Thank you. Takes a long time to get settled. Somebody, a friend of mine who came to a talk that I gave some time before said, why does it take so long? There's the bowing and then just getting settled in the seat and opening the things, the microphone and so on and so forth. So that really stresses the point that the point of lecture in Buddhism or in Zen is to sit sazen. So you're sitting Sazen, I'm sitting Sazen, we're all sitting Sazen. And hopefully the teaching comes from there, from that place. And we can meet at that place. I wanted to finish the, I've given two prior talks on the Heart Sutra.

[01:22]

And I think the last one I got through the middle of the text and I want to finish it if there's such a thing. When you think you're ending it, it's just the beginning. So I'd like to continue with that today. And maybe that'd be it for the Heart Sutra. So the next section says, with nothing to attain, a bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. So it's the sticking to attainment that creates hindrance. For both beginning, middle and advanced students, sticking to attainment creates hindrance. So the very path itself has to be negated.

[02:27]

That's why our sutra says no path. And the Buddha said, once you get to the other side, you have to let go of the raft. Otherwise, you can't carry the raft on your shoulders. So we don't stick to Buddhism or even to Zazen. And even though We say, just sit, and we sit all the time. We don't stick to zazen. And that's the teaching of Suzuki Roshi, a beginner's mind, and also that it's an ancestral teaching. And in this book, Not Always So, which is the last book of lectures by Suzuki Roshi, there's a chapter there called Not Sticking to Enlightenment, and he talks about the, the sixth ancestor, Winang, where he says, which comes from the Diamond Sutra, which is the mind that doesn't abide anywhere, doesn't stick to anything.

[03:39]

Even Zazen. So after we do Zazen, we just forget all about Zazen. After we do Sashin and experience this wonderful radiant splendor deep in Samadhi, we forget all about the deep radiant splendor of Samadhi and just go back to our activities. Because otherwise if we stick to that, then it turns into a snake. It becomes a poison. And then we become sick of the path itself. The path itself makes us sick. Although that may be a necessary illness at some point. And then instead of being enlightened, you're just sick. Like... Sun-Faced Buddha, Moon-Faced Buddha, Healthy Buddha, Sick Buddha, Enlightened Buddha, Deluded Buddha, or I'm forgetting, the lay Buddha who receives the Bodhisattvas when he's sick.

[05:00]

He invents his illness to receive the Bodhisattvas. Vimalakirti. Thank you. So the path itself can make us sick, but we also have to heal ourselves from getting stuck to Zen and to Zazen, and then it's true Zazen. So we forget all about Zazen and go back to our ordinary activities. And then is Ross here. Ross was talking about the five ranks and the last rank being where it's all dark. So the Zazen there is all dark. The Absolute is all dark. And all there is is just the light of each activity, each action. So this is the practice of non-attainment, which removes hindrance.

[06:09]

And I mentioned something about the four perverted views last time. The perverted views is not just getting attached to some idea of enlightenment or some idea of Buddhism. or whatever the idea may be, we have to exist from a place deeper than the idea. And that's the mind in Buddhism, prajna, as emptiness, the bodhicitta. And then out of that, then an idea comes forth. which is the world. So the perverted views are clinging to ideas of practice that we want to have a permanent self, a permanent sense of ease or well-being and don't want to suffer or feel bad or feel anxiety.

[07:22]

And the Bodhisattva actually feels all those feelings. anxiety and feeling of unease, feeling of anger, but thanks to Prasna Paramita, and depending on Prasna Paramita, then you know how to turn them towards practice and non-duality. So where anxiety and ease are two sides of the same thing. although they look quite different. So the practice of the Bodhisattva is not to be interested in personal gain or gaining ideas or trying to gain something from the practice or from anything, actually, sacred or secular.

[08:31]

matters, the Bodhisattva relates to sacred or secular matters in the same kind of way, with the same kind of mind, including ideas about having some kind of rank, you know, within Buddhism or within the institution. That kind of, even though we have some hierarchy that's kind of natural and spontaneous, just given by the function of dharmas. But on top of that, human beings would tend to add something else, which is ideas about rank that then create hindrance between people and institutionalized religion. and the original spirit tends to get covered over and lost over time.

[09:35]

And this may be a natural kind of unfoldment and development. But the Bodhisattva is not interested in rank or engaging ideas. The Bodhisattva is primarily interested in the development of the cultivation of wisdom and helping beings. which includes saving oneself, of course. So we don't find security in the ego or in fame or material possessions or in views, holding on to some theory, having a debates, theoretical debates, where everybody's kind of defending their point of view as if, you know, clinging to the point of view as if it were a delusion.

