Good morning. Can you hear? Is there enough volume? Is it working now? Is it volume coming up? Yes. You have enough? Okay. So, the subject of my talk or inquiry today is really about exploring the spirit of our practice in community, in Sangha. And so I think I'll lay down some principles and then reflect and ask some questions. And hopefully if I can rein in my digressive mind, leave time for your views and questions, because I think that that's, to me, that's really an essential part of the community life that we're trying to support, a spirit of free and safe inquiry.

[01:18]

So the principles that are common to every Buddhist community that I know of. There may be a lot of differences in practice and so on, but they all hold the three refuges as the three treasures, the treasures of our practice. The refuge, I take refuge in Buddha, which is the enlightened nature available to all of us at every moment. I take refuge in Dharma, which in this sense, Dharma has a lot of meanings, but in this sense, it's speaking of the teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of our teachers, which is the voice and the word and the direction by which we do bring forth the Buddha nature that exists within each of us.

[02:38]

And the third treasure is the Sangha treasure. I take refuge in the Sangha. The Sangha variously means the community of all practitioners or the circle of all practitioners. Sometimes it has a very particular meaning pertaining to ordained monks and nuns. And sometimes you could see it as the entire circle of life. one can see one Sangha, that as one Sangha. And so the Sangha is the place in which the other two treasures are continuously unfolding, they're enacted. So when at the end of our our retreat days or Sashin days, we recite these three refuges and we recite them at other occasions and other ceremonies.

[03:45]

And the third one reads like this, I take refuge in Sangha before all being bringing harmony to everyone free from hindrance. So empowered by the treasure of the Buddha and the Dharma, relieved of hindrance, one's responsibility is to bring harmony to everyone. And this is very much, to me, it's very much in keeping with the Buddha's teaching The term that Martin Luther King Jr. used frequently, he spoke of the beloved community. And the term that was coined in the early 20th century by a philosopher, theologian, Josiah Royce, who was also a peace activist,

[04:52]

And for Dr. King, as he worked with this idea, this was not, this beloved community was not a sort of a holy, heavenly view, but it was a community that was rooted in who we are, the circumstances of our lives, and most, Importantly, how we spoke to and treated each other as, if you will, as Buddhists, as Buddha to Buddha, or as Christ to Christ. And he felt this was an achievable goal. He felt it was a goal that implied equality of being and also equity in the division of wealth within the world.

[06:03]

And it was also a vision that did not pretend that there wasn't conflict, that vision beloved community, and I think the instructions that we have received within our tradition point to the fact that conflict exists, and even that conflict is creative. It's necessary. It's not something we're trying to get rid of and have some boundless sense of that we all agree. but rather conflict is how we find ourselves and how we create the relationships that we have between us. It's one of the ways. And what Dr. King did say was that how we work with that conflict is the criterion by which we can

[07:18]

determine are we living in beloved community or not? And for him, the spirit of that was that conflict be addressed without violence, without retaliation, without resorting to power over. So we have various tools. in our tradition that are both instructions and agreements that we make. We have the Bodhisattva precepts. People who have had lay ordination or priest ordination have received these formally, but many of you have, we've talked about them frequently, and many of you have been here for the Bodhisattva ceremony. In the Bodhisattva ceremony, which is an ancient monthly ceremony for us at the time of the full moon, is an avowal of our karma, our unskillful habits and energies, if you will, and a renewal of our vow.

[08:47]

and then reciting of the precepts, the Bodhisattva precept as a way of kind of resetting ourselves month by month. So there are four precepts that I just bring up today. We call these pure mind precepts. And the way we present them here we present the kind of the prohibitory aspect of the precept, and then it's balanced by the kind of affirmation that the precept leads to. So you have in these 10 Bodhisattva precepts, it's interesting that three of them pertain to speech. And you'll see, even hearing these, that they don't exhaust all of the possible hazards and pitfalls of speech that we might encounter.

