needs a little explanation, because I'm going to be ordaining some people as priests. And there's already one person who is a resident who was ordained as a priest and wants to start practicing as a priest. So people are not used to that idea. When I first began practicing,

[02:12]

I was 35 and I had been through a lot of things in my life and I had a great respect for people of all kinds, people from all walks of life. So I had a real strong, I've always had a real strong affinity for lay people, lay people's practice. And when we were practicing at Sokoji with Suzuki Roshi, it was entirely a lay person's practice. Zen hadn't been in America for very long, And we were just beginning to find out what we were doing. And it was almost nobody thought about so much about Americans being priests.

[03:23]

And little by little, Suzuki Roshi ordained a few people as priests, a few Americans as priests. But And by the end of his life, he had ordained about 15 people, I think, as priests, 12 or 15 people as priests, some of whom actually continued practicing and some of whom didn't. But nobody really knew what that was completely. None of the Americans really knew what it meant to be a priest exactly. And Suzuki Roshi didn't tell us very much. But those people who really wanted to be priests made an effort to find their way as priests. And I started the Zen Do with Suzuki Roshi in Berkeley, 1967, before I was a priest.

[04:34]

And then I did my training, some training at Tassajara, And when I was ready to leave Tassajara in 1969, before that, he asked me if I wanted to be a priest before I went to Tassajara. This was in, must have been, 66 or 67. 67, he asked me to be a priest. But then he waited several years before ordaining me. And one of the biggest reasons why he wanted me to be a priest was so there would be a priest to give our practice here in Berkeley some authority, or that it would have some authority from him. And we were wondering whether or not I should be ordained at Tassajara or in Berkeley.

[05:42]

And then he decided that I should be ordained in Berkeley and that I should be a sangha event in the Zen Do. So that was very important to him. And I knew what he meant, but I wasn't very old at the time. I mean, I hadn't been practicing too long, five, seven years. And he was my teacher, and I was in contact with him. And he gave me a lot of space. to develop my own practice and the practice of the zendo. And my intention was to have a place for lay people to practice.

[06:49]

I was very much interested, always, in the lay person's practice. It's the kind of practice that we had at Sokoji, and it was a wonderful practice. And, but little by little, there became more priests. I think I was about the third priest, third or fourth one that he ordained. And then little by little, more priests. And then when Baker Roshi became the abbot of Zen Center, he emphasized priest's practice, and he ordained a lot of people as priests. And the lay practice at Zen Center became a side issue. And the priest practice became the focus. But it didn't work out so well.

[07:58]

My feeling about that is Zen on Buddhism in America is still in its infancy and people want to take off with it. There's always a tendency to want to take off with it. I don't blame our culture for that. It's just the way people are. But Suzuki Roshi's feeling and my own feeling has always been to take things very slowly and develop, find out what it is we're really doing. And if we can just develop some real understanding, that's plenty, without having to make a zen boom. I remember we used to talk about the baby boom and the zen boom in the 60s.

[09:02]

that a lot of people were interested in Zen in the 60s and 70s. And we were always afraid that there would be this Zen boom, where a lot of people would start practicing, but their practice would be rather superficial. And in some way, I think that happened, that Zen practice reached a kind of peak And it couldn't sustain itself, the real practice couldn't sustain itself so well because people were trying to go too fast and do too much. And it gave a lot of people, that problem gave a lot of people some bad taste for priest's practice and So there seems to be, in the present day, a kind of polarizing tendency.

[10:09]

Some people think there should be just a priest sangha. The priest sangha is the real sangha. Some people feel that way. And some people feel, what do we need priests for? You know, the little lei sangha is the real sangha. And these polarities can cause a kind of problem. I read an article written by someone who's been a priest with a Chinese Zen master for a long time. This is the Gold Mountain. And I know this fellow. He used to invite me to lecture in his classes. And he wrote this article in the Bhajra Bodhisi where he said, the real sangha is the priest's sangha.

[11:12]

And in America, people are talking about the lay sangha and lay practice and so forth. And he said, that's not real. He said, there's only such a thing as priests sangha. The priests are the sangha. And there's a very narrow definition of what the Buddhist sangha is. And on the other side, There's some people and some teachers who feel, why should anybody be ordained in America? You know, there's only the lay sangha. The lay people are the real sangha. So I think that both of them are wrong. They're both wrong because of their positions, their extreme positions. My own feeling is there should be priests and there should be lay people.

