Good morning. So today we're having our opening session for our fall practice period, which is what we call aspects of practice, focusing on basics. Can you hear okay back here? Yes. And the subject for this practice period is called is basically practicing and studying the forms of our way, which is what we're always doing. We just put this name to it. But I'm just noticing it's just a really beautiful day. The wind is up, the Sky is bright and clear, and for those of you or us who are not in Sechin, let me just let you know there's a weekend of incredible free music in Golden Gate Park at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

[01:10]

It's an astonishing array of people, and it's free. All you have to do is find parking. So, we are going to have our own festival here today, and the music in our heads will be, sometimes it'll be more wonderful than what you could hear here, and sometimes more, maybe not so wonderful, but we're living it. This is what we're doing here. I would like to give a sort of impressionistic introduction to this question of our forms, our rules, our style of practice, and I know that we've done this before, and Sogen's done it, all of the lecturers have talked about it, but I've been thinking about this

[02:18]

a lot. I may have lectured on this koan, but there's a koan in the Mumonkan where a monk asks Zhaozhou, how should I use the 24 hours? And Zhaozhou said, you are used by the 24 hours. This old monk are you talking about? So you, meaning us, we are used by the 24 hours. This old monk, meaning all of us, when we choose to do so, use the 24 hours. Another way of saying this is what Katagiri Roshi said, he's quoted in a book that we'll be using over the course of this month, Living by Vow by Shohaku Okamura and Kategori Roshi is quoted as saying, ordinary people are those who live being pulled around by their karma.

[03:36]

Bodhisattvas are those who live by vow. for me, I think for all of us, how do we use the 24 hours? How do we establish, whether you call it a vow or an intention or mindfulness, but how do we look at You could also call this ritual, if you like, which may be really not comfortable to everybody. But the notion, it's interesting, the root of that word, in Sanskrit, the root,

[04:52]

means the visible order or the lawful and regular order of our normal lives, the proper structure of the universe. And I noticed, as I was thinking about it this morning, when we were doing our meal chant for breakfast, their lines in the meal chant that say, desiring the natural order of mind let us be free from greed hate and delusion. So what that's implying is that there is a natural order of our mind and that when we remove the covering of greed hate and delusion and that's translations those greed hate and delusion are the Sanskrit word is klesha and one of its meanings is covering as if it's a husk or a shell that covers our essential being so you might

[06:19]

consider, and I think this is some of what I want to go into further, we might consider that the practice that we're doing and the mind that we're cultivating by coming here day after day, year after year, is attempted to say, God forbid, it's a way of framing our whole life as ritual, as form. Now, I confess, I have a, that's hard for we have these, what can I say, vectors or tensions in the way that we think of Zen, or at least the way that I think of Zen.

[07:34]

One way that that's been framed is beat Zen and square Zen. going back to the 50s where you had some of the countercultural and bohemian or beatnik, this is a ridiculous word, orientation towards Zen as is counter-cultural, it's rebellion, it's anti-ritual, it's crazy wisdom, it's like whatever you do is Zen. And I actually had a close friend, a musical partner that, this was before I was practicing,

[08:44]

had spent a lot of time in Asia and that was kind of his orientation and it used to drive me crazy, we used to argue all the time. So that's one of the vectors of Zen in America. And then you had all of these teachers who came from Japan, like Suzuki Roshi, and Yasutani Roshi and Maezumi Roshi and others, and they brought what you might call, or what was called sort of squares in, which is like, they wore outfits like we do, right? Some of us do. And it was quite formal. And this was the antithesis, for some people, the antithesis of the kind of freedom that they wanted to associate with Zen.

[09:48]

But I think as we settle into this practice, we're now more than 50 years into it in this country, we're beginning to find our own way, our own form, our own style that is, I don't know what you would call it, it's not beat and it's not square. And I think that Suzuki Roshi really led the way in this, and what he said, which is very interesting, he described Zen as a very formal practice with a very informal mind, and I've been sort of puzzling over what is informal mind, and this is some of what I'd like to explore and

[11:02]

I think what he's implying by informal mind and from a familiarity with Suzuki Roshi's teachings and with Sojin Roshi's teachings and others in our school, that informal mind means the mind that's not stuck on anything. The mind informal means a mind that is fluid, a mind that's capable of perceiving change, a mind that is capable of accepting that our physical and mental realities are changing moment by moment. The outside reality is changing moment by moment. You know, I was sitting here, I don't know, 20 minutes ago and the trees were wild with the wind and now it's dropped off.

