Well, good morning everyone. We have people on three continents here today. In Berkeley, it seems that we're having a heat wave. The day is heating up. And I know that places all over the world are encountering this incredible heights of temperature that certainly are convincing evidence that global warming of human influences is a significant factor. And I think another time we will talk about that in greater detail.

[01:04]

I'm going to let me just switch to gallery view so I can see all of you or as many of you as possible. We are in the summer here in Berkeley, and we are moving towards what we're calling a soft opening of Berkeley Zen Center at the beginning of August. And that is going to entail a number of different changes in the way we schedule things and the way we do things. But mostly on my mind right now is the question of our formal practice and the training for that, and how that weaves together with the rest of our lives, which is also a question of training.

[02:14]

So what I've been doing, particularly before the practice period, I was delving into some of Sojin Roshi's teachings. And there's just, as I've said before, there's an incredible wealth of material. There's something close to 2,500 lectures that he has given. And very shortly, you'll be able to access many of these as audio files online. And we'll also recruit you because we need your help in doing some of the searchable data for those lectures. So again, we'll talk about that later. There are two lectures that I found by Sojin that are relevant to the question

[03:21]

that I wanted to explore and also raise with you. First one is from a lecture that he gave in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1995. It begins, at the end of a recent session, a student said, you know, if we didn't have all that formality in the Zendo, there wouldn't be anything to this at all. It's like the emperor's clothes. Sojin writes, from one point of view, that statement looks like a very accurate statement. Although we talk about the form of Zen, there is no special form. Since Zen is nothing more than the practice of our life, it follows that whatever forms our life takes

[04:22]

can be the forms of practice. Even though that is so, it doesn't mean that we are always aware of them. So our predecessors developed certain recognizable forms like Zazen, bowing, chanting, holding our hands this way or bowls this way. And when we enter these forms, we can recognize practice. We can see it because it has a shape. When I came to practice, I saw myself as a very informal person and irreligious, too. I wasn't really interested, I didn't think, in religion, and I didn't think I was interested in forms. At least I wasn't interested in ritual,

[05:35]

perhaps. And I was surprised to find very quickly that I loved the forms that we had in the Zendo. This was a surprise to me. And I'll also say, and this is laying out a bunch of really big questions that I'd like to address, that I saw our Zen practice, I saw it as Zen Buddhism. I understood it to be the practice of Buddha Dharma, which by some definition you might call a religion, as opposed to something called Zen without the Buddhism as a, as kind of a practice

[06:47]

or a path or something that was not religious, but was sort of, was existential, if you like. I always understood it as Buddha Dharma. I don't know why. And I related to the forms that way. And then as I looked at my life, I saw that I had been very well trained in forms that I didn't see as forms. Most of that training, I mean, the problem, the reason that I saw myself as not religious and as opposed to ritual was because I had religious training forced on me as a young person. And it was not particularly meaningful. Also, it was not skillfully delivered. But my

[07:56]

training as such had been and sort of continues to be my training as a musician. My training as a musician was about training in a tradition or in traditions. In other words, learning a really deep traditional artistic expression. And like Zen, that expression was not something that I was born to. It was something that resonated with me on such a deep level. You know, as Zen does, my roots, my family roots are in Eastern Europe and in Judaism. But Zen fully resonated with me.

[08:56]

My musical roots or my cultural roots were in, you know, listening to show tunes and rock and roll. And when I heard these various Southern musics that I play, old time music, Cajun music, bluegrass, that was it. You know, that was like, that was what I wanted to do and have been doing. Blues, also, all of it is blues based, actually. So I could not say necessarily that this was my tradition, but I trained in those forms and spent time first listening to everything that I could. And then as it got a little older, playing with musicians from those regions and learning it

[09:58]

firsthand, just as we do with Zen. So really body to body transmission. And then playing out the forms in terms of being in groups and bands that played this music together and learning how we had to interact in order to express ourselves. So by the time I came to Zen, I had an unconscious model. And I took to it very quickly. Maybe I took to it too much. After a while, Sojin said to me, you should let things fall apart. Because I was quite attached to these forms. And then when it

