Good morning. Can you hear me okay? It's really a beautiful, crisp autumn day in December. We're in the fifth day of Rohatsu. Trying to figure out how to integrate all the things that are on my mind this morning. And of course, that's the that's the work of our life. And that's the work of our practices. How to how to integrate how to make a oneness of our life. I'd like to dedicate this talk to

[01:01]

our friend Jinzan Doshin Al tribe. Jinzan means mountain of mercy. And Doshin means path of compassion and do you remember what I said? Trust and wisdom. Thank you. Path of trust and wisdom. That was his dharma name. It was a name that was given him by Suzuki Roshi and then confirmed by Lou Richmond. So, several of us went to Al's cremation yesterday. He died suddenly at the age of 71, 72 last week. And

[02:07]

probably you know that he's married to our very close friend, Carol Paul, who would otherwise be with us here today. And before that, he was married to our friend and teacher, Fran Tribe, who, if she hadn't passed away in her early 50s, she would be with us here today. Some of us, there's a number of people in this room who sat Zashin with Fran and she was a priest of this temple. She and Meili were the first Shusos here. And Fran gave me Zazen instruction. And Al gave me

[03:10]

support at a time when I really needed it. As I was thinking yesterday, what he, I called him up because I was really frightened. And he came over and we took a walk out by the marina and just walked side by side. That's actually, that's the way a bodhisattva works. They just walk side by side. So, the subject of my talk basically is Zazen, how it's, and I'll talk about my own path and how I think about practicing and how I've come to practice.

[04:15]

And I think this is touching on what I heard in the first three days of session, I missed the talk yesterday from Sojin Roshi. Sojin Roshi reading and channeling his teacher Suzuki Roshi. And you were talking about composure. You were talking about impermanence and change and, you know, the capacity we do or don't have to accept them. And more. As I was, as I walked in here, I realized, so Al had a brother who was a couple of years older, has a brother, was a couple of years older than him. Maybe you know of him. His name is Lawrence

[05:17]

Tribe. He's a very well-known constitutional scholar and lawyer. And you often see him like on the liberal commentator on TV, on Supreme Court issues and so forth. And it seems to me, so my theme is saving, or I shouldn't say saving, taking care of the self and taking care of the world. This is, you know, this is sort of a question that James asked two days ago. He said, like, is our practice about separating from the world? I don't think so. So Al was a Zen practitioner in his later years, a Zen teacher. And through his whole

[06:21]

professional life, a psychiatrist, who was just the manifestation of being with people and helping them come to terms with themselves. So helping them take care of themselves. And then his older brother, Lawrence, is a constitutional scholar. And if you saw, just, you know, he made a big impression on me yesterday. I just was very moved, because he was an older brother losing a younger brother. And they had their own complicated family dynamics, as we all do. But he was just in grief. And the love was so palpable.

[07:28]

And Lawrence's path is to take care of the world. Same heart, the same family. And yet, you know, he has a book coming out later this year, about impeachment. And he's involved in Supreme Court cases that are attempting to hold our president and our government to accountability. Although he's not wildly hopeful about any of that. But that's his work, to take care of the world. And this is what... I've been very fortunate, along with Soch and Roshi, for a long time I've been... I've had...

[08:38]

someone advising me as a teacher, a Japanese Zen priest, the Rinzai tradition, Shodoharada Roshi. And they're two... He's not my root teacher. And yet, there's ways that he pushes me that's very useful for me. But his... One thing he said is that the purpose of Zen is to take care of people, to take care of your country. This is very challenging to me, to take care of your country. And I pressed him on this. And it's, you know, it's country. How can it be country without any attachment to some idea of identity, or them and us? This is a really good question for us. This is our country. And we are citizens of it.

[09:45]

So I'm thinking about all this today. And I'm also thinking about, in the face of impermanence, that met the last night, yesterday at the reception at Carol's house, Carol Now's house. You know, it was a couple who were very old friends of the house, going back 50 years. They had had dinner with him the night before. And he was fine. He was in good mood, healthy, you know, lively. And, you know, then he's gone. So this is impermanence. I'm thinking about it. You know, I've always thought about it. It's...

