Practice and Ritual: Just Enough

00:00
00:00
Audio loading...

Welcome! You can log in or create an account to save favorites, edit keywords, transcripts, and more.

Auto-Generated Transcript

good morning
can you hear me okay great
we're experimenting with a new making approach which i think should help so we have recently completed our practice period which is a hard time of the most concentrated effort the most concentrated zazen sir
sheen
complex ceremonies and rituals and i wanted to talk about that complexity ah the ritual complexity ha had it it's wonderful that i
i was amused i started out by making a big mistake i walked in here hand i've stood at the bowing matt and realized that i had forgotten one of the priests essential objects of clothing
my bowing matt
ah so fortunately barred when from judy
oh it's sir
it just demonstrates how much more work i need to do
ah
but i wanted to talk and also i bought these books which i'm not going to get into but so there are see here
this is this book these two volumes are called the standard observances of the soto zen school
and they total about eleven hundred pages in pretty small print ah and they detail
how the standard or the that they describe but document every ceremony almost every ceremony and ritual that we do ah and in the sodo school
so that's kind of the basis ah but i wanted to begin by talking about what inspires me
and ah
so start a couple of months back
the the purpose of ritual when we just say i i was looking ah i want to be clear about this because i had my own resistance i thought i
he did ritual when i came here thirty five years ago ah i was firmly convinced of that ah and when i walk into the zendo and ah
that doesn't the service chanting offering i discovered that i had a love for it
and what is it so i'll interest in to live
academic terms or a ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures words and objects performed in a sequestered place designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the
actors goals and interests got that
ah
it was written by catherine bell in a ritual perspectives and dimensions from oxford university press or richard rituals may be described by the traditions of a community richards rituals are characterized by formalism traditionalism invariance rule gov
it's sequel symbolism and performance
the root of the word ritual
ah in latin is ritual alice
that which pertained to write or id ah in roman religious and legal usage it was the proven way of doing something or the correct way correct order performance great custom
there's if you go back in the ah
the etymology i the word may be related to a sanskrit word ah
spelled r t a and of is linda year she's not here she would know this ah which rita which means the visible order in vedic tradition so the lawful and regular order of the normal therefore the proper natural
and true structure of cosmic worldly human events
okay with you like that or not that's that's definition
so how does this work
the couple months ago sojourn was giving a lecture
and soetoro she talked about
his own encounter with
zen practice early early days if i'm remembering correctly of coming to a psychology to the original ah
soto zen temple which then became san francisco zen center ah
ah near japan town and seeing everyday suzuki roshi come in
offer incense do his bows and do zazen
and that he would do this in a in an unvarying way
and somehow you found that inspiring right and i think u shaped i mean i'll ask you did i think you should ask you know you kind of shaped a vow around that probably
oh
what intention
i had never wanted to repeat anything
right
similar good
got the lack of ritual ritual day here today
the right
little joys and right that that inspired you write and i think that i had some of the same instinct i just said no best way is not to repeat anything you know ah and that had to do with music that i loved and poetry and art you know it was
about what the spontaneous side of zen and that was an aesthetic and i don't just throw that out but ah
that when he said that that inspired me can actually the fact that i would say the fact that that surgery she had that experience
if he hadn't had the experience this place would not exist in none of us would be sitting here today height
ah so this is the way that ritual works to create a sense of order and harmony and
groundedness joy in our world
so that was really inspiring to me when i heard that even though
i think in that same letters so true she said by i've could have incorporated embodied suzuki roshi and i would say to some extent i have incorporated and embody my teacher ah but i'm always aware of what a long distance i
still have to go still a work in progress
so the second inspiring thing also involves a sojourn roshi ah friday that was yesterday friday ah
i was sitting in my
ah vice sebaceous seat they're sitting out facing the door and ah
surgeon came in to open the zendo and do exactly what he saw suzuki roshi doing ah offer to your bows do john doe and then he had some people to see for docusign so he was going out the door and when he got
to the place towards the back of the room near where i was ah he noticed that that the chairs were a little out of line there they weren't up to the that white mark that we have floor they weren't they weren't even with each other and he stopped