[11:02]

came time for me to have lay ordination, which was, I think, in 1986, one of the two Dharma names that he gave me. The first name is Hosan, which means Dharma Mountain. And the second name, which was something which is your Dharma name, which is more like an essence that you need to bring forth for yourself. And that name is Kushiki. Ku is emptiness or formlessness. And Shiki is form. So as I've said, often I tend not to use Kushiki in general community because it seems to me that referring to myself as Mr. Formless Form is, it's too much. But Sojin gave me that name to point me in a direction. And I think that he is a

[12:25]

perfect manifestation of that principle of formless form. He had a kind of naturalness about the way he moved in the Zendo, the way he moved in the world. That was, on the one hand, very particular. And he was very particular. He was the best teacher of the forms that anyone can imagine. And I feel like I benefited from that for so many years. And all of us who grew up with him had some taste of that. He was very precise about how you wore your robes, how you rang the bell, how you did Gassho, all of

[13:28]

those things, how you comported yourself in the Zendo, and how you comported yourself in the world. And he could be really particular and point to just that thing. And I think that quite a number of us have absorbed that. And that is, that's really important to me. So let me go back to another piece that he wrote. Because his experience was, was really similar to mine. This is an essay that he wrote in 1987. Okay, so we're talking about 34 years ago. By the way, yesterday would have been Sojin's 92nd birthday. So we

[14:29]

take a moment, just send him a press. So this is an article that he wrote for the Minnesota Zen Meditation Centers magazine, Udumbara, 1987. He says, When I first came to the Zendo, the practice forms were foreign to me. But at the same time, I respected them and wished to do them properly. It wasn't long before I realized that the teaching was right there within the forms. More properly, the forms took on meaning according to my willingness to enter into them wholeheartedly. Reading this last night, and reading over my notes this morning. It put a new, a fresh energy. It like polished up

[15:44]

my energy for the bowels that we did shrink surface for the strength that I put into my chanting. It was really a wonderful tonic. So then he says, I realized that there's another side. Daily life in the world, which is not formal in the Zendo sense, but nevertheless has its own forms, which are very strict. That's true. The forms of our life are very strict, even though we may not think of them as strict. We can we'll explore I think we'll have time to talk about how strict they are and how they how you experience them. Suzuki Roshi taught us that we should be able to

[16:47]

freely enter the forms of either side with the same spirit. We often hear that there is no special form of Zen. But in order to recognize something, it has to have a form. You can hear it, see it, touch it, taste it, smell it, and think about it. But those forms are only form are only the forms of Zen, when we enter them with the proper spirit and bring them to life. What is the proper spirit? Proper spirit is wholehearted practice. In one of his fascicles, Dogen asked the rhetorical question, how do you become a Buddha? And he answers it, just throw yourself completely into the

[17:57]

house of Buddha. This is wholehearted practice. I know for people who come here, as we have, this is going to be more the case as we look to face to face practice. People think the forms are elaborate and formal. But actually, our forms are pretty simple. The forms that Suzuki Roshi transmitted to his disciples were really the bare bones of Soto Zen practice. But I think what you'll find, which is wonderful, is that the forms that we have here are, when you go to another temple, in the Soto tradition in particular, you will recognize everything, you will feel at home there.

[19:26]

Even though you may see that there's a way that we have simplified certain things. But we have something essential. And again, I think this is part of Dogen's incredible gift was looking at a formal approach that derives from our monastic tradition. And applying it to this place, which is fundamentally a lay practice center. And asking us to really do a challenging formal practice side by side with our challenging lives. And that those two sides can really amplify and polish each other, like stones tumbling in a, you know, in a, in a rock polisher. So this is a wonderful thing to consider.

[20:47]

When the pandemic struck, and we had to move online, Dogen's approach was to simplify further. So that we could make, because I think, what he recognized was that the pandemic was not the end of the world. It was a very strict form. We have all these new forms, or we had all these new forms, and we still have it as a social distancing, social, you know, not going out, not doing things with groups of people, wearing masks, using hand sanitizers, washing our hands a lot. All of this was, is formal practice, right? We had to train ourselves to do these things. And at least my understanding was that, at least in my sense, this was form, this was our new form.