[12:16]

And there doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. I think a lot of people feel that priesthood, if it gets very strong, will dominate the lay Sangha. And that is a problem. It's always a problem. If you have a priesthood, especially of celibate monks, they maintain a certain kind of power which can be very dominating. And from time to time, in various countries, the government has put down the priesthood, closed the monasteries, everybody goes out into the world as an ordinary life. But it always comes back again. And so that is a danger.

[13:19]

But ideally, the priesthood and the lay sangha should support each other. If they don't support each other, it doesn't make sense. Well, Priesthood, if someone becomes a priest, there should be a desire to give up their ordinary life. What I mean by ordinary life is a life of trying to make some kind of career in the world in which you have some ambition to further yourself in a worldly way. If you want to further yourself in a worldly way, you can be a layperson.

[14:27]

That's where the lay side of the Sangha is valid. But a priest, in our particular in America and also in Japan and several other places in the world. Sometimes priests are married, have families, and serve a function in the community as teachers and as leaders of the lay Sangha. In that way, the priest and the laypeople have a good relationship. The laypeople may or may not, but mostly, have their careers in the world. And they practice Zen because even though they can't... a layperson may not want to give up their worldly life.

[15:39]

they still have a feeling for practice. Now, sometimes lay people practice in the same way as a priest or monk would, without becoming ordained. That's quite common also. But a priest should, even though the priest has a family, They may even have a job, but their career is as a priest. In furthering their own, their main purpose in life is to further their own practice and to help everyone else to further their practice. That's a priest's role, to self-cultivation and helping others to do that. So sometimes we kind of wonder what purpose a priest has.

[16:53]

But a priest also carries the practice carries the practice from Buddha to the present to the future. And that's a kind of lineage. And it may be that no one else in the world will be practicing, but someone who is a true priest will be practicing. And maybe just be alone. And then at some other time, Other people will want to practice, but the priest will have the practice to offer to people when people are ready for it. So a priest's life may be nothing more than just carrying the ball of practice, never encountering anyone else that wants to practice.

[17:55]

That may be their sole destiny. So, in America, and also in Japan, priests have families. Usually, the usual training for a priest in Japan is, first they'll go to college, sometimes, quite often to a Buddhist university, and get all of their academic training in college, and academic training in Buddhism. Then they go to the monastery for three years or five years or something. And then when they come out of the monastery, the monastery is where they have their training. And then when they come out, they go to a temple, sometimes a family temple or some other temple.

[19:02]

And sometimes they'll train other people and sometimes they'll have a kind of pastoral role. It's a little different in America. In Japan, lay people are not so interested in Zazen. And even the priests aren't so interested in Zazen. But they have a very strong pastoral role, the priests do. And they have congregations. And we may feel, well, that's not as wonderful as sitting Zazen, but actually it's quite a helpful, legitimate role, because the priests do help people a lot. That kind of pastoral role, the priests help people a lot in their daily lives.

[20:09]

So anyway, there's a kind of education. In America, the priests haven't had so much education, not in the same way, at least in the beginning. And we're just beginning to find out what kind of real education should a priest have. And we've had a lot of opportunity to study and to practice, but as far as an actual course of study, that hasn't been worked out, but that's the next step, is to work out a course of study for a priest so that they have a real foundation for practicing and for helping other people. Sometimes we think, well, a priest is, we see a priest and we think, well, that person's a teacher. Or, you know, that person is, who is that, you know?

[21:18]

Maybe they have some special powers or special place. The priesthood has always been highly respected. Sometimes not so highly, but, In Buddhist countries, the priesthood is very highly respected. But when you see a novice priest, you must realize that if someone gets ordained as a priest, they become a novice. And that person has to have some training. And that's what they're doing, is training. And that person's training is an example to everyone of how to practice. So if a person becomes a priest, is ordained as a priest, say at the Berkeley Zen Do, what they're doing is training in how to be a priest.

[22:23]

And they should earn people's respect. I think that we tend to respect someone on the face of it, you know, at face value, which is, I think, good. But in the long run, the person has to earn that respect. And training and helping people to practice and setting a good example of how to practice and putting their life into that. And eventually, the priest may become a teacher, but a layperson can also be a teacher. You don't have to be a priest to teach. lay people can also teach.

