It's always a pleasure for me to come and speak in Berkeley. I always feel that I'm coming home, which indeed I am. In fact, I was born a couple blocks from here. So not only did I start practicing here, but I started breathing here. For real. This has been a lively week for me, full of issues and events and controversies. Today's knowing that I was coming to speak with you today has functioned as some sort of an organizing principle for me in this lively week. But when I've had the brief opportunities to sit down and organize what I might say, I found that the liveliness of the week kept interrupting me.

[01:03]

So I'm arriving today kind of half-cooked, half-baked. And both that's the experience I have of my of what I want to say as well as my week. So first of all I want to apologize for this and also therefore I'd like to invite all of your participation. When you feel the need to make a statement or to in any way interact with this talk, let us have a meeting of the Dharma not a polished performance from me. And I hope that we can make use of this opportunity to meet over the Dharma.

[02:10]

Just to fill you in, as Dolly said, I'm a school teacher and school started this week, which is a big thing. I just met 28 new kids, fifth graders, and learning a lot about them and trying to put together something called a classroom where we can all peacefully coexist and see what we can learn. In addition to that, I'm on the Zen Center board and we've had a few meetings this week. Both, we've had a general meeting and a board meeting. Most, almost entirely focused on a current proposal by the board, by the Zen Center board, having to do with rotating the position of abbots in Zen Center.

[03:18]

And this is a proposal which is being discussed and re-examined and is evolving and is therefore controversial. So that's one thing that's going on. And then the other thing is I'm on teachers negotiating team for my district, and that's a lot of fun. So, these are my events of the week. I'm sure you have your list. But let's see what we can do with this together. I have a little clock. What's our schedule, Dolly? What I'm thinking about is what I want to call Buddha Mind.

[04:44]

Nothing new. And I'm thinking about how deeply dynamic and flexible this Buddha Mind is. A few weeks ago I gave the Green Gulch Sunday talk for the first time Even though I've given talks, a few talks before, the Green Gulch Sunday talk is unique. It's very scary. It's a public talk, which, or at least we sort of take it to be that. So it's different from talking to you where I can invite you to participate. It is something truly resembling a performance, or at least that's how I was suffering it.

[05:58]

And thinking on what I might say, I remembered a verse which I learned many, many years ago and which I spoke about here last year. And I won't go through that verse again, but just to tell you that this verse came up for me as somehow a focal point. And this verse is a question addressed to the Buddha. And then Buddha answers the question in another verse, and that verse becomes a two-volume commentary. A two-volume commentary is written on that verse, which is a Buddhist meditation manual called the Path of Purification. So, in this answering verse,

[07:09]

the Buddha speaks about what is necessary for practice. The first thing he speaks about is virtue. And in the meditation manual there's a long discussion of virtue and then of course concentration and wisdom. But beginning with virtue. So I became much to my surprise, really interested in this idea of virtue in Buddhism. The idea of virtue as explained in this verse is that before one undertakes the path of meditation, one must be established in virtue. And that's the phrase in the verse. A person is established in virtue and then can go on.

[08:14]

So there's a long discussion in how to establish oneself in virtue. And lots of lists of virtues. So I read one list. One list spoke of right livelihood. And with listing, there's a list of improper livelihoods or wrong livelihoods. And this list includes not giving gifts of bamboo, not giving gifts of flowers or leaves, not engaging in bean soupery, and not doing errands on foot. There's a few other things it includes too. So we read this list and we scratch our heads and wonder what on earth, what's being communicated here?

[09:17]

Is this symbolic? What is being superly symbolized? I don't know. But, of course, these lists had importance for that time in that context. In fact, such importance that it was considered to be essential to meditation that a person understand this definition of virtue in order to meditate. So, what becomes interesting to me, even though the virtues, the lists of virtues, I am myself not informed about the historical context which caused this list to be formulated.

[10:20]

But what is communicated to me is that virtue itself is dynamic. it is responsive to a situation, to need. And the virtues that were listed there may or may not be different than the virtues we would list together if we were to come up with what virtues do we need in our lives to practice. So, even though they are obscure, the fact that they are interactive with that context is what really began to interest me. The liveliness and the dynamism, and especially the function, that these virtues functioned for that community.

