Well, this morning I'd like to welcome here Rio Kahn, Steve Weintraub. been trying to get him to lecture here for several years and finally managed to do it. Steve is a long-time resident of the various San Francisco Zen Centers and he now lives at Green Gulch with his family. He works as a psychotherapist and most recently he is one of the three people who completed Dharma transmission with male Tassajara just a couple weeks ago. So we're happy to have you here today. One time, Suzuki Roshi gave a talk, and I don't remember if it was at the beginning or at the end of the talk, but at some point he said something like, oh, that was a pretty good talk.

[01:30]

I should listen to that talk. So I very much appreciate the opportunity to talk and hopefully I'll listen a little bit too. So that I can have a chance to work on my own practice. As Alan said, recently Mel and I and two other people were involved together in a ceremony, many ceremonies actually.

[02:36]

It's the more ceremonious end of Zen practice. Ceremonies called Dharma Transmission. And I want to talk about some aspects of my understanding of dharma transmission. But first, the main thing I want to say is how grateful I am. I was just thinking when I was waiting to give the talk The two events that I remember at the beginning of my own practice, formal practice, at Zen Center when I came in 1968. One of the first ones was we heard that this fellow Mel was over in Berkeley and was going to be ordained. So a few of us came over from San Francisco to see his ordination.

[03:40]

Suzuki Roshi cutting off the last bit of his hair. So my connection with him has extended for a long time. And for a long time it was not so much connection. He was over in Berkeley and I was in San Francisco and we didn't talk. But in recent years we've renewed our connection and because of his open-handed way, like this person up here.

[04:48]

I thought it was this way, but I guess it's this way. I think this is, maybe if you know iconography, you probably know better than me, but I believe that this is called the teaching mudra. The teaching mudra has two aspects to it, this part and this part. Well, it has many aspects. two of them are. Here's some particular point to make, right there, something to say. And here, or here, is an openness to what the student brings, to what I bring, to what you bring to practice, to our investment and energy and our devotion to practice. So maybe today what I want to emphasize is this part, what we bring.

[05:59]

It's funny because it's not so much a teaching, but yet our bringing ourselves to practice is the main teaching. So maybe I can illustrate this by talking about, talking about, get a little New York accent back in there, everyone's talking about dharma transmission. It's funny to talk about dharma transmission, but I was thinking it's okay to talk about dharma transmission because dharma transmission is the same as everything else. It looks different. But when we take lay ordination, it's the same thing. When we take priest ordination, it's the same thing. When we take dharma transmission, when we receive these things, when we receive dharma transmission, it's the same thing. It never changes. That's why Zen students after a while fall asleep, because they get very bored.

[07:09]

It's the same thing again and again and again and again. It's always the same. Even though we spent millions and bazillions of words talking about practice, we're always saying the same thing. Essentially the same thing. Essentially about coming home. That's what practice is. It's the gift of allowing us to return home to where we wanted to be in the first place. before things got so confused and disturbed and upset and backwards. So I'm very grateful to Mel in particular for his open-handed way of giving this opportunity.

[08:11]

So I'm grateful to Mel specifically, but I'm grateful to the chance to practice. They say it's like, did you ever hear this metaphor? Very peculiar metaphor, I don't know where it came from. But like a turtle with an eye on its underbelly, on the soft part. And this turtle is swimming around in the middle of the ocean, trying to get to see the sun. And the only way it gets to see the sun is if it happens to run into a board that it can hold onto, that has a hole in it, so it can turn upside down and look through the sun. how likely is it that that turtle is going to find that board? Not too likely. It's not too frequent.

[09:41]

So actually, I think usually in the literature we say, that's how rare it is to be a human being. But the only reason that's how rare it is to be a human being is because a human being allows us to practice. So we could say that's how rare it is to practice. That's how rare it is to sit zazen. and just give ourselves a chance to come home, you know? Now I know that it doesn't always seem like home, okay? Sometimes it seems like, oh God, what the heck am I doing here? Usually I'm not so restrained. What the hell am I doing here? What the goddamn hell am I doing here? I know it's that way. I've experienced many millions of times feeling that way.

[10:44]

And yet, it really is our home. It really is where we want to be, most fundamentally. So practice gives us a chance, it gives us an opportunity to recognize that and realize it and do it. So the usual way we think about Something like Dharma transmission is like, you know, diploma, right? You've got your diploma at the end of your career. You've got your PhD. You've got your PhD in Zen, okay?

[11:54]

You've done the requisite coursework, you know? perhaps a practicum, and now you get your recognition. So this also implies that the point is to get to know something, know some particular thing, some knowledge. or that you have some particular ability. So if you're new to practice, maybe this is your first time ever to come here, you look at someone else and say, oh, that person, they're very concentrated. They must be very concentrated, because they're wearing a black robe. They look very concentrated, or they look like they know something.