have you align them
and then he went out no big deal but it's the activity of setting the world in order the activity of alignment the activity of mindfulness of how use what you see
even though
you may have some other he had another destination
but along the route he was paying attention to but there was
and the third thing that that deeply inspiring to me is
the ritual of zazen
and i see it as a ritual and this is in a certain way this is like turning my my internal
ah value system it my it's been turned upside down ah because i used to see ritual is something lifeless and not only life list but ah life draining
the repetition of something what
what can be less lively than that
and yet
what i've learned in the general sense is that
participating in the ritual of zazen henner van various other rituals that we have here ah within those rituals there's freedom
that i do feel ah
as i have said a number of times recently and are hidden for as mg buy tokens mg ah he says the zazen i speak of is not learning meditation is simply the dharma gate of repose and bliss
now some of you may be waiting for the repose in bliss
ah
but i can tell you from my own experience i waited a long time
kept practicing
and kept doing that ritual ah because i had some face
i had faith in the people that i saw around us who've been doing it for a long time
and i i think i surmise that
it helped them be the way i was seeing them to be which is to be to live with a modicum of freedom
and after a time and at the present moment when i sit down like this in half lotus ah
it's never the same
but it is useful
hum
the concerns my anxieties which which have a great hold on me
in that moment they drop away
i don't worry about it because they'll come back you know but ah
to notice that they drop away means to see that they're actually impermanent
they are not a seamless all encompassing reality
so
those are three
kind of inspirational aspects that i i just wanted to touch on
before i go into sort of the complexity of it
ah
you know we checked the
we have the sixteen bodhisattva precepts which are the the three refugees refugees buddha dharma sangha the three pure precepts
which we translate as a to devoid to avoid all evil do all good
save the many beings in georgia and and and the ten ah pure mind precepts which are very particular about activities but the first pure precept ah in the
in these books are the first pure precept is is really interesting ah cause it's not avoid all evil it's this is soto's in the first pure precept is a brace embrace and sustain forms and ceremonies
when i first heard that
i had ah
i i just had an immersive response to that it still
it's not what i would say to people in general and it's one it's one version it's not the universal version of that precept in even in circles in ah
but
the second line the commentary on that is it is the abode the source and the law of all buddhists so the forms
the rituals and ceremonies that we have are the manifestation
is it are a manifestation of the dorm
and in his book being upright ah
tension roshi comments by wholeheartedly embracing and sustaining the forms and ceremonies of zen practice you abandoned the self centered way of living which is the source of all evil

so i've been looking through standard observances
and
not long ago i also went to a couple weeks if i went to are we have annual meetings of the the soto's and priests ah there's about one hundred in this country who have actually authorization from soto shoes soto headquarters in in
ah japan and sojourner oh she's one i'm another and mary most seen as one ah not all priests are ah we had to do some training to do this
so we have an annual meeting of these of these priests
and ah
we we always have a scholar of practitioner give a lecture so the lecturer was
it was interesting very clear this year and he was speaking about the okay sir
and the rock suit the the rope that sort of a short small role that we were ah hand for about two hours he he lectured for two afternoons for about two hours ah he talked about
a thirty eight year conflict between within soto zen in japan between the a temples one of the headquarters and so gg temple a thirty eight year conflict about whether there was a ring
hanya okay sir and a zoo or not so if you look at charlie charlie has a an official soto's and rock sioux
that's right it's a priest
i see okay
blessings my son
but when we go to the soto's and meetings most of us here have a certain style of rope that be done at a certain sewing tradition ah and that's the style that we do that we inherited fierce suzuki roshi and and his teachers
we are not allowed we wear those roxas
we have to show up with a raucous who with a ring
and it turns out that of there's great controversy about what dogan actually war did he have a ring or notary
and it turns out that in in the eighteen seventies
this this the original of this ah painting if you look closely his okay has a ring as a closure
other than this painting all of the paintings at a haiti
we're retouched if they had rings they painted them out
this is before photoshop
so
it's a now i'm getting to the critical side

