for fear of some degree of duplication, and she said she gave you, it was kind of a way-seeking mind talk, and also she talked about a lot of the details of the Dharma transmission that she and I recently went through with not talk about the details so much, but talk about my life, our life, lives, and some things that are important to me, some things that I believe and understand. they connect to the things that might look disparate and separate, but really, for me at least, are one life, one continuous life, one life in the body, one practice in the body, and what

[01:26]

a way that I'm coming to see that. I was particularly thinking about this because I was at Tassajara. We were at Tassajara together for about nine days. It was very intense and quite wonderful and very transformative. Then I was home for two days and then I went to Thailand for about 12 days for a meeting and to travel up to the Thai-Burmese border, kind of personal witness with a couple of friends. So how do these things connect? That's what's That's what's been on my mind this last week, coming back, being a bit jet-lagged, and trying to think, well, how do I make one cloth from this?

[02:39]

And what I realized in thinking about it is, I don't have to make one cloth of it. It is one cloth. It's just my life. is just the way it presents itself. And rather than trying to fit it into some intellectually constructed framework, this is just my life. These are the things of my life. And when I look at my life, It's always been that way. And it's always been moving in a direction, even though the direction may not be always revealed to me or always clear. But from a pretty early point, I felt that there was something continuous.

[03:49]

that's a very encouraging, usually encouraging experience. Sometimes it can be discouraging and difficult because you feel, or I feel that the things that are continuing are, I'd like to get rid of. But the unfolding path, which has unfolded to this point, It just feels very good. So I'd like to share some of that joy and encouragement with you. While we were at Tassajara, I'm not sure how much detail Meili went into. After the morning service, we did a kind of private service where we chanted We chanted the Sandokai, the merging of difference and unity, which we chant here.

[05:04]

And we also chanted a text that was unfamiliar to me, and I've been trying to find it. I spent about 45 minutes looking for it in Dogen. and asked Mil, and he didn't know quite where it was. It's embedded in something larger from Dogen. But it's basically Dogen's vow, and I wanted to share part of that with you. This is the vow, the text is called Ehe Koso Hotsu Ganmon. I'll read you part of it. Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we.

[06:13]

We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. Revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. Awakening bodhi-mind, we are one bodhi-mind. Because they extend their compassion to us freely and without limit, we are able to attain Buddhahood and let go of the attainment. Therefore, the Chan Master Lungyas said, Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life, save the body, which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were enlightened, they were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old. Read that, just that little piece again. Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life, save the body, which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were enlightened, they were the same as we.

[07:16]

enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old. Quietly explore the furthest reaches of these causes and conditions, as this practice is the exact transmission of a verified Buddha. Repenting in this way, one never fails to receive profound help from all Buddhas and ancestors. By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, we melt away the root of transgressions by the power of our repentance. This is the pure and simple color of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith." So we would chant this, or recite it, and then do a dedication to our teachers, in this case to Sojin Roshi, my root teacher, to Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, and to Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, Hoitsu Suzuki's father.

[08:30]

And these are our three immediate ancestors and the ones who I feel unspeakable gratitude to for bringing the practice here and creating this situation in which I could enter the practice. When I was younger, a lot younger kid, I suppose I had some notion of that I was supposed to do something in life. It was not exactly destiny. That's kind of too elevated a word.

[09:33]

But there was something I was supposed to do and I didn't know what it was, but it didn't seem to fit into any of the usual categories. And of course, coming from the background that I came from, which was comfortable, upper middle class Jewish, upwardly mobile, supposedly, I don't see if I've gone in that direction, at least in a material sense. I kept thinking about different professions, being a doctor, or being a professor, or being a writer, something respectable and professional. And none of them quite fit.

[10:34]

And at the same time, I was very moved by the world and felt that I had some responsibility to it and again tried, was involved in many things, involved in political movements and in the civil rights movement and all of these things were about connection to the world. I wasn't clear on that then but I'm a bit clearer on it now. And also, there were some things that I loved to do, which involved reading and playing folk music with my friends and hanging out and connecting. And when it came time, as college years kind of rolled on,

[11:37]

A couple of things happened. Some of you may have noticed I have this small bump or protrusion on my head. This was a gift of the New York City Police Department in 1968. It was a different kind of awakening experience than most of us have the opportunity to see in that light. But I was part of an occupation of a university that I went to. And in order to end the occupation, the police beat us quite violently and removed us and arrested us. And for some reason, kind of let's say it's kind of put the kibosh on my academic career. It was never the same after that.

