Well, when this talk was first scheduled, I had something in mind that I wanted to talk about, which was right speech. And sooner or later, I'll get around to talking about it. In the interim, I had an opportunity a week before last to attend conference at Spirit Rock Meditation Center for a week and the name of that conference was Sustaining the Dharma, a conference of Western and Asian teachers. There were about 220 Buddhist teachers from June 20th to 24th out at Spirit Rock and I thought it would be kind of important to report back about that.

[01:03]

Sojin was there, and Meili was there, and myself from Berkeley Zen Center. And I think it was It was a very important gathering, and I realized when I was thinking about it today that I'm going to, in 45 minutes, replicate the effect of this conference by laying out a whole lot of big questions and having no completion on any of these topics and just maybe beginning to have some discussion and you're all, including myself, going to be left hanging. So that was actually the experience of the conference for me. It was kind of overwhelming. And after, oh, and Sue was there, actually.

[02:05]

She can also add her own impressions, perhaps. But there were so many wonderful people and so many big questions. And the discussion, the format was just sort of necessarily You just couldn't go into the kind of depth in anything, any one of these topics you could have spent a week on. And I just realized, well, this is just like the rest of my life. You know, there's all of these huge things. out there floating that we have to contend with. And we just keep kind of chipping away at it, chipping away with our practice, chipping away with our work, chipping away with our family. And there's no final resolution until we die.

[03:07]

Unfortunately, nobody died there. But unfortunately, that meant there was no resolution. Now, I just want to set you straight from the beginning, because when I came home last Saturday, I saw the Chronicle. And the headline in the Chronicle was, Dalai Lama in Marin to shape the future of American Buddhism. And perhaps that was reassuring, looking at some of us, perhaps that was reassuring to many of you. But it sounded a little bit like we used to talk about the left, the political left in America, being funded by money from Moscow. And this is like, oh, the Dalai Lama is going to come in and he's going to tell us how we should reshape the future of Buddhism in the West. And it wasn't like that, actually. It was wonderful to have him there. really encouraging just the kind of spirit, sort of joyful spirit and the feeling that you get from him that he really wants to understand when somebody asks him a question.

[04:28]

but mostly people were presenting to him, and he was commenting to some degree, and there were some things which I think it was pretty clear that he didn't quite understand, or that his perspective, coming from his culture, no matter how sophisticated he is, which is very, there were things that in our experience, particular to our experience in our Buddhist communities, that he didn't quite get. But that was fine, because there are certainly plenty of things about his practice and his culture that we don't get, and there are things about our own culture that we don't get. So he was just a kind of reflecting force. He was there for about two days. So, as I said, we had about 220 Buddhist teachers, mostly from the United States, some from Europe, a few from Asia, from Tibet, essentially, but mostly Western teachers.

[05:52]

The focus was on all the varied expressions of Dharma in the United States and in Europe. And so the subtitle was the preservation and skillful means for a new culture. And as I said, I was very happy to be there. And I felt grateful to actually be participating in something that seemed a kind of watershed event, at least a first step in coming of age, despite the shortcomings. It was also interesting in that the generation of teachers there were, I would say, more my generation than Mel's generation.

[07:02]

So maybe roughly ages 45 to 60, rather than some of our teacher's generation, was mostly people of a similar age, similar backgrounds, most of whom had, at least in part, come to their teaching through having themselves Western teachers rather than Asian teachers. So that already represents a kind of shift in culture. I did notice, when I started thinking about it, that of these total group of participants, there were probably more of Sojon's disciples than any other group, which is really kind of surprising, but there were nine of us.

[08:10]

there, who were sort of his direct disciples, and then two other grandchildren. In other words, disciples of, I think, Blanche and Norman. And that's just a kind of, it's just something I noted. I don't know what to make of it. But it is also worth saying that Mel had a really good time, which he wasn't prepared to and nor was I actually. I think he doesn't prosper at these big events. And since he's not here, I can say, in a lot of ways, he's a very low-profile kind of person. His profile is struck by having, in a way, a lot of disciples. who do some of the things that he wished he could do in his life, but because he's made his commitment to being here and practicing here just steadily, he's not a high-profile person, and he's not flamboyant, and he's just very, very steady.