in the
in the nineteen seventies or nineteen sixties or nineteen maybe was a year nineteen seventy one tulsa gummy regime zero
nineteen seventy suzuki roshi tassajara had begun and they had a they are very i think a simple practice simple liturgy and forms and touch the commie roshi who had been the ino at a a ha ha ha was invited over to ist
dalglish the monastic forms it does ah ha and it happened to be the time when children know she was she so to use is a hotel doshi i think is the term ah she's so teacher had he set up the a forms and dosage forms if you go to toss are many of you have
it's a complex form but it's fully digested and we know how to do it ah and it you know when you digest these forms their just natural and that's the monastic form
in the middle nineteen eighties ah
category roshi who had moved to minnesota
and he had established the minnesota zen meditation center and then had begun him a monastic training place
the van iowa minnesota boarder called a hockey oh gee
yeah and ah
at one point in nineteen eighty five eighty six he brought over ha
the nagasaki brothers ah to zen masters in desoto tradition are you going are saki and and nagasaki ha and i believe that laurie participated in one of those in one of these sessions and merely scott did also there
had what was called bend away which was
maybe bend a whole ah which was
giving people a case of the formal practice ah as they understood it in embodied it ah of tokens in and it was very people freaked out because they thought it was gonna be like this from now on and it's very
it there's free prescriptions about how you go to the bathroom
ah their pages about how you tie up the washcloth that goes around your head you know how you lie down to go to sleep ah everything in soto life his ritualized
and that his monastic life there's a description in a book by a suit and narrow stop hiroshi about ah well actually it's a quote from his teacher who was also category roche's teacher echo hashimoto roshi ah
ha and talked about the practice of monastery is like the practice like farmers treading on wheat
they tread on the on the on the stalks of wheat ah and they been them down ha and bend them down to the ground so that they strengthen have more streets when they emerge any he said you are like
you are like a shaft of wheat when you're in the monastery
and there's also a verse dogan wrote in
twelve thirty four from wonderful ah one of a piece city rob which is it's called dog huge issue guidelines for studying the way and ah
like to take this up some time it can be fun to to study it's real instructions for you know your attitude towards practice but in that ah
there's this line you should engage yourself in zazen has though saving your head from fire
so this when i first heard this hen when i first encountered in the mid eighties which was relatively early in my practice i was ah both excited and scared about these ritual practices ha
they gave me a form to enter
and i understood that and wanted to do it
and also it was very hard there are places where i had already discovered why i love this aspect ritual
and there was a point where
it was like a switch was thrown and say okay this is too much stop here on
but that wasn't you've got a monastery that is not your choice you go to the monastery whether you like it or not you do what
you're expected to do
and so i did that and i learned it and settled into it
and i continued that often on for the left for the for the following
decades
in two thousand and three
i had an opportunity to train had suga narrow saki roche's monastery in japan ah
now plucking the way a blocking
the name of the place so yoji so yoji on the island of shikoku ah and we were given a sort of intensive training it was really hard
because
even though this assists to be training for teachers their idea of training for teachers was okay you start
as a monk and you'll learn the monks practices and the monks are like twenty three year old boy's head is not so easy
ah but what i noticed that was deeply inspiring
was that all of the practices that we were doing
at c o g
ah at route
i recognize them
as perhaps in some cases the elaboration of practices that we do here
berkeley sense in her and what i also appreciated
don't put there were many more of them but what i also appreciate it was i couldn't see anything that we were doing at berkeley's and center that had added anything if you understand what i mean say sometimes you go places i've been to other centres where they they have other way
ways of doing things and when or where does that come from
but there was nothing that i could see that we were doing it represents center that didn't make sense with they didn't correspond to what we're doing ah at zoo eog and i found the same thing true at at at a haiti
so gg was a little different because they have a different style of forms damned slightly different rituals
but this is
what we have here which is
really inspiring to me
is to me as a ritual is
just enough
that i think what
what search and roshi and over the years the community has evolved is
a relative simplification of complex monastic forums that fit our space and fit our practice little things is space you know ah when the
ah when the doshi ah
