I vow to taste the truths of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. I don't think I need this. That's OK. It might be a little loud, Catherine, if you could turn it down just a hair. Everyone can hear it, right? So while we're in the sort of instructive mode just to say that verse we chanted is a verse that we use in kind of formally opening the sutras or opening the teachings whether it's in classes or lecture and it's very common. It's used in Japan, used in China and Actually, the first thing I'd like to do is if you could, let's, people should have an opportunity to know who's in the room because we don't all know each other.

[01:02]

So if we start with Barry and just go around, say your name clearly and not too quick. Alan, welcome. just have been really appreciating your sitting. He was really settled today, which is nice. I've been looking at a lecture of Suzuki Roshi's that seems appropriate to the day, and I had some rambling thoughts as well.

[02:08]

Mostly, all of this is in the area of what is it that we're doing here in the Zendo, day by day, and in Sesshin, and that verges into the territory of why? And I thought I would share some of my thoughts, some of Suzuki Roshi's, and some commentary on that, and then for your own thoughts and questions and then we'll actually get to do this more extensively in the afternoon. I just came back from I've been for four days or so at we have an organization called the Soto Zen Buddhist Association which is an association of teachers of Zen teachers and also of priests who are not yet teachers meeting separately and then coming together and wonderful group of people from all over the country.

[03:24]

teachers and about 35 priests who were more novice priests not full teachers and just a really great community of people dedicated to Zen practice and it's really interesting because there's things about Zen practice that are highly formalized as you might that to some degree are comfortable. Some people love it. Some people don't love it. Some people wonder why we need this. Do we need this? None of these questions are settled, right? There was an interesting talk by Robert Scharf, who is the Chen Professor of Buddhist Studies at UC, and he has some Zen background, but he's not strictly a practitioner at this point in time.

[04:36]

He's a scholar, and he asked a question. He gave a very personal talk, and he asked a question about authenticity. What is it? How do we feel about authenticity as an expression of our practice? Which might seem an abstract question, but I think it's in line with something Suzuki Roshi said, when you are you, Zen is Zen. What does that mean? It's not necessarily licensed to do anything that you want and calling it Zen because that's who I am. What does that mean? So in the course of this talk, he related an anthropological story. I think the anthropologist's name was Robert Z. Smith, who was studying bear hunters in Siberia.

[05:39]

And what this anthropologist discovered was there was a really big gap between what they said they did, hunting bears, and what they actually did. What they said, they had all of these rules and rituals for hunting bears, which is part of their livelihood and their food supplies. You had to honor the bear. You would never take a bear, you could not kill a bear who was sleeping in its lair. If you were in combat with a bear, the bear had to be coming at you. and you had to strike them either with a spear or a gun or a knife in certain prescribed places in their body and they weren't allowed to bleed outward, no blood could be shed, all of which is kind of patently insane.

[06:50]

It's like, and the bear hunters knew this. You get an angry bear charging at you. It's like, this is highly idealized. And in point of fact, they needed the bears and they killed them any way they could. But then, I'm sorry, this may be a really, this whole, story may be a tremendous diversion for what we're doing. I'm not sure yet. What they had was a bear hunting ritual in which they would find a cub and raise it for a number of years and treat it incredibly well. and have it live with the family, and play with it, and raise it, give it as good a life as it could for about three or four years.

[07:55]

And then they would enact this ritual, which, you know, this is aside from the precept of killing, this is a separate question which we could discuss, but that really is a digression. Then they would sort of bind this bear in this ritual position that seemed to enact the values that they had in their story about how you were supposed to ideally kill a bear. And they would kill it. And then they would honor it and sing songs and consume the bear flesh and use the fur, et cetera. How is this at all relevant to what we're doing? I think the point that Bob Scharf was trying to make, and the point that I think is relevant, is that there's a gap between how we want to live our lives, how it's possible