[11:20]

I've been... Looking at some of Walpola Rahula's works, he wrote What the Buddha Taught in Heritage of the Bhikkhu. These are books. What the Buddha Taught was published in 1959, and it's a wonderful book that many of us read years and years ago and then put in the back of our shelves and forgot about. At least I did. Anyway, I pulled it out, thinking again of his basic wisdom, simple, basic wisdom. And he's also a very good writer, so I found it really refreshing to read some of his work. And I'll read a little bit to you. This is a passage talking about how the Buddha in his time interacted with

[12:24]

the rules, monastic rules, and changed them. At the beginning, bhikkhus used robes made only of pieces of cloth discarded by the people at cemeteries and elsewhere. Later on, later on the request of Jivaka, the Buddha approved the acceptance of other robes offered to them by devoted laymen. With this change in the earlier practice, people began to offer robes to bhikkhus. Sometimes devotees who went to the monastery with offerings of robes returned home, taking them back as they could not find a bhikkhu to accept them. Thereafter, the Buddha allowed the appointment of a robe-receiver bhikkhu for this purpose. However, those robe-receiving bhikkhus did not store them carefully, and the robes were damaged and destroyed. Thereupon, the Buddha approved the appointment of a robe-depositor bhikkhu, whose responsibility it was to store the robes. Nevertheless, this was no There was no appropriate place to store these robes, and this resulted in the robes being destroyed by rats, white ants, white ants, and the like.

[13:37]

Then the Buddha authorized the establishment of a store to keep the robes safely, and also the appointment of a storekeeper bhikkhu to be in charge. With differences of opinion arose among bhikkhus in distributing the robes collected in the store, whereupon the Buddha approved the appointment of a robe distributor bhikkhu to distribute the collected robes among the members of the community. In this manner, more and more rules about robes were introduced. And there's another passage which speaks about food in a similar way. It is very clearly stated in the Mahavagga, which is, there's a very long word which I won't even attempt to pronounce, but in one of the suttas, that certain rules in regard to food and drink were relaxed and changed in times of famines for the convenience of the bhikkhus.

[14:48]

At the beginning, Buddha had ruled that it was improper for a bhikkhu to keep foods inside his residence, to cook food inside his residence, and to cook his own food. He changed these rules when a famine ravaged Rajagaha. During this famine, devotees brought bhikkhus such foods as rice, oil, salt, etc. Since it had been ruled as improper for bhikkhus to store these things inside their residences, They kept them outside, where cats, rats, and other animals ate them, and the hungry people and thieves stole them. When the Buddha was made aware of this situation, he approved the keeping of foods inside the residences. The bhikkhus did so. Yet the food was prepared outside their residences, and hungry people came and watched. This caused a scandal, and bhikkhus could not eat in peace. Thereupon the Buddha allowed cooking inside their residences. Much of the foods received during the famine was misappropriated by the attendants, leaving only a little for the use of the bhikkhus.

[15:50]

The Buddha, being informed of this situation, permitted bhikkhus to prepare their own food. In the same way, a few other rules on food were relaxed during this famine. And I have something else. The point that he is making is pretty clearly stated here. The Vinaya, which is the code of the rules for the Sangha, is not an absolute truth. It's only a convention agreed upon for the orderly and smooth life of a social organization, as it should be conducted according to social and economic changes to suit the place and the time, The Buddha laid down appropriate rules and also changed them and modified them. Because he realized this, the Buddha, just before his parinirvana, that is, his death, told Ananda, his closest attendant disciple, that if the sangha desired, they could remove or abolish minor rules.

[16:57]

So I've been fascinated with this notion that two things about virtue. First of all, that virtue has a function. It's not an absolute truth. It has a function. And the function is harmony in a social organization. And the function is also to allow us to, as individuals, to enter deeply into meditation, that without virtue we are hindered from harmonious interactions with each other, and hindered from entering deeply into Buddhist meditation. And the other thing is, that is striking to me, is that rather than establishing virtue so that we can get on with meditation, the virtue itself is a lively debate in the community, continually.

