Good evening, everyone. So I want to continue speaking about what I spoke about a little bit yesterday morning. Some of you were here. Starting with one of Dogen's major teachings, which is about abiding in one's dharma position, or occupying one's dharma position, that our practice of just sitting, being upright and present in this body and mind, occupying our cushions and seats and body and mind, is to realize and express and be present with This situation, this body, this mind, beyond our ideas about ourself and this body and mind, of course, that's part of the situation on our cushions, but how do we occupy our dharma position?

[01:18]

How do we occupy our karmic situation? How do we be present in the midst of our life? How do we occupy our lives? So Dogen talks about this in many different ways. As I mentioned yesterday when Kaz Tanahashi was here talking about his translation of Dogen's Shobogenzo, last July he was asked what single word sums up Dogen's teaching, and he said non-separation. not to separate from anything. And a week ago Saturday, when I was in Kasa's hometown, speaking at the Berkeley Zen Center, I said that if I had to pick one word, I would say, to occupy.

[02:21]

So how do we occupy our situation in our world and in our life? How do we occupy our sangha? How do we occupy The various sanghas, how we occupy this body and mind in our sitting practice. And one way to talk about this is in terms of time. Joanna Macy is coming here next July. She talks about re-inhabiting time, which I think is about the same thing. We could also talk about it in terms of re-inhabiting space. What is it to occupy the space? So we try and take care of the space of this zendo and this temple in various ways. We try and take care of the space of our homes and of our neighborhood and our city and our world in various ways, where we respond to what's going on. We try and take care of the space around our cushions as we sit. Dogen says if you In the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, if you display Buddha and mudra with your whole body and mind, so to display Buddha and mudra is to occupy your whole body and mind fully, then all space awakens.

[03:40]

Similarly with time, Joanna talks about how all time is present now, and she's particularly aware of and concerned with and teaches us how to become friends with beings in the future. This is not to ignore beings in the past or in the present, but actually our present time as we... As we were sitting here tonight, it's possible that some of you had some thought about something that we thought of as in the past. or somebody we'd seen in the past or something that happened yesterday or earlier today or whenever, or even that some of us had some thought about or awareness of something in the future, something tomorrow or next week or whatever. So all of time is actually here.

[04:41]

How do we completely occupy this body and mind? basic Buddhist teaching. So we're going to be working with that this weekend at our three-day sitting in terms of ancestral time. So we have this, we just, in our dedication, dedicated this practice in our chanting, well, to many beings, but also specifically to Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 years ago, more or less, Northern India and Bodhidharma. About a thousand years later in China and Dogen. Oh, 750, 800 years ago in Japan and Suzuki Roshi, who was around during some of our lifetimes, but I think there's some people in the room who

[05:48]

were born after he passed. So anyway, many beings for many times are part of what we are here now. So this weekend we're going to be chanting. We haven't done this in a while, maybe not since we were at the Centical, but we're going to chant the ancestors' name, both the Buddha's and ancestors'. in our lineage, official lineage, and the women ancestors that we invoke. And thanks to Keizan and Dawn, we will have, with their help also, we will have now Sanskrit names for the Indian ancestors and Chinese names for the Chinese ancestors. So we're going to try it. It'll be a little difficult to chant. And thanks to Douglas and Laurel and Nathan, who are going to be here for all three days and have a chance to work out the chanting part. We'll see.

[06:50]

Anyway, this is part of our practice, though, to invoke the people who kept this alive. So there are many ways to occupy our time and our situation in our society. So for Dogen, He actually did go to Kamakura and met with the Shogun there. We don't really know what happened. It's the movie that shows various things that are imagined, but we showed here once. But he left the capital, and I would say he wasn't running away from society then, but he just decided the most important thing he could do was to keep this practice alive, and I'm so glad. So he trained a number of good monks in Soto Zen, or the Soto lineage, whatever it is, continued in Japan, and eventually here we are. So there are many ways to occupy our seats, many ways to occupy our time.

[07:53]

Dogen's teaching of yin time is relevant, that time is not some objective, external container. It's not that we don't honor clock time and pay attention to when it's time to stop and chant and have tea and cookies and so forth, but time, Dogen says, is our time of being. Time is your body, your mind, your activity, your thinking, your speaking. Time is not some objective external thing. It's actually we are time. And so we know this from periods of Zazen where the same amount of time may go by very quickly or may seem to take a long, long time, but time moves in various directions.