[09:09]

to live our lives in this very troublesome, difficult world. And yet we have ideals and principles. And there's a sense in which what we are doing in here, to my mind, now you may not agree, and that's fine, is, and I would say this is also a parallel, hunting the bear is something you do with your body. Doing a ritual is something you do with your body. Sitting zazen is something that you do with your body. And often, even though everything we're doing in the world is something we do with our body, we're trapped up here in our minds and sometimes we forget we have bodies. So, to come all of the forms are about things that we do with our bodies, step by step, including how we sit, sitting zazen, and in a way you could see that, you could see sitting zazen as a, and this also may push buttons for some people,

[10:33]

ritual embodiment of an ideal way to meet moment-by-moment reality. It's not the way we can meet it every moment, but I think what I feel is that If I look at my life, the first 35 years of my life before I was doing something called practice, it wasn't that I didn't have some kind of training or awareness in other areas, but somehow to be able to do this practice for me is the way of bringing narrowing the gap between how I want to be in the world and how I am and this is not something in my personal experience or in what I've seen that that happens overnight.

[11:47]

It happens by a kind of And the question is, what's useful for doing that? These are, what we do is, you know, a version of some pretty old and time-tested approaches that we're actually trying to translate in some sense. To some degree, we're trying to translate them into our American life from Japan, China, perhaps India before that. And there's a lot of experimentation because we don't know which is the baby and which is the bathwater. Usually, you can tell the difference between the baby and the bathwater. But in something like this, it's a little murky. The room is full of steam.

[12:48]

So we're experimenting with that. So that's kind of by way of preface and to see a little what Suzuki Roshi says about this. And the chapter that I was going to read from is called Limiting Your Activity in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And he says, in our practice we have no particular purpose or goal, nor any special object of worship. In this respect, our practice is somewhat different from the usual religious practices. So we're not worshiping, even though we have an altar with these figures.

[13:51]

The point of this practice is just coming forth ourselves, each of us individually and in community, in the circle of people who are sitting here or who are working in community, and then in your wider, to me, in your wider community, the community of family, community of work, community you live in, perhaps in the nation and the world. Joshu, the great Chinese Zen master, said, a clay Buddha cannot cross water. A bronze Buddha cannot get through a furnace. A wooden Buddha cannot get through fire. Whatever it is, if your practice is directed towards some particular object, in other words, if you believe in somehow the permanence or the higher principle of a clay, a bronze, or a wooden Buddha, then various kinds of conditions in the environment of this world are, that object of your worship is vulnerable to them.

[15:15]

So if you set up some particular principle that's above who you yourself are, then you may find it can be dissolved in water or burned in a fire or melted in a furnace or subject to some other kind of deconstruction. So long as you have some particular goal in your practice, that practice will not help you completely. It may help as long as you're directed towards that goal, but when you resume your everyday life, it will not work. And the same thing is true, obviously, in our everyday life. I mean, there are goals that we have because we have to make choices and decisions. But if you're like me, you may find that sometimes you have this goal, and when you attain it, it's like, oh, okay, now what?

[16:17]

what was that about, which is not the derogation of all goals. We do have to have some objectives and intentions, but sometimes if we set something very high and then we attain it, if we attain it we find we still have to go on. There's more to do with our mind and body, there's no resting at the attainment, right? It's like we don't attain it and then we just fade out of existence because we've accomplished this. We actually have to go on. And sometimes that attainment is helpful, sometimes it's a hindrance, sometimes it's both. You may think that if there's no purpose or goal in our practice, we will not know what to do.

[17:20]

But there is a way. The way to practice without having any goal is to limit your activity or to be concentrated on what you're doing in this moment. So that's what we do here. In the wider world, even though there are obviously some limits to our activity, we are also subject to a lot of different input, experience, pulls in one way or another. If we come here, Sometimes I think of the Zendo, my particular way of thinking of it is that it's kind of like a laboratory in the sense that the variables are limited, more limited than they are just if you walk down in the street. It's quiet. It's relatively...