[10:51]

Ross and I were talking a little about that as we were driving out yesterday. He was talking about sort of an awareness of impermanence that came to him. For me, the awareness of impermanence is... I think I may have said this, told this before. I was sick, you know, and when you're a kid and you're sick, at least when I was a kid and I was sick, you stayed home, and you read books, and you watched TV, and your mother brought you food, which ordinarily she didn't do. And I think I was about four or five years old. And I was watching television. It was a public service. Now, there were a lot more of those on TV when you're in like, you know, we're talking about 1953, 1952, 1953. And there was one about... It was kind of touching, but sort of wouldn't happen today.

[11:58]

It was like a public service announcement about don't run for a bus. You know, don't rush, you know, don't go, you know. And it showed a guy, the bus was like pulling away from the bus stop. And the guy was, the guy in his business suit and hat was running after the bus and clutching his chest and falling down with a heart attack. And it's like, and I would little four or five year old me thought, oh, that's not good. I don't want that to happen to me. So the next day, the bus came to pick me up from nursery school. And it pulled up to in front of the driveway, you know, and I just very slowly, mindfully walked out to it. And the guy was blowing the horn. And I just thought, I'm not running for that bus.

[13:01]

It also makes me think of this conversation that Aitken Roshi had with his wife, Ann Aitken. It's another person who was my, he was another person who was a teacher for me. And as she was age, as she was nearing her death, he said, well, what do you think about death? And Ann said, well, when the bus comes, you just get on. That's pretty good. What? Don't rush. No, didn't rush, that's right. That's good. Yeah. So I was really taken, so I want to talk about Zazen. I want to talk about Zazen. I'll get to it. In a sense, as a one sense, you could say, taking care of yourself, taking care of the world.

[14:14]

And also, as a path of salvation, although that's tricky, because we don't want to have a gaining idea. Suzuki Roshi is always talking about that. But what does salvation mean? It doesn't mean just saving yourself and leaving others behind. The Bodhisattva path means we got to get everybody on the boat. Which is like really hard work. So I was taken, I think, on Monday. So, Roshi was talking about an encounter with Master Wa. What was his name? Tolun? Tolun, before he was Master Wa, of the city of 10,000 Buddhas. And his students are still here and teaching.

[15:15]

What I wrote down was that he had said, that struck you was, everything is a test to see what you will do. You know, so that's interesting. Everything is a test. So who is conducting the tests? You know, and who's grading it? And does it count on your record? You know, actually, it does. It does count. That's called karma. And we have to decide how we're doing. But also, because we practice together, our friends can tell us how we do. And our teacher can tell us how we do on the test. So my experience, I came to Berkeley Zen Center on Dwight Way in the summer of 1968.

[16:30]

And a bunch of us came out from New York after having taken over the university and lived in the president of the university's office for a week, and then getting pretty violently arrested. And we came out here because there was something in our experience of having taken psychedelics and having read what was available to read then, which was basically Alan Watts and DT Suzuki. And then, just then, The Three Pillars of Zen, Philip Kappel. And we came out, and I remember sitting at Berkeley Zen Center in the attic on Dwight Way. And, you know, you're remembering things from Three Pillars of Zen about

[17:34]

makyo, about kind of these delusions or images that might pass your eyes. There was a sort of slanted wall in front of me, right? And I remember seeing sort of colors swimming on that wall, thinking, oh, is that makyo? I know, yeah, I'm not supposed to think that's good, but maybe it's good, you know. And being in tension because the thrust of, particularly the thrust of DC Suzuki, and particularly of Three Pillars of Zen, was very different than the teachings that we later, I later gathered via Suzuki Roshi and his students.

[18:40]

You know, it was a lot about getting enlightened. And I wasn't so, you know, it's like already at that age of 20 or 21, I felt like my whole path had been about accomplishing things, getting things. You know, I didn't really want to do that. And yet, I felt there was something in Zen that I needed to do. And because I never talked to anybody while I was there, I didn't realize that there was another approach going on. And so I went back to New York with the intention to continue to sit. And we had zafus and zabatons, and I began to study Japanese and thought that,

[19:46]

oh, we should go to Japan, you know, and practice Zen. And it's like, I couldn't do that. And part of the reason I couldn't do that was because we think the world is bad now, which it is. But if we think back to 1968, 69, 70, the Vietnam War and the war all across Indochina was raging. And it was horrible. It was tearing our country apart. It was killing millions of people, many of our sisters and brothers, but also many more Vietnamese and Cambodians, Laotians. And it made us crazy. And there are many people in this room I know who know exactly what I'm talking about.

