It's wonderful to see all of you here this morning, and there are many familiar faces and many old friends from Berkeley Zen Center, from other realms of life, and I welcome you all here. So we're nearly two months into our national and international practice period. This is not the practice period we had anticipated from the spring, but it's what we got. And as in so many other social endeavors and organizations, BCC has had to reinvent our Zen practice. We've had to strip away everything that seemed in the moment in essential.

[01:00]

And, uh, we've also had to seemingly sacrifice things that we might actually consider essential. And as Sojan has been saying, and other teachers I know have been saying, this is in fact, true practice, settling our minds, and really seeing and asking, how do we act and how do we practice when we are up against the limits of our lives? This is why we're actually not practicing, we're actually doing it. We see that millions of people around the world are suffering. And at the same time, as we know, some of us are actually enjoying the spaciousness and the creativity that have inadvertently come with the pandemic.

[02:12]

But sorrow and loss are never very far away. On Wednesday in New York City, The 47 year old son of one of my very oldest friends died of a COVID related stroke. He was in really in very good health in the prime of life. He left behind a young daughter and a wife and family and none of them could be by his side when he died. And none of them could come and be with his body after he had died. There are millions, certainly hundreds of thousands of people who are having this experience.

[03:22]

My friend whose son died had been more or less enjoying the open quality of his days. And now he is devastated. How do we hold that? We have a Bodhisattva vow. Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. or in the Sixth Ancestors version, sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them all. This is our vow in the midst of the pandemic and it has always been our vow. Zen practice and really human life turn on our response to this vow.

[04:28]

Actually, it turns on one fundamental question. How? How? As we read in the old Chinese poem, Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, the meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. How will we sustain our practice in this moment? In each moment? In the next moment and the next one? When there is suffering and at the same time as I'm sitting here, I can hear the birds outside in the trees. I can hear the crows whose feet are scratching on the rooftop over my head.

[05:31]

How can we help each other awaken? How can we settle all of those wild sentient beings of our own minds? I was deeply moved two weeks back When Sojin Roshi offered his endorsement of my prospective leadership in this community, as we move from the founder's generation, which was Sojin's and Sojin's life, to the next generation. Many of us in that generation are online right now. Like many of us, I feel that Sojin Roshi and through him, Suzuki Roshi, Dogen Zenji, and countless ancestors have given me my life.

[06:44]

Not just, not just Zen or Zen practice, but really everything. My family, who I met in, you know, Lori, who I met in the practice, the children who were born here and grew up here, my work at Berkeley Zen Center in the world, and what little steadiness of mind I have gathered. Half a life ago, Before I came to Berkeley Zen Center, I had capabilities and many questions, but my life was completely unsettled. And I felt that I had run out of whatever little script I had been given.

[07:54]

And then I came here. And I've been sharing my life with this community and with Sojourn Roshi for more than 35 years. With Sojourn Roshi, often we agree. We agree on the essentials. We agree on the practice. I have no wish to alter or change that practice. And Sometimes I don't agree with everything he says or does. And the reverse is also true. And sometimes he has moved to offer me correction or criticism. To the best of my ability, whether the words are coming from him or coming from you,

[08:59]

I really try not to hold on tightly to my opinions. And if there are criticisms, I've learned to look for what is true or correct in those criticisms, no matter how difficult they may be to hear in that moment. So this is intimacy and relationship. I've been blessed to experience this in my connection with Sojin and with so many of you who have been practicing here. We've been practicing together as sisters and brothers with all of the family dynamics that that implies. And I'm grateful to live and practice here at Berkeley Zen Center where Sogen's door is always open, where the door to the temple is always open, except for now.

[10:16]

And some of us are actually growing old in the practice here. But I don't actually make a distinction between the seasoned practitioners and those who have just come through the door. Each person is a Buddha and must be appreciated and respected in just that sense. Sojin asked, I think in that talk two weeks ago, he asked me to clarify what I would be offering as practice. And just as Sojin has always offered an open door where you can knock at any time and he will invite you in, my instinct is the same.

[11:18]

Though I confess it's not as, maybe not as perfected as his. But my door is always open my phone and email is available. And as a family, uh, Lori and I and our children have always had this open door policy, welcoming Sankha members at any hour, welcoming guests into our home to visit or stay sometimes for a long time. So now at Berkeley Zen Center, we are smack in the middle of impermanence, which of course is always the case. The corona pandemic is still unfolding.