[18:23]

fairly comfortable. There are not a lot of distractions except what we find in distractions of our own mind. So we actually get to see ourselves fairly clearly. So that's the purpose of limiting our activity. And the same thing goes with how we move in this endo, walking slowly, carefully, how we enter, how we sit down, how we take care of everything. So limiting your activity also another aspect that comes forth and this is really at the heart of Soto Zen practice is don't treat anything like an object. treat everything as if it were part of you, part of your body. The cushion, so we don't move around our cushions with our feet. We're not careless with things, we're very careful. So we limit, that's what he means, I think, by limiting your activity.

[19:31]

Instead of having some particular object in mind, you should limit your activity. When your mind is wandering, when your mind is wandering about elsewhere, you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal Buddha nature, that is our way. When we practice zazen, we limit our activity to the smallest extent. Just keeping the right posture and being concentrated on sitting and on breathing is how we express universal nature. Then we become Buddha and we express Buddha nature. So instead of having some object of worship,

[20:36]

We just concentrate on the activity which we do in each moment. So that's what I was saying. We focus on our breathing and posture. When we're walking, we can be mindful of how our feet are moving on the floor. what kind of, you begin to attune yourself to how you have to shift your weight. And some of you may have intended to say, what do I do at the corner? I'm going to have to turn the corner, right? It's like, going straight, oh that's pretty easy. It's like, what do I do? Right there, there's a question. And it's not like there's any right way to do it, as far as I've ever been taught. It's like, you have to figure out something, which is, how do I shift my weight? How do I shift my balance? These are all things that we do with our body. It's like a very, it's pretty simple slow motion dance.

[21:43]

This is being mindful of the smallest activity and ordinarily, you know, you just be walking down the street, you come to the corner, you turn the corner, you're not, we're not necessarily thinking about that and it's not that you necessarily should be thinking about that. Each activity has its own proper mode and pace. But here, what we find is if we can really limit our activity, then we get to see something about ourselves that we don't hardly stop enough to see. Then we know who we are. And also we notice, oh, I'm doing this with other people, some of whom may be my friends, some of whom I may not know, but how amazing it is to do this together. So instead of having some object of worship, we just concentrate on the activity which we do in each moment.

[23:00]

When you bow, you should just bow. When you sit, you should just sit. When you eat, you should just eat. If you do this, universal nature is there. In Japanese we call this Ichigyo Zamai or one act Samadhi. Zamai or Samadhi is concentration. Ichigyo is one practice so it's if we're actually concentrating again this is not concentrating it's a really bringing mindfulness to our activities, then we see it's one act, one practice after another. In k'in-in-sei, it's just, it's the act of lifting, then the act of placing, synchronized with the act of breathing.

[24:03]

In zazen, It's the one act of Zazen, the 30 or 40 minute act of Zazen, during which an infinite number of things occur, few of which you can remember, right? What happened during that last period of Zazen? Where was I? I was just sitting and breathing. I think some of you who practice Zazen here may believe in some other religion, but I do not mind. Our practice has nothing to do with some particular religious belief. And for you, there is no need to hesitate to practice our way because it has nothing to do with Christianity or Shintoism or Hinduism. Our practice is for everyone. Usually when someone leaves in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself.

[25:16]

I'm not sure I fully agree with that, but it certainly is a tendency. It's a tendency in some religions to place the power the authority or higher reality of existence outside oneself to which one surrenders or pays respect or has to find oneself in one way or another in relationship to. That's not always bad. Sometimes that can be very useful. But here, what we keep trying to look at is where is this, where is agency, let's say, the ability to act or move, where does this arise from within myself? Which of course is an enormous mystery.

[26:24]

But the mystery is not strictly outside myself, The mystery is something that I am part of and have a particular responsibility to and for. You make the world work. Each of us makes the world work. Our absence makes the world different, as does our presence. We may not be able to discern what that effect is. But I really believe it. I've seen it and I see it in communities that I take part of. One person can come in a room even without doing something and the energy changes. One person can make an enormous difference in the world.