is ending service in a usual monastery there would be a lot of space between the ballot mad actually be a lot fair amount of space between the government and the altar and a fair amount of says team the buying mad and who and whatever was next we have of compressed space so
so we've just we've figured out how to move in that compressed face
so that we can maintain her composure
and respect
and
not leave anything out
since just enough this is the meaning for those of you who have eaten or aoki ah
the meaning of the word or gop is it's a vessel
that contains just enough
just enough food
to sustain us in our practice in our life
so this is attention that that i experience said of in the in the zen world to some degree because there
ah even among americans there are people who
it goes both ways they are people who
have to me last the spirit of the forms
who's not been and i see people who are even teachers who have not been not been trained in them
to the point where they can pass on something that is really important to me
i could be wrong it's important though i think ah and i see other people who are ah
clinging to a very very complex form that does not seem to me too
be appropriate to the nature of our practice
so what is the basis of that practice
how do you hate it i i found a wonderful lecture
ah can i can get a few was published in the beasts see newsletter and in two thousand and two it might be good to publish it again ah so tomorrow she wrote it in nineteen eighty seven for present mount a minnesota zen monasteries are medicine mountain centers not minnesota
zen
yeah couldn't borrow magazine scratch at ah minnesota zen centres magazine and it's about practicing with form
ah sort of read you a little about that little from this is he says when i first came to descend on the practice forms of foreign to me but the same time i respected them and wish 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 them wholeheartedly
it seemed to me that the meaning of the heart sutra was directly connected to the wholeheartedness with which i chanted
but even though i enjoyed the forms i realized that there is 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
us that we should be able to freely enter the forms of either side with the same spirit
this is the flexibility this is the
the middle way that we have that is really unique
of all the places i've been in a certain way we have the we have
one of the most formal practices here have any zen center of any lays and center that's not a monastery we have remember we're not a monastery and yet we the form sustains us because
we're doing this form their people in this room who have been practicing here
there i see people who've been practicing year more than thirty years
because the form of our practice sustains us
and that includes the form of zazen
my friend tiger layton ah
because saw our posture and sauce and deposit buddha mudra
said sake putting your body
into the position of been a buddha
which is no difference then no different from being a buddha
buddha mudra it's a really cool expression
the question is what is buddha murderer
in the world
the dharma name that sojourn she gave me ah
about thirty years ago
the i use the name a hundred his dharma mountain but the actual technically my dharma name is khushi key which means formless form
so he presented me with this go on
ah that represents for me it represents attention
attention in both directions from my life the report that can get stuck on forms
and on ideas of villages in trade and the part that maybe doesn't pay enough attention to forms and is a little lazy
but the thing in our life is too
ha
is to make it authentic
and in his essay
central ratio he writes something ah about music
that is completely consonant with my own experience he says the great trumpeter jazz trumpeter trumpet player dizzy gillespie absorbed and played roy eldridge another great trumpet player note for note
and then went on to develop his own unique style
this is to internalize the teaching and the teacher on that foundation to find your own way your own voice
this is what
i actually had sort of worked out for myself as a musician before i even came to this practice
the music that i play is a traditional
hi traditional forms of american music of ha
southern music of blues based music but also appalachian spring ban based music and they're very clear forms for how you play this and i had you know i listened to everything i could
whenever i got a certain degree of competence ah
me and a bunch of friends over the years
went down south and we would learn from the old musicians or when they came up north we would get together with them we will learn and we would learn that music in as close to an authentic way has we could
and that was the apprenticeship that was training
ultimately with xin with jazz with traditional music
in order to make it your own you have to express it through your own body
and you have to express it through every aspect of your life
so to go back to this question of just enough
ah sojourn roshi rates here suzuki roshi his own practice was always very simple and seemingly informal in the midst of formality the formal practice we got from him was just the bare bones