[12:25]

It's not over. We don't quite know when it's over, even though there's a kind of, unstoppable force towards return to normalization. I don't particularly want to be hasty about that. And so the question in this impermanence is how do we meet our present circumstances? And also how do we meet the generational shift that we are encountering with love and grace, with the deepest appreciation for Sojon Roshi and for all of our teachers, and with the determination to hold the practice for ourselves.

[13:30]

Talking with Lori over the last two months, just as Soton raised the question of what will I offer or how will I offer myself to the Sangha, we have raised this question ourselves. What I came to or what we've come to is that I want to offer myself with a sense of, with that open door and with a sense of warmth and love and patience.

[14:37]

Dogen Zenji, our, 13th century Zen icon speaks about a set of practices in his essay, Tenzo Kyokun, which is instructions to the cook, how to prepare food for the monastic community. And at the end of that essay, he talks about three minds. And I've spoken about this before, but I return to it as essential to how I would like to practice and how I would like to be of use to the Sangha and how I would encourage you to practice, to take on these practices for your own sake and for the sake of others.

[15:41]

So he speaks of, of these three minds and, uh, I'll unpack them a little bit. The first mind is joyful mind, uh, which is Kishin in Japanese. The second mind Roshin is variously translated as kind, compassionate, parental mind, I like the translation in some of the versions as grandmotherly mind. That makes it really vivid to me when I think about my paternal grandmother and she had this mind towards me, one of infinite kindness and acceptance. And the third mind, which is called Daishin.

[16:46]

Daishin means big mind or magnanimous mind. There are other minds that we could invoke, of which these are aspects. There's Buddha mind, which includes them all. And there's beginner's mind, uh, Soshin, which Suzuki Roshi speaks of, and we know it's kind of our watchword and it, that really translates as, uh, the mind of not knowing, which means the mind that is open and is completely receptive. At any rate, Suzuki Roshi spoke about these three functions, these three minds, joyful mind, kind mind, and magnanimous mind as functions of Buddha mind.

[17:55]

And I'll quote you something from one of his talks. Joyful mind means having a joyful attitude towards our life. A person of joyful mind is contented with his or her lot, even in adversity. One can find Buddha's grace in difficult circumstances. One feels pleasure even in painful conditions. In this way, one can experience spiritual joy and realize that the world of birth and death is the world of nirvana. And then he finishes this paragraph with an interesting statement. Joyful mind is the volitional aspect of Zen mind. So, you know, you may not see that your joy is arising, but you can have that aspiration and you can move in that direction and

[19:08]

That's our practice. Our practice is realizing what is arising and at the same time it's cultivating the aspects of our lives, the aspects of our true nature that need to arise. So that's volitional. That's vow. We vow to let that joy arise. And I think that if you've been practicing for a while, you can see that. If you can't see it in yourself, you can see it in people around you. There's something that, there's a lightening that happens to us where the joy just emerges and people laugh more, they take, they take themselves less seriously, which is quite different from not take, they take what they do seriously, but they don't take themselves seriously.

[20:18]

They let that joy infuse all of their activities. So then he speaks of this kind mind or compassionate mind, The compassionate mind is the affectionate mind of a parent. Parents always think of the welfare of their children to the neglect of their own circumstances. At least that's what parenting functional families do. And compassion allows courage. This is kind mind. Dogen speaks of this. He said, so-called kind mind is the spirit of fathers and mothers.

[21:20]

It is like a father and mother who dote on their only child. It is like a father and mother who dote on their only child. One's thoughts of the three treasures are like their concentration on that one child. Even if they are poor or desperate, they strongly love and nurture that child. People can only understand it when they themselves becomes fathers and mothers. I'm not sure that that's true. But what he's saying is that the attitude that we have learned to cultivate for our children and those we love closely is the attitude that we should have for the three treasures, for Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And it's the attitude that we should have for all sentient beings.

[22:23]

The third mind is magnanimous mind. And Suzuki Roshi says, the magnanimous mind is as big as a mountain and as deep as a sea. I'm sorry, I left something out. I want to go back. The final sentence of Suzuki Roshi's passage is, a kindly mind is the emotional function of Zen mind. I don't know if you hear this tapping, there's, it's either an animal on the roof, or there's an animal in our house, but I'm not going to go search for it. So it's the emotional function. If joyful mind is the volitional function. This compassionate mind is is what arises in our mode in our emotions and what we call our feelings.