[27:29]

And then there's the sorrow of feeling that no matter what you do, it doesn't make a difference. That's also true reckoning with that difficulty. But that may be another talk. So, He says, usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. But our way is not like this. In our way, the pointing of the sharp angle is always towards ourselves, not away from ourselves. Joshu's statement about the different Buddhas concerns those who direct their practice towards some particular Buddha. And here I think he's referring to, it's a kind of, within this is a kind of critique of what, of some kinds of Japanese Buddhism, some kinds of other Buddhism, which come very close to creating deities out of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

[28:42]

That's not the true spirit of our practice, but it also culturally exists within it in, say, a Chinese or Japanese tradition. Maybe this is a human thing that happens. We want to keep placing things outside of ourselves, and even with the best intentions and the most clear teachings and instructions nonetheless we find ourselves doing this. But what Suzuki Roshi says, one kind of Buddha, whether it's a clay Buddha or a bronze Buddha or a wooden Buddha, one kind of Buddha will not serve your purpose completely. you will have to throw it away sometime, or at least ignore it. But if you understand the secret of our practice, wherever you go, you yourself are, and he puts this in quotation marks, you yourself are boss.

[29:55]

In another place he says, you be the boss of you. which doesn't mean boss has a particular set of connotations in our culture, but just what he means is be fully responsible for yourself. Lead yourself, don't be pushed around by circumstances, don't be pushed around by idealism, don't be pushed around by other people. but move with them in harmony to create peace and freedom, freedom of mind, freedom of activity. So if you understand the secret of our practice, wherever you go, you yourself are boss. No matter what situation, you cannot neglect Buddha because you yourself are Buddha.

[30:59]

only this buddha will help you completely only the buddha that you bring forth yourself as yourself in your activities with your body and mind will help you and yet we have this practice that we do together the essence of which is helping each other reinforce Buddha as ourselves, and then perhaps creating one great mysterious Buddha together. See, that Buddha is somewhat, it's itself transient. But again, we do this by limiting our activities, by knowing how we bow, how we move, how we sit, so that we can't be Buddha unless we actually truly see ourselves.

[32:07]

And that's the function of the form of this practice. It's not necessarily the only way to see oneself, but it's the way that's been brought to us by our teachers and their teachers. And so we handle it with great care. It's been given to us as something precious. if you make that something precious into a wooden or a clay Buddha, then it's dead. So the question in all this is, well, how do I keep this alive? How do I make this not just some kind of dry formalism, but actually do it with my body? So I think that's, I wanted to leave some time for questions and answers. Just open it up, so maybe you have some thoughts. Yeah.

[33:11]

I think it's possible to formalize it, but I wouldn't force it. So that's the koan. The koan is like, how do you, how does that kind of order occur naturally? I would say, I say this a lot, I tell this story a lot. After Lori and I got together for a few years, this is my wife, who also lives here, she had been practicing actually longer than I. And she said, you know, it's really strange, my zazen is just as messy as it ever was. In other words, some of us, some people have really good concentrated minds, that's the way their minds work, and some of us, our minds want to wander all over the map.

[34:52]

And so she's saying, my zazen is just as messy as it ever was, but my life seems much more orderly. So there's this mysterious activity or interpenetration. So I can't say, you know, I think if you, again, if you make this a goal, I've got to, you know, I have to have a more Zen reality around me, I think you're creating a problem. But, the other hand, to keep the koan, the living koan for yourself of how to regulate your life is a good question. You know, there is no one answer to this. Good luck. Thoughts or questions? Yeah, John. Speak up a little.

[35:59]

I think that's right. So long as you don't have this objective of making everything wonderful and nice to actually see the problem or problems that one has as the medium or opportunity of awakening. The opportunity of letting go but that doesn't mean that it just drops away and everything is wonderful. Problems will arise as long as we have bodies and this is the main problem that we have is we have this body And some of us notice that our physical capabilities ebb and flow, and over time there is a definite arc to where they go.

