So, welcome to Berkeley Zen Center. And we're having a one day session today, one day sitting from five in the morning till nine at night. And this day is the opening of our spring 2019 practice period. And I'm going to talk about, I'll talk a little about Sashin and more about practice period. But it seems to me that each of these is, it's like, it's sort of like a nest of Russian dolls, that practice period is sort of a compressed version of our everyday life, where we have work and we have sitting, we have eating, And Sashin in one day is like a version of our entire life.

[01:03]

So we sit again and we walk, we walk in meditation, sitting meditation, we have eating meditation, we have cooking meditation, we have work meditation, we have study or lecture. And this is also a compressed version of our everyday life. And then usually you come here on Saturday and we do all of that within the space of the morning. We have the same elements. It's very boring life, you know, we just do the same stuff. But it's wonderful to be able to sit here. One of the things that we can commit ourselves to during Sashin is to show up for the whole day, to show up for each activity, to everything that we're asked to do, simply to say yes.

[02:08]

and to set aside our usual preferences and set aside some of our usual thinking and activities. And this is hard to do here. In fact, everything that we're trying to do is hard to do here in its own particular way. I was just, this week I was had a Zen monastery on Whitby Island in the Northwest, where they were deep in the middle of their seven-day session. And I was there because we were dedicating my oldest friend's ashes. We did a ceremony from my friend, John Shoal, Tanzan, Enduring Mountain. And we did it in the middle of Sashin with his teacher, Shotoharada Roshi, and the other teacher there, Daichi Priscilla Starrant, present and leading this seven-day Sashin.

[03:19]

And that's hard practice that they do up there. But one of the things that makes it a little easier is that most of the people there come from someplace. It's not, the challenge of doing Sishine here is that we're close to home and some of us go home. you know, in multi-day sessions, we'll sleep at home. And, you know, it's hard to get away from the pulls of our everyday life. But when you go someplace, if you go to Tassajara, or you go to Tahoma Zen Monastery, or you go to Green Gulch, we already have made some effort to set aside our everyday life. And this is, of course, what the monks and nuns did going back hundreds and thousands of years.

[04:31]

In Zen Master Dogen's Ehe Koroku, his record of informal talks, in one of the talks, Dogen holds up his whisk, not a whisk, this is a stick, but, and he drew a circle in the air. And he said, practice period goes beyond this. So, practice period goes beyond this. So we're beginning our practice period. This afternoon, we will have the opening ceremony. We will go around and pay respects at all the altars.

[05:39]

And then we will install our Dharma friend, Carol Paul, whose name is here, Buddha's name is Shiken Seigetsu, clear intention, serene moon. And she will be installed as the shuso. Shuso is like the head student for training period. And it marks the transition from a during which time a student begins to teach. And so, Carol is going to be able to teach us with her body, by being present at Zazen, and with her words, by the talks that she will give in the next six weeks. And I believe that the first one is Monday morning.

[06:41]

Is that right? Yeah, so, and I will say this is the 31st practice period we've had here at Berkeley Zen Center, which is amazing. The first one was in the fall of 1989, and our late sister, Maile Scott, was the first shuso, And she had recently been ordained as a priest. And then she was ordained together with our late sister, Fran Tribe. And so in June of 90, Fran Tribe was the second Shuso. And we've continued since then.

[07:41]

And Carol is the 31st. There's a few people, if I look around the Zendo, I think there's a few of us here who have taken part in every one of those practice periods over 31 years. That's incredible. And there are quite a few people who've taken place in a lot of them. These shape us, they shape our practice, they shape our lives. And to think that we've been having this practice for 31 years is just, it's deeply encouraging. It's really, it's something to just do this year after year and see our sisters and brothers mature, see them become teachers and feel ourselves mature and deepen.

