Not for today, but from now on, I would like to suggest that the people who sit in chairs, who are not sitting in chairs, sit up here. Thank you. Good morning. Well, to begin my talk, I just want to, before I forget, which I would, I want to remind everyone that on May Fifth, we open our spring practice period, and so I want to encourage all of us to partake of the practice period. This is how we renew our practice and regroup ourselves so that we can have a wonderful practice for the rest of the year.

[01:09]

practice period kind of brings us all together and brings each one of us together with ourselves and really look at what we're doing and make an effort, a little more effort to remind ourselves what we're doing. The practice period ends with a five-day seshin and a shuso ceremony on the 17th. So Ellen Webb will be our shuso. I don't know if everybody knows Ellen Webb. She's been practicing for years and years, a long time. She was a, for a long time, what you would call a modern dancer, and a professional modern dancer.

[02:24]

I gave her one of her names, Dancing Light. So she's very happy about that, and so am I. And when I ask somebody to be shuso, sometimes I don't know how it will actually work out. But as soon as that happens, the person comes to life in a new way. And it's always very exciting to see that happen. So, You know, we're all very busy. Everybody's life, more or less, is in place. The rhythms of our life are in place, and so it's not easy to extend into more extended practice. But a practice period gives us the opportunity to extend ourself.

[03:34]

a little bit more, a little more zazen if you can. Hopefully that's really a good way to really see how much participation you can actually afford to partake of and letting go of some of our unnecessary activities or suspend some of our minor activities so that we can actually put more time into practice for that six weeks. So I want to encourage all of us to do that. And I, myself, promise to do that. So I hope I can be of some encouragement. So my subject today, you know, we're having a ordination.

[04:42]

Lori Sanaki is actually being ordained today as a, what we call a priest, a monk. None of these terms work really well for us, priest, monk. They're terms that are used for renunciants. Monk is more common. Priest is more like an office or something. So I never really feel comfortable calling ordained people priests, and yet they're not quite monks because I think of monks as being in a monastery. Monastics are monks, renunciants. But whether it's priest or monk, it's still renunciant. You know, there's this, Suzuki Roshi talked about no gaining mind.

[05:49]

One of his mantras was no gaining mind, and people sometimes balk at that or question it, and we don't understand necessarily what it means. You know, someone will have an ice cream cone and they'll say, oh, you know, I'm giving up my no gaining mind. Does it gain any mind if I have an ice cream cone? No. Please enjoy your ice cream cone. He also said, if when you're enlightened, if you like ice cream, And then you get enlightened. When you walk past an ice cream store, will you still crave ice cream? Of course. No gaining mind. No gaining mind. So the purpose of practice is to let go as much as possible.

[06:53]

Instead of gaining, instead of our life being about gaining, it's about letting go. It's just the opposite. Renunciation is to let go. What does letting go mean? It means letting go of self-centeredness. So no gaining mind means Stop adding to your ego. Stop creating an ego out of desires that have no virtue. So when one becomes a priest, one becomes ordained, the purpose of that is to help you to give up You're acquiring mind. Suzuki Roshi said in a talk that I just read, he said he felt that lay practice, lay person's practice, was more pure, actually, than priest's practice.

[08:25]

He said, lay people, you know, we all have ego. We all have self-centeredness. And lay people are simply practicing, mostly, whereas priests have, it's hard for priests to let go of their arrogance and about being something special. It's hard for priests to let go of some aspect of feeling that there's something special, because in the history of Buddhadharma, monks were, and still are, considered special people. because of their renunciation. So if your renunciation makes you more arrogant, it's defeating its own purpose.

[09:35]

So each side has a problem, right? So the problem of priests is how you realize that there's nothing special about it. which is very hard because it's always been thought of as something special. So it creates a kind of separation. Lay people have pure practice because they're simply practicing. There's no getting ahead. There's nothing except practice. Good, bad, right or wrong, it doesn't matter. As long as there's nothing to gain, it's pure practice. When we want to get something out of it, then it's defiled practice.

[10:37]

So no gaining mind is pure practice. It means just do what you have to do. And so my attitude toward ordination, priest ordination, is that instead of thinking of the priest as some special person, that the priest is the servant of the Sangha. The priest is In the old days, because priests were renunciates, monks and priests were renunciates, no sex, no money, just the quality of practice was your offering to everyone.