[09:00]

We were talking about time moves into past, time moves into future, time moves into present. Everything is changing. This is the basic reality that we live with. So, again, and Dogen says this in a very sweet way when he talks about being time. He says, you know, he encourages us to completely be present, to presence our time, to occupy our time of being. But then he says, a partial being-time is still completely a partial being-time. Actually, we can't help but occupy our lives. Can we take that on, though, intentionally, with our breathing, with our presence, with our posture, without holding back from our lives, with bringing our life to life? to find a way to make our life more vital. So I read yesterday, I'll read again, a little section that we're talking about not holding back from our life, when related to Dogen talking about Zazen being the gateway to repose and joy, without trying to get anything from it, from our Zazen.

[10:14]

Also not trying to get rid of anything. Do not hold back at all. Do not hold back from just being yourself. from just fully enjoying or engaging this present experience, whether you feel good, bad, or indifferent about it. This is the heart of Zazen practice, at least in Dogen's tradition. If you think about what you're going to get out of this experience, that's just consumerism, returning your experience into some kind of commodity. If you try to get rid of anything, that's also kind of holding back from actually just being yourself. This is a practice about learning to be radically yourself, to be completely ordinary, to be a human being. In fact, to be the human being on your cushion right now. So how do we really occupy our seat, really take on our situation? And in Zen practice, we do this in terms of turning the light within and paying attention to what it's like to be present and presence to occupy this body and mind, this cushion tonight, this time and space.

[11:26]

But also we don't turn away from the world around us. The Bodhisattva ideal is that we are open to the suffering of the world. So, as I said, Dogen chose to leave the capital and to not engage with the Shogun in Kamakura and keep alive this tradition in the mountains. And that's an appropriate thing to do for some time and space. But I want to use this as an introduction to say a little bit, again, about the Occupy movement that's going on. which I find inspiring, and we don't know what's going to happen with it. Of course, there are uncertainties about what's going on in our world, but there are many positive things about it. And again, I'll give my disclaimer, anytime I talk about social things, you've probably all heard it by now. But as a religious nonprofit, 501C3, we're not supposed to advocate for candidates or legislation.

[12:31]

And I don't want to do that anyway. And one of the strengths, I think, of the Occupy movement is that it's not involved in that. Maybe some people are trying to get it to be involved in that. But to just say, what I see as the spirit of the Occupy movement out there in the world, and specifically in Chicago with LaSalle and Jackson, but we each can find our own ways to occupy our world, is to point out the immorality of what's going on in our society. And I think it's a very positive thing that there are no particular leaders of this movement, and that there are no specific demands, and it's kind of amorphous. There's nobody to make demands to that's having legitimacy anyway on some level. So what the Occupy movement is speaking to is a kind of corruption of our whole economic system.

[13:36]

People leading the big banks on Wall Street have committed what's documented fraud and been rewarded for it. There's more and more unemployment. This isn't just an abstraction. There are people in our sangha who are unemployed or underemployed or face the possibility of unemployment. Our justice system seems to be completely immoral and out of whack. Our electoral system, now that Big corporations can give unlimited amounts of money to the candidates who support them. This seems off, and we have these wars all around the world, and a huge amount of budget going to militarism, our growth industry, and society's prisons, and public education is being damaged at least. And so I think to speak about that to, as is happening all around the country and all around the world, people just going into public places and occupying.

[14:46]

And so some of us, Chicago Buddhist Fellowship has been going down Tuesdays, 4.30 to 6, and several people in the room have gone. There are other times, but Tuesday afternoon, Some of us are sitting or doing walking meditation. A couple weeks ago or so, it was raining and I was doing umbrella kidding. And anyway, the people down there seem to be very interested and appreciative, both the kids and homeless people and others who are there as part of the Occupy movement, but also the office workers walking by seem to appreciate that there is this calm in the middle of sometimes drumming and chanting, more active chanting than we usually do here. So I think it's very interesting. And again, we don't know what's going to happen. But I'm inspired by it.

