I vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Good morning. This is working? Can you hear back there? Good. Well, Sojan is away today, even though it's the practice period, and he asked me if I would speak, and that's something I wanted to discuss with you, so it's timely, but I want to make a couple of announcements first. The reason he is away is he's lecturing this morning and then helping to lead a ceremony at Mary Mocene's Clearwater Zindo in Vallejo. And after, gosh, it must be about a year and a half or so of working on her garden, which is lovely, at the Zendo.

[01:00]

They're having a blessing of the garden and a celebration, and Sojan was giving the talk this morning, which is happening right now. But there is time, and I encourage you, if some of you have the opportunity, to go up to Vallejo, blessing and then the party afterwards begins about two o'clock and everyone from here is invited. Mary is a really integral member of our sangha and it's kind of a sister relationship between Berkeley Zen Center and Clearwater Zen Do. So there's a sign up on the bulletin board if you'd like to go up. The other announcement, this came up on sort of short notice. I believe that Ross was talking with one of our neighbors, Nahoko, who has been

[02:12]

She worked in Japan and then she's been helping a Japanese teacher of Noh theater, Noboru Yasuda. who's been doing lectures and presentations about this great, sort of dramatic, ancient Japanese theater form. that explores all kinds of the intensities of life very dramatically with masks and kind of stylized voices and movements. And so he's going back to Japan, I think, on Tuesday, but they set up on very short notice a workshop, a presentation, here on Monday night at 7.30. And everyone is invited to that.

[03:19]

I'm really interested to see this. I've seen little bits of no plays, but I've never kind of heard it talked about or understood what the elements are. So I think it's a really neat opportunity if you have time to come. Is there anything else I should say about that, Ross? I'm assuming it's English, you spoke English when I met him. While the presentations were about three hours long at other venues in the city, because of the evening hour and our morning schedule, it's not going to be about that. So Monday at 7.30.

[04:25]

And evening, evening, yes. And so thanks to Ross and to Nahoko for setting this up. And even though it's short notice, I think it should be, it's just a great opportunity. So that's my announcements. I was helping Mel fold some of the lineage papers yesterday. And reading, there's a text at the bottom. Some of you have these papers and some of you will be getting them at lay ordination. And there's a line in the text that always strikes me, which is that, The perceptual vein, preceptual vein of the Buddha is the one great causal condition of our lineage gate. So that's not usually the way we think.

[05:28]

Usually, yes, the preceptual vein, in other words, the precepts of the Buddha is the one great causal condition of our lineage gate. I think usually if we were asked what it boils down to, you know, we would think, well, zazen, which is true. But flowing in that zazen is the life of the precepts and the precepts meaning how we meet the world, how we meet each thing, and that is also expressed by our conduct. One of the marks, I think, of the Soto school, which is very characteristic, is that there's an emphasis on

[06:34]

and the precepts as manifest by our conduct with each other person that we meet, how we carry ourselves, how we talk, how we treat people, animals, plants, and other things. And so we have these precepts. And all the Buddhist traditions have the precepts. We have the pure precepts of cultivating, of avoiding evil, cultivating good, and saving all beings. We have the kind of root precepts which, you know, in their earliest form are, do not kill, steal, lie, use intoxicants or misuse sexuality. And in our Bodhisattva precepts, which are the precepts to enable us to be Bodhisattvas and save ourselves and all beings, we've sort of expanded them, because some of them can use some expansion, into ten.

[07:57]

But along with the precepts that are common in every tradition, there are also rules or standards. So in the Theravada tradition, they have essentially one common standard. It varies a little from country to country, but the monks and nuns keep a lot of rules. It varies anywhere from about 250 to 280 or 290, depending upon your gender. Those are the rules that spell out how one lives a life of precepts. For our tradition, in the various Zen traditions, we have these pure standards are called Xingdi.

[09:02]

And there tends to be a particular standard for each particular place with a lot of commonality. So for the last number of weeks, Sogen has been teaching one part of Dogen's pure standards. He's been teaching the Tenzo Kyokun, which is the instructions for the cook, how the cook is instructed to conduct herself or himself with the food, with the other people in the community, with co-workers, etc. So that's part of the Ehe Shingi, Dogen's Shingi for Eheji.