i met a ten die abbott who said that he felt suzuki roshi to given us the most simplified forms so that everyone could do it
he said that in japan the soto school has the most elaborate and ornate kind of chanting of our schools and adzuki where she only gave us the heart sutra to chant in a monotone
ah and then he says a taxidermy rocio someone who set up all the other forms so we have this simple form and we have built on it over the years and deepened our attention to it

but we have to develop forms we have to develop and we'd been i don't think it's is a problem i think we have developed
forms and a practice that fit
our life that exists in the world
our life with jobs and families and bad backs and getting older
ah we practice sometimes i would think about this last night the
this prescription to practices if saving your head from fire
this is really good
but maybe after twenty or thirty years you can't quite do it that way ah maybe you have to realize you have to practice as if ah your head was ah
ha
a high risk fire area
yeah i hope ah because because we can our head can always burst into flames
you know it's not always burning you know sometimes it's nice and cool
but we have to be prepared this is what to me this is what zazen doesn't would soto zen practice does is it a pray it prepares us to move in fluidity either way
this is just our style the practice it's not necessarily the best style have decided to best style for me
but i respect other approaches i was a i give talks last weekend i think it to homers and monastery and not on whidbey island which is a rinzai monastery are run by someone has also been a teacher for me for many years showed a hirata
oshie and it's really interesting to hear them chant tear hear them to service because they wang in the bells they really hit the hit him as hard as they can and when they're to the clappers it's smash them together and when they chant they shout
and it's full out and it's what i see them doing is just what what soetoro she talks about this article their farid in their teacher you know when you hear a rod roshi chant it's like there is nothing held back you know is is full out and that's inspiring also
and then you see you know students chanting the same way and visit know it somewhat imitative but they're trying you know they are trying to embody the form of their teacher which is which is fine
for us
we don't bring the bells we we want a good open sound on the bells an open voice resident we want that to be the sound of are chanting so we can get we can get quieter and i'm not gonna do this but
we can in an appropriate moment give a huge didn't shout that shatters the world
i did something like that
couple months ago some place and
i think it scared people
salt added to it but we should have we should have the capacity to move in whatever ways appropriate but as a normal
process we just take the middle way that is properly aligned
so i'm going to stop there ah hand you know i hope i haven't thrown too much stuff at you but we have a little time for question five minutes six minutes jed
this scholar the whole feel about
yeah the rings i didn't say what that was about again
they decided to way down to her for whatever drink
switch that change covered
kurt government was around her
yeah really many right
so let me just very briefly because i don't fully know this history and also it's it's complex
not surprising the it's about money power and respect
ah
the ag system and the so gg system so surgery was huge henne haiti was making a kind of power move in so gg system while was wedded to the ring and the ag system was not and finally they they win at this for thirty eight years
and the meiji government finally intervened and said stop at you guys go and shake hands and the compromise that they made was there is no ring on the okay sir
in in official soto no ring on your kaisa there is a ring on the rocker zoo and that the attempt there was even handedly to honor
dogan and case on has the has the founding sources of soto's and that's my understanding of it ah but ah anyway
we shouldn't get caught in that yes
go here
if what
i know him
where are you going that you need it
you look at rice's
oh ross is ross belongs to another ross was so this is rob suit in a so gg tradition right yeah new york it was the so gg conditions are like a few hours a day in alleges clearing wrong as with the journey of a another
i was feeling this say that his went and more accounts
okay now we've opened this can of worms surgeon
literally you said with a try yeah the time the street the old a basic the ball it's a clasp
give a disastrous history road so
if you are chinese
a chinese man chair a very real
a
the
back in the twentieth century
ha
i really do
some zen teachers that researched owners and they
introduce reintroduce the old man right
and we are worried when the old time
kind of erosion was that matter whether repeat with the you
who are razor sharp
and feel like comfortable with you so
from erosion suggests that to hiroshi when we started filming that emerging seventy one
snap your official through our own wrong in that style and as what we've that so we don't have room
you want
what is the order i remember with this level
happened he said obviously