[11:44]

and being an example, an example of unselfishness. So Suzuki Yoshi's a message to his people he ordained, or to everyone actually, was don't be selfish. He always spoke in very plain terms, simple terms. Just don't be selfish, and don't create an ego out of selfishness, out of selfish desires. That's the message for everyone, but He always did ordain people, and to become a priest or a monk is to really devote your life to being unselfish, to having unselfish practice, and to let go of arrogance.

[13:13]

as a special person doing some special thing. He always called the practice, nothing special. I had a controversy once with Eiken Roshi. Alan remembers this, where I asked him, it was on his 80th birthday actually, around that time, and I asked him about, nothing special. No, I did. I said, how do you see nothing special or something like that? And he didn't like that. He thought that's denigrating yourself and being too submissive or something.

[14:25]

Yeah, yeah. But actually, nothing special means everything special. So our practice is to see what is special about everything and letting go our... In other words, it's seeing the equality of each thing. we have equality, everything is equal, and yet everything is very special at the same time. So he was emphasizing everything is special, sort of, and I was talking about everything is equal. But both is true. Everything is special and everything is equal at the same time. there's really no difference between lay practice and priest practice or monk practice.

[15:39]

At the same time, some people want to be ordained, and it's not exactly a club, but it's an order, a Buddhist order. I was having a very hard time at Tassajara in the summertime. We were doing the first Sashin at Tassajara, and Chino Sensei was leading that, and Kiyoshi was there, and it was 105 or something, and we were, you know, your feet were slipping off your thighs. After that, he called me in, and I couldn't keep my legs crossed very well, and I hadn't been practicing very long either. And so he called me in and said, I would like you to join our order.

[16:44]

That's how he put it. I never thought of an order, but that's what he said. And so that was a surprise to me. I'd never thought about it. But he somehow recognized something in me that because I was actually practicing, as I was imitating my priests. So, he just saw that that's what I really wanted to do. But it never occurred to me of that possibility. So I said, yeah, yeah, why not? But all the time he was always admonishing us to not be self-centered, not to be selfish, to not see any priest as special.

[17:46]

Although in the history of Buddhism, priests are special. But in the history of Berkeley Zen Center, priests are wonderful, just like everybody else, and there's really no difference. When we go to Tassajara, to a monastery, Everybody's a monk, whether they're ordained or not ordained, because we're all practicing the same thing. And there are no special positions for priests, and that's the way it is here, too. But the priests have an obligation. They make it their intention Their obligation is to practice with that in mind. And so everyone can come and go, priests can come and go too, but their vow is to, this is their life, main thing in their life.

[18:52]

And this helps to keep the lineage going, to keep the practice of the school continuing. You don't get ordained for yourself. It's not something for you. It's something that you offer, actually. It gives you a channel for offering yourself. So, what you really work on is not being selfish and offering yourself to everyone. Suzuki Yoshi, his understanding was that when you really practice that way, then wherever you go, without trying to do anything, you influence people.

[20:04]

Your practice influences people. You don't have to try to do anything. Just being with people and working with people. You know, and One problem that we have is when we have been practicing a long time, and we have ordination, and we have had all these positions, and we feel that we have some prestige. It's okay. but we cannot be attached to that. It's very good when someone who's reached the top, so to speak, starts again at the bottom.

[21:07]

So that we're always at the bottom, even if we're at the top. Dogen, in his Sagura Mudra Samadhi Vesicle uses the analogy of your feet are walking on the bottom while your hands are swimming on the top. on the surface. So no matter how high you get, in order to balance height, you have to have something really heavy underneath, like a ship or a boat. In order for the boat to stabilize, it has to have a very deep keel. So our practice actually is how to stay aware of the keel.

[22:16]

how to stay aware of the ballast so that the ship doesn't turn over or get top heavy. And in order for this to work, we have to always have the weight at the bottom. And our cross-legged practice exemplifies that. The weight is all down here, so that the body can stay stable. So when we started to practice, I wasn't sure Well, actually, when we started this practice here, I was not yet a priest.