[12:42]

I didn't have, I couldn't believe in that institution and I just couldn't put my heart in it. I certainly couldn't put my body there, back in that institution or in another like institution and pretend that the kind of violent disconnect that was being imposed on me by the university and by the state, I couldn't pretend that that didn't happen. I suppose, in a sense, that means kind of bare grudges. But I don't think it's so much bare grudges, it's just it didn't really hold meaning for me. And so I felt constrained to keep leading my own life in my own direction. And that was very hard.

[13:43]

And it was very, how to say, very discouraging. And I think I'm not such a, even though my tradition is Jewish religious background and my grandfather was quite religious. I don't feel that I'm much of a scholar or much knowledgeable about those traditions, but when I look back on it, I feel that for 20 years I was wandering in the wilderness. from the time I finished college to the time, almost 20 years, to the time I was in my middle thirties. I was tremendously unhappy. I was alone.

[14:45]

I kept doing the things that I considered important to do. I sort of kept on a track. It was one life, but it was very painful and difficult and lonely. I was alone most of that time. And I kept having, but I believed there was something to do, even though I didn't know what it was. Early on in 1968, I actually came to Berklee Zen Center. I had been involved in a kind of literary scene and scene of poets and we were not quite, we were sort of lost between the beat generation and the hippie generation.

[15:55]

I wasn't too self-defined as a hippie. It didn't seem to fit. I liked... Well, when Woodstock happened, I actually lived in Woodstock and I was playing in a rock and roll band. And we wouldn't be caught dead going to Woodstock. I mean, wallowing around in mud. Forget it. So we were in there someplace. But I came to practice out of reading, I think, Three Pillars of Zen, reading a lot of Japanese and Chinese poetry and literature that called to me about something that flowed through ordinary life that was brilliant and clear and refreshing and there just to taste.

[17:00]

And I, by intuition, I knew that was there. And it seemed that Zen was a path to do it. But in 1968, summer of 1968 when I came here, I was not, I wasn't really ready to practice. we sat under the group of friends and I came out from New York and we sat on Dwight Way and we sat at Sokoji San Francisco Zen Center in the city and I can sort of remember the wall swimming in front of my eyes and chanting in Japanese and no one talking to us or to me when we walked away from Zazen And I sort of wondered, well, what's going on here? And I wasn't ready. Even though we purchased Zafus and Zavatans and went back to New York City, but I wasn't ready to practice, not in a way, but some kind of seed had been planted.

[18:12]

When I came back in the early 1980s, I was ready. And that was, I think, after wandering out in the wilderness for a long time. And when I walked in here, I felt at home. And that was just, it wasn't any great revelation, but it just felt like home. And I realized I had been looking for a home. I wanted a home and for some reason I was allowed to be determined to make Berkeley Zen Center a home for me. And so I did. I just came here to practice. First I came every afternoon, then I was coming

[19:16]

most mornings and afternoons, driving over from my house in Oakland. And there really wasn't anything else that I particularly had to do but practice. I didn't have a regular job. I was playing music. I played music, and then I would come and practice. And it was not, you know, I can't say that I enjoyed zazen or that it was easy. But there was something that was home for me here. And I've never lost that feeling. And it was home. It was interesting. I think that Mel was away when I came. I think he was in Japan. And so it was not even the home of looking for a father or a friend in that sense.

[20:24]

It was really something physical and something, an intuition that I had or a sense that I had about the community. And I was just, and there were people here, you know, there were people here who were weird and there were people here who were unfriendly And there were people who I could see in retrospect were saying, well, who's this guy? And he's coming on kind of strong. And they tried to put me off. It didn't work. I just sort of kept coming around. And shortly after that, I think after about a year, there was a short practice period at Tassajara that Mel led, and I went to that. I'm trying to think, is there anyone in this room that was in that practice period?