this is if he or she went along nice
use this will never use anything like that
guess didn't ask him
you
during doesn't get and over in japan so own role and let them ejected with extra credit
but there's a few monasteries were they do but very few and you can't so jade if you're going to an official soto event you'd better get a ring truth around with afraid that was explained to me why do we become i was upset over why can't we go to really anywhere in road
good nice
we are one where the six that get out of uniform that japanese practice right
you know
we all do with it you know they are the same cameras disinfect you
but i will say we had like last year at our meeting we had or aoki instruction and that was very amusing because
at every step in the meal they had to have a fever discussion about what to do because every one of them had a slightly different form
how standardized you want to be
the right and read to have it on
megan
please
i've always thought it's a very great ah deprivation for the young man of our society that do not have a come of age ceremony that's really important neither my grandson
leave that their bar mitzvah was i was hugely benefit that you could see they sell like mad when they were finished and the only thing most people have this get a driver's license with you
authentic
the lot i really believe that the ritual ceremony the over
what can be more i agree i agree i wish my bandmates for head i wish i came out of it feeling like a man but that's another issue that that's a whole other talk soon
has found interesting that and i like to add one
five a ceremony that i started reaching our factors place
as the fact that we do it out and gather yeah really important aspect of our style of practice
so much because we shared like sharing a language sharing
i'm gonna have a partner
no can become part of the animal and out around
and at the same time
can you do
and that makes it possible for me here in the chair of the offered flower petals in fact
actually have individual alive has been very smart people alive
i think that the ritual i was speaking blessed weekend ah
there's a book that i love by lewis hyde called the gift which many of you know hand one of the essential point of that book is that the gift is only alive when it's in motion
and i think the same thing is to original ritual the rituals only live
where's as you're doing it
and in the embodiment of that you know sometimes you might see things that need to be changed we changed something ah speaking you know about our founders ceremony a small point in the ritual that when searching pointed it out said oh yeah that that feels right so rich
rules are alive and breathing the the problem in the
with the problem would have a book like this is it makes it seem like it's gotta be this way and it's always this way and then it's not alive so one more question peter oh this is far much you say that when i hundred if you be talking a little bit out
the other side of his car on the jews there's nothing ever rupees didn't know it
nothing ever repeats yes ah every bow that i do
it's a ritual activity it may look similar every bow that i do
is different
every period of zazen your area quite literally every bow that i do as i go down and as i get up the elements of the body the elements of ritual is
your hand your leg your weight you know it it's not automatic ah and that's where it's not american same sense of when when so she was going out he aligned the chairs you know ah
it's not like just getting it done it's actually entering into it which means having an awareness for a mindfulness of it
have i think that really everything that we do is that and that the the
for me i think the thrust of soto's and and thrust of monastic life and so does and is to ritualized everything from is it too much but i can understand the point of that and is a way of thinking of one's life that way which really draws your attention to each activity
yes
the book
has all the regulations over ways didn't do for me accepted any proof
yes but the actual activity you draw what you need from the book
sylvania
really
well i actually met longer longer religion
this is sarah
we don't have to do over and pick out the elements that work great
it was excellent created that is not like you have to fall over some people do but if our current situation use those elements
people feel when pupils are well
was then wouldn't want to do how many people are going to be there with the situation and then you use of elements to create seven yeah at tom i've been teaching ritual that who paez and center and i actually put together a two page a two page hand out
of building blocks of soto zen ritual you know that you put it together generally had of these elements and i think that the same thing
ah
suga our saki and his book i'm reading says it's okay this is the formal way that you do choker or surface ah but when you're back in your home temple and you don't have all of these different temple positions and officers one person has to do this and so we want you to know what the elements are
and then you figure out how to do it in the most effective way this has this is our life this is actually true of everything that we do so thank you very much enjoy this beautiful summer day