[10:04]

For some of you who were here at the skit night the other night, Mary Mocene read as her skit, actually. She read selections from another part of the Shingi, which is known in Japanese as the Fushiko Hanpo, which is the instructions for eating. So it's very detailed and some of it is pretty funny to us, but like the monks and nuns rules in the Theravada tradition, one would imagine that every one of those rules that is formulated in the Fushiko Hanpo is there because somebody did it. You know, it's like, oh, don't form your, you know, said, you know, well, Venerable So-and-So is forming his food into a stupa in his bowl.

[11:12]

No, don't do that. And venerable so-and-so is having sex with a knot hole in a tree. No, don't do that. These are the rules and they're there because we have an enormous and creative imagination for what we can do to get ourselves in trouble. And so all these things need to be spelled out. And that's what the Shingi do. But they also set out kind of general guidelines that kind of clarify and open up the precepts from kind of broad principles to a sense of how we actually move in the world with each other. So, somewhere, gosh, it seems, I think it's like about seven or eight months ago, a group of senior students who meet monthly got into a discussion about the Berkeley Zen Center's ethical guidelines.

[12:33]

And that evolved into a pretty thorough review of this ethic statement that we have, which is kind of our Shingi, or a piece of it anyway. And we, I won't, the process was rigorous to say the least, maybe tedious to say the most, but we went, we felt like we had to go through every word and figure out why it was there, figure out what we really meant and how that was rooted in our experience and in the experience of the Sangha. And so we went through this process and came out with a draft and then Ann Jennings applied her experience and wisdom and her sense of responsibility as board president.

[13:38]

She and I have reviewed it again and made some small revisions and now the board will go over this. So it can get pretty well combed through. But it seems like particularly some of the things that have been coming up around conduct within spiritual communities, that even though it's not done, not finished, it'd be good to share at least this draft with you and some of the thinking and also have some discussion. So that's what I'm going to do. The other thing I would say by way of preface is, for 11 or 12 years I had been working at Buddhist Peace Fellowship, where we've had an ethics project and where I had the kind of mixed opportunity of hearing from people who have experienced harm.

[14:51]

in their community. And I don't need to go into details, but almost, well I think without any exception, in a community where they don't have principles like this in place where they don't actually have a document and where that document is not actually shared with the community. It's not like, you know, it could be written and put in a drawer. Where those principles are not clear to people. There is no resolution and they can't be created after the fact. So it's important to set these standards and create a process for how to explore them when or if things go wrong. And that that needs to be shared among the community.

[15:55]

So that's also part of the motivation for this. So I thought what I would do is read I don't know, parts of this or all of it, I'm not sure. And explain some of the thinking and then hopefully open it up to discussion. So as I said, this is a draft. And it's sort of broken down into paragraphs. So paragraph one, the intimacy of Zen practice, teachers and students, Dharma friend and Dharma friend is a source of great joy in the Berkeley Zen Center Sangha. So the emphasis of this whole document is on Sangha, is on how to create Sangha and community, how to forge that from our individual practice. The Bodhisattva precepts serve as our roadmap along the path of right conduct and relationship.

[16:55]

The intimacy of practice is based on trust, safety, respect, and true communication, mind to mind. So that's like the basic principle for this whole document is how to create a sense of trust and safety so that we can be free in our practice with ourselves and free in our communications and our relationships with each other. The Sangha jewel is formed of such relationships. We offer the following thoughts not to draw hard and fast lines of behavior or to delineate individual rights and wrongs, but to nurture an atmosphere where people can practice without fear or distraction, where dharma comes first. So paragraph two. Over the years, as we look at ourselves and other practice communities, we've come to understand that great spiritual and psychological harm results from teachers and students becoming sexually involved, violating trusts, or using position for personal gain or manipulation.

[18:14]

This harm can easily stain the practice of student, teacher, and the whole community. So that's one, it sort of delineates the areas of concern. Sexuality, power, money, you know, all the, there's no surprises there. In a deep sense, nothing can stain the practice. Nothing can stain the Buddha Dharma. that it's kind of like, in a certain way, it's sort of like a Teflon non-stick surface. It can't be stained. And yet, in the real world, behaviors, experiences,

[19:15]

can discourage us. They can frighten us. They can intimidate us. They can turn us away from the practice place. And it's very hard to sustain one's practice without a community, without a safe place to come to. So in that sense, even though the Dharma cannot be stained, Even though, as we say, things are perfect as it is, we also are constantly trying to generate or bring forth the harmony that's natural among us. And when things are in disharmony, people go away. And when people go away, whether we like them or not, we lose the benefit of their energy, their talents, their practice.