[23:28]

And we have a very good example in our Zendo of wonderful practice of lay people. And when we have some priests, I don't know exactly what will happen. I think the laypeople will have to help the priests. Mostly, when a person becomes a priest, they already have some practice, some good sense of practice. Otherwise, I wouldn't ordain someone that didn't have a good sense of practice already. And in our practice here, men and women are considered equal. In Asia, men and women are still not considered equal.

[24:39]

Probably in China they are. I think in China men and women are considered equal. But in Buddhism, men and women are not considered equal in Asia. But in America, men and women are equal. Strictly speaking, in the Orthodox Sangha, where you have monks and nuns, whenever a nun sees a monk, they have to bow down to them. But we don't have that kind of practice. where the women have to respect the men because they're men. We just all respect each other because we're all human beings. So in our practice, lay people respect priests and priests respect lay people in the same way.

[25:41]

And I don't want to see some kind of divisive quality appear in our practice because of that. The other thing I want to talk about is the mandala, what I call the mandala of our practice. The way I always visualized our practice or actually the way it naturally works out is

[26:45]

that there's a core of people who are very devoted to practice and can maintain a very strong practice. And around that core, many people can participate. And when we moved to this place in 1979, we'd been practicing for quite a while already. But this was an opportunity, moving here was an opportunity to have a residence practice, a place for eight or ten people to practice and live here. And that practice of residence gave our practice a very strong core.

[27:52]

It's not that the residents are better people or better Buddhists or better in their practice than other people, but it's that the sense of participation because they live here can be very focused. And the mandala, from this strong focus, the mandala spreads out in widening rings to people in various circumstances, so that, and kind of to infinity, so that people can participate and practice here from a very wide-ranging set of circumstances.

[28:59]

Someone can come and sit zazen once a week and feel that they're part of the practice, feel that they really belong to the practice. someone can come back once every two years and feel that they're part of the practice because there's this strong core of people who keep the practice going at the center. And without discriminating who's who, you know, we all accept each other's abilities to practice equally. There's no hierarchical barrier to our practice. And it's always been, that's been the most uppermost thought in my mind, ever since we opened the Berkeley Zendo, was that it could be a place where

[30:06]

People just come and practice without thinking about who's who, who's the chief, who's the boss. What is their position compared to other people's positions? There is a natural kind of hierarchy. Whenever you have an organization, there has to be a natural kind of hierarchy. So the people that I relate to, mostly, are the people that are around me. And the people you relate to are the people that are around you. So that creates a kind of natural hierarchy, but it's not a closed hierarchy. Is there any method even a hundred thousand can help us?

[31:20]

Having existed and listened to, to remember and accept, how to face the truth of Thakurja's words? Usually, it's customary when we do a Bodhisattva ceremony to have a talk on the precepts, but I want to talk about who is this Buddha that we're presenting ourselves to.

[32:24]

When we do the Bodhisattva ceremony, we avow, as the translation goes, we avow our ancient karma and our present transgressions and mistakes and shortcomings and renew our vow, renew our vows to continue. I was talking to Carlos about, he asked a question about prayer and what is the equivalent of that in our practice. In Christianity you have you can talk to God through prayer and wait for some kind of answer or some kind of response.

[33:52]

But in Buddhism, there's no God exactly, but there is Buddha. But who is Buddha? That's always a big question. And it's not a question that you can easily answer. And it's also a big koan. Who is Buddha? Who is Buddha is the same, similar koan to who am I, which is our basic koan. Who am I is our basic koan. And who is Buddha? is also our basic koan. And we can talk about it, we can intellectualize about both God and Buddha, but in the end there's just

[34:58]

Just this. So Christianity is a little bit like Shin Buddhism. It has a lot in common with the side of Buddhism which is devotional, so to speak. But devotional is a very tricky word because devotional is not the opposite of practice. The devotional attitude is to supplicate God or Buddha, to become associated with God or Buddha through prayer or some form of prayer. I feel that Nembutsu, chanting the name of Buddha, is a form of prayer in Buddhism.