[12:59]

Do you know what's going on in that person's life? They're looking at somebody else. Or maybe they're looking at somebody, it goes by colors. Maybe they're looking at somebody with a brown one, you know. And they say, oh that person, I don't know anything, but he or she, she must know something. She must have some real She has finally learned how to do zazen. So the buck stops here. Here. Here with ourself. We can't keep passing it. Passing the chance to somebody else. The buck stops with you, with me, with us. You know, and I'm not denying that maybe along the path, along the way, you learn something, you have some knowledge, or you are able to, you have some ability, you develop some ability.

[14:41]

These are wonderful little things along the path that may or may not happen. But my feeling is that the main thing is the path itself. The path itself. Can you folks in the back hear me okay? Okay, great. So this is, I was thinking about the actual words, you know, the word path that we use. Path or way, right? That comes from Chinese, right? T-A-O. Tao. So this is very interesting because we say on the path.

[15:44]

You're on the path or you attain the way. But, okay, well, now when you have a way, when you have a path, there's two kinds of implications. One is there's something at the end of the path called the goal that you're going to get to, okay? And you're walking along this path and eventually you're going to get there, you know, safe way or wherever you're going, you know? You're going to get there and then you're going to get something when you get there, okay? And most paths are that way, you know, there's something at the end of it. But then I was thinking, oh, there's some very interesting paths, they don't go anywhere, you know, they just sort of, you just sort of meander about in the world. Maybe those are the most interesting paths. Anyway, there's a goal, the path leads to a goal, but then the path is, the emphasis is on being on the path. You don't attain the goal, you attain the path.

[16:47]

You enter the path, you enter the stream. That's the sense of practice, you know. And Dharma transmission, or priest ordination, or lay ordination, it's no different, exactly the same thing. Except, you know, word perfect, you know, word perfect, you hit bold, and then everything gets bold. You know, on the screen it gets bold. That's all it is. It's just a way of emphasizing. The same thing. It's just a way of emphasizing what we know all along. This effort, this energy, this movement to be on the path. That's the heart of it. That's the core of it. Anyway, that's my sense of it, my understanding. So knowledge and attainment and ability, that's the goal.

[17:49]

Maybe those are the goals, but let's forget about the goals for now. Let's just stay on the path. Let's just get on the path. So let's get on the path. Here's another word, Buddhism. Now Buddhism is a fabulous word. because Buddhism comes from a root, the Sanskrit root, maybe you know this already, is B-U-D-D. That's the root of the word. B-U-D-D in Sanskrit, if you translate it into English, it means awake, it means wake up. So in English, the name of this religion is Awakeism. If we wanted to call this by its English name, instead of saying practice Buddhism, we'd say practice Awakeism, practice waking up. And waking up, awakening, is a process we go to.

[19:05]

We go through. Go to, go through. Go around, go above. It's something we do. It's an activity. The activity of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not some knowledge or some ability that we get at a certain point. Get up to the top, and then we coast along. It's not like that, okay? It's something that keeps happening, that we keep re-devoting ourselves to. So practice is the dedication, our devotion to waking up. Now, I wonder how it is for you when you wake up in the morning. The alarm rings.

[20:07]

Shut that thing off. I don't want to wake up. Five more minutes of sleep. Don't they have snooze alarms? snooze alarm on the machine. No. I want to wake up just yet. Maybe in a little while. And Suzuki Roshi, I used to say he had a practice that when his alarm would ring, he would get up. One time at Tassahara, I think he had changed cabins or they had moved his cabin around or something like that. So his practice was, wake up, stand up, go to the bathroom, urinate.

[21:17]

That was his practice. But they had moved his cabin around, so he woke up, walked forward, ha ha, smashed his head. That's wonderful practice. That's the devotion to waking up, okay? Now, Uchiyama Roshi, let's see, do you have a kiyosaku here? Yeah. Do you have a kiyosaku? Do you carry the kiyosaku here in Berkeley during Sesshin? A kiyosaku is a stick to help you wake up. And it's carried around and then people hit you with it. Wake up! Wake up! But Uchiyama Roshi is a wonderful teacher who died, I believe. I don't think he's alive anymore. I think he's still alive. He's still going? Yeah. Oh boy. Uchiyama Roshi is a wonderful teacher, still alive.

[22:21]

And he never uses a stick in his zendo, because he says, eventually you will wake up. without a stick. And if you, you know, Zen students are famous for falling asleep. You can sleep for years. You know, you usually don't make so much noise. And I see someone here who I was at Tassajara with, you know. And at Tassajara, you'd always know if someone was asleep because this center thing would be up, you know. You'd be sitting, zazen, and then you'd suddenly hear, kaboom! Somebody had, whoosh, collided into the center divide of you. Everybody, oh yeah, zazen. Anyway, Uchiyama Roshi's sense was, eventually you wake up. You may be asleep for a second or an hour or a thousand years, but eventually you will wake up.