[18:04]

And that Buddha seemed to be suggesting that the dynamism of that discussion is useful and is Buddha-aligned. So the flexibility and the liveliness with which we enter into discussion with each other about what would produce the greatest harmony or what would allow us to enter deeply into meditation is affirmed. Rahula in his other book states, this is unique in the history of religions. I haven't studied all religions in history, but I found that statement very striking also. Unique in the history of religions that our own personal intelligence should be so deeply affirmed by our religious, by this religion, that we are absolutely responsible for being engaged at every level, not just on the cushion, but in our lives together as human beings.

[19:19]

So I'm always delighted when I notice things in the school system that remind me of Buddhist practice. So on Tuesday on the first day of school, I and most school teachers up and down the hall are constructing, putting together a list of rules for the classroom. So my class, in constructing this list, raised their hand and we list all over the board everything that we could possibly think of that would help us have a happy time together. So the first child raised, I think, his hand and said, well, we should be nice. So our first rule is be nice. And then we have all kinds of different ways that we can be nice and who to be nice to and so on. And then we had another group of rules that sounded like being respectful. Being respectful of the fact that there are different religions and different choices and different learning styles and all kinds of differences among us.

[20:37]

I wanted to make a big rule called, Don't Interrupt. But it turned out that that fell into the category of, Be Respectful. The next thing we came up with was, Don't Waste. And we listed all the things that a person could possibly waste and why those different things would interfere with our happiness and our learning in our classroom and out of our classroom. Kids these days have a fairly high degree of awareness of environmental issues. So they think of paper and water and all kinds of things. They don't think of wasting time. I think of that one. And opportunities. And then They wanted to have a rule, something about how sometimes you make mistakes, but one should always try again.

[21:43]

So we have a rule called Do Your Best, which means try again, and let others do their best, and things like that. Like in my classroom, it's very understandable, but like my classroom, which is a little, you know, little world, our whole world, we ourselves can invest in not only the following of rules, but the creation and the function of these rules. And I'm wondering what we would you know, if we actually sat down and with the charge of coming up with detailed rules for our behaviors in our world I think it would be a very interesting discussion.

[22:44]

Something about not driving our car too much and something about at least being aware, like in our chant of innumerable labors being aware of the source of the products which we buy and use. I think that these days we would think a lot about that in constructing rules for ourselves. And that debate that debate is a demonstration of Buddha mind in its flexibility and connection. I'm personally really interested in seeing Buddha mind at work in common everyday circumstances in the political arena and so on.

[23:56]

and topics of ethics in our society are certainly important to us at this time. I found, speaking of politics, I found this really interesting statement. This is in What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Lahula. To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, not spiritual. Isn't that interesting? Read that once more. To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, not spiritual or intellectual. Excuse me.

[24:59]

I wonder why he says it's political. Um, let me go back and read something on the previous page and maybe we can discover in what sense, you know, the sense in which he's speaking. What's the name of the book? This is called What the Buddha Taught by Opole Rahula. Page three. Let's see, it starts with... Then the Buddha gave them advice. This is in the middle of a story. Well, I'll set the stage and read the story. The Buddha once visited a small town called Kesaputta in the kingdom of Kosala. The inhabitants of this town were known by the common name of Kalama. When they heard that the Buddha was in their town, the Kalamas paid him a visit and told him, Sir, there are some recluses and Brahmanas who visit Kesaputta.

[26:07]

They explain and illumine only their own doctrines and despise and condemn and spurn others' doctrines. Then come other recluses and Brahmanas. And they too, in their turn, explain and illumine only their own doctrines, and despise, condemn, and spurn others' doctrines. But for us, sir, we have always doubt and perplexity as to who among these venerable recluses and brahmanas spoke the truth, and who spoke the falsehood. Then the Buddha gave them this advice, unique in the history of religions, he says. Yes, Kalamas, It is proper that you have doubt, that you have perplexity, for doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now look, you Kalamas, do not be led by reports or tradition or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances

[27:16]

nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea, this is our teacher. But O Kalamas, Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome and wrong and bad, then give them up. And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. Well, Pola Rahula speaks extensively on the individual responsibility and the freedom of thought, which is not only the teaching of the Buddha, but the responsibility of Buddhists. And I think that when we sit Sowsin, with a non-gaining idea.

[28:22]

One of the things we gain is strength. Tremendous strength and confidence and a sense of independence. You know, when we survive all kinds of wild and perhaps difficult and unusual experiences, and just sit there calmly, we become stronger. Without quite knowing it, without quite trying to, it just strengthens us. And that kind of strength, which rests on confidence but also softness to allow experience to come our way to know that we can allow experience and reality to come our way and we will be here to receive it.