[23:25]

I was not yet ordained. And then after Shakyamuni Rishi asked me to be ordained, there was two more years before he actually did that, and he wanted to do it here. He said, I said, well, when and where? And he said, well, when you're ready and I'm ready. And then he was wondering about whether to do it here or at Tassajara or Zen center somewhere. So he decided this would be the place because this is where I practice, right? But I was not a teacher. I was just a monk. And I was always, I never put myself forth as a teacher. I just took care of the place and for a long time until, well, I didn't advertise myself as a teacher or say that I was a teacher, but people would come and I'd have to teach them something.

[24:38]

And then people would say, would you be my teacher? I always say, well, if I'm teaching you something, that's it. But I did not say you could be or not be my student. I never say that. People come and go. We mingle with each other. Something happens or something doesn't happen. And that's the way that I like it. But people become my students. At some point, it's understood. I become their teacher. At some point, it's understood. But sometimes the student is the teacher. Sometimes the teacher is the student. I don't have any special way of teaching people. We just relate. And we learn through Zazen. Zazen is the teacher.

[25:40]

Zazen is always the teacher, and we all pay obeisance to Zazen as the teacher. So, some people, I thought if there's no priest or lay people, we're just all the Why do we need to, you know, making divisions creates problems. And if we're just all in the same boat, but the boat needs officers. It needs people who are dedicated to taking care of things. So I went along with ordaining people. So it's all a work in progress. Suzuki Roshi said, we don't know exactly whether we're, we're not exactly lay people, we're not exactly priests.

[26:49]

There's something else going on and we have to kind of work with that. That's our big problem. We have to work with it and not try to force something or to force some idea or be hasty to make some hasty decision of how it should be. We have our examples from our teachers and we're in the process of letting all that work together and letting it solve itself, so to speak. So if each one of us is respectful to each one of us, everything will work. If we think someone is in a higher position, someone's a lower position, a high position and low position.

[28:03]

Suzuki Roshi used this example of a basket of fruit. He said, when you see a basket full of fruit, we automatically, they're big, nice big juicy ones, and then each one is a little different, you know, and you get down to where there's the least delicious piece of fruit. So, which one do you choose? So he said, you know, we want to take the big one, the nice, big, juicy one. But he said, it's good to take the one first. You take the one that's not so nice, the last one. If you're conscious of selfishness,

[29:10]

ego. He said, so if you take the first one and then there's still some left over in the basket, then you're choosing on the basis of self-centeredness. But if you eat the first one and then eat all the rest, it doesn't matter because it doesn't matter which one is first or last, because you've eaten them all. Doesn't matter which one you start with. And then if you start with the big one, and then you're starting to get full, right? And so you never get to finish. Then you're stuck with your ego. So it's okay to take the big one. but only if you're going to finish the rest of them, because they're all equal.

[30:14]

So it's a very simple thing, but it's worthwhile thinking about it. I had this list in my pocket. So another aspect of being a priest is that you become visible, and everybody puts their projections onto you. So you may think that it's a nice thing, but it's actually rather troublesome. Not only is it troublesome because everybody puts their projections on you and they expect you to be a certain way. And I get criticisms about, not about me so much, but I do, but about some of our priests, you know, how come this person is a priest and they act like this?

[31:29]

Whereas these persons are lay people and they're so virtuous. So there's that kind of comparison which happens, right? So it's not easy to do this because you always have to be examining yourself and your actions and your self-centeredness. everything is a work in progress. That's why, you know, sometimes we look at somebody who's having a really hard time, who never can do anything right, and, you know, always messes up, and the slow meal, right? No, that's the slow mazel. Yeah, there's one. There's one who is always dumping on somebody. That's the shlomozil. And then there's one who is always being dumped on. That's the shlomozil.

[32:32]

Is that backwards? But sometimes that person's practice is very pure. because of their effort. It's not so much of a matter that people are always making mistakes or doing something wrong or whatever, or they can't control themselves, but it's their effort that makes their practice pure. It's not a matter of being some wonderful person. It's a matter of how you're always expressing your effort, consciously or unconsciously. And you just continue, and you don't give up. This is the main thing. So when somebody becomes ordained, it's not that they're such a good person.

