Good morning. Good morning. Can you hear me all? Yes? Good. Well, it seems like the heat that was predicted has broken. And we have a number of things converging today. It's Father's Day. which I congratulate all of you fathers and also all the mothers and then all the children. We're all included. Today also at 8.30 p.m. we mark the solstice. which I believe is the longest day of the year.

[01:05]

And so that's a, what can I say? An astrogeological celebration, moment of celebration. And also we're in the, We're in the midst of what has become Pride Month, Gay Pride Month. And so it's being celebrated, Gay Pride is being celebrated at, in different places, on different weekends, but all month basically. So I wanted to congratulate everyone who identifies with and who celebrates gay pride. A couple of years ago, there was a move to inaugurate in the bluegrass music community, Bluegrass Pride.

[02:20]

And they've actually had a winning float in the San Francisco Gay Pride parade with people with banjos and mandolins and fiddles and guitars playing as the parade went along. I think there's no parade this year, but Bluegrass Pride, I mean, that's not something that was so imaginable. 20, 30 years ago, but I love it. I really love it and I support it. So perhaps it's a time to celebrate. We're also celebrating the end of our practice period, which was a great accomplishment in the midst of the pandemic. And I'm gonna talk a little more about that and about the challenges

[03:23]

uh, in the bulk of my talk, but I thought if we're celebrating, we should sing a song. So, uh, I'm going to invite you to sing a song with me. Um, people in the Zendo can do it and people out there, uh, in, uh, radio land can do it. Uh, let's see. So, um, You're all familiar with this song, I believe. It's This Little Light of Mine. And it reminds me very much of Case 86 in the Blue Cliff Record, Yunmin's Bright Light, in which Yunmin says, everyone has their own light. And if you want to see it, you can't.

[04:25]

The darkness is dark, dark. What is your light? And I also think of the last words of the poet and writer Goethe, which were reported to be more light, more light. So you can sing this with me. This is an anthem of the civil rights movement. Let it shine.

[05:57]

Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Everywhere I go. I'm gonna let it shine. Everywhere I go. I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine All around the Zendo I'm gonna let it shine All around the Zendo I'm gonna let it shine All around the Zendo I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine, let it shine Let it shine, let it shine Even out on Zoom I'm gonna let it shine Even out on Zoom I'm gonna let it shine Even out on Zoom I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine This little night of mine

[07:19]

I'm gonna let it shine This little light of mine Well, I'm gonna let it shine This little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine Let it shine Let it shine When I'm in the dark I'm gonna let it shine When I'm in the dark I'm gonna let it shine When I'm in the dark I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine Let it shine Let it shine One more time Well this little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine This little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine This little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

[08:32]

Feel good to sing. to hear the people who said, I wanted to say, I was doing Doka-san this morning, but I was so glad to hear people chanting and to hear the chanting sound so good. So, One more announcement. Sorry, my voice is hoarse. This afternoon, to close our Sejin and to close our practice period, we're going to have Shosan, which is an opportunity to have a public Dharma dialogue, and I will

[09:58]

be here to receive your questions and respond as best I can. Sometimes Shosan, like Shuso ceremony, has been considered to be like Dharma combat. It's not combat, or that's not how we're doing it. It's actually to bring forth the Dharma together. So I encourage you to frame a question for yourself. You can do it now or you can actually wait and see what really arises on the moment. And I will see what waits, what arises for me. I have no rehearsed answers.

[11:02]

So what I would encourage you to do, though, because there are quite a few of us, is really cut to the chase. Ask a question. And try to eliminate the prefatory or contextual questions remarks that lead up to it, but just get to your question. And that will really encourage everybody. If you don't have a question, that's fine. If you don't have a question, just stand up and bow. And Mary Beth will give you the instructions at the time for how we're going to proceed. I think we're going to begin with the people in the Zendo. And then move to the people on Zoom. And then we'll have a very brief closing ceremony.

[12:09]

So I just wanted to let you know about that so it won't come as a surprise to you. Or if you don't know what Shotsan is, if you haven't done it, it's really wonderful. It's just where we stand open to each other. and can bring forth the Dharma together to the best of our understanding. So, this seshin, for, I hope it's been wonderful for you all, for most of you. There have been, a lot of, there's a lot of detail and questions and mistakes and trying to figure out what should happen behind the scenes to make this go or appear to go smoothly, which maybe it has, maybe it hasn't, I don't know.