[29:36]

That's what I'm thinking about in Buddha Mind the flexibility and softness of mind which is couched in strength. It's hard to, it's challenging rather, it's challenging to speak about Buddhism because Buddhism is not an about, it's a, our language guides us in one direction making Buddhism or virtue seem like a static thing, when in fact the meaning of the words is a little different. But our mind can contain all of that. Our mind is soft and big and flexible.

[30:44]

You don't have to light on one or the other point of view. Yes? I don't know if I can, but I can more easily characterize the opposite.

[31:47]

So let me give you a couple of examples that I've been thinking about of the opposite. Maybe if we fill in the non-Buddha mind, whatever is left we'll call Buddha mind. Sometimes I think that we are endlessly dumping on fundamentalists, you know, but I've been thinking a lot about fundamentalism in our country and thinking about how, what is it that frightens me about that and what is it in me that What do I do like that every day and all the time? And I'm thinking about how it is that we sometimes, you know, take in information from one source or another, wherever we get it, and take that information to be absolute truth.

[32:57]

Take that information as authority. And then using that truth or that authority, mechanically apply it to our experience or to reality, sort of mechanically impose our truth. I do that all the time, I don't know about you. I would say that's not Buddha mind. And why is that? When I do that, I realize at some point, sometimes far into the process, that I've become dependent. I've become dependent on, extremely dependent on reality to confirm my truth. That I have formed a kind of symbiotic relationship with reality and have therefore become vulnerable to

[34:05]

reality perhaps showing me something that I'm not taking into account in my truth. So in that way I color reality a great deal. I color my experience because I need it to be a certain way, I need it to confirm me. as it was described in early Buddhism. And the two kind of rules that you listed were promoting harmony within social structure and promoting concentration in Buddhist meditation. virtue, that virtue was promoting harmony and Buddhist meditation, I would have thought, wow, what a restrictive notion of virtue.

[35:26]

What about those who are not in harmony with the existing social structure? And is virtue so relative as to the only concern within I followed you up to a great deal of what you had to say.

[37:01]

Do you have a question? Could you put it in a question form? I think it's an observation, just about what you were just saying about the nature of Um, Meili, did you want to say something? That, it, yes, I agree. Um, um, what do I want to say?

[38:05]

There is a sense of, you know, the, I don't know about you, but I find what I'm, what I'm, I just define fundamentalism. Okay, I just came up with my own new definition of fundamentalism. And now I'm going to go ahead and impose it on you. I find fundamentalism, to use the word, or this kind of rigid mind, or this kind of non-Buddha mind, present in myself. I see it, you know, as a basis for dialogue in Zen Center. I don't think that any human group or individual can be exempt by a religious teaching from our human experience. In other words, that's just the way we are, you know.

[39:07]

Right after Buddha died, a council of elders convened and discussed, you know, what now are we going to do? And then, I believe it was a hundred years later, there was a second council, and by that time, there were major differences of opinion on this very point. Whole sects divided on the point of, are we going to respond to our circumstances and eliminate rules that are not that don't have any meaning or function for us, or are we going to hold those rules because we heard them at Buddha's feet? We sat at Buddha's feet and heard those rules. So that very debate cause was one of several causes for Buddhist groups to split into sects. So it's a phenomena of history and it's a phenomena of our lives.

[40:10]

I wouldn't say that there is no absolute precepts in Buddhism. You know, certainly the rules that I mentioned about the being supreme and not giving gifts of flowers don't fall into the category, even at that time, as absolute rules. But, you know, when we speak about nonviolence, not taking what is not given. There's a lot to be said about those rules, but the rule itself is not negotiable. And in that sense, there's something absolute. I mean, there's something absolute in non-violent activity. And I think what I'm what I'm speaking about and what interests me is the affirmation that that discussion be kept on the front burner for us in our lives, in our everyday lives.