[09:36]

And so sometimes that means that he doesn't get quite seen. And so I think that's just something that he has to live with and work with. But I think the kind of validation that he got being there with peers, with disciples, with other people was just really having more feeling seen and seeing others and seeing a kind of maturing of the dharma. And so when he left on Friday, he uncharacteristically said to me, you know, I'm having a really good time here. You know, which is like pretty unusual. It's a very extravagant statement. So, you know, but it made me feel really good. I just was very, I was really touched by that.

[10:38]

and glad for him and kind of renewed sense of gratitude for the way that he is and the way his teachings are. It's also worth noting, and I think this is a remarkable circumstance, that more than half the participants at this conference were women. And somebody my friend Santikaro Bhikkhu was saying, you know, this is probably, could possibly, or possibly be the largest gathering of women Buddhist teachers ever. Not of practitioners, but actually of teachers. So if you think of it, a hundred women Buddhist teachers in one place was quite remarkable. And they had an ongoing circle It was one of the events where they kind of met in council among themselves and got to know each other better.

[11:50]

And they were quite visible in the conference itself. Maybe what I'll do is list some of the issues that were taken up and say a little about some of them. I'd say that gender and question of women teachers and women in the practice was a topic that was discussed. was not particularly controversial, except in the area of the monastics, where there was a large, pretty large contingent of monastics from the Zen, mostly from Theravada and Tibetan and Zen communities.

[12:57]

And in the Theravada and Tibetan communities, where they have full monks' ordination, in some of those traditions they have nuns' ordination, and in some they actually don't have nuns' ordination, which is a higher ordination. It's like becoming a monk, except there are more rules. and included, kind of institutionalized in those rules are special rules that basically say that, sort of structurally, any nun is, no matter of what age or duration of practice, has to bow to the seniority of any monk. even if that nun is practiced for 40 years and the monk is practiced for one year. So this is problematic, to say the least.

[14:01]

And yet, This was a really great opportunity for another circle that went on and was very active, was the monastics. They met every night and they really talked about this stuff in ways where even within some of the Theravada monks and nuns who were in the same family, they hadn't quite opened up these discussions. These are all Westerners, by the way. that I'm talking about. They're not Asians. So they're people coming from the same Western culture, and yet there's some real issues of power and authority that have yet to be dealt with. But it's out on the table. And I think that was most of what I could say about this conference is all these issues that are raised, they are now out on the table, which means you can't hide them away anymore.

[15:09]

There was a lot of attention and pain given to the question of diversity. and real questions of racism within many or most of our Buddhist communities. It was really hard to look around and see that of these 220 people, there was one African-American teacher, just one, Ralph Steele. A very lonely, difficult place for Ralph to be in. And there were only a few Asian American teachers. So only a few Asians present with the exception of some of the monks who had come from India and Tibet. But in terms of Asian Americans or people who are practicing primarily with Westerners, there were maybe four or five.

[16:23]

maybe one or two people of Latino or Spanish-speaking background. So diversity is not very good. And this is a really important question in terms of race, in terms of class, in terms of how do we sit Or how do we practice in the midst of the very communities that we live in? Are we open? What are the barriers? And there was actually a wonderful tool prepared for this, which I'll get some copies. They just made enough for, they gave it to everyone. When you registered, you got this booklet that was called Making the Invisible let me just get the title exactly right, Making the Invisible Visible, Healing Racism in Our Sanghas, which was prepared and edited by some friends, a group of friends who've been acting as the Buddhism and Racism Working Group here in Berkeley.