[13:17]

And I will confess that Last night I was trying to think about the things that had to happen today. I felt somewhat overwhelmed. And I had to find, to renew my practice in that light. And I was thinking about this, chapter, talk by Suzuki Roshi in Not Always So, which is entitled Just Enough Problems. So he gives this on the last day of Sashin and says, we've already come this far and we can't give up.

[14:22]

The only way is to stay here. I feel I have a very good crop. You may not feel that you are ripe yet, but even though you're still ripening, if you stay in our storehouse, you will be good apples. So I have nothing to worry about. And I don't think you have any reason to worry about your practice either. He goes on to say, some of you may start a decision because you had many problems. And that may be true for some of you, some of us. You thought that if you sat here... from editing, you thought if you sat here for three days, your problems would be solved.

[15:28]

But whatever problems you have, they can be solved anyway. That's a really complicated sentence. You may have thought that if you sat here for three days, your problems will be solved, but whatever problems you have, they can be solved anyway. It's not contingent on sitting here for three days. And then he says, Buddha will not give you any more problems than you can solve or more than you need. So that's what the Buddha was saying to me last night, although it was actually really hard to accept that. And I thought, oh, this is one too many, you know. Whatever the problems are, they are just enough.

[16:31]

If these are not enough problems, Buddha is ready to give you more. It reminds me, we talked about this. At one point, Sojin, when he was having a hard time and thought that Suzuki Roshi didn't have faith in his practice, he went to him and asked him, should I continue this practice? And Suzuki Roshi said, oh, isn't this practice hard enough for you? So in that case, maybe Suzuki Roshi was ready to give him more problems. Certainly, Sojan Roshi gave me more problems.

[17:35]

And he gave me, and he left me this big problem of learning how to be the avid at Berkeley Zen Center. That's enough. So if these are not enough problems, Buddha is ready to give you more, just so you can appreciate your problems. If you have nothing to cope with, your life feels empty. So we have to have something, our problems are what we work with, our problems is how we develop our lives. Our problems is how we develop our practice. Our problems is actually, they are how we find our freedom, believe it or not. If you have nothing to cope with, your life feels empty.

[18:39]

So I think you should trust Buddha. A life without problems is like sitting near this window for seven days without doing anything. We're doing something as we sit in session. We are engaging with ourselves. We're engaging with all the things around us. We're engaging with the schedule. We're engaging with how on earth to have a hybrid program. All the things that for many of us worked so smoothly for so many years that we had all the schedules worked out, we had all the positions worked out, and then all we had to deal with were the weird people who were doing them and ourselves.

[19:47]

We had to deal with ourselves fundamentally. But now, we're actually having to think about each ceremony, each sequence of events and how we're going to do them and how we're going to engage and mesh with the people who are on Zoom and the people who are here in the Zendo. So this is our first taste of this in the course of the pandemic. We have done everything on Zoom. And now we're experimenting with this interpenetration of Zoom and face to face. And we find we have, no matter how closely we try to plan and look at what we've set out to do, there are

[20:55]

unexpected complications and unintended mistakes. But Suzuki Roshi says, no problem will appear that you did not originally have. But because you overlook it, you do not expect it. So it is better to see your problems as soon as possible. So last night, my problem was not the complexity of the schedule or the planning. My problem was myself. My problem was my resistance. My problem was saying, isn't this enough already?

[21:59]

But this is the position that I took on. I tried to find the passage where she speaks directly to this. Yes, here he is. He says, before you accept the problems you have in your position, you cannot accept yourself as you are. You cannot sit in a true way.

[23:07]

In other words, whatever position we take, as somebody who signed up for Sashin, as somebody who's a Dohan, as somebody who's a Sashin director, as somebody who is an abbot, irrespective, all of these pieces are part of the whole. They're interlocking gears that have to roll together in order to make this go. And my effort, your effort, are necessary. One's effort in the position is necessary to make the whole goal, W-H-O-L-E, and also to accept oneself. To accept oneself as one is.

[24:11]

And to recognize that everyone is making this effort. And it's complicated. And it's wonderful. Because we are making this ourselves. It's like not some job that we went to. It's not something that is assigned to us. If we didn't have some deep faith in this process, there would be absolutely no reason to be doing this ridiculous thing that we're doing. So we do this in the process of accepting ourselves as we are. If you can't do that, you cannot sit in a true way, he says. When you steady your mind, trust Buddha and just sit.

