It occurs to me that I might offer a precept reflecting the etymological sense of the word, sept something, septus or something, of to take something beforehand. A warning, a teaching. So I offer a warning or a teaching beforehand this morning. My teaching or the teaching or the warning is that I feel we are at a turning point. We are in a crisis here in this room this morning.

[01:03]

We're turning from twenty days together to not being together. twenty days of concentrated meditation to a very different form of meditation probably for most of us. There's tremendous energy here now. There always was, but perhaps we feel it more. I really feel much more energy now than at the beginning of this intensive. Tremendous energy. And this energy is, there's lots of dangers around this energy and lots of opportunities.

[02:13]

and we're now at a turning point and looming before us is another turning point. This evening there's a turning point of a ceremony of people going through the crisis of bodhisattva initiation. So this is another very enormous energetic field of this ceremony which we're moving forward towards ten people at the center with the preceptor, but all of us will be together. And then this morning and yesterday and the day before as we reflect on the structure of the ceremony and how the structure of the ceremony The mandala of the ceremony of initiation is also a structure of the path of practice as a whole.

[03:21]

We've come across several difficult and dangerous words, words that have also a lot of energy, or you could say charge on them. And these words, as I just said, are dangerous and difficult, but they're also opportune and auspicious if handled skillfully, these words. So I warn us, I warn myself and you, all of us to be aware of the dangers in discussing this ceremony and the powerful and dangerous words that are part of the ceremony. And also in using these words which are also teachings and they're teachings in the sense that they're religious teachings

[04:30]

And religious teachings are often called dogma. Dogma means the teachings, the doctrines of a religion. And the root of the word dogma is to seem or to think. So when we use religious words, which are part of a religious teaching system or teaching mandala, there is the danger of dogmatism. If I say confession, if I sit in this seat and say confession and repentance and renunciation, these powerful words coming from the dogma of the tradition, the doctrine of the tradition.

[05:32]

There's a danger that they will become dogmatism. See synonyms for dogmatism at dictatorial. The teaching is not dictatorial, but if held too tightly the authority around it is held too tightly. It can become like a dictatorship. So, and the more energy there is in the words, in the teaching, the more danger and the more opportunity. So now with these powerful words from this powerful tradition with all this energy that's developed from us practicing together there's a danger of dogmatism looming in the discussion and dogmatism if that's all there was to it that would be bad enough but dogmatism as you know can lead to disharmony dispute and religious violence and war

[06:48]

On the other side, the same dogma you've handled properly in conversation is an opportunity. That the energy around this teaching can be an opportunity for menju, for face-to-face transmission, for awakening, and for learning how to undermine dogmatism and promote harmony and end religious war. There's an opportunity to learn how to talk to each other so that both sides, all sides, can stop being dictatorial about their teachings. So I warn myself, I warn you.

[08:00]

Maybe that's enough. Again, a word about the yoga practice that we've been studying and devoting ourselves to these 21 days. I've heard from people here and I've heard from people before and I've read in books and I felt myself that by sitting still and quiet day after day this practice tenderizes us we are already tender. When people first arrive at a retreat, they're already tender.

[09:05]

If you poke them, they're very likely to slug you. You know what slug means, Tatyana? People come to retreats, you know, you say, if you say to them, you know, you're ugly. they might slap you or leave the retreat. At the end, you say, you're ugly, and they say, why, thank you. I needed that. Or they say, ugly? That's an understatement. Come on, you can say that better. Like in Cyrano de Bergerac. Remember that? Did you ever see that? Cyrano de Bergerac? It's a French play, I think. Is it? It's about this guy with a very big nose. And some guy, he goes to a bar one time and a guy says, Sir, your nose, it's large. He says, large? Why? And then he launches into 20 beautiful elaborations on his nose being large.

[10:12]

This is what you can do when you're, when you realize you're tender. You are tender. I am tender. You are tender. We are sensitive. But when you calm down, you can open to it and live with it. You can walk around. I'm tender. If somebody touches me, it's going to like, I'm going to feel something. It's going to be a big deal if they touch me. Oh, wow. If I ever met anybody in this state of tenderness, it would be like, wow. That would be a meeting. Oh, here comes somebody now. My God, what's going to happen? Rather than, I'm going to retreat and okay, there's the person and you know, so they're not going to hurt me. Anyway, people are calming down and they're reporting that they're feeling tender and they're feeling vulnerable. And as I said over and over, that's normal.