[10:00]

But they create a good frame. So the fourth precept is, I resolve not to lie, but to communicate the truth. So, not to lie on the positive side, but to communicate the truth, to be active in that communication. The sixth precept reads, I resolve not to dwell on the mistakes of others, but to create wisdom from ignorance. And I think that that means for me, it's not that everything anyone does is perfect or it's not that one may not see another's mistakes or another will see my mistakes. It's the, the pivotal word is dwell.

[11:03]

Uh, and, uh, to create wisdom from ignorance is also this wisdom that's being created. I have to create wisdom for myself, but also if you have wisdom and someone is misguided, it's also your responsibility to share it. The seventh precept is I resolve not to praise myself and downgrade others, but to maintain modesty, putting others first. We often have narratives running in our minds that are judging, evaluating, ranking, ourselves in relation to others, others in relation to ourselves.

[12:09]

Sometimes we're one up, sometimes we're one down. All of this is quite familiar to us. The fact of the matter is, if all beings are Buddha, there's a level on which this is really irrelevant. And there's also a level in which one's evaluative mind is leading you down the wrong path. And you can see this in your own practice as well. All of these things, even though we're talking about speaking and we're talking about interaction, that interaction also exists in dialogue with myself. When I am sitting zazen, you know, you can be lying to yourself.

[13:13]

You can be deluding yourself about what you're doing. You can be praising yourself or downgrading yourself. Say, I can't do this. I'm no good at this. Constantly a stream of judgment that you may be spinning out in relation to this really simple activity of facing the wall and breathing. And every moment we're actually challenged to be in harmony with ourself. It starts there. And sometimes for some of us, that's easier than being in harmony with others. And for others, sometimes it's easier to be in harmony with others than to be in harmony with yourself. And the fourth precept I want to mention is not directly about speech, but it's the ninth precept, I resolve not to harbor ill will, but to dwell in equanimity.

[14:29]

For the sake of organization, and for the sake of it being a pedagogical tool, these precepts are broken down into principles. But really we see that they don't come up, as Suzuki Roshi said, these are not rules. These are sort of naturally arising principles when we are acting as Buddhists. And the challenge is how do we act and what's arising in our diluted human state, which of course includes being Buddhist, but it's also, there's a lot of work to do. So the nature, I speak about this because we're in a period of unprecedented incivility.

[15:42]

The kind of things that you're likely to hear at a press conference are things that you have never heard before in public discourse. And then that goes back and forth. And this has been going on for the entire election cycle. somewhere early in the election cycle. I was talking with friends from the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, and we thought maybe we should write something about incivility. And actually, we did have something that we asked Norman Fisher to write, which was quite good. And we kept waiting for the right moment. Just the right moment somehow never came up, which was us missing it because every moment was the right moment.

[16:48]

And now it's even getting better for incivility. It's a high point of incivility. But in the course of this, So this is a national issue. How do we speak to ourselves? How do we speak to ourselves when we're holding different opinions and different views? And that exists within this community itself. One of the things that sort of emerged in awareness, at least for myself and some of us in this election season, was that, it's hard for me to say this, there are ways that people

[17:57]

were speaking to each other from time to time, not always, in this community that were hurtful to others and left others feeling unsafe. And the more some of us thought about it, the more we realized that this is a moment when we have to address this. And that that unsafeness was not in the nature of this practice, at least as we want to understand it. Dogen speaks of, he actually set it out very clear. In his fascicle, Shishobo,

[18:59]

There's four principles for basically how to act in a bodhisattva manner. To be generous, to use kind speech, beneficial action, and what he calls identity action, which is recognizing that each person is equal and to cooperate. But in kind speech, I want to read you something that he says about kind speech. Kind speech means whenever meeting sentient beings, arouse compassionate mind towards them. Offer caring and loving words. In general, we should not use violent or harmful words. It's interesting, he says, in general.

[20:00]

He doesn't rule out using forceful words completely, but he says in general. Usually, you don't. In society, there is a tradition of asking others if they are well. In the Buddha way, we have the words, take good care of yourself. And the disciples' filial duty to ask their teachers, how are you? I would be careful, that filial duty with Sojin. It's not your favorite question. If you're really asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is loving speech to speak with the intention of compassionately caring for living beings as if they were your own babies. That's a line from the Metta Sutta.