[21:29]

Maybe not. There's some people who have been here a lot, who were there. Bob Polson, who lived here for a long time, was there with some very good friends. whom I married. Actually, she was aptos to her at that time, but she absented herself that month. She went away, so I didn't really meet her then. But that was a very powerful experience and it made me, it just convinced me that I was at home in this family. And I think that partly because I had sat in 1968 on Dwight Way and at Sokoji, I never felt any particular distinction between Berkeley Zen Center and San Francisco Zen Center. I felt they were part of the same family. Even though my home was and is primarily here, I feel like those are like, you have close cousins, you know, ones that you feel are really

[22:39]

connected when you see them, or I had them when I was a kid. I don't have them so much now. That's the way it felt. And Tassajara, I felt, was part of our home. It's kind of the mountain part of our home. But then in 1988, I'd been practicing for a while. I had had lay ordination. which was quite wonderful. I think one of the most moving experiences that I've had and that one can have. My family took it very seriously, actually. They thought, oh, this is like your bar mitzvah. And they all came. And it was like my bar mitzvah. It felt very much like a coming of age. And I really appreciated that my family took it, my brothers and sisters took it very seriously, even though they didn't really have much of an idea of what it was, but they recognized the kind of ritual and ceremonial power.

[23:55]

And so in 88, this was after, I don't know, a year or two after I'd had Chukai, I went down to Tassajara and did a practice period, a full practice period that Rev. Anderson led. And there were, I think there had just been a large ordination, priest ordination at Zen Center that Rev. had done. And all these new priests were down there and they were, a lot of them were kind of my age and my time frame for being in Zen practice and intellectually we were on the same track and so they became my friends and they're still my friends and in that practice period we began to chant the whole lineage and I think we did this almost every day we chanted from seven Buddhas before Buddha

[25:04]

all of the names, and there are a hundred, there are more than a hundred, up to, or no, there's ninety-two? Ninety-two. Up through Suzuki Roshi. And we chanted those every day. And then the lectures that Mel gave, that Rev gave, were on kind of the heart of the Zen lineage back in the Tang Dynasty from the sixth ancestor up through maybe Tozan. So all of these colorful figures about whom there are just many, many wonderful stories. And it was very moving. What he called, he said something to the effect that these are our, he was celebrating festive dancing and village songs.

[26:14]

And that notion has always really stuck in my mind. And I think then I contrived a notion of really wanting to be in that family. Not any notion of being one of those ancestors myself, which is kind of unthinkable. but of just having a place in this latter day, in that family, being at home there, making that the practice of zazen, the practice of inquiry, be the kind of life that I led. And it seemed from, even though it was filled with difficulties, from these stories, that it was a very joyous life.

[27:21]

And another way that I saw those stories and still do, there are stories of just friends spending years together, and kind of challenging each other, pushing each other, sometimes irritating each other, mostly being with and enjoying each other. And of students spending a long time with their teacher, you know, and in those times sometimes whole years might go by and nothing really meaningful was exchanged seemingly between them. And yet, there was learning going on and softening going on and I felt like this is I can't think of any other better way to live and actually I really can't I still can't and I recommend it to you and I think that that's

[28:30]

is, you know, I'd never read this Dogen's Vow or this quotation from Lungya until we were in the middle of this transmission process. But it's the same, it expresses the same thing that I yearned for, desperately yearned for, ten years ago, when I first raised this idea of being in that family, just that Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. Revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life save the body which is the fruit of many lives.

[29:35]

Before Buddhas were enlightened they were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old. I can't in faith say that I am exactly as one of old. I really don't know, and I wouldn't presume that. But what I can say is that with the practice of sitting still, and that sitting still and upright through the very difficulty of sitting still, which is not easy for many of us, but with the application, with placing your body there, and I think that's what it means to save the body, to just place your body there again and again, you can have the experience

[30:50]

You can have your own experience that is the experience of Buddhas and ancestors. It's your own. It's the fruit of many lives, but it is what you're experiencing in your one body. And I think that, for me, it's what I experienced in my one body from boyhood through all of kind of writhings and tortuous places of growing up and of youth, of heartbreak, of illness, of confusion. And yet, really, there was nothing to do but to move through that with my body. not my mind, my mind would go all over the place but my mind is part of my body so just to bring my body through that to the place where I was given the opportunity to sit down and it's the same opportunity, it's the opportunity that all of you are availing yourselves of right now and that

[32:19]

most of us do again and again. And it's the same body that carried me back to my family, that played with my children when I got home, that lay down next to my wife at night, that then got in this heavy metal tube which was then propelled across the ocean, which always kind of astonishes me, same body in there. Very tough and resilient and ongoing and very fragile. Same body that carried me up to the Burmese border. to see people whose own lives and bodies were at risk, and whose own lives and bodies were no less precious and no less intimate to them than mine is to me, whose bodies were no less the bodies of Buddhas and ancestors than my body is.