[25:15]

There is no problem, no confusion anymore. When you are patient enough and wait until the problem makes some sense to you, you can appreciate your being here and your position, whatever it may be. That is how you practice asana. So last night, I allowed myself to have my, what can I say? Well, my reaction, to say it simply. And I said, okay, I'm having this reaction, I'm just going to let this play out. And come back and look at the whole thing in an hour. And when I did, I was able to think clearly without the clouded emotions of reaction.

[26:23]

And that is the way of trusting my practice. And I've also been feeling such gratitude for having this practice to trust and rely on. Suzuki Roshi says, even if you feel you have too many problems, when you trust Buddha, you sit with your problems.

[27:30]

At the same time, you should be ready to refuse a problem if it is too much. Buddha may say, oh, if you don't, if you really don't need it, I will accept it at any time. Give it back to me. I love that line. You know, the problems I was having last evening were it felt like it was more than I could accept. And so basically it's like I could say, okay, could you hold this one for a little while until I have the capacity to take it up again? And he said, sure, sure, no problem. I'm not so sure.

[28:49]

about something in this. At one point in this lecture he says, this is a mysterious thing, these problems that we have, mystery of life. We have just enough problems Not too many and not too few. So there is no need to ask for anyone's help. I don't completely agree with that. Ultimately, the problem that you think you have has to be resolved within oneself. But there is no... shame or proscription against asking for help.

[29:59]

Asking for help from Buddha, asking for help from our friends, our teachers, our family members. We can ask for help at the same time remember they cannot solve the problem. I think that's what he's getting at here, but I'm not sure. The problem has, the problems that we think we have have to be resolved within ourselves. But I don't think there's anything mistaken or anything wrong about asking for help. It may be as simple as saying, how do you see this? Or how do you see how I'm acting or reacting at this moment?

[31:07]

And really listening. Because I am not exactly some unitary thing that exists within this bag of skin. I am also those I love, those I know, my teachers and all beings. And they have a say in what I may choose to do, or how I might feel at any given moment. Towards the end of this lecture, Suzuki Roshi says, he talks about teachers here.

[32:19]

He says, you're receiving just what you need. So the only way is to trust Buddha, to trust your being here. That is what we call Zen. You may think that all the Zen masters are very tough. They look tough when you need them to be tough. But actually, they are not so tough. They're just tough enough for you. That's all. Actually, you don't need your master or your teacher if you know how to practice Sazen. But I would say that's one side. Our teacher Sojin was always talking about there being, never looking at just one side, but recognizing that two sides are operating at any moment.

[33:40]

So one side is that you support yourself entirely. The other side is that we need each other. This is what I was speaking of yesterday when speaking about Sangha. Without Sangha, there would be no arising Buddhas. Buddhas do not arise spontaneously. They arise in the context of Sangha. So even if though we don't understand how we need each other, we do. We need each other to complete ourselves. We need each other to see that we have just enough problems.

[34:45]

So I think that's where I'm going to stop this morning and leave time. for your questions and remind you again, please prepare, but not too much for the Shosan, but do present a question for Shosan. Meanwhile, you can present a question now related to what I've just been talking about. So if you are online, you can raise your digital hand to ask a question. or put something in the chat box. And I suppose in the Zendo, you can raise your real hand and Hozon will call on you. I've got one here, a live one here in the Zendo. Joe? How does this talk relate to our problem of taking on too much? Sometimes we say yes too much.

[35:52]

That's your problem. You know, that's... Somebody asked me that yesterday as well, in Dokusan. I mean, this is why the Buddha invented a monastic system. You know, because that system is... It has boundaries, and... All you really need to do is follow the schedule. We have a really difficult practice because we're here in the world where there are many pulls. There's pulls of our family, there's pulls of our work, there's pulls of our responsibilities in various places, and there is no great answer. that I have to that.

[36:53]

You should do what your capacity allows. And that's one of the things I think in the process of investigation is to come to an understanding of what your capacity is and say, yes, this is it for now. And with practice, if your capacity expands, great. And with age, your capacity will contract. Certain capacities will contract. And you need to know and be really honest with yourself and with others about what they are. That's the best I can do. Heather Sorontas, do you want to unmute yourself and ask your question, please?

[38:04]

Yes, good morning. Ozana, you mentioned our problems are how we find our freedom, which I loved. And I wonder, sometimes my problems resolve quickly, and sometimes I look back and realize I've been working on the same problem for 40 years. So what is a relationship or words of encouragement for problems that stick around a whole long time? That's great. That gives you a focal point for your life and your development. What I've always felt, and I came to this before I took up Zen. And then it was affirmed by some things I've learned here. What I always felt was that my problems or internal contradictions, whatever, were constantly resolving to a higher level.