[10:42]

Because then the point of view becomes a delusion. So in the Gospels, according to Matthew, it is said that the son of man has nowhere where he or she could lay his head. That's the same idea of the mind that doesn't abide anywhere. And who's the son of man? It's just the self. So in Sazen, we receive the self and we use the self, and then we let it go. So Samadhi practice is the practice of receiving the self, using the self in all activities, and then forgetting all about the self.

[11:54]

And the same is true of possessions. We acquire things for functional purposes, but we don't turn them into objects of fantasy that kind of supplement our ego in some way. And this is the way we have to relate to possessions, whether we have them or we don't have them. and to productive and work-related activities as well. I remember that in my 20s, I worked in a halfway house. And it didn't pay very much. It was a psychiatric halfway house, and it didn't pay very much. And it wasn't very glamorous, and it wasn't very professional. And I was studying to be a psychologist.

[13:04]

And people would tell me, well, why are you working there? You're not making any money. It's kind of a raunchy place. It's kind of run down. And you could be doing with your studies and what you know and so on, you could be doing something so much better and making much more money. And I wasn't that interested in that. And sometimes I thought, well, you know, they're having doubts. Maybe I should be better at selling myself, you know? I think, well, no, there's actually no need to sell yourself, because we already have something that's priceless. Not for sale. So I was pretty satisfied there.

[14:09]

And I was in that job, and I did it for a long time, kind of like Ross had been working at Pete's for, I don't know, 20 years, 30 years. just doing the same thing over and over again. And it's very, you can do that, it's very, the practice of zazen helps you do that, because no matter what you do, it's very enjoyable. Because you're relating to the activity from the absolute side. And then the practice also helps you to be satisfied with few things. There's always wanting more, but you can be satisfied, feel satiated, and satisfied with few things. And I remember I would stay overnight once a week there. And I would get up before the residents and do zazen in the living room.

[15:16]

And one morning, got up and I was getting ready to sit zazen. And then spontaneously I went into this deep samadhi. Sometimes we draw Buddha near. Sometimes Buddha draws us near. It happens in both directions. When we sit zazen, we're drawing Buddha near. Other times, Buddha grabs us and draws us near into his or her being. So that happens sometimes, you go into spontaneous trance states. And then I had this kind of apparition of Jesus. And he was laying, putting his hand out like this. Sort of this teaching of receiving the self and giving of the self and then forgetting all about the self and forgetting all about Jesus and Buddha.

[16:28]

Actualizing Jesus and Buddha and forgetting all about Jesus and Buddha and forgetting all about yourself too. And I was studying to get a PhD also. And I really like to study. I have this kind of tendency, which is kind of a, you know, it's a good thing, but it could also be a problem. And in Zen, it's a problem. In academia, if you like to study, it's good. But in Zen, it's a problem. The bad student. So I've always been a little bit of a bad student because of that Zen student, because of that inclination.

[17:40]

But I really liked Mel as a teacher, even though he's not intellectual type. There are other teachers who are intellectual types, but he's not an intellectual type and doesn't like the intellect so much, but his practice is very strong. And that's what drew me to Sojin. He's very pure and very strong. It doesn't matter, you know. So the intellect is seeking for something deeper than the intellect. But, you know, I felt like, you know, it's like there's Buddha, and then there's the two immediate disciples of Buddha. One is Makkah Heshapa, and the other one's Ananda. And they represent kind of two sides of the Buddha. Makkah Heshapa is the direct transmission, the strong, strict practice of Zazen.

[18:43]

And Ananda was the scholarly type. It took Ananda longer to realize his nature because of his tendency towards discrimination. But that's a mistake on purpose. Because thanks to Ananda, we have the scripture. We have Buddhist discourses. Otherwise, we wouldn't have that. Now, if we didn't have that, would it matter? We didn't have the sutras, it didn't matter, we just had Zazen. But actually the teaching in Buddhism and in Zen, and even Rujing, who was Dogen's teacher, he didn't, this idea of transmission, special transmission outside the scriptures,

[19:48]

Rujing emphasized Zazen, right? Dogen went to Rujing and he said, well, all you need to do, forget about, you know, ceremonies and fancy robes. He didn't like to wear fancy robes, you know, and ceremonies and ritual and all that. Just do Zazen and drop body and mind. That's the fundamental teaching. But at the same time, he told him, there's no special transmission outside the scriptures. There's nothing inside or outside the scriptures. So there's no duality between Zazen and the sutras. So this is like Makkahashapa and Ananda, two sides of the Buddha. Eventually I graduated and Then one day, somebody called me out of nowhere. This woman who became a friend of mine just called me at the halfway house where I was working and offered me a job.