[33:51]

And so the responsibility there is to treasure each other. We treasure each other in the Zen stories. We treasure each other, the old friends that we practice with, our teachers, our families, those we're close to. We know to treasure them because they're around all the time and we can't take them for granted. but i think the implication here again is revering buddhas and ancestors we are one buddha and one ancestor awakening bodhi mind we are one bodhi mind at a conference yesterday where people were discussing spiritual approach and a spiritual understanding and a spiritual opposition to the death penalty.

[35:02]

People from several faith traditions who didn't hear each other actually, they were presenting at different points of times, said essentially the same thing. To save one life is to save all life and to take one life is to take all lives. And I think that that's also the implication of Dogen's vow, which is the vow that we take. I think that's the implication of our sitting together and the responsibility that it places on us in all the moments of our lives, the moments when we're sitting and the moments when we're at work, the moments when we're out in the streets, being about our lives, the moments when we take on other matters that are intimate with other people.

[36:08]

So, that's what the transmission, the Dharma transmission means to me. not clear. It's a renewal of this vow. For some people, I think for Meili, it allowed her, freed her to make some kinds of clear decisions about where she goes with her life. For me, it just creates a space where I consider further. One of the things that I said to Sojin during the process was that I don't see... Well, I still have much to learn and I feel like

[37:18]

A kind of confirmation like this is wonderful, but we're not going anyplace. However long the process unfolds, I have time to learn. we have time to be intimate with each other. And this is, to me, this is just the way of those old stories, of the festive dancing and village songs that students and teachers hang out with each other for a long time. that some of us in this community, as practitioners, have hung out with each other for a very long time and are deep friends, deeply connected, even in the moments when we might not like each other so much.

[38:27]

So, that's part of my vow. give myself space to understand, to keep looking at how things unfold. So I think that's, we have time for a few questions and I think I'll leave it there. Thank you for listening and allowing me time to share some of this with you. Thanks very much. I was curious to know your dharma name. My dharma name is Hozan Kushiki.

[39:30]

Hozan means dharma, mountains. Kushiki means formless or empty form. And it was on all of the, kind of for official use. Usually I use the hosan part, because it seems kind of, at least you can conceptualize that. And it's kind of euphonious, kushiki. It's just really hard. And he gave me that name. And then in all the official documents, which I think Meili talked about doing these documents, right? It's all the monk kushiki. And so how do I relate to that formless form?

[40:37]

It's the heart sutra. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. So I won't, I think about it and maybe I don't need to take any further, but that's my name. Judith. Thank you. I'm very happy for whatever I'm understanding of how you're experiencing yourself now. What I wonder, what I heard most in the talk was this seamless story of Alan's body going through his life. And I'd like to hear a little bit about the spirit, the continuity of spirit, and how that connects from going from Tassajara to Burma, Thailand. I think it's just the spirit that was there all along.

[41:41]

It's the same spirit that when I was 12 or 13, when I heard about the Civil Rights Movement, I just naturally moved in that direction. And I can't tell you where that came from. It's the same way when I walked in here, I felt at home. I can't tell you where that, I don't know where that came from. It's an argument for some kind of rebirth, some kind of something that continues, because if you look at my parents, my life is not the logical projection of their lives and values necessarily. When I heard about certain kinds of things, I just naturally did them, naturally entered them. So that spirit, I feel, has been continuous. When I heard about, when I came to practice, almost immediately I heard about this organization, Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

[42:51]