[39:18]

It's like they were spiraling, fortunately spiraling upward. But they always remained. And what I expect is that they, that those problems always will. This is, this is part of one's life's work. And, you know, I think about this section, one of Suzuki Roshi's books, Ed Brown, during Sashin, one of our teachers, Ed Brown, who was a disciple of Suzuki Roshi's, was, complaining about a problem that he had. And Suzuki Roshi said, the problem that you have. And then he paused and Ed thought, we'll go away with practice. But what Suzuki Roshi said was, we'll always be your problem.

[40:22]

So we are who we are. and with certain karmic formations, and this is who, and this is what we are working with. So, just enough problems. I'm sorry. Thank you, Hodan Sensei. My question is, right now I'm living in a house without any ventilation, and sitting with perfume and I have headache and nausea. And my question is, what can we do? What do I do with that problem? Can you hear the question out there? Yes? Not well. He would say he's sitting in a house with inadequate ventilation and there's someone in the house with perfume, et cetera.

[41:26]

What can I do? Obviously, you should talk to the person in your house. Or, you know, you can ask me to, but if that's the situation, please address it politely and directly because it's very likely that the person is not aware of that. Most of our world is not aware of the impact of scents. You know, if we watch television, we see where the scents are being sold to us every day, you know, pretty high pressure. So you just say politely what you experience and how it affects you. And the challenge for all of us when I mean, that kind of response that you're having is a kind of neuro or psychochemical response.

[42:36]

And so that causes anxiety in us too, right? So just if you can see that anxiety and set it aside and just tell someone very kindly this is what the effect is, that's That's what you can do. Instead of, you know, we do have a rule about scents. We ask people on the property not to wear scents. But sometimes people are not aware of it. We haven't been on the property really for a year and a half. So we have to renew that. And I will support you in that. that I'm kind of trapped. Well, that's the feeling, right? The feeling of being trapped. So that's where you have to create a sense of spaciousness for yourself and realize you're not necessarily trapped, but you are having a response or a reaction, a psychophysical reaction, which is understandable.

[43:55]

So we can help each other. Jen, would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question? I guess the issue I'm struggling with, and I'm sure so many other people who said I've been doing this longer than me, are struggling with it because so many people are struggling You know, their lives are dead. I mean, I know there are a number of doctors out there. You are involved in so many issues, you know, in Burma and around the world. And you feel this urgency. It's not your suffering. It's the suffering of others that and I that. So I guess my my problem isn't my problem. I mean, I'm OK. I can cope with it. I mean, my my work is is. Right now is dealing with a lot of tenants who can't afford their rent and are on the verge of eviction.

[45:02]

And as I said, and I'm like, you know, like taking it. Right now we're all on my team is working seven days a week and I'm sitting. And my problem is I don't I feel like I shouldn't be sitting. And I know so many other people struggle with that. So what if the problem isn't it isn't I mean. I do feel anxiety and stress because of what's happening to others, but I can, that's not my, in a sense, that's not my problem. I mean, that's not the problem I've had to cope with, as I said. It's like, I don't, how do I sit when it's not my problem? I don't, it's other people's problem. Could you hear that? What's not his problem? I didn't catch that part. What's not his problem is the suffering.

[46:03]

He's concerned about the suffering that he experiences in his world, which is not immediately what he personally may be suffering. And yet he feels it really intensely. I'm sorry, just to clarify. How do I sit? It's sort of like, how do I, how do you all, how do you, because I'm sure you can be doing a whole lot of good right now for the last three days while you sit with us. And, you know, thank you for sitting with us. But, like, how do you do that when you know that there's all this other need? I sit just to sit. I sit because I have come to believe that the sitting increases my capacity to be open.

[47:05]

And I really, I trust that. And I sit with the bodhisattva vow. And we're so struck by the urgency and it is really urgent of the sufferings in our world. But this is three days or it's one hour a day. And if that settles, if that helps to settle a practitioner, then the practitioner is much more able to give in those other 23 hours of the day. I have really, I have faith in that. And also I have faith in the, for myself, you know, part of the job that I feel or responsibility I feel is to share the practice in a way that it becomes available to other people.