[23:28]

Because waking up is the name of the game. Waking up is... It's not a requirement to wake up, okay? It's the way we are. Waking up is the way we are. And practice gives us the chance to express that way that we are. That's all it is. So there are the six paramitas, you know, like the six perfections. The six perfections are the, are Buddhist virtues. Generosity. patience, moral behavior, energy, concentration, and wisdom. The six perfections are names of aspects of waking up.

[24:42]

They're names of aspects of what is elicited in practice, of what comes forth from us practicing. They're not requirements. Maybe that requirement I'm not sure if it's Judeo-Christian. Maybe we should think about that. For us, you know, American modern people, so deep in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you know, that somehow it's the should. You know, we should be patient. We should be generous. It's very sincere to try to be generous, even when we don't feel generous. And yet, this sense of it as being a requirement from outside is not ... Don't worry about it.

[25:46]

Don't worry about requirements from outside. Generosity and patience and morality and energy and concentration and wisdom are gifts to us. and their gifts to the world as well. A friend of mine was saying he was driving his girl, his little daughter, who's six years old, to school. And when he drives her to school, they listen to K.F.R.C.

[26:49]

K.F.R.C., you know, and rock and roll and oldies and stuff like that. Then when he drops his daughter off, he listens to, you know, more serious channels like KPFA. By the time he gets home, it's like, oh my god, you know? Just so overwhelmed with the mess, the messes, the innumerable messes all over the place. The really terrible things that are happening. So these virtues are a gift to us and to the world. We really need them. Even when I say virtue, it's the same sense of, this is not something from outside required of us.

[28:01]

I think etymologically it means true. Latin means true. It means true to yourself. Like a carpenter would say, that being is true. In that sense of true, not true versus fault, but true in the sense of expressing its nature, expressing its upright, accurate nature. So let's see here. So there were two basic things I wanted to say, and I've kind of hinted at one of them, I think.

[29:35]

I don't know if you've gotten it, but anyway, one of them is waking up, okay? The emphasis on waking up and not getting something, not attainment. When we wake up, we don't know what the day will bring. We don't know where it will wind up. But we wake up, we awaken, inevitably. to do that, to actually focus on it.

[30:46]

Usually we do it without knowing it. I'll tell you a little bit about the other part that I was going to address, but then I'll ask for your questions or things you... discussion. The other part that I was going to talk about some is that how it feels inside, how it feels when we sit zazen.

[31:48]

I'll try to slip in a quick story here from my early days at Zen Center. We used to sit, San Francisco Zen Center, we would sit at the, before, some of you may know Page Street, but before Page Street there was Sokoji which was on Bush Street, which was a... it had been in the Second World War, after the Second World War, a synagogue. And the Japanese congregation, Japanese Zen congregation had taken it over. And then Suzuki Roshi came as a missionary. He was a Zen missionary for these Japanese people in the hinterlands. Strange American place. So they used to raise money at Sokochi by showing movies on the weekend. So we'd have to end, you know, if we had a one-day sitting, we'd have to end at four or five o'clock so they could show the movies, samurai movies, on Saturdays.

[32:59]

So anyway, we were able to get Seishin there, and I don't know if they were showing movies, the movie screen was up, and Suzuki Roshi was too sick to lead the Seishin, so Katagiri Sensei, we called him, Katagiri Roshi, was leading the sesshi. I went to have doksan with him, doksan, you know, one-to-one meeting. It changed later in his life, but at that time he was, he was very much like, his mouth was like a bent carrying pole. You know, like in Asia, you know, they were carrying, you know, you see those pictures, people carrying poles, two big buckets down at the end.

[34:02]

So his mouth was like, very, I can't, I haven't looked in the mirror, but anyway, very stern, with a mouth like a bent carrying pole. That's a Chinese expression. It means really, you know, really. So of course I was scared. And he said, how is your zazen? And I said, pretty terrible. Because that's the way it felt for me. It hasn't changed much. That was 24 years ago.

[35:05]

Sounds funny, but it's true. It hasn't changed too much. A little bit, not so much. Mostly not changed. 90% not changed, 10% changed. 1% changed? Anyway, it hasn't changed. So I said, pretty terrible. Then he said, oh, pretty terrible is pretty good. So I think that's terrific. I think what he said is terrific. Pretty terrible is pretty good means just focus on the path. Don't worry about other stuff. Even though you may feel pretty terrible, it's pretty good.