And it never occurred to me that there was anything odd about the notion of a socially engaged Buddhism. It just was the most logical thing in the world, and so I just joined. I didn't necessarily do anything right then, but then later I encountered people who were it wasn't so logical necessarily for them and I had to respect that as well because the unfolding of their spirit is not the same necessarily as the unfolding of my spirit but for me it feels like this has been continuous and I've always tried to tune into what calls me and odd things It might look like several different lives. Last night I went and I played Appalachian music for contradancing, which is something that I've been doing for, I've been playing this music for

[44:01]

37 years now, and I really, you know, it's a language that I know very well. How that comes to, you know, an urban Jewish kid, I don't know. But when I heard it, it was just, it called me. You know, and when I went to Japan, when I went to Japan, I hung out with all these bluegrass musicians. And they were completely, what really baffled them was what I was doing practicing Zen. It's like, that didn't compute for them at all. And all I said was, well, gee, you might check yourself out. Look at the music that you're playing. And if you think Zen is weird, what about you guys playing bluegrass?

[45:03]

And it's the same thing, something called to them, something that transcends human particulars. So that's about as close as I can get. I was at a time when you met some people around your age who had just become priests. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that experience and how that influenced you, whether at that time you saw your way to becoming a priest or just how that happened. Well, I did. And I went back, I was pretty

[46:05]

a lot of things happened to me in that practice period. It's also where I met Lori, it's also where I had a very, very life-threatening illness, and all this stuff came up together. But when I came back, I asked Mel, I said, I'm interested in taking ordination. And he sort of said, well, whoa, wait a minute. And he said, live like a priest. And I said, well, what does that mean? And he said, well, that's what you have to figure out. But what was clear to me in my notion of being a priest was that there was kind of nothing else I wanted to do. I was, at that point, not thinking about, I wasn't, I had no interest in going back to school or having a particular kind of career.

[47:17]

It looked like, I realized at that point, after quite a long time playing music, that I didn't have the particular character of ambition that one would need to be famous as a musician. You have to have a certain hunger. I didn't have it. I don't have it. I just love playing music, and I like playing at a very high level, but I realized there was not anything that was more important to me than this. And so we explored that notion for quite a long time. And I explored it with my friends as well. And it was just a wonderful opportunity to be able to talk to them about it. And I don't talk about this a lot because I'm not sure that this is

[48:19]

I don't want to set up a hierarchy of practice where a priest's practice is kind of set apart from a lay person's practice, because I actually don't believe that. I think it depends on what you have to do in your life, what your responsibilities are. It also had to do very much in my mind with being willing to make a kind of commitment to help people continue to practice, even though it was also clear to me at that point I needed a lot of help myself. So maybe one more. Could that apply also? I think so.

[49:22]

Maybe I'm just thinking too much. No, I think it does apply. Whenever he's talking about... Dogen is always using language that transcends dualistic terms, so I think that that applies. And how you grasp that is of primary importance, not what words are there on the page. But I think that, to me, the implication, because I like to use my mind, I have to remember my body. One of the things that Nell said to me quite a long time ago, I forget what my question was, but his response was something to the effect of, And I'm always thinking about where are my feet.

[50:27]

When I'm standing here, sometimes I feel like I'm leaning on my right leg and not so much on my left foot. And I readjust my feet. I readjust the balance of my body. So don't discount that as well. That, in fact, paying attention to that paying attention to your body is paying attention to the large body. While I have this spot here, I'd just like to make one announcement because I'm going to leave. On November 7th, there's going to be an event that crosses Sangha lines called Healing Racism in our Sanghas. It's a community teaching event that's going to specifically use Buddhist practices to explore racial conditioning and its impact on our sanghas.

[51:28]

And this is being sponsored by a group of people from Berkeley Zen Center, from Empty Gate, from Spirit Rock, from Community Mindful Living, and other groups who've come together to kind of shape this event. What it's exactly going to be, I don't know. but I hope that people would be interested in participating. There's a flyer on the bulletin board, and Berkeley Zen Center is an endorser. And I think this is a wonderful opportunity to continue some of the dialogue that we have begun here around issues of race and diversity and inclusion, and to have that discussion as well with people from other sanghas. And we don't have Because everybody's real busy, we don't have always a lot of opportunity to talk to people. In other songs, there's other people on the path. So I think this is a really wonderful opportunity to do so.

[52:32]

So I said I would give it a plug, because it's close to my heart. So thank you very much.

[52:38]

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