[37:46]

And it's often true of certain mental capabilities, although some of them are very enduring. It was really interesting, during the conference, this friend of mine, Keoghan Carlson, who's a teacher in Portland, Oregon, he was giving a presentation on the precepts and all of a sudden he just sort of stopped and there was this long silence. And somebody said, are you okay? And he said, I don't know. You know, I don't know what's going on. And it was scary. It was scary for him. It was scary for us. You know, fortunately there were two doctors there in the room and they had him sit down and someone brought him a glass of water.

[38:48]

It wasn't necessarily, we don't know what it was. It wasn't necessarily like he was talking about something that was really emotionally charged. Here's somebody who has wonderful force of mind. That force of mind is very, it has just a lot of, it's very tenuous. Is that right? Anyway. It seems to just go on with a lot of energy, and it's always surprising and strong. It's kind of like a muscle or a tendon. It seems to have real life and vitality. And at the same time, in just that a moment, something happens biologically, physiologically, and it's also very fragile. This is the way our lives are. And it was like we were seeing it right there in front of us with a friend.

[39:53]

We don't know what happened, but he was close to fainting and didn't. So, just to say that we have to constantly reckon with our body, which is the essential nature of this practice. come from war. by a desire to do the right thing. Or ego or whatever. Yeah, the ego. So I guess I think sometimes the forms are helpful to sit, to kind of go back to, it helps kind of, this is kind of getting back to my authentic self a little bit more.

[41:05]

So the forms I think are helpful to me that way to kind of maybe disengage that ego part and help me kind of say, okay, now I'm getting back to my authentic self. I don't need that. I have to do this for work. I have these reasons to do this. I don't need to do that. I have to do this for a lot of stuff. Yeah, well, I think these are ongoing questions. We can build ego on the head of a pin. It's really, we have this really remarkable ability to do that. And yet sometimes you see yourself in, this is a medium in which authenticity can arise, but we don't live in the zendo. And we're not, this is not, we're not doing a monastic practice as such.

[42:08]

We're doing something that references monastic practice. But sometimes you notice when you're working or even when you're having a conversation with somebody or you're doing something expressive, whatever activity, sometimes you have some awareness that there is, that you're fully alive. It may be just a flash of that awareness. You're fully functioning. Now, of course, you're always fully functioning, but most of the time we don't know it. But sometimes those things come together in such a way that we can have an awareness of it. And that's very encouraging. So again, that's what we're refining here in this kind of laboratory setting, Zendo, I think. Is it Molly? Take a little bit more of that. Well, first, I think we should all bow to you because it's a really noble and necessary profession.

[43:49]

What do you teach? English. Oh, yay. So, but I'd like to come back to, I think that would be a really good subject to talk about over tea, because our time is almost up and it's a big subject. What do we mean, say, by a Zen teacher or a Buddhist teacher and what are the commonalities and perhaps what are the differences with other kinds of teachings? I think that's a really good question. Right, Suzuki Yoshi did talk about this.

[45:09]

That's what's really important. All do the same thing, but actually they're without regimentation. Without some idea I'm supposed to be doing exactly like this other person does it or exactly like the teacher or the person in the front room does it. It's like because we do it with our own individual body. So we have some idea maybe even some platonic idea of the form that we're inhabiting but it always comes out different and some things really stick in your mind after time like there are people I can visualize some of my teachers' bows. Some teachers that I had over the years, I can see them bowing and I can see where little bits of that are in the way I bow, which is quite wonderful. You know, it's very minute and particular. And if you start thinking that way, you can also see, I mean, I can think about Sojins, or Rev.

[46:16]

Anderson, or Category Roshi, Shodoharada Roshi, I can see all of their bows, and little bits in my own. But then we realize, actually everything we do, in the world is like that. That's why I said everybody around us affects who we are and how we do things, which is part of this incredible mystery that we're simultaneously pursuing in and also just living out. So we'll continue to, we can talk over tea. And I think that we'll be Outdoor Kenyan until 1120 after this. Thank you.

[47:04]

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