[20:24]

And so, when people are discouraged, it takes away from the richness of the whole Sangha. Paragraph three. Our practice at BZC is warm-hearted and close. But it is important to remember that the intimacy of practice itself brings up sexual attractions and other issues of power and confidentiality. Desires of all kind arise with our very life. A shadow side is always present. These shadows can leave us reticent to speak out and can lead to a wider conspiracy of silence. Rather than allowing desires to control us and feed the flames of suffering, we can try to turn these feelings back to our original intention to waken with all beings, to practice spiritual friendship at BCC and in the world at large.

[21:41]

So, the kind of energies that arise between us mean we're alive. If there wasn't sexual energy, like, dislike, various kinds of feelings that come up, we wouldn't be alive. They come up particularly because this is charged with practice and a kind of intensity. These feelings come up naturally. If we didn't have much to do with each other, they wouldn't come up here. It's also true that Well, I guess I'll speak from my own experience. I hope this isn't too much of a confession.

[22:49]

That in the context of practice discussion or dokasan, which is just two people in a room, these energies come up. And actually, that's good. That really gives some fuel, some juice to what's going on between people. I think in maybe the therapeutic context, and I'll be corrected either now or later, because I'm not a therapist, that the process, what gets called transference and counter-transference between therapist and client, for lack of a better word. What? Therapist and.

[23:50]

Therapist and, yes. As that comes up, that gives you the stuff to work with. And that's true even though we're not doing therapy here. It's true between teachers and students, between peers. And if it weren't happening, when it's not happening, you actually don't have any relationship to go on. And so there's no learning that happens. The challenge here is to turn it, is to see what may arise as one kind of energy simply as energy, as a gift to work with, and to build relationship there.

[24:52]

dharma relationship rather than say a sexual relationship or a friendship. To use that energy as offering the possibility of transformation for oneself and for the relationship. That's what we hope to do. Where we are unable to do that and where it's unspoken or unacknowledged, then it has this shadowy power over us. And we act in ways from our feelings rather than from the dharma. And that's always a possibility. But that's what we are trying to surface and articulate for ourselves, and in one fashion or other, articulate in our practice relationships.

[25:57]

So, and where they aren't spoken, acknowledged, or where they leak out as rumor or discussion around the community, then it has that potential destructive effect and also can have an effect of shame or hostility where people shut down that discussion, they shut down their feelings. So the question in this practice is how to create enough safety to surface that shadow side. and to turn these feelings back to our original intention to awaken with all beings to practice spiritual friendship here and in the world at large. So paragraph four says, at Berkeley Zen Center the teachers

[27:06]

And that's being defined as priests and lay practice leaders who offer practice discussion and give dharma talks have all made a commitment to practice right conduct in our relationships. Teachers will avoid sexual involvement with students here. So what that means is if one is in a student-teacher relationship, one will not be in a sexual relationship or a romantic relationship. And I admit there's a little ambiguity about the word avoid. So it's not something that's completely proscribed because if you proscribe it, for sure it's going to happen. If you forbid it, it's like an invitation. But we'll avoid. And I think what it does mean, what it should mean, is that

[28:09]

Teachers and students will not simultaneously be in intimate relationship, in sexual relationship or romantic relationship, and be in teacher-student relationship with each other. That is really countervening this guideline, as I understand it. Then, the next paragraph says a little more. The development of mature, intimate relationships between students, including sexual relationships, can be a strong foundation for our lives. So that's the other side, meaning that to have a... I mean, I'm in a relationship with another student. You know, Lori was... you know, she was practicing actually before me. And it's a very rich thing. Those of you who are in those kind of relationships know how wonderful and useful it can be for, you know, for both parties to be roughly on the same Dharma page.

[29:19]

It's extremely helpful. And some of you also know how difficult it is when one person is practicing and the other person is not, that sometimes that can be a real, that can be a tension. So just acknowledging here, this can be a strong foundation for our lives. And then we get to the rule. Some of you may have heard of the famous six-month rule. It's been changed. Students who have practiced at Berkeley's Zen Center agree to refrain from sexual relationships with persons who have practiced here less than one year. One year, it is hoped, is a sufficient length of time for a new student to stabilize his or her practice and to generate trust in the practice at BCC before encountering the additional challenge and responsibility of a sexual relationship with another student.