[15:50]

And I feel like there's a lot of flexibility and creativity in this movement. And it is basically a moral movement, not a political movement. And two images that I mentioned yesterday that I want to share, it seems like the usual powers that be. Well, another disclaimer, of course, you know, one of the slogans is the 99% based on the fact of the richest 1% of our country, the people in our country, you have it controlling about half of the wealth and the just massive inequality of resources going on in our economy that seems to be increasing exponentially and enforcing that with their laws. But I want to say again, as a disclaimer, of course, not all corporations are acting irresponsibly by any means. Some of them seem to be caught up in this greed where if they have tens of billion dollars, they need to have more.

[16:53]

Not all of the 1% wealthiest are acting in harmful ways. There are some people who are trying to be very responsible about how they use their resources productively. So it's not that there's bad people involved. The reason that I think this is an interesting movement is that it's speaking to something systemic. And part of what our practice is to look at the system of greed, hate and delusion that we each also, that is part of each of us as we occupy our seats. How do we look at that and see it in ourselves and try and take on through the precepts some responsibility for it? So just a couple of things that happened in the last couple of weeks that I want to mention. It seems like the response of the powers that be has been to try and use brutality to end the encampments.

[18:00]

In New York City and in Oakland and in University of California, there was an event at UC Davis, maybe many of you saw it, where a bunch of nonviolent demonstrators, students sitting, sitting down cross-legged and blocking some passageway there, were hosed down with pepper spray. Really horrific, brutal events, reminiscence of the civil rights movement. and the black people in the South being hosed down in the early 60s. That happened, I think, two Fridays ago. The next evening was one of the most amazing demonstrations of nonviolence and of the power of silence that I've ever heard of. So, you know, one of the things that's different about this movement than past movements is that it's pretty strongly nonviolent.

[19:09]

pretty committed to nonviolence. So if you go on YouTube and look for, it says that the Chancellor walks to her car. I don't know how many of you have seen this. The next night after the UC Davis students were hosed down with pepper spray, very brutal, the UC Davis chancellor on the way that evening, it was dark, was leaving her office, going to her car, most mundane of things, was filmed walking to her car. There was a way clear from her office door to her car. And there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students sitting around on the path as she walked in total silence. And some newspaper reporters kind of interrupted and asked her what she thought and if she was still afraid of her students.

[20:18]

But it was just the most amazing, chilling, inspiring thing I've ever seen, I think. So you might look for that. The Chancellor walks to a car. The other thing that happened at UC Berkeley, I'm not sure, around the same time, maybe a little before initially, there's an account from the Poet Laureate, former Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Haas, who's a professor of English at UC Berkeley, of how he was attending a lecture one of these Occupy things at Sproul Plaza in UC Berkeley, the center of the free speech movement years ago. And he and his wife were beaten up by the police, and he has this moving account of it. And then he talks about going back there several days later. They had cleared away all the tents, but instead these students had tents attached to helium balloons. So there were, and I didn't see any pictures of this, but I'm imagining that they had tents floating above Sproul Plaza, which reminds me of the Lotus Sutra, most of which happens in midair around the stupa of this old ancient Buddha who comes.

[21:38]

Anyway, I'm inspired by what's going on now, and I don't know what's going to happen with it, and there may be problems with it. But I think there's some way in which it really bears on what it is we do here, how to occupy our lives, how to occupy our world, how to speak truth to what's going on in our lives, how to see the truth of our own greed, hate, and delusion, And, you know, the practice is maybe just to witness to it. So I feel like what the Occupy movement is doing is sometimes loudly, but witnessing to something that's seriously, dramatically wrong with our society in a way that's getting worse and that's causing massive amounts of suffering in our country and around the world. And so our practice is just to witness.

[22:41]

So I feel good going down to the Salon Jackson and just sitting there, walking there, and being present with it. So I'm not saying that anybody here should do that, although a few of you have already. But I want you to consider, and I want us to consider in this Zen Salon we have in this Sangha, how we talk to each other and how we occupy our Sangha and how we share perspectives. So maybe that's enough for me to say. I want to continue this conversation from yesterday and for those of you who weren't here to start anew. So anyone who has any comments, questions, responses, please feel free. Yes, Jeremy. The YouTube of both of the chancellor walking to the car and of the policeman spraying pepper spray in the student's face and what I felt was most alarming about the pepper spray moment is that the look on the police officer's face that was actually going through the motions of, I shouldn't say going through the motions, it looked like he was kind of

[23:57]

doing it willingly, and not only willingly, but it was almost like he was doing his job. The look on his face looked like he was just doing what he had been ordered to do, and that scares me a great deal, because I feel like he is just as responsible, whether it's an order or not, for what happened there. I don't want to parallel this to other very horrific acts in history of where people were just doing their job, but I'm wondering if there will be a point where those who are told to pepper spray other people in the face that are just sitting there will kind of question what they're doing. It's hard. Yeah, very important point. And the chancellor, after some days, at UC Davis, she says that, well, she didn't order it.