[11:14]

that's the way we always are, and when you calm down you get to see it and maybe like be okay with it, be at ease with being vulnerable. And even when you start to calm down you start to be vulnerable to a a feeling for your relationship with people. And you might be vulnerable to the feeling that your relationship is hindered. You're vulnerable to the feeling of the hindrance between you and other people. Usually you might be feeling like, I'm glad there's a hindrance between us. I'm glad there's a nice little, like, big wad of felt between us. a nice iron wall.

[12:17]

That's why I like it. They can just stay on the other side. But as you calm down, you open to Jesus. It's kind of funny that there's this stuff between us. It kind of hurts. I feel deadened by it. It's kind of stuffy. Usually we're so agitated we don't notice how stuffy it is to have a sense of substantial separation. But as you calm down, you start to feel that the problem with that substance, that stuff between you and other people, that it's kind of bothersome. One time I was talking to somebody And I just felt like my heart was covered with dust.

[13:21]

I felt like my heart was choking with dust. I could hardly breathe. I could breathe, but something around here couldn't breathe. And it had something to do with I couldn't breathe in relationship to this person. And I just felt like if I said something, it would blow the dust away between us. So I said, I love you. And it blew a hole in that dusty blockage. I love you. It blew holes in it. But there was still stuff there. I love you blew it partly open, but not, it was still, it was thinner, but still there. And I thought, I don't know, it seemed like I should say something more.

[14:29]

And I don't remember what I said next, but I think maybe I said one of two words because I said two more words. I think actually the next word I said was, thank you. And that blew away more dust. But there was still some. And then I said, I'm sorry. And that kind of blew the rest of it away. So each of those words addresses different dimensions of our sense of separation, I guess. So this is the heart-sweeping words. I love you. Thank you. I'm sorry. And sometimes you meet people and you feel that obstruction and you're happy it's there.

[15:32]

and you don't want to say, I love you. I don't want to say, I love you. I don't want to say, I'm sorry. And you don't want to say, thank you. Just leave it there. But when you calm down and you soften up, you don't want to have this big heavy junk between you and people anymore. So, When we calm down, we open up to our vulnerability. It's already there, but when we calm down, we open to it. We open up to our vulnerability to hear. We open up to hearing. We open up to our vulnerability to see. We open up to tasting. We open up to smelling.

[16:35]

We open up to touching. We open up to feeling. We open up to hearing. We open up to seeing. And we also open up to being heard. And we also open up to being seen. And we open up to being smelled. And we open up to being tasted. OK, taste me. We open up to being touched. We open up to being felt. We are being touched all day long. We are being seen all day long. We are being heard all day long. We're vulnerable to be seen, heard, touched, and felt all day long.

[17:38]

When we're calm, we open to it. And this is also opening to contemplation of the Dharma. People are, this is happening here. More or less in different places in the room at different times. I say it's wonderful. I say it's dangerous. I say it's a great opportunity. A little bit more on the word renunciation. Etymologically, it means to bring back or to protest against or to report.

[18:48]

It's from Latin. Rinuntiare. How's that, Lorenzo? Huh? Okay? Rinuntiare. Huh? Re. Re. renuntiare, to bring back or report back. And the first meaning in English is to give up, especially by formal announcement in a bodhisattva precept initiation ceremony. But it literally says in the American heritage to give up especially by formal announcement. It also secondarily means to reject or disown. So there's that harsh aspect potentially there.

[19:50]

The Chinese expression in the Buddha Dharma for renunciation is to leave home, to leave your nest, and to enter into training. Another Chinese expression for renunciation is a character used also for giving alms. So another meaning of renunciation is to give, not just to give up, but to make your giving up a gift. So practicing generosity, making everything you do a gift, is also renunciation. And then we come back to the word repentance, carefully discussing this difficult word. So in the English dictionary, the etymology of repentance is re, the etymology is re-pentir,

[21:08]

And that repent here is, goes to the old, that's old French, and old English is repentant. And this means re plus to be sorry. And the word pentiere is related to pain. To re-experience the pain of some action. To again feel sorry. And again, remorse means to remorse, remanja, taste again. Taste again the thing you did that you're sorry about. That's the etymology in English. The definition is to feel sorry to have a feeling about what you did so as to change your mind.

[22:23]

To feel sorry or remorse such that the mind changes. It's not just to feel sorry. It's to feel sorry so that the mind changes. Sometimes we do things Sometimes we're cruel. Sometimes we're disrespectful. And sometimes when we're disrespectful at that very moment, we don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. Later we think about it and we feel sorry. Later we find out perhaps that it hurt the person. And we feel sorry. And then our mind changes and we no longer think it was so good. Our mind changes. Sometimes we think, no, it wasn't good. Actually, it was really something I don't want to do anymore. The mind changes. But that English word has that tentier in it, some pain in there. Without that pain, will we actually reconsider and will the mind change?

