Good morning. As I was getting ready for this talk, I seemed to be in the mood to go out on a limb, I noticed. Maybe it's only a limb in my own mind, or several limbs, but maybe they're all in my own mind. We hear the phrase Zazen or Zen practice is not psychotherapy and I agree with that, that makes sense to me. However, it is partly psychological and it is therapeutic in the sense that it's about healing, it's about healing the split between our Buddha nature and our small self, our big mind and our small mind.

[01:03]

And so I don't want to see that whole and all the language and everything that we have in our the commons about psychology to the psychotherapist only. I think that part of what I think that comes up as a way of saying that Zazen is not the best or only treatment for every any and all psychological issues, and of course that's true. So I don't have any quibble with that. But I think that I wanted to talk about the difference between Zen practice and psychotherapy in terms of our methodology. And I'm thinking of it in terms of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So we're really not supposed to talk about our methodology very much, if at all. but I'm figuring if I can frame it as Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, maybe I can get away with it. So under the heading of Buddha, I am saying that we believe in the naturally integrative power of just sitting, or to say it the long way, the naturally integrative power of sitting together

[02:25]

cultivating awareness for the benefit of all beings. And it's kind of a crazy act of faith because there's no way to evaluate how that's going really, how integrated it is or whether it's working or anything. And the more you try to evaluate it, you just get balled up and mucked up. So you just have to do this crazy act of faith. We had a five-day session, a five-day sitting recently, and so of course the human mind does try to evaluate, that's the way the mind works, and so I tried to evaluate how my five-day session was, or what happened, or something like that, and I really can't, but I did come away with this phrase which I will share with you now, which is, when I remember to when I'm sitting, I think, oh, so this is what this feels like.

[03:38]

Just whatever it is. This is what this feels like. Whatever's happening. So I wondered, do you want to try that with me for just a minute? and go, oh, this is what this feels like. this particular experience in this particular circumstance. So I mentioned integration and that's why I wanted to talk about some of the ways that integration can happen. So one way is horizontally integrating our left and our right would be one way of talking about it.

[04:49]

It's the left brain and the right brain, and I've been told that that's sort of been debunked now, the two sides of the brain, but I don't know about that. But anyway, it's a useful metaphor, so I'm using it as a metaphor. And so in that metaphor, the right brain is the mind that sees things as a whole, sees things in their suchness and their wholeness, sees a vast web of matter and energy transforming Maybe. There's a lot of different ways people talk about it. And the left brain is the discriminating mind that makes distinctions and judges and sees things in their partness, in their separateness. And people have ways of... We're always using both all the time. That's how it works. But most of the time there's a feeling that the discriminating mind is in the driver's seat.

[05:55]

It's actually not actually, but it thinks it is. And so it's almost like it is because it thinks it is. But sometimes we experience, we can naturally experience the wholeness side and different people have different, sometimes people experience it in nature, being out in nature, listening to music. Sometimes in meditation or trance, some people experience it during trance and some people don't. So there can be conditions under which you can experience it. And then there's other conditions under which the discriminating mind, the judging mind, comes forth. And so they need to be integrated somehow. So it's not like you go out in nature and think, oh, everything's nice, and then you immediately as soon as you get back to the city you're plotting revenge or something. You've got to find that way to bring your vision of wholeness, however it is for you, into your life of discrimination.

[07:04]

And knowing when discrimination is the appropriate is appropriate. and how to use it for benefit. I was in a class with Greg Anderson the other night and someone asked, he was talking about our commitment. So we make a commitment, we make an effort. to sit or practice or follow the precepts. And we have a shared commitment here. That's a big part of what we're doing is affirming our shared commitment. And then someone asked a question. I realize this is often the question, which is a kind of despair or frustration that you can't accomplish it or that you can't do it all the time or something. And I realized that that's where you need to discriminate. We have an intention, we make a commitment, we take the precepts, we can commit to each other.