[12:17]

Where did that wind go? So that informal mind is the mind that can move with everything that arises and this is what we are training in. As we sit here today in Sachine, we get a very strong taste of that, a taste of our own minds and a taste of the continuing transformation of reality moment by moment and we we have it today but we also have it in the context of our practice which just amazingly unfolds over week by week, year by year, decade by decade. This is really unusual.

[13:20]

So for me, part of the conundrum also is built into the name that Sojourn gave me. I think that I came to this practice with that kind of orientation towards beat zen, just almost intellectual literary one, or I thought I had that. I thought I had that orientation. And I was very surprised when I came to practice here to discover that I actually really liked the forms, that I really resonated with them. And then, at the same time, I thought, wait, I don't like this kind of stuff.

[14:42]

This is not who I am. But evidently, in part, it was. there must have been some yearning that I wasn't in touch with for that formal side and I became attached to it. And so when it came time after a few years to have lay ordination, So, Jinroshi gave me my Dharma names, as he does and we do, and I tend to use the first name, I've talked about this before, the first name is Hozon, which means Dharma Mountain, which is kind of a nice, it's a nice image and it sounds good.

[15:54]

but the actual Dharma name that he gave me, the second of the names, is Kushiki. And I really, I was not happy with this name. Kushiki, so if you, for those of us, you know, when we chant the the Heart Sutra in Japanese and we're always talking about ku and shiki. Ku is emptiness or formlessness and shiki is form. So form is emptiness, emptiness is form, and so on. We're always saying this in English or in Japanese. And so my name, Kushiki, to me was like, forget it, what does this mean? And sometimes that second name is, it's instructional or prescriptive, it's supposed to help lead you in a direction that one needs to work on.

[17:16]

And so the message, I think, the overt message that Sojin was giving me with this name was, don't be so attached to the forms. And see how you can figure out a way to manifest the forms in a formless fashion, there's the other side to manifest formlessness in a formal fashion and You know, this is an unusual name and we would go we have had these naming workshops with our Japanese teachers and people from Soto Shu come over here and Twice we've had these in both times they singled out my name as bad example.

[18:20]

This is not a name we would give anybody. The more that they did it, the more I liked the name. Because I have a continuing opportunity to learn from that name, to learn to work with how does one manifest formlessness in a formal fashion and form in a formless fashion. And this in a way is the conundrum or it's the question for all of us. There's a wonderful lecture that I found. I dig around a lot on Google. and when I dig in certain areas around Dogen or around Suzuki Roshi's teachings or certain Zen topics, it's interesting that because we've been posting BCC lectures online for a long time now, they come up often in Google searches.

[19:44]

lecture from, or an essay by Sojin that was, he wrote it in 1987 for the Minnesota Zen Center's magazine, Udumbara, and it was also reprinted here in 2002. It's already 11 years ago. But in 87, when he wrote this we were sort of 20 years into practice at Berkeley Zen Center and it's his the title is practicing with form and he talks about he said when I first came to the Zen Dojo the practice forms were foreign to me but at the same time I respected them and wished to do them It wasn't long before I realized that the teaching was right there within the forms.

[20:50]

More properly, the forms took on meaning according to my willingness to enter into them wholeheartedly. I think that that's what we're encouraged to do. This willingness to enter them wholeheartedly is one side, and we also might notice that we have some resistance. And this is the tension of practice, I think, that we have. I think that all religious disciplines have this. We're pulled Sometimes we can enter it wholeheartedly, sometimes we will resist or we'll notice our resistance. And he touches on this idea of the tension within sin.

[22:07]

He said, even though I enjoyed the forms, I realized that there's another side, our daily life in the world, which is not formal in the Zendo sense, but nevertheless has its own forms, which are very strict. We often hear that there is no special form of Zen. So that's kind of the beat side. But in order to recognize something, it has to have form. In the Zendo, there is a recognizable form of Zen practice. That's what we're doing today. You can hear it, see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, and think about it. But those forms are only the forms of Zen when we enter them with the proper spirit and bring them to life. Suzuki Roshi talked about this also. And that's where Sojin got his own understanding, obviously.

[23:12]

Suzuki Roshi talks about the pure rules, or pure forms. And what he says is, the difference between usual rules, which is like, you have to do something this way, and our rules is that our rules have freedom in them. The rules which have no freedom are not pure rules. The restricted side and the freedom side in our pure rules is one. And how we take care of our rules is how we take care of our practice. This is what Sojin is getting at. He says, so in a sense, we are always involved in formal practice, in coursing through the emptiness of all forms.