[25:03]

But there's going to be an investigation by the whole UC system. So we'll find out, I guess, hopefully. But yeah, these same kinds of things are happening in various places around the country. And we've been told that the mayors, for example, are consulting with each other. It's not just a few bad Apple policemen. And yet, of course, they're following orders. What does that mean? The other side of it is that there are many Iraq War and other war veterans who are taking part in these activities on the side of the Occupy movement. Speaking of impermanence, it's a very volatile situation in our world now. It's a very, you know, there's all various positives and also scary things about all of this. And for us to pay attention to it, I think, whatever we, however we each decide to respond is, I think, helpful.

[26:05]

Thank you, Chair. Walt, may I ask you, I know I've seen you down at Occupy Chicago, and I wondered if you have any reflections on being there or on what's going on. Oh, sure. Hmm. I could hop over to a philosopher I admire. I don't know if anyone's a Xixie fan. Yeah, contemporary Slovenian philosopher.

[27:12]

So he relates a joke that I think was told in Slovenia somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. you and redneck is a lot and I say okay and so they received so they received the first letter they received from this person who's been forced to move to another city it says everything it's written all the loop when it says everything is wonderful and the apartments are huge and spacious and we have all the latest movies and books from the

[28:15]

I think it's really an invitation to imagine a different sort of world, I suppose, which I think is something we in particular can do. this is what a society looks like, or this is what a man, this is what a woman is, you know, being able to really penetrate through a lot of these naturalized structures, and actually have a bit of courage, I suppose, to imagine other worlds. Thank you. Very helpful. Good joke.

[30:36]

Other comments? there was a sort of brief moment of collective awakening when we had people like Alan Greenspan questioning the efficient market hypothesis, saying, hey, maybe markets aren't inherently self-correcting. To have Alan Greenspan say that is sort of, that he was deluded about one of his fundamental beliefs was really profound. But then it felt like everyone just kind of shrugged their shoulders and went, well, we can't really imagine anything else. There seems to be a bunch of delusion at the heart of this.

[31:41]

But, well, what do we do? And everyone kind of forgot that little moment of awakening. And it seems that what the Africa Movement is doing is saying, you know, let's imagine a different world. Let's imagine a world not built on Greek and hatred and delusion. remember that there are lots of other places in the world at other times when societies haven't been built that way. And so it seems more of a call to imagine a new way of being. And I think in some ways, that's a more profound challenge. Because it's easy to sign a petition and say, you know, we need to make the Glass-Steagall Act and, you know, tax CEOs as high as we tax harder to really think about how do we live our daily lives in ways that aren't based on sort of implicitly using market metaphors to understand everyone, aren't based on

[32:44]

Yes, Josh. I was thinking about it yesterday. Do you know Fleet Mall? Yeah, I've met him briefly. Yeah, he works on Buddhist prison work, right? Yeah. Amongst other things, yeah. I remember at an activist kind of retreat thing, maybe like eight years ago, and one of the first experiences I had was somebody thinking differently and along the lines of, he has this idea for a government surrounding circles, and I don't know if this is his idea or if he was quoting somebody else's, but basically, to sum it up, he said it much more eloquently, but he thinks that there should be small organic circles that form, and then out of those small circles, an organic leader develops, and those organic leaders form another circle, and so on, and in his mind, it was the only thing he could think of that was non-hierarchical and really was able to I just thought it was really interesting that somebody, and for me, I was 23 at the time, was kind of like, whoa, that's a really good idea, and where do I sign up?

[34:11]

But again, it's like, I don't know how that could ever come about. It would be such a profound change. Well, I think we're at a, thank you, I think we're at a point where to think about profound changes. Change is happening anyway. What's happening is not sustainable. So there's going to be change. Just in terms of what's the damage to the climate, there's already change happening in the world in a fairly dramatic way, and we're all going to be affected by it one way or another. But part of what's interesting about the Occupy movement, and I haven't participated in this much, but there's these general assemblies and this consensus decision-making, and it's a different model. And it's actually, interestingly, very much like, analogous to what you're saying, circles of meeting, and it's very much like what Thomas Jefferson imagined in his vision of small participatory democracy.