[21:04]

How would you choose, how do you treat your children, your baby? And that's not just how you treat sentient beings around you, it's also you. are the big baby of your own mind. How do you express your compassion in that direction? He said, we should praise those with virtue and pity those without virtue. And he says, from the moment we begin to delight in loving speech, it grows little by little. Whether we are subduing a deadly foe or making peace among people, kind speech is fundamental. When one hears loving speech, that person's face becomes happy and their mind becomes joyful. When one hears of someone else's kind speech, that person inscribes it in their heart and soul.

[22:06]

We know that loving speech arises from a loving mind. And the seed of a loving mind is compassionate heart. Study the way that kind speech has the power to transform the world. Study the way that kind speech has the power to transform the world. And remember that discordant speech also has the power to transform the world. How do we want to act here with our sisters and brothers? Sometimes this comes down to a question of the perception of power. a lot of the, some of the conflicts that I've been a party to and other people have been a party to here at BCC, the context for that has often been someone being in a position of authority, having a practice position, or being

[23:29]

longer in the practice, uh, as opposed to someone who's newer in the past practice. And for whatever reason, whether it's, I'm curious to know what you think about this. And when I stop in a couple of minutes, it's there's, there certainly is an authoritarian, tendency that we read and pick up from Asian Buddhism, particularly from Asian Zen, and we translate it into our culture. But I think we also have, we have our own authoritarian issues. We have our own uncertainties about our authority. I was looking at, Peter spoke, I think, I can't remember if he was here.

[24:38]

We did a workshop at a conference on right use of power. And one of the things, there was a little map that I thought was really interesting. The three dimensions of power. Personal power, In other words, who you are, just what your life force is, what your intelligence is, what your sense of agency is in the world. And then there's role power, which is the authority that is assigned to you, you think, by virtue of the role or the position that you have. And this is where people often, this is where people are often mistaken. And then there's status power, which is actually a sort of subtler version of the second, but it's also where the personal power and the role power come together.

[25:53]

as well. So we don't have time to go. This is something that we could really study. That would be really useful. And then what unfolds from this. But this I want to say what I think is the spirit of the responsibilities that that we carry. So if you have a practice position, the responsibility that we carry when we have a practice position, like the Saturday Director or the Vice Abbot or the Tenzo or whatever, is to help people practice.

[26:54]

To bring harmony to everyone, as I as I said at the beginning. And. That means that one's interactions should be encouraging. And clear. And kind. And open to. Open to feedback. but also if it's in the nature of the position to give feedback, to give that in a helpful, kind way. There is never, there's never any proper context for getting angry at someone because of how they're doing something here. That is inappropriate action. And that's completely, the precepts are our guide, not to praise self or not to place oneself above others, not to harbor ill will.

[28:08]

The precepts are agreements. that we make. They're not just these abstract principles. When we recite them, when we receive them, when we recite them, we agree to them, and we look at the precepts as these are our tools for how we are in relation to other beings. Every one of those precepts is about relationality. So It's really important that we let them be the guide, and it's really important that there's a collective sense of responsibility about this. If somebody has a practice position, they're responsible for a certain kind of discourse, a certain way of speaking, just as we're responsible for a certain, each of us, for a certain attitude and approach when we sit zazen.

[29:14]

At the same time, if we are working, if someone is the work leader, say, and she assigns you a position, To the best of your ability, we support the work leader or we support the tensor or we support the head dishwasher by doing what they have asked us to do because it's their responsibility to ask. And if you have a question, you ask. But it's a it's a question. It's a matter of mutual support. That's the way that's the way the beloved community. That's the way the Sangha works. It's not unquestioned obedience, but it's recognizing that, say, Leslie is supporting me and I'm supporting Leslie.