[23:33]

Now I'd like to also bring up something that Charlene brought up. And I thought what she said yesterday was that the origin of the word repentant or repent was metanoia. But what she meant to say, I think I talked to her more, was that in biblical studies they use the word, the English word metanoia, to translate the Latin word metanoia. It's the word they used to translate it, and I think it's a pretty good word to translate it. However, the word metanoia does not have any element of pain in it that I can see. Meta means after, and noia means thinking. And so metanoia, it's... I just happen to have a book called Metanoia. So I went and looked at the book.

[24:39]

And the book is called Metanoia because the people who wrote the book feel that metanoia is a word in Greek, in classical philosophy, which meant a way of thinking about things afterwards. Because, again, metanoia, a kind of thinking afterwards that transforms our consciousness. And there's something about the nature of thinking itself that it is thinking afterwards, which I may comment on in a minute. But I think the reason for using it, the reason for using, it was used in the Bible, in the Latin Bible, to say there's a way of thinking after you do things, there's a way of thinking after you do things, such that your mind is transformed. And when they translated it into English, they brought in the element of pain, which I think is painful and difficult, but there's some validity to it.

[25:52]

Because just thinking afterwards about what you did, if there's no pinch in it, to say the least, if you think, oh yeah, I was cruel to that person, I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about it after I did it. I thought about it. But so what? You might continue to be cruel. But if you think about it and you feel a stab in your heart, you think, well, maybe I shouldn't continue this. So I think sometimes when you think afterwards about things, like especially if you're in Greece maybe, and you think about something you've done. Maybe you don't feel pain. You just see that was stupid and you change without any pain. You just see that was like not right. And there doesn't have to be a stab. Sometimes you can just see the beauty of doing it another way. It's not painful. But, you know, up in Northern Europe where it's not so nice, maybe people don't change so easily as they do like looking at the Aegean.

[27:00]

I don't know. Anyway, The English word repentant has etymologically, it's listed in certain etymological dictionaries under the discussion of the origins of the word pain. It has pentiere in it. Repentiere. Again, think about the pain. Think about being sorry. Now, I'm going to say this, and some of you have not studied chapter five of the Samadhi Nirmacana Sutra in classes with us here, so this may go over your head, but I'm just going to say it anyway, and you can study chapter five and so on for the rest of your life. There's a relationship, I think, between the Greek word metanoia and the sutra's teaching about the functioning of mind.

[28:13]

And the relationship is this. This English sentence, the process of thinking originates in reflection about what has already happened. Somebody says that. Like Hegel. The process, now in terms of chapter five, the process of thinking, and in chapter five thinking is called what? Thought. Mind, thought, and consciousness in chapter five. Mind, thought, and consciousness. Mind is alaya-vijnana, thought is manas, and consciousness is vijnana. The process of thinking, manas, operates on what's already happened, a laya. A laya is the part mind gets transformed into. There's a part of mind which is what's already happened.

[29:17]

Part of your life is actually what's already happened. Another part of your life is reflecting on what's already happened. And we call the part of reflecting on what's already happened in this teaching the thinking part. And the part of what's already happened is the storehouse of everything that's happened. So like your body is to some extent a storehouse of everything that's happened. And the consciousness that lives with your body is the consciousness of the history of yourself and the universe. And then you can reflect on that. That's the thinking. So metanoia is, in some sense, the thinking after the fact. So there's something about the nature of the way the mind works which reflects the nature of the process of repentance on our history.

[30:20]

And the process of confession and repentance taps into the transformative processes of the mind getting to know itself and become free of itself. And then again I just want to point out the Chinese words for this process when it says It says confession and repentance. Often confession and repentance is translated as confession. In some places it's translated as repentance. I translate it as confession and repentance. Because there's two characters. And the first character means confession. There's nothing about, there's just confession. San. The second character, ge, it means confession and it means sorrow. And that character is translated usually as repentance. So there's two parts. One is admit it, admit your actions, be aware of your action and be honest about it, confess it.

[31:30]

The other part is connected with the confession, get in touch with how you feel about it. And we don't necessarily repent, we don't usually use repentance for wholesome things, for things that we think are good. Because we don't feel bad about things that are good, usually. Now if we do feel bad about things that are good, then later we feel bad about feeling good about things that are bad. Because it's not helpful to feel good about doing bad things in terms of helpful towards appropriate to becoming free. So that leads us then just to the next aspect of the ceremony, which is a confession and repentance. And in that part of the ceremony, as I said yesterday, we say something kind of recommending the practice of confession and repentance.