[36:12]

And in Buddhism, in Japan, Japanese Buddhism, the Japanese have defined these two aspects of practice and devotion, Zen and Nembutsu, Shinshu practice, as two opposite ways of practicing, two opposite ways of understanding Buddha. And the Zen way is superficially called self-power. because it advocates practice, and it advocates becoming Buddha, or finding Buddha through your own effort, or coming to realization through your own effort. And nebutsu practice, chanting the name of Buddha, and related practices, has been called other power,

[37:28]

which means that through chanting and prayer that you receive Buddha's divine grace. You don't have to do anything. I mean, you do have to do something, but you don't have to do practices in order to uncover your true nature. So these two sides, self-power and other power, are superficial designations for these two practices. In reality, they're not different, even though they may be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

[38:39]

Self-power, you know, some people point to Zen and they say, self-power, big ego, you know. You do everything by yourself and you don't take into account Buddha. But in Zen, we don't have devotional practices in the sense of supplicating Buddha or giving reality, giving credence to some kind of other power, something out there. that's helping us or sustaining us. That's on the surface. But actually, Zen practice is extremely devotional.

[39:49]

And I don't mean just our service. When we have service, sometimes service looks like something different than Zen practice. So when we chant and bow and so forth, sometimes people say, what has that got to do with Zen? And in the chanting itself, and especially in the echo, we pay a lot of homage to Buddha. And in the meal chant we pay homage to the various Buddhas. But in our actual practice, we don't have a kind of form of prayer. But a prayer has various aspects to it. There are different kinds of prayer.

[40:50]

There's the kind which asks for something. And there's the kind of prayer which is just taking down the barriers between yourself and God or Buddha. It just opens the gate. And in Zen practice, Zazen, is that form that we use of taking down the barriers. And we don't call it prayer because we don't say anything. And even Buddha is out of the picture. All kinds of conceptual thinking are out of the picture in Zazen.

[41:52]

So the Buddhists sometimes criticize the Christians, or the people who supplicate in prayer, that their form of prayer is dualistic, because there's always something that is being addressed. If you address God or Buddha, then God or Buddha become an object of address, and therefore stand outside. You divide yourself between, actually dividing, you're discriminating between yourself and God, or between yourself and Buddha. So the Buddhists are very careful, especially in Zen, not to discriminate between yourself and Buddha.

[42:58]

That's why in zazen there's no thought of Buddha. Don't think of Buddha. Don't create a conception in your mind of a deity or something outside of yourself. So in Zen, we sometimes say, you are Buddha. There's a famous koan. Echu asked his teacher, can't remember the name of his teacher, Echu asked his teacher, who is Buddha? And his teacher said, you are a Jew. But what does that mean?

[44:02]

That's a big koan. That's our koan. What does that mean? You are Buddha. I am Buddha. It's a cat. It's Buddha. A what? A what? It's Buddha. What does that mean, I am Buddha? You are Buddha, ain't you? It's a serious question. If we're not careful, you know, people look at us as egotistical or atheistic.

[45:12]

Buddhism is atheistic, but at the same time theistic. It's both theistic and atheistic. Because Buddha is not God, but there's yet We talk about emptiness. All things are empty. God is empty. Buddha is emptiness. But what does emptiness mean? As the Heart Sutra says, emptiness is form. So it brings us right back into where we are. Buddha is everything and Buddha is no special thing. and God is everything and God is no special thing. And if we stick to the idea of self-power, that we can find our own way by ourself, that is an egotistical attitude.

[46:25]

I reached enlightenment through my own efforts. or I will reach enlightenment through my own efforts, or you can reach enlightenment through your own efforts. That's very egotistical. But in prayer, if you ask, present yourself in prayer, then you would like to have some response. You don't know if there will be a response, and you can't expect a response, but you hope that there will be a response. That's called faith. And if you get a response, then that bolsters your faith, and you go a little bit further, you know, and you build up a very strong faith.

[47:26]

And then you feel that you have some connection with things, with the great being. But how do we have some feeling of connection with the great being? I think that's a very important point. How do we find in Buddhism some connection with the great being? How do we get a response? If through my own effort, I try to do everything through my own effort, what does my own effort mean? Again, we face the question, who am I? Whose effort is it? Whose effort is this? Who's doing this? I'm doing this. But who am I? So, if you think about who am I, you have to come all the way back to, I am Buddha.