[30:17]

It's a question of, in that relationship, irrespective of the role, there's mutual accountability. So I also want to say that if you experience something as you're working here or as you're practicing here that does not seem in accord with those principles of kind speech, of harmony, of helpfulness, don't eat it. Don't take it as, oh, this is my practice. It is your practice. But it's also really good, important to tell somebody and talk it over. Because in any community, the system, any social system needs constantly to be brought back into balance.

[31:20]

is constantly falling out of balance and being brought back. So one's silence in the face of, say, harsh speech, is just, it actually plants the seed of discord more deeply. So, and this is a, An open question is like, when do I say something? When don't I say something? It's also important if somebody gives you feedback or if somebody gives you criticism. I mean, my practice is before I talk to anybody, and certainly before I react to that person, I want to try to step back and figure out, is there something true and useful in what they're telling me. And to see that, but there still might be more.

[32:26]

There still might be more around the edges of that exchange that is not so okay. We do not want to be in an authoritarian environment. We're seeing enough of that emerging in our political system. We see enough of that all over the world. The Sangha is a community of Buddhas together. Some of them are fully enlightened Buddhas. Some of them are less enlightened Buddhas. At any given moment, someone can be completely enlightened. So, yes, if you see something or if you experience something that doesn't feel right, please talk to one of the teachers, talk to one of the senior students, get help if you feel intimidated in a conversation with someone, but don't just swallow it.

[33:37]

That really does sow the seeds of discord. I'm saying this not because I think there's something terribly wrong here. I think this is the constant unfolding of community life, which is not easy because it's made up of all of us. who we have our strengths and weaknesses. But we do have this, the thing that I love is, so when we're sitting like this and facing the wall, we're in what my friend Taigen calls Buddha mudra. So we put ourselves physically into the position of being Buddhas so that we can unlock that Buddha reality within ourselves and gradually it permeates our life.

[34:50]

but it's gradually. There are shortcomings, gaps, personality disorders, all kinds of difficulties we have to deal with within ourselves and between ourselves. How can we hold those in a harmonious and loving way? I'm going to stop there and you may have some thoughts or questions. Peter? can meet our everyday sangha life through practicing the Bodhisattva Way. Very on point and balanced, thank you. And in particular, I'd like to say that your admonition to not eat harsh speech, so to speak, I'm just referring to something you said, I think

[35:55]

Yeah, thank you. What I'd say also is if I'm trying to make an agreement for myself that say, if you bring me an uncomfortable encounter that you had with somebody, I will really seriously listen and think about how what might be helpful for you, for the other person, and how might I help? And not just kind of set it aside. Tom? Yeah, thanks for your talk, Rosanna. Anyways, I agree with what you said about how the way people interact here is pretty wrong. In fact, I used the There's a lot to be said for how people interact with each other with respect.

[37:29]

I'm curious, at what point should a conflict be brought to the whole community? I don't know. Basically, I wanted to open up a discussion here today, because there's been aspects of discussion that have been happening in different sections of the community. And so I wanted to bring that to the community. I don't have the answers to that. But there are times when it needs to be brought to the whole community, and there are communal approaches to conflict resolution as well. And so I think this is something I hope we will be able to continue to discuss and figure out. Yes. In Chinese culture, there's actually a saying that women are supposed to swallow their bitterness.

[38:34]

So it's interesting to hear that contrast. And then just a question. It was really interesting how you're describing three different kinds of power, power of role, power and status. Are there similar? Where would we be able to find more readings or essays on the consequences of those three kinds of power? Peter? Yeah, if you just Google the right piece of power, there's an organization where they do these workshops and so on. And I'd be happy to talk to you guys more. Yeah, good. Thank you. John? It's interesting talking about the work position. often on directions or instructions and that sort of thing.

[39:42]

And it wouldn't hurt us as a group to get together and practice, understand when someone says, oh, I don't want to do that, or x and y, how we handle those things and so on. So we can be better models. Yeah, I think that was one of the ideas that came up at the practice committee that I incorporated into something. But I think it's true. Yeah, practice positions are terrific. That's how we really learn how to interact with people and how to hold responsibilities that we may not have had and how to enact that. Yeah. Kelsey? I was wondering if you made the distinction between time speech and nice speech? Yeah. What's that distinction? I don't know. I'm from New York. So I'm not sure I do nice very well. It's the same way, it's the same thing as actually playing the guitar.