[24:21]

So always involved in formal practice. And this is the other side of what Suzuki Roshi talked about, the formless side, but then he also talked about the fact that he defined the precepts as just our way of life, our ordinary way of life. So when he was describing the precepts he said, well when you get up in the morning you wash your face, that's a precept. You brush your teeth, that's a precept. You have breakfast, that's a precept. So this is a way of understanding how these forms naturally manifest in our lives. And the question is, how do we develop them? And there's an interesting section, and some of us see ourselves doing this or have seen ourselves doing this.

[25:32]

What Sogen Roshi says is, I really enjoyed imitating Suzuki Roshi. I always tried to do things the way he did them, in much the same way that I followed the forms in the Zendo. I found myself talking like him, which I think meant leaving out articles in your sentences. And my movements took on some of his characteristics. This is true of many of his disciples and I see it in the disciples of other teachers as well. It just seemed like a natural way to do things. Studying with him was like an apprenticeship. Suzuki Roshi himself said once that imitating a teacher is a very common practice. The student walks in the teacher's footsteps. The object, of course, is that after the student fully absorbs the teacher, the student becomes fully him or herself and develops his or her own way.

[26:40]

And then he gives an example. The great jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie absorbed and played Roy Eldridge note for note, then went on to develop his own unique style. This is to internalize the teacher. and to find your own way, your own voice. Sometimes it is said that the student should surpass the teacher. He says, I've yet to see that happen. But I will say at least that the student should become his or her own person. That's safe to say. Surpass, not surpass, we don't even know what that means. But this is a way that we learn. The danger is that the student will stick to imitating the teacher without finding herself.

[27:48]

So sometimes the teacher must push the student out. I'm reading from Sojin's piece. Whenever I came to Suzuki Roshi with a question or a problem, he would inevitably turn it into a koan for me and then he'd say, oh I'm sorry you came with a question and I've given you another problem. Then he would laugh. The connection was established and I was turned out on my own. I think it was the laugh that allowed me to see my problem in a much bigger context. So our teachers One of the things that they're teaching us is a kind of lightness, that even though we may be suffering, even though we may have a problem, can we hold it lightly? Can we even laugh?

[28:52]

And can we encourage others to laugh? So the last point in this essay is the last point I want to touch on here before we get to discuss this. Sotiroshi says, my observation is that even though our practice has been for lay people as well as for monastics, the forms are always monastic or semi-monastic. And here he makes a critical statement. He says, what is basically lacking are forms which validate and make recognizable our lay life. I am a priest, but the people with whom I practice are mostly lay people. I can identify with both sides and indeed live a life which includes both sides. says, I'm as much at home at a Tassajara practice period as I am practicing with my family in the city.

[30:06]

But many students live their lives involved with the world. And there is a real need to develop forms which help us to recognize and appreciate the lotus in muddy water. So this, I think, is the challenge. This is one of the things we've been working on here for the whole existence of Berkeley Zen Center. What is the way that we somehow translate, integrate this formal side of practice with what we see to be the less clearly formal side of our lives in the world. Are they separate? Is that a dualistic way of looking at it? Or are they just on a continuum in which the emphasis falls just in slightly different places?

[31:17]

How do we do that? If we're just concentrating on this formal side, and sometimes people come to Berkeley Zen Center or other Zen centers and they want to run away screaming because it seems so formal to them. Now, I don't think of it that way, but I understand how someone might perceive it. nonetheless for those of us who stay we live in the world, we live with our jobs and our children and government shut down and all of the both the joys and the fears and the challenges the form of our practice emerge in that context?

[32:22]

To me that is the question that I think we want to address in the course of this month. To maintain, as Suzuki Roshi said, to maintain this formal practice at the same time as to maintain and honor the informal mind. So, I'd like to leave some time for discussion or comments or questions. The floor is open. Go ahead. I wonder if you could speak a little bit more on being freedom or equaling, being equal to freedom or allowing freedom. You kind of touched on that. I guess I think of, you know, I went over to Hardly Strictly yesterday and heard a little music and there was a really good bluegrass band that was on called Seldom Seen, and that's a form

[34:01]

that their music is very formal. And I've been playing that particular music for more than 50 years. So I understand that form kind of inside out. And to the extent that I understand that form and try to do it, when I'm actually entering the form, there's nothing but that form. There's nothing but that music. The form allows me to enter it completely. We were talking about this yesterday in a study group. In the large way, it applies as in Genjo Koan, where it speaks of birth and death. In the moment of birth, everything is birth.

[35:06]

There is nothing outside of that. So the freedom is within the complete expression and immersion in that activity. It's an immersion that includes time and space entirely. And the same thing is true when we're dying. So those are the, you know, we could see those as sort of bookends of our life, if you want, but it's also true of any activity that we're doing. If you go to a fire, there's just what's happening in that moment, which has its own form, that you enter completely. And if you enter it completely, you're not being pulled off by extraneous thoughts, you're just fully entering that activity.