[23:30]

So to magnanimous mind, Magnanimous mind is as big as a mountain and as deep as a sea. A person with magnanimous mind is impartial. He walks the middle way. That person is never attached to one side or an aspect of things. The magnanimous mind works justly and impartially. And this denotes the intellectual function of Buddha mind. In other words, this is actually, this is wisdom. Wisdom is, it's actually, if we're looking at the wisdoms, and that's another talk, the four wisdoms in Mahayana Buddhism, it's the great mirror wisdom. It's the wisdom It's also the second wisdom, which is the wisdom of equality.

[24:35]

Uh, and the third wisdom is the wisdom of impartiality and the fourth wisdom. I am going into this fourth wisdom is the wisdom of action. So, uh, this magnanimous mind is the mirror mind that reflects everything. A mirror does not choose what to reflect or what not to reflect. It reflects whatever, comes in, it is receptive to everything that is coming towards it and it reflects it back so that we can see that. Um, and this is the workings of our mind. This is our minds. If we have the developed this intellectual function of wisdom, then we are able to see everything just as reflection and as equal and without partiality, because we can see that everything is just causes and conditions that are streaming our way.

[25:42]

And that includes ourselves. So the whole Zen mind, this is where she says, the whole Zen mind, Bodhi mind is the harmonious unity of intellect, emotion, and volition. and it's equipped with intelligence, benevolence, and compassion. Suzuki Roshi writes, our practice is how we treat things, how to make friends, and how to study our teachings. Anyway, our way is limitless. So without being satisfied and without stopping our effort, we should express big mind. This is the Buddha life. So this is my intention as we go forward here, whether we're in this pandemic situation or whether we've returned to so-called normality, whatever that is, I want to encourage you to try to practice with that warmth

[27:01]

that intelligence and that compassion. And, you know, it's my vow to try to do that with you. Recognizing that we each have our own way. We each have our own feelings. We each have our own wounds and difficulties. And just recognizing that is the condition of this samsaric world that we occupy. And if we can recognize that as the common condition, then we can find some freedom from the fixed belief that that's the way things are. And we can allow ourselves

[28:03]

the flexibility and fluidity to receive the circumstances of our life and to ask again and again, how? How do I meet this? How do I come forward? And how will I live? How will I practice? So I think that's what I would like to say today. And I've tried to be relatively concise. So we have some time for questions and answers. And I think that Tom is going to facilitate the raising of hands. Is that correct? Yes. If you'd like to raise your hand, you can do it on your Zoom screen. Or you can also enter your question in the chat function at the bottom of your screen, and I'll convey the question to Hozon.

[29:07]

So whatever works better for you. And it looks like we already have a raised hand from Ed Herzog. So. Hi. Thank you, Hozon, for your talk. My question is that I have a good friend who's in the past, he's a Trump supporter. And in the past, we've been able to continue our friendship and we have a sort of an agreement where we don't talk about politics. But now with the pandemic and everything, He believes that this, he mouths the line that this is a hoax. And it's brought up a lot of feelings for me.

[30:11]

A lot of anger and a lot of fear. And I'm having a real difficult time even being in his presence. So my question is, how do I hold him? And how do I hold this in myself? I'm thinking of a quotation from a sermon by Dr. King, a sermon called Loving Your Enemies. And basically what he says, which is very difficult practice, he says, You just keep loving them. You keep loving them and loving them. And after a while they can't stand it and they just break down in the face of that love. Now, if you can do that, that's really good. Um, and if you can't, if you don't trust your responses in proximity to this person, step back and

[31:21]

you know, you can limit your communication. But in the Buddhist texts, what Buddha Gose, who wrote the Path of Purification said, so finally, if words haven't worked, if practices haven't worked, give that person a gift, literally. you know, you can do that because the gift is a literal expression of connection. And so that's something you can try. You, we try these things that we don't, there's no guarantee they're going to work, but we have to try. You know, if you're caught in afflictive emotions, which is totally understandable, step back for that moment. But then once you step back, and the immediate latency period of that affliction has passed, then remember your connection and your love.