[40:58]

You know, people think, oh, I'm gonna play nice and play like really delicate and soft, but actually you have to play a musical instrument with energy. Kind involves energy to me. And it might even involve fierce energy. It's like kind is not just, is not just nice. Sometimes people with energy need to be met with energy. But you need to, I think the element of kindness is as best one can understand embedded in one's intention, right? You know, as this expression that we got from our friend Karen Dakota's practitioner here, it's like, in sort of conflictual situations, she raised the question, well, do you want to be right or do you want to be in connection?

[42:09]

If you want to be right, chances are you're not being kind. If you want to be in connection, chances are you are being kind, if that makes a distinction. But some people are brand new, and the way that these forms are is foreign to them. They're new to the practice, they're walking in here and never had any experience at all. And so sometimes there's a time to help people, but sometimes there's a time to let them find their way. But it isn't necessary to correct every error in form.

[43:15]

And that can be off-putting and people cannot come again because they're very sensitive, they're feeling self-conscious and trying to do something that they were asked to do. So it's very delicate to offer help versus correction. And sometimes it's better to just let it go because you know they're new and they'll find their way eventually. Right. Well, this has been an issue for me. I think Sojin identified that as an issue for me early on. Oh, now you're laughing. Well, his advice to me was, you should let things fall apart. Because what? I think often, if we look at the underlying motivations, the need to keep things together, the need to have somebody do a form or know a form, that's my anxiety.

[44:30]

You know, that's my problem, actually. And I feel like I'm pretty good at doing that and really at reading what people's comfort and discomfort might be. And I like to think I'm pretty kind. I also learned the hard way not to do things in public, not to criticize in public. take somebody aside or show them gently how to do something, and then you've actually created a relationship with them. And sometimes you say something and sometimes you don't. You can't be... This is a lay practice period, practice center, where people are coming with all kinds of skills and also all kinds of lives. And, you know, Unlike the present administration, this is not running like a well-oiled machine.

[45:45]

You know, but, so yes, we have to use, people who have responsibility have to use their discernment about when to speak, when not, you know, quite aside from how you speak. I wanted to give you an opportunity to weigh in somewhere. Whether you understand the way our practice operates, we have a lot of practice positions and that's what keeps the harmony of the practice going. And we rotate the practice positions so that each practice position that we are assigned to, we observe the whole practice from that position. And when each person

[46:52]

doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, then a low-oiled machine runs really well in harmony. So harmony is really an important aspect of our practice. If I do what I am supposed to be doing without asserting my self-centeredness, I think it all boils down to self-centeredness. That's fundamental. fundamental problem for Nietzsche. Because our whole practice of Nietzsche is to lift up our self-centeredness. That's what it's all about. So if we practice from our position with the whole saga, everyone Each person is the boss of the whole sangha.

[47:58]

The dishwasher doing the dish washing in harmony with their surroundings is running the whole practice. So what happens at the top affects what happens at the bottom, in politics and dharma. So it's incumbent to each one of us to realize that we're all equal, whatever task we have is equal to all the other tasks, even though each one is different. I'm sorry for pontificating. You're in the pontifical seat. But the other side, I just want to bring up the other side that Dogen talks about. He says the wise ruler does not know why she is wise and doesn't necessarily recognize that the wise ruler is wise because they're supported by the wise people.

[49:16]

And the wise people just want to be, in this kind of confusion thing, want to be led by the wise ruler, but they don't necessarily recognize that they themselves are supporting. So this is why I think it's just like being in a band. in the sense, and somebody told me this, I play music for many years, and at some point early on, somebody said, you know what, you have to be, you have to take complete responsibility for what is happening in the music. So you have to be keeping the time, keeping the melody, harmony, whatever. Each person in the band has complete responsibility, but so does everyone else. And you have to work together. When you're working together, then it's swinging.

[50:19]

So let's swing.

[50:20]

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