[20:52]

And at that time, there was no, I didn't, the feeling, the message of Buddhism and Zen had not come to an articulation of the integration of those things. There were people who were integrating. If you can read Gary Snyder, going back to actually to 1959, who actually was articulating the integration of these views. But it was not generally held, you know, and I didn't know how to integrate it. And so I went in another direction. I went in the direction of being an activist until somewhere along the line in the,

[21:58]

by the late 70s or so, I just sort of ran out of script. And it wasn't until I came out here in the early 80s and I really felt like I hit a wall, spiritually, existentially, politically, psychologically. And I'm grateful to my psychotherapist for saying that the questions that I was bringing to her were spiritual questions rather than psychotherapeutic questions. She said, oh, you should go figure out how to address them spiritually without telling me how to do that. And that's the point at which I came back through the gates of Berkeley Zen Center, which was not where I had left it. It was about a half mile away. So it was really hard.

[23:12]

So I was about in my middle 30s when I came here. Of the other fact of impermanence that is on my mind this week is that next week I will have my 70th birthday. Which is kind of, it's just astonishing to me. There's some days when I really feel it. And there's some days when I don't and can't imagine it. You know, and it's a whole lot longer than my parents got to. They died in their early to mid 50s. And I feel very fortunate. But also I realized Al was just a year or two older, you know, like go like that. And you have to be ready.

[24:14]

So when I came here, I felt at home. I've said this before. And I felt at home with people who were practicing here. Some of you are still in this room. Not not so many, but a couple. And I was thinking the other day. I walked in, I think I came in in November or something and I was sitting daily in the afternoon and I came in one day and there was something really different going on in the room. It was rohatsu, you know, and just, whoa, something's happening here. And I said to myself, I'm, I'm never gonna miss another one of these. You know, let's say these, I would make these kind of grand pronouncements to myself

[25:20]

without any reality basis at all, you know, but in fact, I've never missed a rohatsu. I think there's one that I haven't been here because I was in Japan. But in all those years, and there really is something special going on here this week. I hope that the people who are coming in for zazen in the afternoon can feel it. But it was really hard to sit. Was, you know, 35 years of kind of bad posture and bad attitude towards myself. And I think it took me maybe 15 years to begin really to be able to sit. And, you know, as for the Dogen's fukanzo zengi, where he says,

[26:28]

you know, the zazen that I speak of is not meditation, it is the dharma gate of repose and bliss. It's like, where is this repose and bliss he's talking about? I'm not feeling it. But I will say, now I do. Now, that's the operative word in our practice is now. Because next week, next year, whatever, that repose and bliss can slip away. But right now, I can sit relatively stably, cross-legged. I discovered, like one day, the Dogen has been talking, you know, he's giving zazen instruction regularly.

[27:30]

And I heard it and, you know, he was talking about expanding your sternum and lifting from your middle, lifting your sternum, you know. And it's like, he talked about it. And, you know, I would try it and it would last for about five seconds. And, you know, it's like, I couldn't do it. I didn't have the, basically, what's really interesting, I didn't have the backbone. Now, you can think about that, you know, in a literal sense or a metaphoric sense. So, this is the way, you know, at Upaya, Roshi Joan Halifax talks about the way she characterizes zazen, that I like a lot, is a strong back, soft front, you know. So, you're strong and you're, and you're receptive. Your front is receptive and not, not protecting, open.

[28:33]

When you see Sojin walk and when you see Huitzu, Roshi do Kinyin, or when you watch a baby, or when you watch a Tofuro Mifune movie, you see them walking kind of with their belly open, unafraid. That's what that openness means, unafraid. That's the attitude of, not just of Kinyin, that's the attitude of zazen, and that's the attitude of life. Just meeting it. You're composed, that's your backbone, and you're open. So, I want to talk about a couple other points of zazen that have been really instructive for me. I will say, first of all, I feel that zazen saved my life.