[32:30]

Hey, Hozon, there's a question from Helen. It says, what do you advise in moments of activation when warmth, intentionality, and wisdom are not available to us? I advise something along the lines of what I just said. And this is what I, let me just say, this is my practice. I am not immune from being triggered. And to be quite honest with you, I've met a lot of even great teachers, people that we really admire. You know, I've never met anyone that didn't get angry. So when that happens to me, I really step back. I do not engage in that state of mind.

[33:38]

I try to step back and I literally ask myself, I tell myself, I recognize I am triggered now and this really feels awful. And I asked myself, how will this feel in an hour? How will this feel tonight? How will it feel tomorrow morning? And then in those intervals, I check. And what I see is the incredible urgency of that first moment, uh, tends to wane. Uh, it doesn't mean that the pain goes away, uh, completely, or that a sense of injustice or being wronged doesn't entirely, it doesn't entirely disappear, but the emotional, energy of that initial impulse is, is much less.

[34:47]

And so what that tells me is that I am looking at the operation of impermanence. And, uh, I think that, uh, I don't know, Laurie, are you teaching a class today? Tomorrow? Tomorrow. Laurie's teaching a class tomorrow on, on Suzuki Roshi. Uh, and I think that the subject of that class is, Believing in nothing. That's, that's very good. Believe in nothing, you know, or, uh, if you want to live your life according to, uh, the bumper sticker that's on my car. So don't believe everything that you think. Don't believe everything that you feel. So I really recommend that practice of literally asking yourself, how will this feel in an hour? How will this feel tonight? And so forth. Um, That's something you can do. Thank you. Also, my tech support person told me to remind everyone, if you'd like to ask a question verbally, feel free to unmute yourself, which is in the tile where your picture is in the upper right.

[35:59]

And if you'd rather do it via chat, that's fine, too, because I'm looking at that. And we now have a question from Preston. And Preston, if you please unmute yourself and ask your question. Hosan, what stood out to me in your talk is this distinction between taking ourselves seriously and taking what we do seriously. I'm wondering if you could say more about that distinction and maybe offer some advice on taking ourselves less seriously? Well, we have to learn to laugh. I don't know. I think that... What about the seriously part?

[37:04]

Yeah, well, there's a seriously part too. But the not serious part is Uh, it's really stepping back from our judgments of ourselves and allowing, this is, this is allowing beginners mind, you know, allowing, allowing yourself to make mistakes, recognizing that mistakes happen and having some lightness and sense of humor about yourself. Uh, and you know, I feel like that's a, I've been, I've been learning that, and so if I make a mistake, and it comes up around the smallest things around, if you're doing a Doan position, or you're doing something in the Zendo, and you make a so-called mistake, if you berate yourself at that moment, then actually you've lost the moment. If you berate yourself, you're gonna miss the next thing that you need to do.

[38:09]

And, you know, whereas if you take yourself lightly, you know, there's a small laugh or a recognition like, well, I'm human, you know, and I need to move on. So that's in a general sense what I mean by taking yourself not so seriously. The taking seriously part means throw yourself completely into everything that you do. Do it with complete wholeheartedness. Don't do it halfway. And that is also really the mark of our practice. So you throw yourself completely into this activity, whether it's zazen, or it's relationship, or it's work, or it's playing music, or whatever, and recognize that there are going to be errors that's only human and appreciate them.

[39:16]

Appreciate that the errors themselves mean I'm alive. So that's where I would start. Okay. Ross has a question for you. Okay. Can you hear me? Yep. Great. Sweet Pea has a question. So, Hozon, thank you for your talk. And Sweet Pea's question is around the bumper sticker, actually, and somewhat related to Preston's question. Could you say a little bit about how we practice intentionality and believe in our aspirations for waking up and the practices around that? but not taking it so seriously that we lose, um, the intention.

[40:18]

It's easy for someone to look at that bumper sticker and say, don't believe everything you think. And then you go around doubting, Oh my God, what should I believe? So just to distinguish those two. Thanks so much. Yeah. Well, I think that don't believe everything you think just means to, to hold, uh, to, to hold what you think. with some lightness and transparency so that you recognize whatever I think may be different may actually, I can also, this is magnanimous mind. If I think something, I should recognize with that intellectual faculty, oh, there may be another way of looking at this. And to look at it, so to look at it that way, But it's not, I think it's really important not to translate that as whatever. Or that everything is okay the way it is.