[17:44]

And this was basically a booklet of personal accounts mostly by people of color, about how does it feel to come in the gates of a Zen center or Vipassana community? What does it feel like? What do the barriers feel like? What kind of painful and unconscious things might be said that lead one to walk away? So these are very personal accounts. And as I said, this was given to everyone who came in. And then we also had several meetings, circles, just raising the question of diversity and racism. Again, putting it out on the table. What was really encouraging is that at these circles, really,

[18:47]

wonderful, good teachers, leaders from the Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts were there. Jack Kornfield was there. Joseph Goldstein was there. Blanche Hartman from Zen Center. Norman Fisher. Leaders from, not just from individual communities, but from some of the some of the handful of institutions that we have who are setting the tone for what happens here in our country. So that felt very supportive, but there's a lot of work to do. There was a lot of talk about the need for kind of horizontality or peer peer relationship for teachers, where they're mutually accountable both to each other within a community or even in the wider circle, but also a mutual accountability between a teacher and their own community.

[20:02]

In a number of cases, there were some very painful situations in communities involving power, misuse of sexuality, lack of ethical conduct, where this was voiced and brought up, where where people were stuck. They were stuck in their communities, sometimes with their teachers, and felt that there was one of the common human things that happens is that people defend. and they defend by cutting off communications or just sort of shutting down. So this question of accountability and accountability for our practice is another important issue.

[21:06]

There were more broader discussions about faith and devotion, and that was one that was had in the presence of His Holiness. The Tibetan tradition is particularly a devotional tradition, much more than ours, and that's a strong stream that runs through all Buddhism, but it runs through Buddhism in the West as well. There was talk about, there was a half day given to social action of various kinds which was in a way gratifying to me and perhaps in another way the most frustrating because we didn't, it's like we couldn't really get into anything. And I just had to set it aside. There was discussion about the need for us to understand the various practices that are available.

[22:17]

I mean, quite honestly, I don't know much about, I mean, there's a variety of Tibetan practices and what I don't know could fill a shelf of books. In fact, it does. And what they don't know about, a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle misunderstandings. For instance, in this discussion about lay practice versus monastic practice, there's the whole realm of our Zen practice, which actually is somewhere in between the two. the monastics didn't quite know how to figure it. It didn't fit in one category or another category. So we're in a place where categories are probably not so useful. But looking at practice and the kinds of commitments that people make to practice and what they do daily is perhaps more useful. There was also a lot of discussion about

[23:22]

preservation of culture and tradition, how much of Buddhism that we get, how much of it is embedded in a cultural setting, or how much of it is just a kind of pure principle of Dharma that can be extracted, taken out of this cultural setting, or taken out of a form, or taken out of a kind of ritual container and just maybe crystallized as, you know, what the Dalai Lama, who talks to hundreds of thousands of people who are not Buddhist, I mean, he talks about principles of compassion, a practice of kindness, liberation from freedom, liberation from freedom, liberation from greed and anger. and he can draw these principles out. But here we are trying to practice as Buddhists what

[24:30]

what kind of support do we get from a culture or tradition and also what kind of barrier might that present? That was a live question and it sort of fit also in with the question of just a large question of mainstreaming, which is a word that I hate. The mainstreaming of Buddhism, like it's some, you know, stealth ideology that's going to subvert the so-called dominant paradigm. And I'm not much drawn to it myself. And yet, there were people there who I really admire, who are you might call them mainstreaming. You know, Jon Kabat-Zinn and some of his co-workers who have been teaching mindfulness as an approach to pain control and stress reduction.

[25:39]

And this is something that our friend David Weinberg, one of the priests here, has been doing. This is very valuable work. It's a way of carrying the Dharma out into hospitals, into prisons, into places where people are really suffering, without necessarily putting people in the situation of having to choose between the religious tradition that they're in, or that they were born into, or that they're practicing, and this other approach which can just really help their life and also help them be kinder and more open to those around them. So that was a live question. A few things that weren't spoken about, which sort of surprised me.