[29:43]

I don't think I would be here in 70 if it weren't for that. I can't say why, but I just know through various psychological and health crises that I've had, which have been serious over the last more than 30 years, it's the practice that I've relied on, that I've returned to, that sustains me through all this. I recognize that's very lucky and fortunate, because with all the practice in the world, it's not like it's a panacea, it won't always work. But it's worked for now, that's why I'm saying the word is now. I've been reading, over the years I've been reading, there's a book that's called

[30:48]

Meditating Selflessly, it's called Practical Neural Zen, Meditating Selflessly, by Jim Austin, who's a neuropsychologist, really interesting, and a really strong zen practitioner, and a very good person. And he talks about these aspects of our zen practice that really resonate with me, and they're complementarities. There's ways that you can distinguish, or you can say about different approaches to meditation, well this is more, so those approaches are, you know, one is a concentrative approach, which he describes as kind of looking down and in,

[31:50]

and the other approach is a receptive approach, which is more looking up and out. Of course there is no in and out, and yet there's some kind of distinction there. And he also, another way that he frames it is, so the concentrative approach is the approach of attention, and the receptive approach is an approach of awareness. These are very interesting ways to think about, some basic schools of meditation tend to lean more in one direction or another. So if I had to categorize, for me I would say the Soto school, my understanding is receptive. It's an open awareness that allows whatever sensation or thought arises within oneself

[32:56]

to arise to awareness and flow through and out, and then the next sensation, the next thought follows, and without holding on or being caught by anything. And say the Rinzai school is more, there's a more of an emphasis perhaps on the concentrative, on having a phrase or a koan as the object of one's meditation and placing one's, placing more of one's attention there. And there are different ways even within that, you know, Yasutani Roshi speaks about, you know, his Yoshikantaza is like, you know, concentrating like sweating bullets. And yet his student Akin Roshi said,

[33:57]

his advice for koan practice was just carry the koan very lightly on your breath. So we have these complementarities. And what I didn't understand about Zazen when I came here in 1968 was that it wasn't about getting enlightened. You know, it was about coming to awareness and allowing awareness to arise. You know, I got that the second time around. And I got that when I when I read Zen My Beginner's Mind, which was later. So one begins a session of Zazen, I begin by going down and in,

[35:14]

and by taking some long breaths and really following my exhalation, on those long exhalations and just following the breath to the end and watching it turn. Then take taking some more breaths like that. And really changing gears from whatever mind or activity I've been in. And then at a certain point, just settling into an easy, natural breath and settling into this receptivity. One thing that that Jim Austin talks about that I have taken as a way of practicing,

[36:16]

he talks about Susokan, which is breath counting, as which Suzuki Roshi talks about as, you know, essential, an essential basic practice of Zen. And the way he framed it, which is useful to me, is it was always counting didn't work very well for me, for some reason. So what I tend to do to establish myself, it's just like, I breathe in on the word just, and I breathe out on the word this. So it's just this, and they seem to rest very well on my, the sounds rest very well on my breath, just this.

[37:19]

And the meaning of those words brings you to the infinitely renewable present. And then after a while, the words kind of slip away, and you're simply breathing. And then you find yourself thinking about lunch. And when you find yourself thinking about lunch, just bring those words back and start again, without any judgment. So this is the way of taking care of oneself, of encountering oneself. Everything that comes up in your mind, you're encountering. The larger reality is that you are the world.

[38:30]

The world is constructed of, what is it, seven billion? Is that right? Yous? Me's? Ah, not me, but seven billion beings. Every one of them is constructing the world. The way we practice is bit by bit to understand our connection to all of them. We start, we do start by turning towards ourselves. This is what Kategori Roshi talked about as returning to silence. That to feel the immensity of existence within one's own existence.

[39:37]

To see the subtle movements of mind, the subtle changes in body. The developments of oneself from day to day, from moment to moment. And to understand, oh, everybody is experiencing this their own way. And in that activity, I'm connected to everybody. How on earth anything gets done is quite remarkable. It's like mind-boggling to me. You know, how does a bridge get built? You know, how does, uh, how does a train run? How do we get our kids to school? How do they sit through it all day?