[20:57]

And I ended up leaving the halfway house. But otherwise, I was ready to stay there forever. But she kind of recruited me. She's kind of an angel. She died, Maria Vargas, living in Berkeley. She died young of a heart attack. So I worked at Berkeley Mental Health for a while, right around the corner from here. That was the job she recruited me for. And then about a year later, she did the same thing. She brought me this job for San Francisco. You know, so there's certain people that kind of are gatekeepers. We all have people who are gatekeepers for us. So if we just, you know, trust ourselves in the teaching, receive the self and give the self and use the self, then the whole works.

[22:01]

And we all have different, occupy different gates for each other. So we forget the self, then we work within interest net, and the whole works. And then we enlighten each other. So then she told me about this job in San Francisco, and that's where I've been since then. I only worked for a year at Berkeley Mental Health and then been at San Francisco in the Mission Clinic since then, which is a public clinic. So I never had much interest. A lot of people go in to study psychology and they want to open a fancy office and have a private of people with a lot of money, and then they advertise, and so on and so forth.

[23:09]

And they say, well, you have to open an office like that and put a plaque, and then you start charging a lot of money. Because if you charge a lot of money, then people think you're good. If you don't charge a lot of money, then people think you're bad. So even if they don't have much experience or know much, what's under their nose, they start charging a lot of money. And then people who have money are impressed by that and go for that. So that's kind of how wisdom degenerates into knowledge for consumption. That's what happens to wisdom in society and in institutions and in academia. So working for the public in a civil service, for civil service, which is working for the government really, the health department.

[24:31]

So there then the thing breaks again into this duality of healing and the organizational politics and the administration. And in most of these organizations, there are people who have this kind of mission, or not mission, but I guess the vocation to be healers and to help people. And there are other people who have a vocation to be administrators. And I tried being an administrator for a little while, and I just couldn't do it. because it becomes this thing about attainment and achievement and power and rank. And a lot of the people who are kind of going that direct, I mean, somebody has got to do that, you know, unfortunately.

[25:41]

It's like the, the Romans and the Christians, you know, and then the teaching of Christianity, you know, give to Rome what is of Rome and give to God what is of God, right? So they're always going to be the Romans. And the Republicans are like the Romans, you know. I'm sorry if there's any Republican here that I've you know, this thing about, you know, authority and power and this kind of ambition, you know, to rule, you know, it's kind of ambition to rule and kind of ambition for power, which looks like the dharma, but isn't, and can get very easily get perverted. So it's better to kind of play low key, you know, so what I've tried to sort of stay under the writer's screen.

[26:49]

So they let you do what you can do and be a healer, you know, but not get into the politics of the organization. And then be some kind of pivot by which something else can happen there than what usually takes place. So this is, I'm talking about this because I think this is the part of the practice of the Bodhisattva's practice of non-attainment. Kind of staying low-key and under the radar screen so that lets you do the Bodhisattva work. And sometimes you have to go along with things, and other times you have to take a stand.

[28:05]

But knowing when to take a stand in a way that doesn't create more suffering and karma is quite a challenge. And I've had the experience of doing that both in a karmic way and in a non-karmic way. You know, I was talking about possessions a little bit, but I guess I'm already past that. But it's an important aspect, you know, how do we relate to possessions. But I guess I'm going to go a little bit more into the issue of institutionalization of the dharma and of religion and what happens to spirituality in that process.

[29:29]

In our practice, we have choices that they didn't have in Japan. I mean, in Japan, to really practice Zazen, basically you have to make a choice of being ordained as a monk or as a priest and go to the monastery. Whereas here we have the, the choice of being able to practice without doing that. So then we have to kind of come to a a deeper understanding of what is a priest or what is ordination.

[30:45]

What does it mean? If we don't have to be ordained to practice Zazen, then why be ordained as a priest? And what's the purpose of it? And if we take out the institutional the institutionality of it, your motivations for power or to be a member of a priest club. Sometimes people think that, you know, in the community sometimes people speak about priests being some kind of special group that has a certain kind of power, some kind of elite. And that doesn't seem to be consistent with the Bodhisattva spirit. So if anything, the priesthood has to be something else than a kind of career in an institution to acquire ranks and to move in as if it were some kind of business.