[08:09]

I'm going to try to be honest with you. Many things we make a commitment to each other or to our practice, to our teacher, but they don't give us any control over what happens, and they're never going to give us any control over what happens. I think a good place to discriminate is between when you're making your commitment and when you're just frustrated that you don't have any control over the outcome. Because you never are going to have any control over the outcome. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't matter, you know, if I say I want to be kind to you and then I do something mean, I want to say I'm really sorry. under those conditions, I wasn't able to do what I said I was going to do, and I feel bad, and how can I make amends? But the idea of berating yourself is really just a little bit of a disguised thing about not being able to admit that you have no control, and you're not going to have any control.

[09:17]

So integrating, you know, we have the we kind of come into it with this feeling that the discriminating mind is a little bit in the driver's seat and we need to really honor and learn about the fact that it's actually the big mind that's in the driver's seat. And so, some people may look like they have more, if you go along with big mind, the way big mind is going, grow along with Big Mind, the way Big Mind is going, it's going to look more like you have some control, because you're going along with things the way they're going already. Dogen says, you know, there's no killing, don't kill, because there is no killing. So in this Big Mind sense of how everything is just matter and energy transforming and nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, there's no killing. So join that and don't kill.

[10:21]

in the way you think you can heal. So have our discriminating mind, our left brain, under the tutelage of the big mind. Another way that we can integrate is vertically. So we have body, heart, and mind. Our bodies are set up that way. And our brains are kind of set up that way too, it turns out. So there's like, this guy Daniel Siegel has this hand model of the brain. You can check it out on YouTube. There's the reptilian brain, or the kind of survival brain. And then there's your limbic brain. I think he kind of uses your thumb for your limbic brain. And then your cortical brain wraps around. And so it's set up vertically. And so we can integrate vertically. And oftentimes, we aren't integrated in that way. We may know something conceptually, but it's not how we're responding to situations.

[11:31]

They need to be talking to each other, because any one of them could be wrong. What you know in your bones could be wrong, actually. I was thinking, we know in our bones that something that tastes sweet and something that tastes fatty is really good for us. We know that in our bones. But actually, it's not always true. It's not always right. So that's a situation, because of the way things have evolved, where you need to get your cognitive part in the picture there to let yourself know that actually, maybe not in this situation, the sweet thing may not be the best thing. We sort of idealize what we know in our hearts. I think in Zen we often think the body and the heart are deeper than the critical faculties or the cognitive, but really they need to be coordinated. You can know things in your heart that aren't true too. You can know that you're not lovable or something.

[12:37]

You could have picked up something in your childhood that is something you know, but it's really not true. Or it was true in some situation, but it's not true now. So we need to bring new information, and new information often comes first through, I mean, I think there's the cognitive, but it also includes the senses, and new information's coming through. I may be wrong about how I've got this sorted, but anyway, the new information needs to come in and revise the knowing of the different parts of ourselves. They need to be in a conversation with each other. And then there's other kinds of integration, like our male part and female feminine side and masculine side, our receptive and creative, our past, present and future selves. I mean, there's just a way that

[13:38]

just by sitting with awareness and other things I'm going to talk about today, Dharma Sangha part, there's a natural integration that can happen. Or at least we have that faith. We have that faith. So under the heading of Dharma, I'm putting that we believe in the power of orienting to a teacher or teachers. I debated with myself just before the lecture about whether I was going to use the phrase secure attachment or not for this. And the reason I have the urge to use it is because the relationship we have with teachers is more than their words and their explanations. It's something deeper. It's like a tractor beam that you set up, that you orient towards them, and it's not what they say. something about how they're carrying themselves, how they hold themselves, how they stand, how they move, how they respond to people and situations.

[14:48]

And it's something that you, and you get to pick that. I mean, you don't have to think like someone else thinks the way someone's holding themselves is cool. And you don't, you get to choose that. You, but, but we do need to orient towards something. And, um, I, And here's another thing that feels a little bit like a limb for me. You don't need to find a teacher that never makes mistakes or has no blind spots or stumbles, anything like that. You don't need that. If you think about it for a minute, that would be kind of creepy, really. it wouldn't give us any foothold of seeing that they're like us, they're just like us. So, you know, it doesn't feel that good if you're standing nearby when something goes wrong.