[41:26]

Meili, did you have your hand up? Yeah. Well, I very much agree that that nonviolence, there is something absolutely about nonviolence and that it is a manifestation of Buddha mind. And I wanted to go back to politics and religion and what is Buddha mind. Seems to me that whenever there are two or more people with politics. And I was recalling a time when you used to live in our house. And there was a ping-pong, this was a long time ago, and there was a ping-pong table and my children were engaged in very fierce ping-pong combat. And Kathy was around, and Kathy was quite willing to play ping-pong, but she wouldn't keep score. And she would be very available to play ping-pong without keeping score.

[42:33]

So it seems to me that that is a little manifestation of changing a political into a kind of a spiritual situation. And that's allowing the Buddha mind to be there. to put a little twist on it. A little twist, a little ping-pong ball. But then, of course, if I set up the sort of notion that from now on, ping-pong, when we play ping-pong, we do not keep score. I mean, there's no safe place to stand as far as doctrine goes. doctrine does not provide us with protection, whether it's in ping pong or anywhere else. I wanted to mention another example of how, what I've been thinking, actually I'd like to hear from you, what I've been thinking about is another example of the opposite of Buddha mind, or what is somehow different from what I think we are

[43:43]

I don't know, cultivating. This summer I went to a teacher's conference. Oh, it's 11 before. I went to a two-week teacher's workshop in marine biology in Santa Cruz. And at this workshop there was a professor, a marine biology professor at UC Santa Cruz who came and spent a lot of time with us and talked about his work. And he was this sort of person who had, he's probably in his 60s, and through his work, he had truly developed sage-like qualities through his work in marine biology. But since it's still, since it's 1104, I won't go into that. We asked him what, what he, what was his field in marine biology, because you know, marine biology is big. Three quarters of the Earth. And he said, tunicates.

[44:51]

And not having ever heard of tunicates, we looked at each other and asked him to, you know, go on with that a little. And he explained, first, there were two reasons that he is interested in tunicates. The first reason is that there are only seven people in the whole world who study tunicates. So it gives him a field of expertise. In fact, he is the only person in North America who studies tunicates, so he is the North American expert. And, not only that, he said, everyone, all of these seven people who study tunicates are really nice people. And he said, and you don't realize what that means in the world of science, that all of your colleagues would be nice people. And the second reason he said that tunicates is an important thing to study is that it turns out that tunicates have a symbiotic relationship with each other.

[45:57]

And he said, now, when I say a symbiotic relationship, you're all thinking about peace and harmony and getting along, right? Right. Not. A symbiotic relationship involves a mutual dominance relationship, completely, a dependent dominance relationship, to truly dysfunctional in our terms. One tunicate depends on the other for some sort of an enzyme that does something obscure, and has to control the population of somehow has to exert control on the other symbiote and does that with one of the most toxic chemicals on the face of the earth. So there is this extremely toxic chemical which they've apparently recently discovered is the controlling factor in this symbiotic relationship.

[47:03]

And it also turns out that this extremely toxic chemical is proving to be useful in the treatment of disease. So this is what his work is involved in. And I've been thinking about that ever since, of this symbiotic relationship, which produces a toxin and, you know, perhaps it can be useful to us in some odd way, but the relationship between these two, between the between the tunicates, between the symbiotes, is not what we're calling Buddha mind. It's a dependent relationship, a dominance relationship. And I feel that I know what it's like to be a tunicate. I know that relationship. I know that toxin. You know, I know that sense of dependence and control going together.

[48:07]

So, another example, remember that meeting, Meili, that we went to at the beginning of, right after Sashin, at Ivan's house, with a woman who is a leader of a Buddhist group that's very large in England called the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. She spoke about, in their group, they really work on relationships. They work on their relationships because, and she said that relationships in Buddhism are characterized by love, which is permitting allowing someone else to be who they are and take their place. And this kind of mind, this kind of Buddha mind, requires tremendous strength, tremendous confidence and independence, and willingness to be interactive, willingness to be completely engaged.

[49:26]

Speaking of interactive, I talked away all the time. I would like to close then with something from the Gensho Koan. To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. There's another quote that I actually like to really close with, that Norman gave me last night. This is from a poet by the name of Robert Kelly, that I'm not familiar with, and neither was Norman, so he couldn't tell me about him. The trouble with ideas is that they're clear, too clear. People mean things. Then they expect the interactive world all around them to support those meanings.

[50:32]

Big problem. Thank you very much.

[50:52]

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