[31:58]

So that's the downfall of having a hierarchy. It's not easy to talk about this. It's a bit of a difficult topic. So the robe basically represents – what does the robe represent? It's not a symbol of power or authority or look like that, but it isn't. What do we say when we chant the robe in the morning? We say, now we open Buddha's robe, a field far beyond form and emptiness. The Tathagata's teaching for all beings. So the robe represents the teaching and represents Buddha's mind. And

[33:05]

And it's also a symbol of dedication to the practice. People can practice Zazen, come in and out of practice, and can practice in various modalities. But once you make a vow or a commitment to ordination, then it means that you've already reached a place where you think that you're going to practice for the rest of your life. So I think that should be a criteria for ordination. And not just something that you do temporarily, like, you know, get ordained, you go to a practice place for five years, you get ordained to do that, and then you come out and do something else. So it's symbolic of Buddha's mind and heart, but it's not the only manifestations of Buddha.

[34:20]

So it's also important to have the lay manifestation of Buddha and not just the priest. And there's a way in which the lay practice leader and the priest practice leader are on the same, should be on the same level. particularly in this kind of setting where it's mostly lay people practicing. So we've, you know, we've debated a lot about that and about giving people different kinds of, you know, rank and authorization and so on and so forth. And I think we all have kind of different points of view about it. But although, you know, we need to transmit the practice of wearing Buddha's robe, it's also important to put late practice on an equal footing to priest practice.

[35:26]

So then the practice of wearing Buddha's robe is not a question of power or authority over anybody else. You know, in the history of Buddhism, Buddhism has gone through various, I mean, it seems to go through ups, up, up spurts, and then downfalls, and then it goes up again, and then it goes down again. Like, there is Shakyamuni, the founder, and then there's the Hinayana teaching, And then there's the Mahayana sort of brings back Buddha back to life with people like Nagarjuna and Basubandhu. And then the teaching of Nagarjuna and Basubandhu then degenerates into scholastics.

[36:33]

And then Bodhidharma brings it back to life in China. And then it degenerates into mirror wiping, Zen. which is a whole debate in the platform sutra, which is sort of the shell without the essence. So the sixth ancestor says there's no mirror and there's no dust, so what should I wipe? But even though there's no mirror and no dust, we still wipe. So both sides of the teaching are important, but it seems like over time, the form or the skin achieves precedence over the marrow or the bone, and the two get confused. And then it died out in China, and then Dogen brought it back to life in Japan, and then after Dogen, it kind of died down in Japan,

[37:45]

And then Suzuki Roshi brought it back to life in the U.S., and then maybe it will kind of die down again in the U.S. It will degenerate into the institutional Zen, the outward skin of Zen. So that's the danger of institutionalized religion. And one of the strengths, I think, of the practice that we have here is that we still have both aspects of the teaching very much in a vibrant way. And having lay practitioners alongside priests is very important. because it emphasizes the non-institutional side of Buddhism.

[38:48]

And it makes you think really about what's the fundamental thing. Is it rituals? Is it ceremonies? Is it wearing fancy robes? Or is it the fundamental of the practice and the teaching? And that happens to all traditions. You know, Christianity is sort of an utmost example of that, where you have the Pope and the Vatican, this big building, big institution, the fancy robes and hats and so on and so forth, but where's the beef? Where's the living manifestation of the Spirit of Jesus? Where do you see that? Actually, it's everywhere, but we don't see it. So, well, I managed to talk about it somewhat, although I was a little hesitant here and there talking about this topic.

[40:02]

But I think that I've reached the end of my remarks here, so I want to open it up for discussion and comments or questions. I've got one, a nice controversial one for you. Let's see if I can handle it. You can say, this is my opinion. What about, since it sounds like you assert that you believe that lay practice and priest practice should be put on, you know, held with equal esteem. Yes. What do you think of transmission to lay practitioners, formal transmission, outside the priesthood? Do you think that's legitimate? Well, you know, one thing that I didn't say, like I said before, I was really drawn to Mel because of the strength of his spirit and practice. And that was before he had transmission, way before. Mel didn't have transmission like for quite some years into when he was practicing.

[41:06]

And he already had the transmission of Buddha nature. Suzuki Roshi's spirit was already awake in him before he got the transmission robe. And the transmission robe, he wasn't taken very seriously at San Francisco Zen Center, and they started taking him more seriously when he got a brown robe. And he had to get a brown robe by, and I'm saying this, I'm speaking for myself, okay? I'm not speaking for Mel or for anybody else, all right? But he got the brown robe from Hoetsu, who was the suger of his son, right? But his teacher was was Surya Suzuki, not Hoetsu. So the transmission of the essence of the teaching was transmitted, was a direct transmission from the practice of the teacher to the practice of the student. And then

[42:08]

to get the institutional recognition, he had to get this rope from Hoitsu Suzuki. And then he got some more recognition from the institution. So that's the politics of the transmission. The essence of the transmission is through zazen. That's how we bring Buddha's heart and mind to life. And then the other is the institutional recognition. And the two of them can be confused. And then you can have one without the other. And the teaching sort of degenerates when you have the skin without the bone and the marrow. So lay practice is about having the marrow, the bone and the marrow. people who practice, lay practitioners who practice dowsing alongside priests, so they also have the transmission of Buddha's mind.