[26:43]

As I mentioned, I think, there were a few Asian teachers of Westerners and the few who were there, interestingly enough, didn't stay, which made me feel that I think they didn't stay consciously or unconsciously because they didn't quite have a place. they didn't quite feel at home there. And then there are a whole bunch of other really major teachers who've been working for years and years with Westerners, like Thich Nhat Hanh, or Harada Roshi, or in our own family, Kobinchino Roshi, or Lama Zopa, or Upandita from Burma. These are people who've been working with Westerners for 20 or 30 years. And I think that their perspective might have been an interesting alternative to the, I would say by and large, the more psychological

[27:47]

orientation of many of the Western teachers. I think they had something else to offer and I was sorry they weren't there. There was very little said about practice for or in the gay and lesbian community. There were teachers there who work primarily with those communities, but it wasn't surfaced as an issue by itself. There was a little but not much said about Dharma practice in prisons, which, just from the work that I've been involved in, I know is really growing. And it's very important. It's a real place where people can build a practice and find some hope in an otherwise hopeless and oppressive system. I think one of the frustrations in the section on social engagement was there was really no time to talk about practice in social action, practice and social action.

[29:03]

This is not a resolved question at all. It's an open question, but it somehow didn't There wasn't room for it to come out into discussion. So, the best part was just being around with people. I mean, really, the part I enjoyed most were the meals and the conversations that were quite deep. And it was a very powerful experience being there. Coming back last Saturday, coming back here, I felt like I was emerging from a session where things feel very exposed and both inside and outside have this kind of really vivid quality and where the smallest you've got to appreciate the smallest gestures between people so it's very much like Sachine to me and a week later I'm just I'm kind of beginning to float down or settle down but I think that the ripples

[30:23]

and waves from this conference are going to last for a long time. I think it was a true counsel, even though we only made preliminary explorations in these areas and that no questions were answered. But there was a feeling that we're coming into some kind of maturity. as people and as teachers and as communities, like this one, that there's a maturity and commitment to practice that is deeply moving. It's moving to the teachers, seeing other teachers. When we talked about our communities, there was just incredible feeling of affection and appreciation. So, I want to thank the people at Spirit Rock and San Francisco Zen Center and the Network of Western Buddhist Teachers for all the work they did planning this and pulling it off.

[31:36]

It was a lot of work. And with His Holiness there, they had to deal with the State Department and metal detectors and dogs sniffing people. It was pretty intense security. It was important work and the work continues. So, I did it in about a half hour. And you can imagine what six days of that was like. Sort of at the same level of intensity and... Well, let me just throw it open to questions. We have a few minutes. Well, I thought a really interesting article in the Turning Wheel recently was, is Buddhism affordable? And I was wondering if that was talked about, maybe you said on the screen, is it broadcast or cast? Well, that was discussed in the diversity group.

[32:39]

Again, no conclusions were reached, but it was, You know, there is a real question about whether the kinds of practice that we're evolving here are only really available to people of means. You know, to do a Seshin, it's not all that expensive. On the other hand, you have to not work that week. There's a real question about that. So there's no answer, but it was surfaced. And it was surfaced, again, in the diversity group, which I think is going to go deeper, and trying to see, are there other ways that we can structure ourselves economically?

[33:41]

Mel went to a session. I don't know how he ended up in this session, but it was like Buddhism and money. which is pretty funny if you know Mel. I think he sort of accidentally ended up, but he actually had a really good time at it, and he came out and he said, you know, just listening to the stories these people are telling us, I just feel such appreciation. We have such a good situation here, you know, where we're able to keep the practice at a very low price, and yet we're able to support this wonderful place. So it's just an initial discussion. David? Was there discussion of formal and informal practice from the... How do I ask this? Usually the template is the monastery or the temple. That's where the forms have been cultivated and so on. And even in our relatively lay practice, we still

[34:44]

to suit our lay lives, primarily lay lives. But was there any discussion specifically of how to adapt forms for a family-centered practice, rather than the monastery as the touchstone? Well, unless I missed it, which is possible. Let me just take a quick look. I mean, the answer, the quick answer is no. Was there? Yeah, that might have been, there was one of the so-called breakout groups. But it certainly wasn't one of the, you didn't hear much about it, did you Sue? No. And I think that's one of the things that was, that was missing, but on the other hand, You know, a lot of what gets talked about in this country is that. And one part, it's just, it's this interesting tension.