[15:53]

But I think to just affirm to yourself that you don't need that, you don't need the person to be perfect. You want to see who they're orienting towards. You want to see that they're orienting. They're not just this charismatic, cool person with some big insight. They're orienting towards something, and you should be able to see what they're orienting towards. I feel very devoted, actually, to the people who I have related to as teachers, who I practice with. And for me, part of my devotion is not to idealize. I think that, you know, we actually orient towards the whole line of Buddha ancestors, back to the Buddha. And that's why you need your teacher to be orienting towards that line, and you need to be able to see that.

[16:57]

And one of the great things about, to me, like the Koan literature, which is so hard to understand and can be so scary in a way and make you feel bad or stupid or something, there's some way that they are conveying something about how they carried themselves and how they responded to things. It's mysterious how that's conveyed, and that's part of why it's hard, it's that mystery, because it's not just this doctrine about stuff, it's like stories about, and you know, even if you go back to the early Buddha scriptures, the Pali Canon, there's a lot, there's a huge amount of doctrine in there, and you can get totally snowed by all this doctrine, but there are many, many sutras that are about how the Buddha responded to somebody, and they're really, really cool. you will feel it if you read these. He had a special way of responding to speak to people.

[18:01]

And that's what we're orienting towards. And that's one of the reasons why it's really important that we bring the stories of the women ancestors also, because we need both men and women, we need that, we need to have the complete picture to be able to orient So we can picture ourselves taking that in, you know, like there's that tractor beam. You get pulled into the line somehow. Not every minute, not all the time, not that you never stumble, but you get drawn in. It's a condition, it's a factor towards being drawn into the line. And then, I totally have no idea what time it is. I'm sure I have plenty of time now. So then under the heading of Sangha, I want to say that we believe in the power of friendship and our relationships with each other in the context of a shared commitment.

[19:12]

So it's not limited to inside the gate. enjoy the power of your friendships with anybody. The shared commitment is kind of important for what we're doing here because it provides some kind of a container of sorts. So we have a lot of things we do here. We put on these activities. They're like little plays or something. We put on a Saturday morning program. People are in charge. They have to work with other people who are doing other things. We put on zazen every day. We put on sesshins. We do a whole bunch of stuff. And we take full advantage of the natural fact that we drive each other crazy. People drive each other crazy. Right? Am I right? Yes. We are using that ideally, although I can't say that we have, I'm not sure we have fully brought this teaching into full expression with each other yet.

[20:33]

It's a journey that we're on. But it's kind of like one image I have is that we have these little magnets inside of us, which is kind of our delusions, really. They're things that maybe were once true, or limited versions of what's really true. And so, I mean, you could say that this friendship thing is a way of integrating our idea of who we are with other people's idea of who we are, and also with the way things, more like the way things really are. So we have these little magnets, and then they attack the other people's magnets, and then they go ding! And then we have like a fight, or a blow up, or burst into tears, or run away, So many things, so many things. And really, that's what's supposed to happen. That is awesome when that happens. Unfortunately, we almost never think it's awesome or feel that it is awesome. It just doesn't feel awesome.

[21:34]

It feels bad and it feels like running away. It's really hard to stay when that happens. You just really want to run away. It feels like He's treating you just like your dad did or whatever it is a million different things, you know And so if only we can learn Some a little like I think if we had maybe a half a cup more spaciousness All of us some of us most of us. I don't know we could we would be there because because A lot of people, I think if you talk to people who have been around BCC for a long time, they will tell you about a time that their core issue, because it's not just we have these sort of magnets, but we usually have some kind of core, a couple, one, two, three core issues that are going to keep coming up in whatever situation we're in. So if you stick around here and if you get involved in these activities that we do together, they will come up for you here.

[22:40]

We can be dependent upon. to stimulate them. And people will tell you that that was a big turning point when they really thought they should leave, they really wanted to leave, or they found some way to turn around within that. So I just offer that to you as encouragement. When I lived at Tassajara, I'm having a hard time finding a way to put this into words, so I'm going to try. I lived there for three years, and I left because of something like this. I'm not the kind of person who, when I get my core issues triggered, I don't usually lash out or act out. or burst into tears or something, I do a strange thing which is even more unhealthy than that, or it's like I kind of dissociate or I implode or something.