[30:22]

These are abstract periods, six months, a year. No one can really know. Somebody could be here three years and still not have stabilized themselves. Somebody could be here three months and because of their life in the past or their experience, they could slip right in. But the general rule is if one is practicing here, one doesn't become sexually involved with somebody who's been practicing here less than a year. And it's another rule that doubtless has been broken one or two times, but it's just a rule of thumb. But here's the way it plays out in the next sentence, actually. Both teachers and students are strongly encouraged to consult with the abbot or senior practice leaders before they take on any sexual relationship within the community.

[31:34]

So that sort of goes back to this rule and the paragraph before. It's really helpful because everything that we do in this community affects each other. It's extremely helpful to be accountable and to let somebody know what's going on. it's not exactly asking permission and it's not exactly asking advice, although that's what might happen, that's what you might get. I know many of us have, this is the way we've lived. It's not like we're asking permission, can I be in a relationship with such and such a person, but to tell Mel or to talk to me or one of the other practice leaders and say, well, I feel this is happening, what do you think? And just to be accountable, again, to the wider community, you know, in the person of the teacher or one of the teachers.

[32:42]

So it's an important principle to remember, to consult with the abbot or senior practice leaders before you take on any sexual relationship with the community. All busy students are expected to do their best to live in accordance with the Bodhisattva precepts and to help create a safe refuge where students and teachers together can focus on Dharma and learn to respect the boundaries and the efforts of all beings. So again, this is about creating safety. You know, to respect somebody's boundaries, what they need to be able to ground their practice. And then the document shifts to talking about dokasan practice discussion and confidentiality. So paragraph six says, dokasan and practice discussion are intimate venues for sharing dharma. Honoring the dialogue between teachers and students is a foundation of personal and sangha relations. Teachers are expected to maintain confidentiality about matters raised in dokusan or practice discussion.

[33:51]

That means that teachers should not be gossiping, chatting about things that came up in dokusan or practice discussion with people. In order to deepen our practice, this is the other side, and not to violate the intimacy of dokusan, students are expected to refrain from idle talk about matters brought up in dokusan or practice discussion. So that side is on students, which is we don't go around having, you know, kind of light conversations about, well, Mel said to me, you know, because what Sojin said to you or what transpires in practice discussion is about your relationship between each other. And it's specific from him or her to you. Now this doesn't mean one never talks about these things, but the operative word here is idle.

[34:54]

You know, that it's often, one possibility is something said to you, you know, you bring it up in another conversational context and you bring it up in a way to make yourself look good. You know, it's a self-centered thing. you know, it can bring up, oh look at the, look how close I am with the teacher or look how the teacher respects me or appreciates me, etc. So this has a divisive, possibly divisive and destructive or disharmonizing effect. So that's the other side of confidentiality. It's not shutting down, but it's being aware of what you say and being aware of perhaps the you know, the grain of self-centeredness in it. Yes. Yeah. Not yet. I will. Paragraph 7.

[36:03]

Confidentiality is the basis of mutual trust between teacher and student. However, for the well-being of individuals and of the Sangha, there are times when teachers and or practice leaders need to consult about confidential matters raised in practice discussion. Such consultations are never done lightly, and only as much information is shared as is needed to clarify and bring harmony to the situation at hand. And those consultations themselves are kept confidential. So, you know, we have this kicking around in our Western heads, we have this thought of, you know, kind of the inviolable nature of, say, confession, Catholic confession, where nothing is ever said, that nothing ever leaves the space of the confession booths. And what we're saying here is confidentiality is not an absolute. That it's an extremely important principle. But as I can say, sometimes I'm over my head.

[37:10]

you know, sometimes I need to consult with Sojin or with another peer, and that I do with, and I think all of us do, with a lot of, with hesitation and with care, and that those those consultations are confidential and often they can be done without mentioning a name. Saying this situation came up, this was this exchange, or here are these circumstances. So wherever that can be done without actually naming a person, that aspect of confidentiality be kept. You know, in therapy, in other clergy relationships, one has to consult with peers and with people who have more experience. And the same thing emerges here. We're getting close to the end of this.