[08:46]

So the history of practice period in Japan, usually a practice period lasts for three months. And the word that they use is ango, which means, uh, something like peaceful dwelling. And for that period of three months, the monks and nuns stay in the monastery. They don't go out. And their whole life follows the kind of structure that I was describing before. It's It's just a very natural rhythm and actually the way it was traditionally before they had mechanical clocks and things of that sort, when it began to be light, you woke up.

[09:50]

And when it got fully dark, you went to bed. Now, part of the catch there is that in Japan, Angos were usually in the summer. So those were long days. And they were also really hot. In Dogan's time, there was a break of two months, I think. Does anyone recall? It was a month or two in the middle of the hottest part of the summer. They actually stopped practice period, and then they renewed it, which is kind of not the way we think of it, but something that they did. And this is just that the idea of practice period is drawn from the Indian tradition in Buddha's time and for centuries afterwards.

[10:52]

And even down today in Southeast Asia, they have a rains retreat during the rainy season of the year. Most of the year, the monks would wander around in either individually or in small groups and go from town to town and beg for their food and just walk and wander. And when it came to be rainy season, though, they would gather together in temples and fiharas, and they would stay together for that rainy season. And actually, their seniority or their stature as monks was simply based on how many rains retreats they had done. And when you read monastic biographies, even today, that's a lot of the, a lot of the biographies just, well, this Rains Retreat I was here, and this Rains Retreat I was here, and that's how people marked their lives.

[12:03]

So in one of Dogen's fascicles, he has a fascicle in Shobo Genso called Ango. practice period. And he gives some context for it. In the context, he says, basically, when the summer retreat began, it resembled your giving rise to your spiritual And when it came to an end, it resembled your having torn asunder the nets and cages of your delusions. So that's, he then says, even though this is how it was, there are some of you who may well have personally experienced it as hindering you from the beginning to end.

[13:09]

So there's not an idealization there, right? It's like, there's some of us who may find this really hard and, you know, if sort of the equivalent of, okay, I'm counting the days, when is this going to be over? And Dogen responds, Well, for 10,000 miles, there's not been an inch of grass. So come on, pay me back for 90 days room and board. Don't waste time. But there's a concerns, there's concerns that we have in the ceremony, in the entering ceremony, which is It's quite elaborate in Japan, and it's pretty elaborate at Tassajara, right? I think what I remember from Tassajara is that at the beginning, they read off all the practice positions for the practice period.

[14:23]

Do you still do that? They don't have the N.I. ceremony at the opening practice period ceremonies. No, but the opening practice period, did they read all the positions? Yeah, we did this when I was in... In Japan, they had boards and they had printed out, you know, every position, every cook, every server, every temple position, and every participant in the practice period had a position. We don't do that. And I'll sort of come to talk about why. But again, in the ceremonies that goes on, there's the entering monks do three bows together and they say, how fortunate we are to be doing this retreat together. I fear lest my acts of body, speech and mind should not prove to be good.

[15:27]

And I pray that I will show benevolence and compassion to all. So that's the spirit. And again, in the thing I read a moment ago, Dogen says, it resembled giving rise to your spiritual question. So I would like to invite you, if you're taking part in the practice period, or even not, to give rise to your spiritual question. What is your question? For some of us, it may be a question about our everyday life. For some of us, it might be a question about our commitment or the shape of our practice, the actual shape of our practice. For some of us, it may be a question of

[16:32]

Where am I going to set my mind of enlightenment? On what am I going to hold in mind as an intention or as a focus for this practice period? And what I'd like to invite you to do is actually make that a real statement. Put it in words for yourself. and maybe even write it down. And I welcome if you would be willing to share it with me or with one of the other senior students or teachers, please do that. Because there's something that happens when we actually hear ourselves saying what our intention is. That's different than just sort of holding it internally. So I think later this afternoon, there'll be a little time for very short dokasan or interviews.