[48:47]

But what does that mean, I am Buddha? It's a well-known fact that we can't really do anything by ourself. If you try to do something by yourself, for yourself, without taking into consideration everything around you as yourself, you always run into a lot of trouble. And most of our problems are caused by trying to do something for ourself, by ourself, without taking into consideration everything around us. So everything around us, which we call the Dharmadhatu, in Buddhism we say Dharmadhatu, which means the great Dharma realm, the inexplicable, inconceivable Dharma realm, which is another word for

[50:06]

better term than saying the universe. Universe has a kind of definition to it. Dharmadhatu is a more complete term which is inconceivable. Everything is included in the Dharmadhatu, the great Dharma realm. So in Buddhadharma, we make our effort is to not separate ourself, not see ourself as something separate from the Dharmadhatu. And when we get rid of our conception of the Dharmadhatu, get rid of our conception of God or Buddha, let go of our graven images of the mind, then we become ourself.

[51:14]

So our goal of Buddhist practice is How do we become ourself? Our big self, true self. Suzuki Roshi is always talking about big self. I think that was his main thing. How to realize big self. And Sixth Patriarch, Huineng, was always talking about true nature. how to realize true mind, true self, big mind and big self, how not to feel separate from it, from ourself. So one way of feeling not separate is through prayer, even though it presupposes a separation

[52:33]

And in Zen practice, to sit Zazen. When you're really sitting Zazen, when you really do sit, there's no worry, no anxiety, no feeling of separation. No heat, no cold, no hunger. You don't have to go to the bathroom, usually. And your mind is very well balanced. There's no good and no bad, even though you may feel so. And there's no self-power or other power. When we're really well balanced and our mind is not in a dualistic state and we're free to respond to circumstances, then circumstances respond to us.

[53:57]

Did you ever get into a position where you felt everything is just going so right? You know, you hear the doorbell and you know that who's there. Or you hear the telephone and you can feel what's going to happen. Or you walk down the street and everything happens just according to the way you would like it to happen. And it's just inexplicable. And then you get out of balance and things start going normally. But there are those times when that happens, when we're really very much in touch and in balance with things, and our mind is not acting in such a dualistic way, and we're not picking and choosing, and we're not outside of ourself. And when we're not outside of ourself, things seem to happen magically, but it's just normal.

[55:02]

and you can almost predict how things will go. You know, in our lineage we are connected to Shakyamuni Buddha and all the Buddhas of the past and all the ancestors as our teachers, great teachers and there's a hierarchical level where each one stands on the other's head.

[56:26]

But the line goes all the way back up to where you are standing on Buddha's head as well. And it's a kind of circular thing. And there's another diagram where all the Buddhas and ancestors are in yourself, are in a circle rather than in a vertical relationship, all on the same level. And that same kind of diagram applies to everything, not just Buddhas, but we're connected and related to everything as ourself. Even though some... we have to keep a balance with everything in order to exist in a certain way.

[57:34]

Even though we're related, we are a raw fire. We don't put ourself into the raw fire because that kind of condition doesn't create the circumstances for us to exist. So we have to balance a certain amount of fire, a certain amount of water, a certain amount of earth, a certain amount of air or ether together in order to create the various circumstances which keep us in a certain place on this world. But all of those elements We're related to all those elements, but what else are we related to? The Sandokai, Sekito says, the elements, we return to their source, like a child to its mother.

[58:46]

Fire is hot, earth hard, water is wet. The Indians, American Indians, used to go up to a mountaintop and speak to the universe, speak to the Dharmadhatu. I always thought that was quite wonderful. To just go up to a mountaintop and just speak, just open yourself up to the Dharmadhatu. And in Samzin, that's actually what we do, without saying anything. We open ourselves up completely to what we don't know. There's no way to think about it. It's beyond our conception. But we have some big trust.

[59:52]

And in Zen practice, it's called faith. So that kind of faith is a big factor. in Zen practice, you're sitting there completely open with no thought, no conception, conceptualization. So just sitting in the palm of Buddha. So the koan, zazen itself is our koan. Just moment after moment is our koan.

[60:56]

It's also the koan of birth and death. Inhaling is coming to life. Exhaling is leaving life. But yet there's always life within birth and death. So in Christianity, I don't want to compare religions, but there's some faith that you will be taken care of if you're good, you go to heaven when you die. There's also that idea in Pure Land Buddhism

[62:20]

that you will go to the Pure Land when you die. Amida Buddha will invite you, you hope. But in Zen, we don't have that idea. Although Pure Land

[62:38]

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