[36:11]

So, to me, that's a definition of freedom. Ed? Yeah, the last thing you were talking about, and I'm wondering, could you give some examples of how the forms help us navigate our way outside the gate? I think that my own experience is that we're doing something very unusual here. And I think Sochin, he spoke about this and it kind of got my attention a few months ago. He said when he started, he sort of expected people would come and go.

[37:15]

He didn't have this idea that people would come and not go. That they would stay for 10, 20, 30 years doing this practice. which I think is very unusual in the history of Buddhism and it's just such a gift for us, for those of us who are doing it, because I can't exactly point and somebody else might have a more clear expression of this, but I think that as we come here day after day, year after year, we are gradually manifesting continuous practice, and that is what we bring to our daily life, even if we don't know it.

[38:19]

it's like where you could say we're sort of reprogramming our brains and bodies into the realm of practice, and so it may happen, you know, the metaphor for Soto Zen practice is, oh it's like walking in a fog, you know, you keep walking and after a while you realize you're totally the kind of experience that's available to us by just the longevity and dedication to this practice. Some of you may have a more precise response to how we bring that. Katie? I was reflecting on form and our relationship with form as you were talking. was thinking that the communal nature of the forms is really important to me.

[39:28]

So it's beyond that I'm doing them because I'm a good girl and I want to fit in or something. I'm joining something that has been brought to us through practitioners, the agents, and that is convening all these people. It's something that can be beyond my preferences. And then I was really struck by what you were saying about form in our everyday life and the practice that we bring or practice of in everyday life. And I guess I don't have as much of a sense of minimal form in that. And I know that a few times in Dholakstan, the discussion of my problem at the moment has led to some small form that I'm going to use.

[40:36]

Bring to mind your practice. But that's different. And I'm thinking of some of the practices that the technology community uses of every time you hear a phone, you're taking between mindful breaths. Well, I think this is what Suzuki Roshi was talking about when he spoke about the precepts as our way of life. So one thing, if you think of the precepts as forms, or you think of forms as precepts, I think what's helpful to me is to recognize that all of the Bodhisattva precepts, they're completely about relationship. Completely. You know, not killing, not stealing. You start looking down that list of the formal precepts, they're all, they suggest ways in which we can manifest

[41:49]

this natural and wholesome way of relating to each other which is entirely communal and relating to ourselves as well and relating to the things around us but primarily those are instructions for the way people relate to people and once you start thinking that way then you see how the entire the practice pervades our social life and also the other way around, how our social life pervades the practice. The Buddha did not create a system of kind of hermits. all of the rules that he organized were not, that he brought forth and articulated, they were not abstractions, they were actually particular guidances which had to do with relationship.

[43:06]

So I think of them in that way and all of the forms that we have, you know, in the Zendo you know, how we bow to each other, how we bow to our seats, how we hold things, how we walk, are a way of taking care, they're not abstractions, they're actually ways of taking care of our environment and our society. So maybe one more. Yeah? Thank you. This is a great conversation. Something that I keep remembering in all of this is a conversation I had years ago. where I'm someone who tends to move a lot, move away and come back. Notice that. Yeah. It's nice to see you here today. Thank you. Susan told me, she brought me a postcard of this painting that we met with a unicorn inside a fence. Oh yeah.

[44:08]

And told me that I was like a unicorn and that I needed a fence in order to become free. Which of course, I was 24 years old at the time. Unicorns don't need fences. They need to run wild. They're unicorns. But over the years, it's really become really meaningful to me, that idea of a container as something that can provide freedom. And also that if you are able to be free within a container, then you'll be able to be free anywhere. And lastly, I just wanted to share a reflection. The first time I ever came to Zen was at Greenwatch. And they taught us all these forms. And I was really surprised to find how much the forms allowed me to settle, because I didn't have to make decisions. Like, since I didn't have to make a decision about what to do with my hands or how to sit on my cushion, I could just be in the experience of doing those things.

[45:09]

And it's something I always really loved about them, is that specificity that allows you to actually be more present. Thank you. Well, I think the relevant teaching of Suzuki Roshi is in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in his chapter, I think it's called Control. He talks about if you want to control, to control is like giving your horse or cow a large pasture, right? Now the implication is there's a fence around this pasture. So this is a conundrum for us, but actually what came to mind was, oh, you believe in unicorns. That's pretty cool. And I think that's where we'll stop.

[46:03]

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