[17:47]

And if you would like to share that, please come and see me if you can today, if there's time. I won't have time to see a lot of people, but I'm very interested in just hearing what your intention is. I will tell you mine. Actually, I'll tell you mine now. When I sit down for zazen, every time I sit down for zazen, for the last while, I've been raising the thought of enlightenment. I've been raising I'm trying to clarify what we call bodhicitta, the enlightened mind.

[18:49]

And bodhicitta in the Mahayana tradition is really manifest in the bodhisattva vow, the vow to save all beings. So what I say to myself, I try to do this three times at the beginning of each period of Zazen. May I be awake that I may help others to awaken. And I don't, I just say it and I let it rest easily in my mind. And then I turn to my breathing. So that's an example of an intention that you can set. Practice period can be really hard. But it's also true that our lives are hard.

[19:55]

So the Zen tradition has a kind of fierceness to it. When Bodhidharma, the first ancestor of Zen, was practicing, supposedly he sat so intensely that his legs atrophied and fell off. Don't do that. Later, when his student Wike came to Bodhidharma's cave for the teachings, Bodhidharma ignored him. And so Wike just said, I'm going to stand outside his cave all night long. And it was snowing. And he stood there as the snow was falling. And in the morning, the snow had reached his knees. And then Bodhidharma said, what are you doing here?

[21:01]

What do you want? Wikke said he had come for the Dharma and Bodhidharma answered sharply, the old masters broke their bones and ground the very marrow of them for the Dharma. Yet you, with your half-hearted efforts, come to demand it. This, we were told, is Bodhidharma sort of testing and encouraging Wikke. How badly did he want the Dharma? So Uike's response is quite logical, was to take out his sword and cut off his right arm and present it at the entrance to the cave. Please don't do that. And then Bodhidharma accepted him as a student. It occurred to me this morning as I was thinking about this story. These stories are troubling, right?

[22:02]

We can view time really differently as we're practicing here. We practice here day in, day out, year in, year out. There's actually really no need to break your bones or cut off your arm. Because if you think of 30 years as one moment, Well, the reality right now is my knees are worn out. You know, all of us experience in the course of this practice, sort of the inevitable physical wear and tear and mental wear and tear. And finally, all of these things will fail us. and yet we continue to practice.

[23:09]

That's really amazing. So it's like, you know, that one night of weekdays practice is really like our 30 years of practice. These things fail us, our bodies fail us, our abilities go away, and yet our bodhicitta persists. And what we're doing in practice period is just sort of goosing it along, you know, just giving it some encouragement, urging it, urging ourselves and doing it together with each other. We don't do it alone. We're not sitting in a cave by ourselves. We're actually sitting next to each other and really encouraging each other. And we're getting great encouragement from the Shuso.

[24:13]

And we get great encouragement from each of us. So there are many of us here that started at our practice young. And some of us are starting out our practice being relatively young still. And we get older, we go deeper, and we're not relenting in our steady practice. That's really amazing. Even if you have doubts about your practice, Think how long you've been here. Even if you're somebody, there are people I see here who come on Saturday, who've been coming year in, year out on Saturdays. That's your practice. That is real practice. We have, I believe that Sojin Roshi is going to be here for the entering ceremony at four.

[25:18]

And you know, he's a, uh, his practice sets a very high bar, you know, as he's completing his 90th year with more than 50 years of Zen practice. You know, he still sits regularly. He still sits cross-legged, which is pretty amazing. Uh, But please don't compare yourself with him. And don't compare yourself with anybody. The practice that you're doing is your practice. The practice period is your practice period. And the challenges of life The challenges are unique for each of us. So each person here manifests to me, to my mind, manifests exemplary courage.

[26:32]

Just facing the conditions of our life and having this context of practice with which to face it is transformative. It's like a cauldron in which everything cooks down and hopefully the impurities are sort of cooked away or evaporate. And we see that in, in many of our friends, we see them deepening, We see ourselves changing. Now, some of us may not be changing as quickly as in ourselves as we may like. Some of us may see people and think they're not changing as fast as I would like, but that's okay.