[35:54]

It just felt really great that we had all these monastics there, because monasticism is also, real monasticism is also a rarity in this country, even though I think what you're saying is right, that our forms kind of move from that. So it's just, but it wasn't much discussed. Dogen says in one of his essays that the issue of men and women is not important. If a man has a dharma, we should bow equally. If a woman has a dharma, we should bow equally to her. So my question is, and I know you don't probably have an answer, but it seems really It doesn't seem fatal. Well, I understand it most basically in terms of tradition that it came from.

[37:20]

And how it was intended originally, I don't know. But what you have in the Theravada, what you have in the Vinaya traditions, which are the monks and nuns' rules, those are derived from the Vinaya that were set out by the Buddha. And when the Buddha was dying, he said, you know, after I die, you know, keep the important rules, you know, you can, there were a lot of rules that had accumulated. Keep the important ones and discard the less important ones, the ones that don't fit. And they neglected to ask him which he thought were the, and so in the first council they said, well, since we don't know, we're going to keep them all. So in the Theravada tradition, which comes down through various Vinaya traditions, they kept them all. What happens in some of the ordained orders, like the Chinese, is that essentially they ignore them. It's like you take these rules, but you ignore them to some degree.

[38:24]

But in other ways, it is a bolster for a continuing ideology of male supremacy. I don't think it's that way, certainly not that way in terms of rules in our tradition. One of the great things about the monastic meeting was that there was a group of people from Shasta Abbey who are Zen monastics, Soto Zen monastics, and they're completely equal. You know, they got their tradition from an abbess. They don't have, in our ordination, we do not have those rules. So it's just something that's being worked out. There were some very powerful, smart, strong, good teaching nuns there, particularly from Achan Semedo's Amravati tradition in England, and I think they're going to help lead a change. Sue, you had something to say?

[39:29]

I had the same experience as Alan. I was just completely overwhelmed by this wonderful vastness of all these devoted teachers. It was really inspiring. I was very lucky to be able to come in the side door as a member of the so-called Buddhist press. It's a very small door. But one of the things that I really appreciated was a kind of theme that was stressed a lot, particularly by the Dalai Lama, of the importance of teachers being really authentic and sincere and letting the Dalai Lama kept saying that what we're about here is human values, that's what's so important, and he's been saying this for several years now, but he made the distinction in that kind of mainstreaming discussion, he seems to make a distinction between the kind of work that Jon Kabat-Zinn and David are doing, where you're taking a Buddhist tool but using it in the secular world, and the mainstreaming

[40:53]

that he was a lot less enthusiastic about. But he thinks it's great for people to do whatever helps in the world to alleviate suffering. If it uses Buddhism, that's fine. You don't even necessarily have to call yourself a Buddhist. And then one other thing, I might tell a little story on Mel, which I thought of when Alan was saying how much fun Mel had. really great clown, some of you probably know. He used to work in the Pickle Family Circus. And he did a performance for all these Dharma teachers, and it was just great. And he did several pieces, one of which, the last of which was Mr. Sniff, which is his old clown character who wears this huge long nose. And before he did it, he said, now I just have to warn you that Mr. Sniff is a person who approaches the world through his sense of smell, so be forewarned.

[42:05]

Then he went into this whole routine where he was pretending that an attractive woman who was sitting in the front row on one side smelled delicious. And he would go over and go into all this romantic fantasy as he approached her. And then he was pretending that this man who was sitting on the other side, who happened to be Mel, right in the front row, smelled terrible. And within 10 feet of Mel, he would go through all these agonized gestures and brush the air away Very funny, and I was wondering how Mel was going to respond to this, and Mel started sticking out his tongue, and he got right into the spirit of it, and Jeff Hoyle grabbed Mel's rakasu off over his head and started dancing around it. I didn't know what was going to happen to that, but Mel just sat there beaming, actually, making more faces at Jeff Hoyle. But that's a silly story, but also there's much of the spirit of the whole conference was like that.