[22:07]

This was our new formal practice. Also, we had to struggle with, as individuals, and as an organization, like, how do we do this? How do we, how do we maintain community here via Zoom? And just like every other form that one encounters, it's wonderful. We have to say, the practice of forms is to do the form wholeheartedly. But the reason we have to say that is that sometimes we have the wish or the habit to resist or to do the form. To do things half-heartedly. You know, a lot of people, probably many of you, I think it's a great division about whether people like our Zoom practice or not.

[23:15]

Nevertheless, what I really appreciate is that people have done it quite wholeheartedly and shown up for these, for this last year and a half. And now we're about to make another shift. And that one is going to be even harder. Because even though we say that, you know, as the Xinxin Ming says, the great way is not difficult if only you can avoid picking and choosing. Well, if we have a face-to-face practice, and we have a hybrid practice, and we offer both, I'm sorry, people are going to have to choose what they do. And that is not, I would not say that it's ideal. But I would say that the practice lies there in that question, without saying which one is preferable to the other.

[24:31]

The real question is how you make the choice and how you live it out wholeheartedly. That's, that's the question. So we simplified many of the forms that we have in the Zendo. And now we're going to have to start them up again, at least with people who are in the Zendo. And also, I want to think about how can that be shared with people on Zoom? You know, now that that reality is shifting, is there, are there forms, more formal forms that are appropriate for all of us in the Zoom context as well?

[25:35]

And there is something that I welcome input on. But what I would like to do is figure out how to institute a training. We're training into Zendo forms, training for our service leaders, Dawn, Skokios, Fukudos, and make sure that there's a lot of, there are a lot of new people who have joined us since the pandemic, that they can, that these forms will be taught to them in a way that they can use them and that enhances their practice as they come to the Zendo. So we can support that formal side. And so I'm hoping that beginning in August, I and I think some of the other senior students will, will do some teaching in these forms so that they're shared widely.

[26:57]

And I think that's an important thing to do. I think, you know, I've been, I have heard from some people, you know, there are people who are concerned about whether the practice that we did for years, the practice that we, that we have from Sojourn Roshi and Suzuki Roshi and our tradition, will it continue as it did with the beauty of the forms? And I'd like to reassure you that that is my very strong intention. I'm really looking forward to, to working on this and to doing, doing this kind of training and to offering it widely and figuring out how to offer it, what portion of it to offer via Zoom as well.

[28:09]

So that's on my mind. And you may have some thoughts about that. But in this last section, I'd like to leave a lot of time for discussion. What I want to circle back to is Sojourn's other point. That is essentially, what are the forms of practice? What are the Zen forms of practice in your daily life? How does Zazen flow through your daily activities? How do you use particular Buddhist teachings?

[29:20]

How do you see your life in that formal sense? One of the things I think about, about Soto Zen, and you know, this can be really, this can be really worked on in a monastic setting, is that Soto Zen, you could see it as the ritualization of your entire life. And I don't mean that in a dry way or a dead way, but in a living way. To me, ritual is alive. Playing music is a ritual. Putting on my mask is a ritual. You know, as I'm walking down the street, you know, I pull down my mask, and it's like noticing that somebody is appearing and I put up my mask. That's a ritual.

[30:31]

Ritual means a kind of repeated activity. And what I find about ritual is it's something that I really have to put, it's where mind and body come together. It's a physical action. And when you're really trained in a ritual, then it becomes second nature to you. You just, you just do it. Not necessarily without, with thinking about it. But in the development of that practice, there has to be thought and consideration. You know, I'm thinking about some of my bowing nowadays. Bowing is a ritual. Bowing is, you know, you could say there's one act, bowing. But, you know, 10 years ago, I enjoyed my bowing.