[32:41]

and then the initiates say a formula which has been transmitted in the tradition and after they say that formula we say that pretty much a miracle has just happened that you said this formula. The karma of your body, speech and mind has now been purified by saying that. And will you continue this practice even after realizing Buddha body? And the people usually say yes. And so, I don't know, it's come to pass that at Zen Center now, in the morning, as part of our ritual, we practice confession and repentance, which was not the case when I came to Zen Center. We did not do that practice.

[33:46]

I don't know if Suzuki Roshi thought of doing the practice and tried it and got some response from the people he was practicing with. I don't know if he tried. I don't think that normally at his temple in Japan when, you know, they did not practice that. His confession repentance practice is practiced in many Soto Zen monasteries, but not practiced with lay people on a daily basis in most temples. And we do not practice it in the Zen Center, but if we had practiced it in the early days of Zen Center, it's fairly likely that there wouldn't be a Zen Center. Sukharshi was a great guy, but if he had done that confession and repentance, I think me, among other people, would have thought, this is not Zen. Now, if he did it in Japanese, we would have been happy. Sounds nice.

[34:55]

But if it got translated, most people would have left, probably. Leave dear Suzuki Roshi just over that? Well, maybe not. But anyway... Almost anybody else that had a Zen Center in America, if they tried to introduce that, that would have been the end of the group. Except for, you know, I don't know, some crazy people might have stayed. We came to Zen to get away from that crap, they would say. But anyway, after about, you know, by the 1980s, middle of 1980s, Zen Center was different than it was in the middle 60s. And various causes and conditions came together and it was brought up. And so now we do it. And there it is.

[35:58]

That's a practice we do every morning. And then once a month we get a little bit more into it. And again, most Japanese Soto Zen temples, they do not do Ryaku Fusatsu. They do not do that. Fusatsu means it's related to upasata, the Sanskrit word upasata, and it means repentance. So some people say it's the first Buddhist ceremony because Buddha was not in the ceremonies, Shakyamuni Buddha. was not into ceremonies. His ordination ceremonies were like, just come. That's all he did. He'd say, come, and they'd walk forward, and that was the ordination. He'd say, I would like to receive ordination. He'd say, come, come, monk. They'd come forward, and that was it. In the early days, they'd just step forward, and their hair would fall off. Same time, blades. But they did have the ceremony of confessing their shortcomings and practicing the precepts.

[37:10]

And they did it in general and in specific. They recited the precepts. And then if anybody had trouble with them during that past two weeks, they did it twice a month on the new moon and the full moon, or new moon and the old moon, I guess. And... So that was that. And so now we still do it in Soto Zen in Japan and throughout the world, temples throughout, Soto Zen temples throughout the world. But not all the Zen centers do practice this ceremony. And not all the Zen centers do transmit precepts. And not all Zen centers chant the confession and repentance in the morning. Maybe you've noticed that as you travel around that some of them, they don't do it. Probably for similar reasons that it takes a certain amount of maturity to be able to bring up these ceremonies without people, for example, not without people, but without people having the maturity to express themselves if they notice dogmatism arising because these ceremonies can easily become dogmatic.

[38:30]

So you have to have maturity enough so that when the dogmatism arises, because it probably will, I think it's too much to say to have maturity so there's been no dogmatism. It's almost impossible to avoid some of it. But when it arises, we need to know how to gently pull the rug out, pull the plugs out, melt the glue, let it off. Because it does arise when you have a teaching, you tend to sort of like think, this is a great teaching, everybody should know this teaching. Let's go over to your rock and help him, you know, practice this teaching. So even in Zen Center, there's a feeling like, you know, well, everybody should practice Zen. That can arise here. And so we need to have maturity to let it arise and let people say, I think Zen's good. And then if there's any dogmatism, gently help them like, not to stop saying I think Zen's good, but just let go of the dogmatic part of it.

[39:46]

Otherwise, if you crush them, as soon as they say I think Zen's good, they maybe just hold it inside. Really, I think Zen's good, but I'm not going to tell these people because they're going to hurt me. I think Zen's bad. You can get dogmatic about that too. And so you can also get anti-dogmatic. You can have anti-dogmatism, which is another dogmatism. It can be. Undermine it. Don't kill it. Don't kill dogmatic people. Help them get over their dogmatism. Don't kill dictatorial people. Don't kill dictatorial people. And don't kill those who are trying to kill the dictatorial people. That's the Buddhist teaching. Don't kill people, even if they're dictatorial.