[43:21]

It was very full of enjoyment and actually play and respect, a lot of mutual respect. It was wonderful. I'll tell you, in the van the next morning from Spirit Rock, when I was driving from Green Gulch, where I was staying, there was a lot of discussion about him grabbing the rock suit off Mel's neck. Yeah, people didn't like that. We have time for one or two more. I was interested in the, in terms of the issue of diversity, whether people talked about more ecumenical activities, because I know Thich Nhat Hanh, as he's lived in France, has much gotten very involved in kind of having joint Christian-Buddhist activities, written a couple books about Christianity and the parallels between Jesus and Buddha, has a Jesus on his altar, and certainly in the Bay Area, Norman has gotten involved with the Jewish community and there's a tremendous amount of overlap there. In terms of kind of making room for people so that they don't have to give up what their background stuff was, but a way of being able to hold the traditions together.

[44:29]

Well, that was one of the discussions in that circle, yeah, was that You know, it's not enough. There's this fine line. It's not enough for it to say, well, we're open. On the other hand, we're not in a place where we want to proselytize. But it seems to me, one of the things we're talking about is that we actually need to inform ourselves more about, I mean, basically need to be like clergy to clergy relationships. And that kind of openness will mean that there can be more of a two-way flow. Because, you know, frankly, there are needs that get met in other religious traditions that not necessarily get met here. And it's not like everybody should practice everything, but it's just that there should be room for a flow and mutual appreciation based on knowledge, based on relationship, on knowing,

[45:31]

Knowing the people, knowing the church, etc. and for another they do, they hurt them. Right. Well, that's, I mean, I think that's an approach and that's something that we need to think about and talk about. There have been some noises in that direction, even here from our community, that really make some of that happen. Perhaps one more question. Offit? Well, I wondered, I haven't heard anything about this lately but in terms of, well, community of leadership or diversity of science, whether there's been any more contact between, besides NEOS, ECC and the Thai community?

[46:35]

Well, you know, it's interesting because I'm sort of one of the agents of that. And actually, it's problematic for a couple of reasons. One thing that's problematic is that the monks down there don't speak English, and not many of us speak Thai. They're quite friendly. But also its problem, again, the Thai system is very authoritarian, and the abbot is not there. So the abbot essentially lives in Thailand and he comes a couple times a year. So he can't provide leadership in that direction and the monks are hesitant to move. Whereas I'm very friendly with the abbot in Fremont at another temple that's like that who is great and there's a lot of give and take and he participates in the Buddhist Council in Northern California. So it's partly a language and culture and authority barrier. But I just encourage everybody to, you know, when you're walking by and you see the monks, the head monk who you've seen out there working a lot, his name is Tan Manat.

[47:42]

And just say hello to him, bow to him. He won't bow to you. But he will be very friendly and, you know, wave as you drive by. And just start little by little building relationships with them. And that's what we can do from our side. difficult. I just thought, well, maybe there would be someone who would give a Dharma talk. I don't think there's anybody who could do that, not from among the monks. It would have to be one of the, given the way they're structured, it would have to be one of the monks. But it would be nice maybe to get Ajahn Prasert from Fremont to come and give a Dharma talk. He's been here. He likes to play. So that's, I mean, I think that would be, that is another way of actually bringing in some of the other traditions and making available that way. Well, this is just the way I said it was going to be.

[48:47]

There's a lot of stuff out on the table, and we can just keep talking about it. It's going to filter through our practice, which is in many ways really wonderful just as it is, but could use some improvement, as Suzuki Roshi said. I didn't make that up. So, and we can continue talking at tea. Thank you.

[49:16]

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