[31:46]

That, you know, I could kind of lower myself carefully, raise my hands, and get up without using my hands. By just kind of reorienting my body weight and swinging myself a little backwards, I could just stand up. It's like, oh, that's very good. I can do a good bow. Now, I need two hands to get up. And I have to be really careful going down because I have a bad knee. And if I do something stupid, if I'm not really thinking, attending to the way my weight shifts, both going down and getting up, then I'm going to further hurt my knee. And so that's bowing today is not the same as bowing yesterday.

[32:57]

So a ritual is a fluid thing. And we develop our ways of enacting them. And the same thing is true. It's easy to see in light of the changes we've had to do for the pandemic. But what are the other rituals of your life? What are the rituals of your life in relation to your family? What are the rituals of life in relation to your work? What are those rituals in relation to how you communicate with people? How you hold your body? These are very important formal practices. And I think, again, that Sojourn was a wonderful teacher in that realm.

[34:00]

One of the things that he says in this piece from the Minnesota Magazine. 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. This was true of many of his disciples, and I see it in the disciples of other teachers as well. Studying with him was like an apprenticeship. Suzuki Roshi himself said once that imitating the teacher is a very common practice. He said sometimes you can't tell the student from the teacher.

[35:04]

The object, of course, is that after the student fully absorbs the teacher, the student fully becomes him or herself and develops in his or her own way. I can see in my mind's eye the way my teachers bowed. I can see Sojourn's bow very clearly. I can see Katagiri Roshi. I can see Shodo Hirata Roshi, who was my teacher and is Alex's teacher. Each one of them, I can feel the way they move their body within my body. I think that there are other people in our lives that we also model ourselves on in the way people may have expressed themselves and what they did.

[36:12]

That was also part of my journey as a musician. Having listened to the breadth of the traditions that I studied and having learned from the traditional musicians, the older generation that I had access to, there came a point, it was a natural evolution by which I had to find my own way, my own sound on the instrument, my own ornamentation in singing. This is what happens. You follow closely and closely and then hopefully each of us discovers our own true way. The wonderful thing about ritual and form is that, and Suzuki Roshi talked about that, that it gives you a structure for your deepest personal expression.

[37:31]

Even though that may appear very subtle, even though everybody may appear to be doing the same thing, each of us is expressing ourselves uniquely. That's what gives us something to work with for our whole lives. I think I'm going to stop there. You may have questions about anything that I said. I'm particularly interested in knowing, as I said, what are the forms and practices of your daily life? How do you see your Zen practice manifesting there? I'd like to once again encourage people who are hesitant to talk sometimes to come forward.

[38:46]

We'd like to hear what you have to say and people who are often speaking to just hold back a bit. But I think I'm going to turn it over to Heiko. I think he's going to call on people looking at your digital hands and your actual hands, right? Thank you, Hozon, for your wonderful talk. Yes, everyone, please prepare your questions and I will call on you in turn. If you would like, you can enter your question in the chat and I will present it then to Hozon for you. Please bring your questions. Thank you. I see Lori. Hold on one second, Lori. Let me bring you up.

[39:59]

What I kept thinking about as you were talking is something that we're sort of… I never quite thought of it this way, but I feel like what we're embarking on as a Sangha is sort of like the rituals of how we talk to each other. And we have these guidelines which are kind of like make it more formal, you know, to let ourselves accept some level of formality in how we talk to each other, particularly in sort of public settings. Thoughts? Yeah, I think that's one of the things that we've been learning in the course of this last year and a half. Of course, we've always been learning this, but somehow I'm not sure why this medium seems to heighten. I think maybe because to some degree it's less embodied, it seems to heighten our need for attention in that area.

[41:16]

But I think it's good. I think this has been really helpful. This is one of the positive aspects of what we've encountered during this time. Thank you. Thank you, Judy. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you, Heiko, and thank you, Hozon. I was wondering, this question of Zoom and in-person, I'm wondering how you approach, so to speak, memory or body memory.

[42:22]

Like for me, the poignancy that this is the time of Sojin's birthday, and it's the first year in recent years that we're not having cake or whatever, some kind of celebration with our tea and cookies ritual. And so I'm experiencing that in my body, and yet here we are in Zoom. So I feel very viscerally, I'm there then, and I'm here now, and I can feel Gisendo and Sojin and you and all of us very intimately. So how can that be somehow connecting to the ritual practice, practice of ritual? At the moment, I'm hearing two things in what you're saying.