[27:39]

Everybody has their own pace. As I was talking about courage, I thought there was a musician friend on Facebook last week, somebody whose posts I read because they're very, very thoughtful. She asked the question, how does one discern between courage and recklessness? And asked, you know, is it always a mix? And somebody else posted a bit of, from evidently, I sort of tracked it back to some sort of pop spiritual psychologist, but it's kind of true, said, courage is knowing it might hurt and doing it anyway.

[28:46]

Stupidity is the same. That's why life is hard. But life is hard. This is the realm that we live in. The Buddha realm, Shakyamuni Buddha hangs out and mythologically watches over this Buddha realm that we're living in, which is called the Saha world. In the Saha world, Saha means basically this is the world in which you have to endure things. And you have to decide that's the path to becoming a Buddha is knowing how to deal with the fact that life is hard. It doesn't mean pretending it's not hard.

[29:54]

It doesn't mean accepting injustice. It just means this is hard, what we're doing. And what do we do? We come inside and all day today, from five in the morning till nine o'clock at night, we do something that's gonna make it hard for us. We sit without moving. we set aside our preferences. But this is our training. This is the training of practice period. And, you know, it's what I experienced in practice period at Tassajara and at Japan is in those kind of formal monastic practice periods, the schedule defines your life. So you have a kind of exoskeleton that instructs you on what you're supposed to be doing at any given moment.

[31:03]

In Japan, it was even more complicated during practice period because not only did you have to follow a schedule, but you had to change your clothes about eight times a day. Because for every activity, there's no, you know, every activity demanded a new set of clothes. You know, wear your robes, wear your samoe, wear your full okesa, wear your rakusu, wear your rakusu with a, you know, but bring your zagu, you know, it's like all this stuff. You're constantly jumping in and out of your clothes. And you know, actually, for the most part, they don't tell you in Japan, which clothes you're supposed to be wearing, which is problematic. But it means you have to watch and observe what other people are doing. That's not the difficulty of our practice period here.

[32:08]

We don't have so much of an exoskeleton. We create a very broad framework for practice period. But really, the difficulties that we carry through this are the difficulties of our life. We have jobs, we have families, and that's what's so amazing about this practice to me, that we do this in the midst of our life, and we do this to make our life somehow coherent. And I find that to be true. For me, I don't know quite what I would do without it. But it also enables me to reflect on my life. And I don't make a distinction between sitting here in Zazen and my life.

[33:15]

It's not like one is my life and the other is my practice. At a certain point, they become indistinguishable. And Zazen becomes like persistent song that you have that's running around in your mind and sometimes you love it and you just go around go along with the with melody because it's something that is so deep in you and sometimes it drives you crazy it's like an earworm and yet this is what we have to deal with. We have to endure both of our, both our joys and our difficulties and our sorrows. So to me, that's what practice period is about. And I am so grateful to be able to do this together with you for the 31st time.

[34:18]

And I'm also grateful to Sojin Roshi for inviting me to lead this spring practice period. It's the first time I've, I've done that. Uh, and, uh, you know, I look for guidance from him, from the Shuso, and from all of you. So please let's dive into the waters of this practice period together. So we have a little time for questions and comments. If anyone has anything to ask or share, please. Jerry.

[35:20]

Yeah, it's really important. And admittedly, it's a bit harder to do here in our world, in our lives, than it might be in a monastic setting. and try to make that effort. You guys are very quiet today. Yes, 10. Standing out in the cold one night was Bodhidharma telling him to go find a cave.

[36:50]

If you can live your life any other way but by the Dharma, do that first. The cold is like him trying to live a different life. He has nothing left. He had this really wonderful life that he had finally found his way into. And then when he finally loses that, Bodhidharma says, OK, now I'm here. Well, that's a really good story. That's really good. I mean, that makes complete sense in its own, you know, its own version. People come to the Dharma for different reasons.