[40:55]

And when I say that, I hope I'm not being dictatorial, but if I am, please don't kill me. Just help me get over it. If I'm being dictatorial, if I'm being dogmatic, help me get over it. Thank you very much for your great efforts in this... Practice period? No. Intensive? No. Practice period? No. Intensive? intense period of practice. Thank you very much. Someone asked me how the practice period is going and I said it's going great. It's a little too short though for me.

[41:57]

I thought it was a little too short. And by too short, I meant two things. For me, there wasn't enough time. I didn't have enough classes. I wanted more classes. But it was very good that we had quite a few days of sitting. So the classes felt too short. You know, for example, we didn't have time to tell the people who don't know about chapter five about chapter five, et cetera, and chapter six and seven. So in that way it was too short. But it was good for me. And also I just want to tell you that I want to confess a little bit of attachment to the group, to this nice big group. And I can tell I'm attached because it hurts me that we've lost, you know, that I've lost, that we've lost some of our members.

[43:02]

It hurts when these people leave. You know, so I say, I'm a little attached to the group. And I kind of feel, you know, I'm in danger at that time of getting a little petulant. I don't want to do any more practice periods if people are going to leave early. I don't like that pain of when the group crumbles around the edges, you know. You know about those people who left, right? And good reasons, but they left. They all talked to me, though. So it's, in one sense, you like to have this nice, well-formed group, and then how do you let it fall apart? This is my... And I'm sort of like, I have a particularly intense responsibility to try to hold it together. So when it falls apart, when the people go, it really kind of like, it's difficult for me.

[44:06]

I'm just confessing I have a little problem with that. Or, no, it's a little problem, really. It's not a big problem, but since I'm kind of wimpy, it kind of seems like a big problem to me. And some people would say, What a sissy you are. You think you have problems? If that's the kind of problems you have, you have no problems. People leaving early from practice periods is your main problem? It's not my main problem, but anyway, I want to tell you that. And I'm not telling you, I'm telling you that to tell you that I also attach to things. And then when I lose them, when I lose them and keep trying to, don't really let go, I feel pain, and if I can open to the pain, then if I accept the pain, if I open to the pain, then I finally let go. So I've almost let go of these people who have left. I don't mind so much if we all leave at the same time. If I get to go with you, I don't mind so much.

[45:12]

But for me to stay and all you leave, I feel kind of foolish. And I am. I don't like to feel it sometimes. But then after I do, I feel good. So tonight we'll have a little party. Oh, yeah, and I thought... this great ceremony, this great crisis that's coming up tonight. Tonight we're going to have a little crisis, a turning point. And I thought, is it a wedding or is it a funeral? In our tradition we have weddings and we have funerals. It's kind of a wedding and it's kind of a funeral and it's kind of a party and it's kind of silly. And also people are going to get kind of dressed up and they're going to wear nice white little socks and stuff, clean socks.

[46:19]

But I also want to tell you that I'm, part of me wants to, I have kind of like three main ways I'd like to come to the ceremony. One way is I'd like to come naked. Kind of would like to. Not just to become famous. But just to say, you know, I'm just a mammal. You know? I'm just a... How do you know? Are you watching him? The other way I want to come is I want to get dressed up. Dress up. I want to dress up. And when I thought of dressing up, I thought about this one Tibetan teacher who was coming to visit America and he had a Rolex.

[47:31]

A gold Rolex. And one of his students says, if you go to America and you wear that Rolex, people won't like it. They won't think you're a holy man. And he says, OK, I'll wear gold shoes too. So in one sense, if you get dressed up, it makes it easier for people to see that you're not a holy man or holy person because you're so vain. But then some other people think you must be a holy man to have such nice outfits. Anyway, one impulse is to dress up. And the other impulse is to dress down and to wear my most raggedy black clothes. To wear the robe that I was ordained in that just shreds now. So part of me wants to just crawl into the room and just say, you know, I'm not worthy to even be here. And... just let me crawl under the tongue.

[48:37]

So I have all these mixed feelings about this ceremony, about this crisis. And so there's danger tonight and there's opportunity and there's danger for the rest of the day and opportunity. So I hope we all enjoy our last wonderful day together. I hope you you know, feel and smell and touch and taste, hear, all that's happening all day long. And I hope you're open to being smelled and touched and tasted and seen and felt by all your friends. I want this for us. We deserve it. We've worked hard. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the truth.

[49:54]

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