[48:20]

And, you know, I don't wanna, I hesitate to say this, but I talked with a giant who's online here today in India. And people there are facing the pandemic and lots of difficulties. And amazingly, our practice, our BCC practice, is reaching there. This is something that... I don't think any of us ever imagined or thought of. So if it's creating a capacity and resilience in people, that's great. If it's doing that directly, terrific. If it's doing it indirectly, that's also what we can offer. But we have to settle ourselves in order to do it. Otherwise, we're going to be caught in urgency and anxiety.

[49:21]

Dan Jackson, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Hi, Hozan. When you said that Buddhas don't arise spontaneously, that brought up for me a question that I'm not meaning to pose it as a historical puzzler, but more about the interplay between individual effort and Sangha. So my question would be, Who was Buddha's Sangha before he became enlightened? Well, that's an interesting question. He had a variety of Sanghas, and he had good friends. But, you know, he's also a kind of exemplary figure. When he began, after his enlightenment, the first thing he did was he went out and found his old friends and taught them the Dharma.

[50:37]

And they became the Sangha. But his Sangha, in a certain sense, if you look through the early Buddhist texts, His sankha were all the Buddhas who came, Buddhas and bodhisattvas that came before him. And they were encouraging him. And he tried different spiritual paths and finally had to be a pioneer and find something for himself. We all have to be a pioneer ultimately. But we are fortunate in that we have a Sangha of mutual support. So, you know, everything is not strictly logical. But that's pretty much the way I think about it.

[51:41]

That is, Sangha were the Buddhists and Bodhisattvas of the past. We're always hanging around, helping him. Thank you. Joel, would you like to unmute yourself and ask a question? Something came up which raised something that's hard for me, which is that you said... when you have difficulty with someone, to speak to them both politely and directly. And I'm conscious that my efforts to be polite often lead to me to be less direct and to interfere with the way about just being direct.

[52:42]

I put a lot of context, like you said, about the question and just... So, any help with that? Whatever we say to somebody, it's an experiment in relationship. It doesn't, and like us in experiment, It has no guaranteed outcome. And like an experiment, you know, the more you do it and verify it, the more you see, oh, this approach generally works. So I'm talking about polite. I'm not talking about being very nice and speaking.

[53:44]

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about respectful, polite as respectful, as having one's own autonomy and expecting another person's autonomy. And whatever form that expression needs to take is fine. And it's always an experiment. It may work and it may not. But if we don't try, You know, if we don't try, we're going to blame others and beat up ourselves. Thank you very much. Thank you. Maybe there's time for one more, if there is one more. Alex, would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question? Thank you.

[54:44]

Hold on. I noticed you say very carefully the problems we think we have. And in sociology, there's a famous theorem that says that the things that we perceive as real are real in their consequences. That's good. I like that. So when you say the problems we think we have, do you think we don't have those problems? Alex, hang on. I just got to repeat that. What you said was... problems that we perceive as real are real in their consequences. That's really good. Okay, so go on from there. Right. So when you say the problems we think we have, do we not in fact have those problems? And if not, then what are the problems we think we have? So he says the problems we think we have, do we not actually have those problems?

[55:46]

Or, I'm sorry, the second part? And if we don't, what are they? If we don't, what are they? This is called karma. That when you act on your thoughts, words, or actions, and you put that out in the world, then it has consequences. So, If we think we have a problem, and we act on that problem, then we have a problem. Then we've made a problem, we've taken a problem out of the realm of a presumption, a thought, an insubstantial idea, and we've projected it. onto the world. And therefore, we have made it into something that affects people.

[56:51]

You know, I mean, really, the essential Buddhist message is, don't do that. But we can't help it. Though we're constantly watching We should be watching according to the tools of practice that we learn, observing our minds, observing our thoughts, and doing the best we can to maintain composure and respect and not to project our our perceived problems on others as really, really hard.

[57:57]

I hear you saying then that when we're considering a response, we should be particularly careful about acting on the basis of what we believe is a problem. That's correct. And this is where we, this is I think also where we, it's good to collect information widely from others. You know, even in some of the conflict reduction work that I've done, you do what's called conflict mapping. So you may see what's something that you see as a, you know, this cause is causing this effect. But when you conflict map and you bring other people into that process, you begin to see, well, there's multiple factors here that we need to look at, and your original notion of what the problem is might actually really shift.

[59:10]

And so, therefore, your approach to resolution may shift. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I think we will end there, and we will continue. Remember, this day is not over, and I look forward to us all bringing forth the Dharma at Shosan. So, thank you.

[59:38]

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