[38:15]

Paragraph 8, BCC teachers who work as psychotherapists avoid drawing clients from the Sangha. Others who work in the helping professionals are asked to be sensitive to the delicate balance between worker and client and the possible complexity of dual relationships that may arise when both parties practice at the same dharma center. You know, it's particularly true for therapists and actually we've had some difficult situations come up where people who are therapists who are seeing people who are clients in the Sangha, and they don't do it anymore. They refer out. But it can also happen, these dual relationships are tricky, and it can happen when someone in the Sangha is your plumber, and you have a problem with the job that they did. This has happened. So, again, this is not a proscription.

[39:20]

You know, it's really aimed to help you to see what some of the potential pitfalls might be and to bring them to the surface so that you and the other person can discuss it. I mean, there's also something great about getting your plumber or your carpenter, you know, from the sangha. Not so much therapist, but... you know, to help each other, you know, to, you know, to mutual support, to appreciate people's abilities. But even in these kind of commercial relationships, there are, you know, there's some hazards to tune into. So this is kind of a broad statement about dual relationships. So finally, If you feel the guidelines discussed here are not being observed or simply wish to share some discomfort, please bring your concerns to the attention of the abbot, the tanto, or a member of BCC's Ethics and Reconciliation Council.

[40:27]

Your questions will be taken seriously and examined according to a principled and confidential process. We hope that diligent inquiry, honesty, compassion, and openness will strengthen the Sangha and support our wonderful Zen practice for many years to come." Well, it's important to bring your concerns to someone in a position of leadership whom you trust. I hope that shortly, we do not actually have this Ethics and Reconciliation Council. We did. But again, it was one of those things that was, it wasn't fully known to the community. So I think what Anne and I are going to talk about with the board is having a visible Ethics and Reconciliation Committee, the names will be up on the board and they will be people of trust and integrity in the community that you can go to if you have a concern about

[41:39]

about something. And it doesn't necessarily mean a rule is broken or you've seen something bad, but just even if you have a concern, a question about the ethical dimension of something, it's someone that you can go to talk with. And that's sort of the next stage. And then the stage beyond that is to actually have a very clear and somewhat detailed process for for working with conflicts or grievances that arise. I worked on the drafting of the San Francisco Zen Center's process, which is fairly exhaustive. And it's been in place for about five years. And because, in a way, because it's so thorough, and because the principle, which I should say, is to resolve things at the lowest possible, most directly interpersonal level, getting help, that's one thing you could always do if you have a problem with somebody.

[42:49]

You could ask Sojin, you could ask myself, or one of the other practice leaders, to be present for a discussion. where you can air your concerns. So the principle is to resolve things at the lowest level. But because this process is in place at San Francisco Zen Center, in those five years, it's only been one case that has really called the whole process to you know, to kind of get into motion. So it's a kind of protection, but it's important for the feeling of safety that people know that that's there. But we haven't gotten, we've got a draft, but that's a little further down the road. I'm going to stop here. I meant to be shorter, and it's difficult, but I'd like to leave a few minutes for comments, thoughts, and we can continue outside, and we can continue at any

[43:52]

time. Andrea? Do we still have those ethical guideline booklets somewhere that Zen Center, did Zen Center put those out or did they put them out? They put them out. Well, there's two. There's one that Zen Center put out and there's one that Buddhist Peace Fellowship put out. And we don't have them yet. And I think the idea is we would probably have one. It's a little confusing. We'd probably have our own. But we'll have to see. I had one more, I hope this doesn't sound like a confession, but one thing that's not really mentioned in there is gossip. And I just wanted to say, kind of openly, just so, you know, I could say, well, I'm not going to say anything about this, which is kind of a common problem. If I were a good Zen student, I would be able to take this. So I'm just going to say it, and that is, a couple days ago I was talking to somebody, and they referred to a mistake I made several years ago.

[45:00]

And they also included some details that were not the case. And I was very, I wasn't hurt or really, I was just kind of shocked. How did they get this information? And the thing about it is it wasn't that big of a deal, but those kinds of things can be damaging. And I just really want to encourage people to not talk about other people's faults and mistakes, unless, of course, it involves you when you feel like it's really a problem. Or if you do have some concern about it, to talk to that person, or talk to the tanto, or to the abbot about it. And we had to kind of do some scrambling around to make it okay with myself and other people.

[46:03]

So to hear it in that way was concerning. So thank you for listening. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I think that that's where this document or this draft is also, it dovetails with the precepts. The precepts are don't harbor ill will.

[46:21]

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