[37:54]

And they come at different points in our lives. Some of us come early, some of us come late. Some of us, like, I'll just say, I've talked about this before, for me, when I came to it early, but I couldn't do it. And when I really came to it, it was at a time when even the way I expressed it to myself was I have run out of script. I am off script here. I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing with my life. And all I can say is that when I walked in here, I felt at home. And I questioned that, you know, it's like, why? You know, how do I know this? But it was true, unless I've been gravely mistaken.

[38:59]

Which always is possible. Ross. Oh yeah, thank you. Yeah. What we're going to study are two short fascicles by Dogen Zenji. And the first one is called Shoji, which is sometimes translated as birth and death. And the second one is called Zenki, which is sometimes translated as total dynamic working or the whole works, which is kind of a nice play on words. And these two

[40:01]

in my mind, and I know in Sojin's mind too, they go together for me, even though they were written at different moments in Dogen's life, because they were translated together by by Dr. Abe and Norman Waddell, and they were published together with commentaries in the Eastern Buddhist, which was one of the early places where you could get translations of Dogen. It happens that it was the first Dogen that I really had an opportunity to study with with Katagiri Roshi in the middle 80s, and it made a big impression on me. And I think I actually taught this here maybe about 10 years ago. But I feel like some of us, we've experienced or we are experiencing a loss

[41:10]

in our lives, in our community. We're experiencing the passing of friends and family members. And we're also experiencing birth. And so there's a birth and death in this kind of literal sense. And then there's the birth and death that we experience every moment with every breath. So it's in the, macrocosmic and microcosmic sense. And so I'm curious to see where that leads, but that'll be the subject for the classes. Yeah, Linda. In our middle chant, we have this kind of calendar spine that says, let's consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it. And I was wondering if you think that Zen teachers It sounds like Bodhidharma is saying you can't come in here until you're worthy.

[42:26]

Does that mean anything to you? It does. Well, in the other thing that I read in the opening to the practice period, there's a similar sentiment. how fortunate we are to be doing this retreat together. I fear lest my acts of body, speech, and mind should not prove to be good. And I pray that I will show benevolence and compassion towards all. I suspect that Psychologically, this is a difficult sentiment for some of us to take in because we immediately go to guilt.

[43:36]

And I don't think that's how it's intended. And no, I don't emphasize that when I'm talking to people, you know, and I don't think I've been emphasizing that in this talk. I mean, what I feel like I'm trying to emphasize here is it's amazing what we're doing. It's miraculous that we're here together and we have this opportunity to do something, you know, and I'm not adding the sentiment, don't screw it up because I'm actually not thinking that, but this is a tension in the Dharma. You know, there's a tension between one narrative, which is about purification and one narrative, which is about including everything.

[44:42]

And that's exactly like what, it's sort of like that verse, like courage is doing something knowing that it will hurt and stupidity is the same. So we live with this dynamic tension. And I don't think that, I'm just not used to our, teachers in our family being too chastising us too much for not being good enough. They might offer correction and we might take that correction. I mean, we have this, this is an issue that, that gets talked about. It's like some people take correction as punishment, you know, whereas it's, it's really meant just like, well, Here, see how this might work. It's not that you're doing something wrong or evil, but we carry these, we, this is our delusion.

[45:54]

Our delusion of self often involves a kind of self punishment. So I'm giving you a long discursive answer to that. I don't know if it, if it really gets to it, but, um, I really don't think we need to cut off our arms, you know, because actually our lives are hard enough. And if we really desire the Dharma, all we have to do is show up. And it's not like the cave door is blocked. It's like, yeah, come on in and sit with us and check it out. If this works, great. You're welcome. And you're welcome to find whatever place you find here. If it doesn't work, You know, go find yourself a farm and see if that works, you know. OK, I think we need to end, but thank you all very much and we'll see you here during practice period.

[47:02]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