[41:22]

Honestly, the way the government has the way the federal government to me, this is my opinion, where the federal government to me has acted is not okay. They haven't taken responsibility in an organized way for the pandemic the way maybe I would like or the way other people that I trust, scientists, medical people might like. That's not I just can't say whatever. But the way it's unfolding is all of us, I have to deal with what's happening moment by moment. So my friend's son's death is terrible. It hit me in the gut. And I understand he's angry.

[42:26]

But he also has a spiritual practice, so he doesn't want to get caught in that anger as what it all boils down to. But his anger is not inappropriate. So that's kind of where I'd start. With regard to the government and wanting it to do more work and to be more proactive, you believe that, right? I believe that, yes. Yes. Okay. So it's believing but holding it lightly. Right. It's believing and also Even if I believe that, and I think we can work for that, we can lobby, we can write, we can express our opinions, we also have to be able to come to terms with things as they are unfolding moment by moment and not get destroyed by them. That's a great response. Thank you so much. Time for one more, I think, or two more.

[43:28]

I see Susan Moon and Heiko, and then we will end. So, Susan? Okay, well, thank you for your talk, Alan. I just want to acknowledge the first part of your talk, which I so appreciated when you responded really appropriately and sort of in kind to Sojin's talk two weeks ago with a sort of long view of your role at Berkeley's NCENTER. And I was very moved by hearing you talk about what it's meant to you in your whole lifespan and to your family and your commitment and to just acknowledge that that's so important and it's been important to me and to see your family and your kids growing up there and you and Lori practicing together and as a family, how you've provided such a rock for Berkley's Inn Center and how wonderful it is that you're carrying forward your open door policy. And I was thinking as you were talking of all the many guests from all over the world who've stayed in your

[44:33]

apartment and so the kind of interconnectedness that you bring to BCC and your willingness to change and adapt and develop yourself as you take on more responsibility. And I've seen how you've done that. And I just want to thank you very, very much for bringing that forward in a modest way this morning as you did. Thank you, Sue. And I just want to acknowledge how long our friendship has been, how closely we have worked together at Buddhist Peace Fellowship and in our efforts in the world. And you're somebody I feel very close to. So thank you. Your words mean a lot to me. Eiko, you may have the last word. Let's see.

[45:40]

Or not. Yes, there we go. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. I wanted to, I recently read, and highlighting what Hozon was saying, but also an article about this time, we have a great deal of loss and regret and opportunity for rumination. And we also have a great deal of time to do it. And so the article was focusing on how, what Hozon was saying really, but we need to distinguish between the loss and the things in the past that we need to really emotionally connect with and the things that we regret. And this is the article was using the regret and rumination And the idea of regret is we can look into it and say, oh, in the future, I can do something otherwise. OK, but distinguishing between what we can apply volition to and what is something that we need to experience and let go is really highlighted at this time.

[46:54]

And the practice opportunity is to choose when we make a mistake, for example, in the forums or in our practice, to say, oh, okay, here's an opportunity for mindfulness application. And when we recognize the loss of a loved one or the loss of our opportunities, also, we can say, okay, this is something I have in my being to experience, and I have to do that, but it's not the same sort of play it over again, what can I do or what was wrong with that? And I think that rumination is really, according to this article's use of the word, wasting our time in a sense. Regret is the idea of processing it so that we can get somewhere. And I think Ozan's feeling tone was that actually that rumination is something we had to stay with our loss and yet recognize it's not the same as something we need to look into and change our behavior about.

[47:56]

I wonder if you could comment on that. Yeah, I want to comment just briefly. Just to say, some of you might know, there are all kinds of tools we have for looking at our lives, at our emotional states, our physical states. I tend to gravitate towards Buddhist tool sets. So we need the, for me, I like to look at the Buddhist Swiss army knife, whatever that is. Um, but so what comes to mind, and again, it's another talk is I encourage you to read the, the, uh, patients, the Shanti Paramita, the patient's chapter of Shanti Deva's, the Bodhisattva's way of life. And within that, there are verses would say, Essentially, if I'm suffering and there's something, there are conditions and circumstances that I can change, then I should change them.

[49:07]

and don't ruminate on the suffering. And if I'm suffering and there are circumstances that I can't change, then what's the point of ruminating on them and making more suffering for myself? That's just, I'm paraphrasing, but that's a good place to end. So I just wanna end like, please enjoy your life and enjoy the connections that we have with each other and enjoy and appreciate the fact that we have this practice that we can do. So thank you very much and have a good weekend.

[49:52]

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