[23:42]

I go way more inside, and it feels really bad, but I'm not exactly acting bad. So I kind of got myself to that place towards the end of my time at Tassajara, and I didn't know how to utilize my teachers and my friends there, and I just really had no idea, looking back I think. But I feel some regret, like that was kind of a wasted opportunity. And it doesn't matter, because of course it's going to come up the next time, and that's fine. But I just want to encourage people that it's an opportunity, and that happens. So I just wanted to mention one of these early sutras is called the Upadha Sutta. And does that mean half?

[24:42]

Do you know? U-P-A-D-D-A-J? A-D-A-J is half. So it doesn't mean half sutra. It means whatever up means plus half. I don't know. OK. Well, anyway. I thought it was so cool when I read it this morning when you said half. I thought, wow, that's cool, the half sutra, you know. So, the Buddha is sitting around with Ananda, who is, you know, his attendant, but really, he's his brother. I mean, virtually, they were brought up by the same woman. I think Ananda was maybe younger or something, but they're brothers, and they're brothers in the Dharma, very close. Ananda just says something, he blurts out, this is half the holy life, isn't it? Just admirable friendship. This is a lot of what we're doing is just admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.

[25:47]

And Buddha says, no Ananda, this is all the holy life. The whole of the holy life is admirable friendship, admirable companionship. admirable camaraderie, and he says, it's to me as your good friend that I help people. That's the way it happens. So, do you have any questions or suggestions? Oh, actually first, may I offer you the first chance? right, but they grew up with the same mom. So they're brothers to me. I'm saying, figure it. But she started very early when he was an infant. I don't think we call that a sister. Anyway, we can disagree about that.

[26:49]

No, but in India, there's this official term, which is cousin brother or cousin sister. And they often consider it exactly the same thing. It wouldn't be just in India, I think, if you were raised from infancy. Anyway, whatever. What else? Anything else? I think that it's the whole of life. I agree with you. But even though it's the foundation, when you say it's the whole, There's also all the rest of it. Our Zen practice is very simple. It doesn't depend on much except the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha, as you say.

[27:56]

But we have all the philosophy and the great thoughts and so forth. which is also wonderful. But you know, all that's really necessary is a simple life. Other comments? Ross? Question. Thank you, Laurie. You started your talk speaking of a big mind and being oriented toward that, and that was, what I inferred was that things were okay as such. as they are in front of us, and we can move forward with that sort of acceptance and it's okay. Yeah, okay, I guess I can see an argument towards okay, I guess. Could you reiterate your point? Things are as they are, incontrovertibly, and I guess instead of okay, what I say to myself is this moment has everything I need to wake up.

[29:00]

I know that, and people do talk about that, just perfect just as it is and stuff, but there's so many ways to argue with perfect just as it is or okay, you know, I don't even want to start that. Okay. Thank you for reminding me that. So one of the things that you do here is you make a great offering to work at the men's shelter. So I'm wondering how you put the two sides together of it's okay and there's some help needed there. Because if we didn't have that side, then it's okay. The people that are homeless, they need to eat and whatnot. So how do you bring in, or how do you allow the so-called relative side, the side of Laurie that feels compelled, to help and keep the two in balance? Well, I think it's almost like you, that's why you need both sides, that you can't manifest the big mind except through daily activity.

[30:05]

So it's sort of like, you know, the kingdom of what's thy kingdom come, you know, in the Lord's Prayer. The kingdom of heaven is brought to this earth through our activity, not any other way. If it's not brought through our activity, it's not brought. So that's our job, in a way, as human beings, maybe to, you know, what does Tozón say? The ministers serve the Lord, the children obey the parents. So if you look at the big mind as the parent or the Lord and the small mind as the minister, we're here to serve that, we're here to bring that into fruition and we get totally distracted by these other activities that we get involved in. And that's a good example of why to say it's all okay, yeah, it's not. But it is what it is. I'm wondering if the offhand remark you just made, we get distracted by other things if we don't hold the two sides together when we see the other side.