[43:19]

So that needs to be acknowledged in some kind of way. Which way, then we get to the politics, you know, of the institution, which I don't want to go there. Oh, that was the question. Right. Well, then we get into issues of color. Is it brown or green? And then it gets kind of silly. It gets kind of silly. Yes, Eric? what's being said closely, and this notion, and that is this notion that, you know, Zen sort of reached this fluorescence in Japan, and then it was this long, steady degeneration since then, and it's only now, in America, being revived as a true essence.

[44:43]

This is a, I think it's a really, I think it's, you hear this, you hear this a lot, actually, and I think it's really kind of, I think it's a little self-serving of us, not to look closely at whether there's more that we can learn from, say, Zen, the way it's happening in Japan now. It can be used as a way just to say, just like, well, this is how we want to practice, and we don't need to worry about empty shell, it might be a little hasty just to, in one sweep, wipe out all of modern Japanese in. I think there is still a lot going on there.

[45:44]

Even the things that we consider to be the most empty shell, I think more and more I've been thinking there might actually be something there that we just don't maybe understand that might relate more to what we think of as being the essence than we're able to necessarily see at this time. Yeah. No, I think it's a good point. I don't think that we're inventing you know, a new form of Western Buddhism or American Buddhism, as opposed to, and then this is the true Buddhism versus the Japanese Buddhism, which is not the true Buddhism. That's kind of nationalistic, self-serving in that way. I agree with you. I was looking more, I mean, I think this is just Buddhism, but it seems like historically Buddhism goes through these phases of kind of ascent and descent.

[46:56]

And it's a hypothesis. I mean, there's a lot of historical research to do to really back that up and see exactly whether it's true or not and whether it happened that way. But it does seem to be in general and in a helpful way, perhaps, that people talk about a teaching, how it tends to get institutionalized over time, and the institutionalization takes precedent over the teaching, and the teaching tends to get lost. But I say that also because that may happen to us. It's not like we're better than they are. We're just as bad as they are. I mean, that may be what's coming for us. So we should be very careful of saying, look at them, because it may be that that's where we're going. And it may take another 500 years before it's revived in some other way in the West. So it may not be a better Buddhism after all than the Eastern Buddhism.

[48:00]

Then, you know, the other thing is that they're all important. It's like with Bodhidharma and his disciples, he says, you're the skin, you're the flesh, you're the bone, and you're the marrow. And it looks like he's choosing one over the others. But they're actually, they're all important. And when you hear the responses that they all give, they're actually all pretty good responses. And that's why he says they're all different aspects of the teacher. So the skin is also important. So the skin is the ritual, the robes, all that. But the skin, if you think the skin is the bone in the marrow, that's where the problem is. Now, if the four are in harmony, then it's working. Isn't to say that the skin is the marrow precisely the expression?

[49:05]

Yeah, but yes, but. You know, there are things that look like they're near enemies of truth, things that look like the teaching, but it isn't. So I think that also applies there, that there's a way in which the essence is in the... emptiness is form, but form has to be emptiness. And if form is not emptiness, then the essence is not in the skin. It's just form, and there's no emptiness in the form. Yes? And to some extent, the proof of the pudding is how a practice affects.

[50:08]

people's lives in the rest of the world. And it's hardly safe to see that by studying what's gone on in the past historically. If you take a crossways cut through Christianity at the present, there's a whole range of corruption and genuine effort on behalf of people going on today, from the Vatican to Guatemala, where we have all these wonderful priests and nuns working on the ground level. Yes. Yes, I agree with you. Thank you for pointing that out. You mentioned that a bodhisattva will look to find wisdom to look towards the betterment of other people. And then you also surprised me by saying and the betterment of the self. And I guess I was wondering if you could speak a little bit, as a psychologist as well, as a practitioner, about the sort of relationship between the self and the non-self and the people, and how you sort of integrate that into practice and practice in a larger sense of one's life.

[51:29]

Yeah. In one minute. It's like the question to Rabbi Hillel, can you summarize the Torah standing on one foot? When we talk about self, we're talking about big self. So when we say we receive our self or receive the self in zazen, what we mean is the self of everything or how everything works together, both in us and between us. But in that working together of dharmas within us that make our self and that working of dharmas between us, which is our self too, there's no self. Thank you.

[52:30]

Beings are numberless.

[52:36]

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