[40:39]

And they're all, we're all doing that. And that's the world. You know, in, particularly in Japanese Buddhism, to go back to what Hirata Roshi said about taking care of ourself and taking care of our country, you know, that the model in Japanese Buddhism is a mandala with what it evolved with, with the emperor at the middle, but it's also with the head priest at the middle of each temple. And the role, the function of the practice was not enlightenment so much as the harmonization of the world. To harmonize your temple or your center or your community, to harmonize your city,

[41:48]

to harmonize your nation. And that was a way, particularly in Japan, of visualizing the practice. And we have that too. Although I would like to, I like to think that our vision of harmonization is not a mandala with a pivotal point, but a nexus, a web of connection. But that's my vision, you know. And that's what we are. But to me, that's what we are in Sishin. We have a Sishin director, we have a teacher, an abbot, but the whole activity of Sishin is our working together in a remarkably complex way.

[42:51]

We are making this, there's no staff that's cooking for us or serving us or, you know, straightening the zafus when we go outside to take our breaks. It's like, we are it. We are making this happen. That's our practice. When we're sitting on the cushion, we're sitting in Zazen, we are harmonizing ourself. But we're always doing that in the context of being a room full of people who are taking care of each other. If you eliminate that context, it's dead. It's just self-centered, self-improvement and isolation. That's not what we're doing.

[43:57]

We are accountable and responsible to each of us. Each of us is fully responsible to each other. We're learning that here. That's the activity of Sishin. And then, this is Kennedy Hiroshi's second book. First was Returning to Silence. The second one was You Have to Say Something. What? That's the third? What's the second one? No, that's the third one. Take it from me. We can look at them. Each one of the universe is the one about Uji, right? Yeah, that's the third. Anyway, let's fight. Arguing is also part of being connected. She may be right. I don't think so.

[44:58]

You have to say something. So she said something. Jerry said something. And I said something back. And that's our connection in that moment. This is what we're doing. So our practice is not. The practice is rooted in training ourselves, facing ourselves. It's the arguments that we have with ourselves. It's what's really painful and excruciating about meeting or easeful and joyous about meeting ourself. Whatever comes up, as we sit, we face it. And to understand the practice means to develop that composure that Suzuki Roshi spoke about in relation to yourself. And then to recognize that it's applicable endlessly in this world.

[46:02]

So I think I'll stop there. I've already gone on a while, but I'd like to take have a few minutes for questions and answer. James. Yeah. Thank you. Alex. When you were talking at the beginning about awareness of mortality, you know, I've been thinking about Karin Zazen and witnessing the arising and passing of a

[47:11]

new number of phenomena. And that seems like in my experience of practicing teachers and that's what they tell us to look to, to remind us about that. But I think also some other traditions that have other ways of doing that. And I sort of feel like in my life, taking a different direction, I would have been equally as happy as a Benedictine monk. And I'm always attracted to those practices. And I remember once reading a book and being very struck by this description of somebody who visited one of their places back in the 30s or something. And he talked about how they dug their own graves while they were still alive. He talked about how like in the church or temple or whatever you call it, the monastery, they would have a sign above the doorway written in Latin saying, maybe today. And so I feel like in our world, it's much more subtle and internal. But I'm just wondering if you have any advice about other ways that, I'm sorry, what? If you have any advice about ways that, you know, alive and present and grounding and guiding our activity.

[48:15]

Yeah, keep it alive and present and grounding your activity. Sochen and I were talking the other day, you know, in Japan, what was traditional was that in the monk's traveling pack, he had a packet of to pay for his funeral. That's very traditional. So that it was taken care of, it wouldn't be a burden to anyone. But also so that you're ready. And also, each year at New Year's, and Lori has done this, actually, each year at New Year's, you write your death poem. So you're, you're, you know, you're prepared, your death poem is, is there. But it's, I think when I was talking about my experience as a four or five year old, I mean, that was a very strong

[49:22]

internal message to me about the precariousness of my own existence, you know, it was perhaps maybe a delusion, but, but, and also very painful to carry. You know, and it took, you know, it's taken me decades, it took decades or has taken decades to, to come to any equanimity about that fact, but you can do it. I'm talking with, you know, my, one of my oldest friends, been a friend for 55 years. He's been here, he's practiced with us, has aggressive cancer. And I spoke to him the other day, you know, and right now, the treatment is working to sort of shrink the tumors, but he knows it is not going to work. And he is a Zen practitioner. And it was a very, he had a very