[43:30]

One is this vast question of how does each of us feel, embody the losses that we experience in our lives? And that's not to me, that's not a Zoom question as such. That's kind of an overarching question, you know. And I think that one of the ways what I would respond to that is what I've done is I've remembered his birthday. And then I spent several days looking through materials and talks by him in order to give this talk, which brings me to life, right, brings him to life.

[44:37]

And then the last thing that I read you about how our teachers live in us, whether alive or dead, is also that's the embodied activity of Dogen's fourth, his fourth teaching of identity action. It's like these people live in us. So that's what I would say to that part. The other part of the question is. We need some reeducation in our forms.

[45:42]

In other words, when we come back, there's stuff that mostly it's in our bodies, for those of us who've had it. But there's a lot of people here who haven't had that experience. And I would like them to have that so that we can all be doing this together and sharing that wonderful, wonderful practice. And I also have to I have to remember stuff. So it's kind of retraining. So so realigning one's body with these activities, and that won't take very long for those of us who've had it because it's there. But, you know, it gets can get a little bit. So. Thank you for your question. Questions. Thank you, Judy. Mary has a question. Mary, please go ahead. Thank you. I've been thinking over the last year, I have felt a struggle about doing Zazen at home.

[46:55]

My space isn't dedicated to Zazen, like dedicated and meaning single use. So that's the space that I do other things in. And there's this business of being distracted. And sometimes I feel so different from being in the Zendo, which is the single use. This is what I'm here to do kind of feeling that is just, you know, imbued in everything we do there, including the things we wear. On the other side of that, during the Mountain Seat Ceremony, I borrowed someone's lay robes because it seemed like the ceremony called for that. And I was very impressed with how much that enhanced the feeling of ritual, how it settled me. And in part because when you're wearing that much cloth, you really have to pay attention to how you move.

[48:03]

So there's some practical part of it. But I think it was more than that. I'm sort of in searching for a question between these two things. Like under this both, how do we enhance our practice, particularly the experience of Zazen, when we wear the same thing or when we do the same thing or when we do it in the same place and in the same way? On the one hand, and how to create that when one is on one's own. I mean, it feels like quite a different task to me to try to bring that dedication in all senses of the word of dedication, both single use and also intent. I think that's my question. Well, the simple response is, why don't you buy yourself a lay rope?

[49:12]

And then put it on in the morning, whether you're here or home. Solves the problem. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's not a lot more to say than that. It's you have how do you you create the space is the thing that whatever space. This is one of the things that we learn in chaplaincy training is that the idea is that you embody sacred space. And so do what? In other words, and you do that by being in that context, you you present a non anxious presence that is very spacious to people. It's irrespective of what clothes you wear.

[50:16]

But if the clothes create a space. You know, I almost always have have robes and my own case on. And you can do corresponding. Thank you, Mary. We have a question from Jerry. Please go ahead, Jerry. You did. Good morning. Thank you for your talk. I wonder if what you meant was something that I started to find myself doing. And I realized it was a transmission from Sojan. Having watched him in his office, just do ordinary things like how he made tea, how he held his cup, how he put the tea in the pot.

[51:23]

And I found myself during the pandemic. Ritualizing my morning activity in such a way that there was much less spilling of anything. Very concentrated. You know, turn the burglar alarm off. Turn the coffee on. Go to the refrigerator and get the dog food. Whatever you know, this this kind of ritual that would take maybe, you know, 15 minutes for the whole thing. And it felt it felt like I was I was practicing. Is that what you mean by bringing it into your life? Yes. But what I would what I would my experience is that. There was a whole lot more spaciousness in the early months of the pandemic.

[52:26]

We had we had more time. And that was one of the things that Sojan was was pointing to. You know, he said, well, you can see this as a kind of retreat. And for a while it was more like that, then it got busy. You know, it got busier as this is the you know, the. The law of entropy, you know. So but at the beginning, yes, that and that's the kind of thing that it's really good for us to be doing throughout our lives to create that spaciousness, not to rush. Not to do everything, not to do things necessarily preciously. This is another lesson from music. You know, it's like you don't play. You sometimes you really have to dig in and play hard.