[35:14]

How that meets our modern technological world, I don't know. Maybe it all happens on Twitter or something. I don't know, but there's change happening. How do we, as people who have been practicing occupying our own seats, our own body and mind, how do we pay attention to this and respond to this? Yeah, thank you. Other comments? Time for a couple more. If anyone has any questions or just reflections to share. You know, one thing that happens when there's dramatic change going on is that there is, maybe it's a biological response of fear, you know, fear of the unknown.

[36:24]

So, you know, as Jeremy was saying, it's kind of scary, parts of what's going on. We don't know what's going to happen. and the brutal response of some of the mayors and so forth, but also just the unknown of what's going to happen with our economy. Things can get much worse, actually, than what's going to happen with the climate and the environment and so forth. But, you know, so what you were saying, Josh, about smaller groups and meeting in concentric circles, Bill McKibben also talks about that. His book, Earth, about the new physical planet that is happening, has happened, is here. I was talking about that book a while ago, Earth with Two A's, because he says, physically, in terms of the science and the chemistry of what's happened to the climate and so forth, it's a new planet, just in the last 20 years.

[37:31]

But then in the last half of the book, he talks about, well, what do we do? And he talks about ideas of regionalism and stuff that Gary Snyder's been talking about for a long time. and other people. And so there's going to be a shift. There's going to be a change in terms of how things are organized. So when there's big change, maybe it's biological to feel, to be afraid, to be concerned about our situation and what's going to happen to us and our world. And I think our practice is to face our fear. That courage is not about getting rid of fear, but about being willing to just face the wall of our fear. To not be afraid of our fear. To pay attention and witness. And then how do we respond? What is skillful means to respond in this situation?

[38:34]

And I don't know. I'm impressed so far with the Occupy movement, and it can go in all kinds of different directions. But for each of us, and as a sangha, how do we meet the situations that are going to be changing? And be willing to admit our fear. And of course, all this happens in our own personal lives, too. But then, to be open to what's going on around us. Because it's not just about any one of us, or even any one Sangha. We're all connected. We're not separate. Yes, Adam? I was just going to offer up that... I guess... I was having a discussion with someone today about the lack of courtesy, maybe, that you see in

[39:36]

You know, like, if you hold the door for someone, which if someone does for me, I feel almost obligated to say thank you or acknowledge them in some way, and how often you can do that and not be acknowledged in any way. It seems like now, maybe more than ever, that could be a really powerful thing that people could be doing for each other. how that would manifest. I'm often picked up during the course of the day by the smallest interaction with someone, where they, for no reason at all, offer some kindness. And I guess it seems to me that for a variety of reasons, economic There's not nearly enough of that.

[40:43]

And I think about the time that I spent at Tosoharu, you know, during the guest season for six months, and there are these forums, you know, even informal as the guest season is, but where you bow to people as you pass them on the path and things like that. And I wish there were more of that everywhere. starting now or tomorrow at the cafe or wherever I find myself. Good. Excellent. Yeah. Dignified presence. How do we express common courtesy? I mean, it's simple in a way, right? But to actually pay attention to how we interact with people around us in the most mundane ways.

[41:44]

I think that's part of what we're talking about. It's up to us to express that. And we may see lots of people just pushing their way through things, but it changes our awareness when we start acting that way. Thank you. It's very helpful in practice. Time for one last comment, if anyone has something else to add. I really appreciate everything that everybody said. Here's one small thing. When you have these excessive use of force, and it appears on YouTube and everywhere, it registers on people's minds outside the country, and it sets some kind of a of a tone for them or a lens of sorts to view the U.S. and freedom and use of force to intimidate.

[42:45]

It sticks in people's minds. That's all. Yeah, that also adds... Part of what that adds to is just the reality of how much our military is... I was saying something this morning about civilians being killed in Pakistan by NATO drones. That's part of that, too. Yeah, this... I mean, what Adam's talking about, about common courtesy, is so broad and wide when we apply it to these kinds of societal things.

[43:28]

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