[31:13]

We only see one side. That's why it's a distraction. And that's why we need to be integrated. They need to both be operating all the time in an integrated way. Thank you. Shall we then, Linda? Thank you for your talk. You're welcome. So what's coming up? I'm just going to speak what's coming up in response, I think. And I think it's also maybe a little bit going out on a limb, too. Thank you. We'll be together. I won't be alone anymore. It's just a question that's been coming up for me a lot lately. So I've been coming around here now for about 11 years. I just realized the other day. And a question that's coming up for me lately is also the left brain aspect of it. is this place is a certain size, just physically. So I don't know how many seats there are. 62, maybe? So if it stays the same size, there's going to be this aspect of coming and going.

[32:15]

And there naturally is here with the sangha. So in response to what you're saying with this close group, when we take care of each other, I've obviously experienced that in a huge way, which has been toxic for my life. But I've also seen this amazing time coming and going of people. So I just looked around the room. And I think I was trying to get a sense of the new folk here, the people that I haven't. Because I've been relaxing a little bit and haven't been coming around as much as I have in the past. And I look around, and there are all these people here that I don't know, that I haven't seen before. And that's amazing. And that's wonderful. And that's part of the health of the whole. To stay healthy, we need this movement. I don't know if that's really a question. How do you feel about that? There needs to be a renewal. There needs to be senior focus J and connection. You mean dying won't be enough? People dying off won't be fast enough?

[33:19]

Maybe shift it over to the bright brain side. Whether we're here or not here, if we pass through and we're here for two years and we go out into the world, It's larger. Yes, yes. Yes, I know that's true. That's a good question. I feel sad when people leave. But if everyone stayed? Well, sometimes people move. There's ways that people can escape without my sadness following them. doing what they, yes, yes, yes, that's true, and yes, bringing it out, no, that's true, that's totally true. Dying to a certain part of the time of their life that may involve Berkley Zen Center? Yes, you're right, you're right, I don't know, I wonder how other people feel about this, but I mean, it's different if someone says that too, you know, if someone, if you were to say, you know, this has been awesome, and I'm just feeling called

[34:20]

in this other direction and I'll be sad not to see you anymore and I'll be sad not to see you anymore and we'll think of each other. Yeah, there'd be a way to do it, yeah. We all have to, yeah, you're right, we all have to follow our journey. If everyone I've known here and become close to over the last 11 years were all still here, there just physically would not be room. I mean, there's that left brain side. But not at morning Zazen. And not at afternoon Zazen either. We have no problem with that. There is no problem. I'm telling you right now, there is no even hint on the horizon of a problem at morning or afternoon Zazen. That's right. And maybe if there were, we'd get a bigger room or have a satellite. I mean, there's various other ways to do it and stay in relationship because it's good if the relationship is still there, I think.

[35:22]

And then I agree that what if, because I have lots of people who I was close to at Tassar, or like people who've left, but some people who've left I still have a heartache about, so I don't know how to answer that. Yes, hi. Hi Laura, thank you for your talk. I'm just following up. I was thinking about the Wednesday night, Jerry's Wednesday night. and Dharma Discussion Group is a very wide gate that a lot of people come through. And there's a few of us that are kind of regulars, and then every week there's four or five new people. And it's really refreshing, this kind of influx of new people and new energy. And then sometimes we see folks on Saturday mornings or afternoons. But one thing that concerns me, I wonder if you can speak to it, is how to, the people that come through the gate, how to help them feel more welcome and more a sense of belonging and a sense of ownership of the experience that they'll come through the gate time and time again.

[36:23]

You know, the only way to do it is to, I hope, start doing stuff. You know, we can't make I don't think I could be wrong about this and I'm open to what other people say But you need to take little jobs. We the only time we really manifest our relationships is when we're working together and so you need to take that step to get to stay for Soji or do come and get a little job or or something, at least that's the way I'm answering you right now. I think you need to step into the three, you know, you've got to engage the three things. You've got to engage the sitting practice and have a relationship with the teacher and muck around and muck about with us, you know, in a way that won't always feel really good and then work with that, you know. Oh, and I forgot to say something.

[37:25]

So glad I remembered this. I wanted to say that if you get really your core issue really triggered, there's no shame in also adding a therapist to the mix of the three things. And in fact, if you live in the Bay Area, it's almost your civic duty to do therapy at some point. Because just to float the economy, you should do some therapy at some point. Or move. Linda? So I love all of your talk today. Well, I love 99.5%. I was getting scared for a minute. I was getting scared for a minute. And about the other 0.5%, that would raise a question. Actually, it's not a disagreement so much as a point of contact, of irritation or something. And it's close to the problem that Ross raised.