[53:33]

And but to do it with precision and wholeheartedness. Thank you. What a lovely discussion. Pauline question, please. Go ahead. Morning. Thank you. You in talking about your practice of treating yourself in the forums, you mentioned second nature, which is a concept that I've been thinking about a lot lately. And I think to answer the question you threw out about how, you know, forms enter our daily lives. For me, the idea of second nature has been something I've been thinking about a lot lately in my own life, because it's the idea that you can educate or train yourself in new ways of being, which in time become no less natural than what was there before.

[54:35]

And I really like the way that breaks down the distinction between what's inborn and what's acquired. And it reminds me also of what I did love about the forums when we were all practicing together in the Zendo, that finding new ways to behave in a way that was new to me, but then could become natural. So I didn't get to do it for very long before the pandemic started. So I will clearly need some of that re-education. But thank you for reminding me about one aspect of what I loved about practice in the Zendo. Thank you. Thank you, Pauline. Well, second nature is a funny expression, actually, now that I think about it. Are there two natures? That's really a Zen question. Are there two natures or is it one? Yeah, I think the way I often think about it is perhaps there's one nature, but there is an sort of infinite number of ways to remind ourselves of it.

[55:44]

I think the thing is that one nature is not, the nature is not fixed. That it is, our nature is always, maybe there's some things that we inherit genetically, but whatever we do from day one is a matter of training. It occurred to me, here's a form that I have in daily life. I know this is not relevant to the question. It's not relevant to your question or comment, but perhaps indirectly. You know, for a long time I did prison work. And when I would go into the prison, you always have to have an encounter with somebody at a desk who has the authority to let you in or not let you in.

[56:55]

And that person, you know, irrespective of how they're feeling, they're sort of trained to call you sir. And they can call you sir in a kind way, they can call you sir in an arrogant way, whatever it is. But after a while, I just felt this is a really respectful way to engage with people. And so I started doing that in my life, you know, saying sir or ma'am to everybody. You know, to the checkout person, to the waiter and, you know, thanking them. But using that kind of little formal, I mean, I think it comes from people who have, it basically comes from sort of military training.

[58:00]

But it's really, it's essentially respectful. And that's a part of my practice now. And I enjoy it because it's a way to express a recognition and respect to beings we encounter. Thank you. We have a couple of comments or questions in the chat box. The first is from Nina Sprecher. Thank you, Hozon, she says, for that never too frequent and ever needed reminder that our whole life is our practice. Your very last point about formal training, providing the structure upon which one's own individual unique qualities find expression, reminds me of that very teaching provided by Eric Hawkins as he taught dance,

[59:01]

saying, don't worry about needing to express your individuality. He used to say it will come through the form without your trying. You can't help but express it. Wonderful. Thank you, Nina. And while we're here, Philip Sherrard says the beauty of ritual is that it brings us into mindfulness almost automatically. Anything that reminds us to be mindful in our daily life is a good thing. Yes, I really, I agree. And that's a way you can look at looked at from the other angle. That's a way that you're bringing. You're bringing your Buddhist practice to your everyday life. Mindfulness and there's. It doesn't have to be.

[60:05]

There's a less formal modality of mindfulness that that some of the Theravada teachers speak up, which is not necessarily the four foundations of mindfulness, but it's just this general awareness of where you are and what you're doing. It's it's a broader kind of mindfulness. And, you know, I think that's it's also another another practice that I have, which integrates our which brings practice into my daily life is just. Remembering this expression that this that surgeon gave me, she said, where are your feet? So just to remember. At any given moment to just stop, you just need to stop for a second and just say, where are your feet?

[61:13]

And as soon as I do that, even the main natural tendency is like, oh, I uncross my legs, I put my feet on the ground. You readjust, you realign your body. And then you meet the next moment. I think that's a really good place to stop. So thank you very much and enjoy the summer weather and don't stay out too long in the heat. OK.

[61:43]

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