[36:11]

It's okay. Even though you may be scared, you're a scared Buddha. Even though you may be upset or angry, you're an upset or angry Buddha. You may not know it, but it doesn't matter whether you know it or not. Just focus on practicing, just focus on the path. So, I'll stop talking this way and ask you if you have any question or

[37:19]

then you want to discuss. Yes? What to do about boredom, which has resulted from the necessity to repeat a 15-minute reading of Dogen's Rules for Meditation? And how to solve boredom is to tune out. Tune out? You mean you get very bored reading Dogon's rules? Why are you reading them? I don't know.

[38:25]

It's one of my favorite answers. Does everybody wake up, even people who don't practice dasa? Well, oh yeah, oh yeah. It doesn't have anything to do with dasa, really. Because there's some people in my life, people that I see in I just wonder. Well, the most generous understanding, the most generous understanding is that eventually everybody wakes up. Maybe they wouldn't be aware of it though. Maybe nobody is aware of it. But maybe it takes, you know, like maybe more Tibetan understanding, maybe it takes many, many lifetimes. to wake up. Even Shakyamuni Buddha, he was practicing for innumerable kalpas before he became Shakyamuni Buddha. What was he like then? The stories tell you he was always this really nice guy, even if he was a bird or an alligator. Maybe he wasn't.

[39:33]

But that's a very central question. One understanding is everybody wakes up, but that doesn't mean everybody is, you know, be nice to everybody and don't mind if they act poorly. That doesn't mean that. You help them to wake up by saying, no, don't do that. That helps them to wake up. You must not do that is very important to know. Does that make sense? I mean, okay, but I guess that doesn't matter.

[41:18]

The bottom line is... Well, it makes things more interesting, you know? Okay. You know, if you get too tired,

[42:24]

than to let the alarm wake you up. If you wake up beforehand, okay, then you're awake, then you're there. But if you're tired, you know, sleep. Yeah. If you had a dhoka song with Venerable Mekong, what would you sing to him? Are you having any dreams? His dreams may be very lively. Maybe he would just answer with a snore. throughout the day?

[43:34]

Well, there's innumerable ways. Within Buddhist practice there are innumerable ways. One is mindfulness. It's a very traditional practice of setting the alarm. When you do something, you're aware of what you're doing. You devote yourself to that awareness. Now, that's at one end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum is actually more like Zen practice, which is you just throw yourself into the water. And then you wake up, you say, hey, I've got to start to learn how to swim fast. But actually, innumerable things come to wake us up.

[44:40]

It's just, well, what helps us keep our eyes open so that we can see what it is coming along to wake us up? One way of talking about that is mindfulness. But I guess I'm talking about something more, I don't know, I think of it as more basic than mindfulness even. Because my, excuse me? That's a problem with mindfulness. Yeah, that's a problem there, see? I guess I'm more organic. My sense of practice is, you just do the best you can do. and forgive the innumerable mistakes that you make. And of course, you know, like in the Eightfold Noble Path, the first, the first, what's it called, the first, there are the eight something or others, what are they?

[45:50]

The eight, the eightfolds. The first fold is, well actually the second fold. The first fold is view. Right view means get a bead on what the heck it's all about. Then the next one is intention. Intention naturally arises out of view. If you Keep looking. Okay, this is called way-seeking mind. I'm glad this came up because in my notes I meant to say this. And I forgot. This is called the mind of inquiry, you know, way-seeking mind. That's what practice is. So another way of saying this thing about invitation or opportunity is that it's, you seek the way. You seek it.

[46:52]

It's way-seeking mind. It's a stimulation to way-seeking mind. So in some way we could say what enables us to do that or what helps us along the way, we could say anything in Buddhist practice. But even Buddhist practice is pretty limited. You know, there are many practices outside of Buddhism that are like this. But anyway, to have the view, and then out of the view, out of seeing, out of inquiring as to what the heck is going on here, naturally, your intention will quite naturally arise. And your intention will have its fruit. So when I say organic, what I mean is, I'm kind of joking, but I mean my own sense of practice is not so much an imposition. You don't need to impose things on your practice. And even mindfulness, as wonderful a practice as it is, can be an imposition.

[47:56]

If mindfulness is an imposition, oh, I should be mindful. then you've already lost some mindfulness there. You've already lost something. Maybe more important than mindfulness. Paradoxically, we usually practice a lot with, I should be mindful. So then we can see through it simultaneously, and then we wind up, it's called the path beyond doubt. So maybe one more question? When awake, who does the doing? Do I wake myself or do I simply suddenly realize that I'm awake? You don't wake yourself, no. You allow, so Dogen says, sentient beings are people who go out and make things come up.

[48:58]

Buddhas are people who allow the myriad things to realize themselves. So that's part one. You don't wake yourself up. Part two is about knowing, and you may not necessarily know it. If you know it, you may be going in the opposite direction. That sounds mysterious. Sorry. Okay.

[49:36]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