[33:39]

It's that you know that they will continue their effort. And that's their vow, is to continue their effort forever. So, you know, you stick your neck out, and you might get it cut off, you know, but you do it anyway. But it's not the province of an ordained person. It's what we would expect from everyone. But the visible person is a kind of, puts themselves out as an example. And not only that, they cut their hair off. When you're ordained, you cut your hair off.

[34:46]

And then some people let their hair grow back. And some people's hair looks like Medusa. It's okay to grow your hair a little bit, but that's a very important point. For women, it's really hard. And then people say, are you having chemo? But you can style your hair. Suzuki Roshi called it a fundamental haircut. But you can grow your hair so that it looks okay in public, but it's short. That's okay. So here's another thing, that in Japan, I don't know about China, when the young men and women, some women, go into the monastery, they become ordained by their somebody, and then they go into the monastery when they're young, and that's where they train.

[36:15]

In America, all the practitioners train for 10 or 20 years before they're ordained. So it's just the opposite. So our monastery is our practice place and the world. And then we get ordained after we've done that for 20 years. 15, 20 years. It's usual, not all the time, but it's usual. And so we're not novices. When you become ordained, you become a novice, and then at some point you become a shuso in the monastery, or someplace, and then eventually you have dharma transmission. But for young Japanese priests, all this happens very quickly when they're still young.

[37:25]

So to be ordained as a novice when you're 60 or 50 or something is backwards, but we've already had our training. by the time we become ordained, so it has a different feeling. Well, as an example, Laurie, who is being ordained this afternoon, I started a long time ago to practice. We practiced together at Tassajara many years ago in the 80s, and then when she came here and she got together with Hozan, and they got married and they had kids, and then for a long time, the heart of her practice was taking care of her kids.

[38:41]

And then as they've grown up, she's become more prominent in what we call the other side, the zendo side. So a big part of our practice is to express our practice outside or in ways that are not zendo-oriented. Sometimes a personal practice for many years and then do something else. But that doing something else is also a stage in our practice. It's a very important stage in our practice to do some other kind of activity, instead of just zendo practice, and then come back.

[39:45]

Because that practice in the world is what matures the practice of zazen. So it's zendo practice and practice in the world are just two aspects of the same thing. So that's kind of what's somewhat unique about our practice in America, is that instead of thinking people are gone, when you leave for a while, you're maturing your practice. This is like the sixth ancestor being in the monastery. He was not ordained. He was a lay person, a young guy. And then he had his realization and he received actually dharma transmission from Fifth Patriarch. And then he said, you have to go away.

[40:48]

And he went out for 20 years or whatever it was in the world to mature his practice. And nobody had any idea who he was. Then he came back. became ordained, became the sixth ancestor. So this is a big part of our practice. Once you start to practice, as far as I'm concerned, unless you really denounce it, is that whatever you're doing, whatever stage of practice you're in, which is not easy to define, you're still practicing. And people will start to practice, and practice for some time, and they go away for a long time, and then come back to the gate, and it's as if, hi, it's as if we never left. Very interesting. That's why I like to keep the practice the way it is, because people come back and it's the same as when they left.

[41:53]

Anyway, I don't want to keep this going too long. But if you have one question. Okay, go. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Yes, all those things, each one of those things you mentioned is a complete lecture. I mean, it's meat for a complete lecture.

[43:02]

So, it's hard, I agree with you. To be continued. Yes, each one of those things. was something actually that I would have talked about if I'd had the time, but we have to go. Thanks for bringing that up. Charles. No good. Well, Punishment doesn't mean punishment. Punishment, in that case, is a term meaning reward. But instead of saying reward, it's punishment.

[44:09]

So if you hang on to the usual meaning of the word, you have a dualistic problem. Because in a non-dualistic way, It's on what? It's on punishment. This is, it's actually a Zen statement, because the word punishment actually means reward. If you take anything literally that you hear about in Zen, you have a problem with it. Okay, this lady behind, I can't tell you who you are. Oh yeah, hi. I cannot hear you. Uh-huh.

[45:13]

Well, that's also true. If you're attached to thinking you're doing a good deed, yes. In that case, attachment is the problem. Okay, good night.

[45:32]

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