[50:31]

difficult life, a brilliant guy with a very difficult life. But his practice over the last 15 years, I'm just really, I'm so deeply inspired by his ability to accept the inevitability of his death. And I don't know how you do this. It's more like, I think the process of Zazen is not, it's not about a gaining idea. It's like, oh, so I can do this. It's like letting that arise. So you can let impermanence infuse your life very fully. And just, it's more like, not you do something, but you get out of the way of something and let that arise. If I understood the radio this morning correctly, Al Franken is resigning from the Senate.

[51:36]

And that, I find, in an odd way, an encouragement, hopeful about understanding impermanence. And yet, and also a way of hoping for a lightly partisanship. I wondered if you had some thoughts about how we hold our government, harmonizing our politics. God, I wish I did. I think that it's like all this mindfulness movement that seems to be sweeping, or sort of sweeping, superficially sweeping the culture. It's like the people who really need it are those guys and women, people who are actually elected officials.

[52:40]

Because the whole thing is premised on presentation of self. And so, of course, they get entangled in greed, they get entangled in sexuality, because the whole name of the game is about the creation of that self. And to find an honest, transparent person, they do exist there. They're just people, those people. But how do we encourage them to be their best selves? I don't want to get entangled in that, but yeah. Raghav? I feel excluded when you say we are citizens of this nation, because I'm not a citizen. You're lucky. You're lucky. And also, maybe the clouds and the birds and the flowers maybe feel excluded when you say

[53:45]

there are only 7 billion of us. Right. You are correct. No, thank you. That's correct. And that's the... One of the things that's in Jim Austin's book, which is quite wonderful, is a large section about meditating out of doors. And what he says about that, which is interesting, is that our human brain evolved. It didn't evolve inside buildings. It evolved out of doors. And he quotes Suzuki Roshi as saying something to the effect, I only want to teach my students how to hear the birds. Is that something like that?

[54:51]

Or I want to teach. Yeah. So, thank you. You're correct. And as far as citizenship, if we got into a longer discussion about that, this was the discussion that I got into with Hirata Roshi, that the idea of country is deeply problematic to me. But the reality of species centered centrism, I think you got me. Thank you. Maybe one or two more. All these things.

[56:00]

That's just a way of expressing how you're taking care of things. But I think in this, I think that's true. Right. But I think as what you're saying, is that in this present, the present reality we have is that the designation, the designation of citizen is itself deeply problematic. We should be citizens of the world. And that includes the grasses and the trees and the rocks.

[57:13]

Right. Right. Right. So, I was using it, all words are provisional. Yeah, Steve. Yeah. You had rights. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I constantly, I mean, we're also citizens of the American empire. That's right. I, you know, I feel more at home in a language I didn't grow up with, and an intellectual tradition I didn't inherit. And I am often, I often feel like my presence here in this country is still provisional. And I sometimes wonder, is the best way for me to take down the empire by giving up my place? I, yeah, I really, I hear that. And I think the, for me, just to unpack my own thinking,

[58:27]

when I use the word citizen, it's because I'm trying, what I want to do, and maybe I was not successful in this. I'm trying to acknowledge my responsibility for the privilege that I have that is violating the precept of not taking what's not given from elsewhere in the world. That's the privilege, that's the power that accrues to one as a citizen of an empire, just as it did in Rome. But I don't want to get too, I don't want to go too much further in that. Last time. Tim. I'm sorry. Of course. Yeah, but there's no inside and outside. How do we use it? By feeling that we belong to a club.

[59:36]

You know, the club of men, the club of women, the club of white people, the club of black people, the club of Americans, you know, whatever club you think you belong to, as you cling to that identity, you lose your essence of being. How do you not attach to these? This is what selflessness means, is not having a self, but it's not locking down an identity that then stands in contrast to another identity, but realizing we are all in it together. This is what Aitken wrote, she said in one of his one of his last books is that it's an animal fable. We're all in it together and we don't have a lot of time. I think I need to end here. Thank you very much. We're going to end.

[60:43]