[38:28]

You referred to Dogen. I think saying that from the point of view, we're not just saying don't kill, from the point of view of the big mind, that there is no killing, therefore join in that. And so my thought was, and I'm going to stick with it right now, no, no, Ben, you are wrong. There is killing. There is killing. And when I hear you say there's no killing, I want to kill you. What I mean is I get upset. You know, a big mind should be, you know, high molecules are floating around somewhere so there's no killing. But the problem is that the people who are doing the killing are doing so because they are unconnected with their big mind. So their only hope for all of us is to encourage us all to get connected with that, otherwise we'll just keep killing each other. So even though, yeah, it sucks, but

[39:31]

that they're killing each other, not because they're bad, but because they think that's a good idea. I mean, here's another way that the big mind, here's another big mind thing. We're all doing exactly the same thing. The thing that makes the most sense to us at that moment. We're all doing that everywhere, no matter where, the people in Israel, everybody's doing that. The thing that makes the most sense to us at any given moment. Right? So we're all the same. So those people who are killing other people are just like us, exactly like us. They're doing the thing that makes the most sense to them to do at the time. So what can we do? Where's the foothold to change? That's why we're doing this practice, because we think that if they were more connected to their big mind, they would find a way to reach across their... Here's the thing with discriminating mind. As soon as you have two, It's making everything into two, right? And as soon as you have two, the two have to be in a conversation with each other.

[40:34]

As soon as they're not in a conversation with each other, they're killing each other. So as soon as you have two, you have to have a conversation. And if it's not a conversation, then there's no big surprise that people are killing each other. It's a natural outcome. Right? All agreed. I'm just objecting to saying there is no killing. So we'll leave it at that. Yes. What did Dogen mean? Well, what did he mean by no killing, there is no killing? Well, I think that's what I tried to say. He meant that in the biggest looking at the universe, a pulsing energy flow, matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. There's no death, no killing or no death. Yeah, well, right. Barbara? I think you answered my question with the last one.

[41:36]

But, you know, I've been into, and you may know it, there's been 100 years of psychotherapy and the world is getting better. You could say that about Buddhism, unfortunately, too. Except we have 25,000 years. 2,500. 2,500, sorry. That's it. So long as, you know, How long has there been Buddhism? And how long has there been those vows? And the world is getting worse. Well, you know what? I've heard that they've actually done studies. Does anybody hear about this? That there's actually less violence or less violent death on the planet right now than there was some time ago. There's a 650-page book by Steven Pinker, and I don't agree with it. However, I've only read reviews of it. The thing is, we have news now. We have news now.

[42:37]

We have news, right? We have news now. And so we know about a whole bunch of it. And we know in detail about a whole bunch of it. So it might seem like more. And it might even be more because we know about more or something. There might be a way that it's more because we know about more. Yes? Is it more? But there's this thing about sitting without expectation. So then, if you're sitting without expectation, can you expect to change the world? That's a good question. I think you can expect not to. I mean, it's changing. It's always changing. It's going to keep changing. And you are part of the change, and you're going to make it change whatever you do. You're going to bring this kind of change or you're going to bring that kind of change. There's no world that's going along the same that's being changed by a particular thing, right? It's just always changing and we're part of that changing and we have no control over that changing.

[43:41]

There seem to be causes and conditions and changing happens in certain ways by certain laws we can study. Do you have a question there? Is that enough? I wanted to mention that when we do these things like breakfast together and things like chanting, we're trying to do it in a conscious way, in an awake way. So we have a thing we've been trying to do with the chant that we're about to do. So I wanted to invite everybody to join us in this effort. And the effort is to not drag out or emphasize the I, so it's going to go, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them. So there's a tendency to go, and there's also a tendency to hang on the R, so I mean, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to say, no, that's what, you're not supposed to do that, I'm not supposed to do what we're not supposed to do.

[44:47]

But we want to say, I vow. We want to say, sentient beings are numberless. I vow to say that. If you're going to stress something, stress the vow. OK? So can we do that?

[45:02]

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