out of the mountain, realized the way. And Peter has been living in Berkeley for a long time. He's been a long-time practitioner here. He trained at all three of the San Francisco Zen Centers, was Shuso, or his student there in the 1980s, and received Dharma Transmission here at Berkeley Zen Center from Sogen Roshi a couple of years ago. Thank you, Hasan. So now it's time to test the audio equipment. And can you hear me? Let's try it. That's better. It's better for my visual field, too. Everybody in the back can hear? OK, good. Good morning.

[01:15]

I came upon the topic for this talk a little while ago. It's about, broadly speaking, how I arrived at my question during the recent Shuso Ceremony, which was held at the end of our spring practice period a couple of weeks ago, I guess. I'm forgetting how long. So, let's see if I can actually read my notes with this large blue object in front of me. So, as you know, we enact the shuso ceremony, and this is a little bit of a follow-on from Hozan's talk of a week ago about ritual. Sometimes I wonder what the difference between ritual and ceremony is, but the way I think about it is that ceremony has a lot of ritual and ritual is smaller in scale.

[02:25]

But in any case, we enact this ritualized ceremony at the end of the practice period in which we have a head student who gives talks and teas, and leads us in practice. And in this case, that head student was sitting right there, exactly where Mary is now sitting. And in fact, I believe it's the same person. And one of the reasons why I wanted to speak about this, because on the day of the ceremony at morning lecture, Sojin gave some remarks about the ceremony and the way we ask questions in the ceremony. For those of you, I don't think there's anybody here who doesn't know about this, but I'm going to explain in any case. The ceremony, the principal part of the ceremony is a question and response by all of the members of the practice period individually to the Shuso in turn.

[03:36]

And so, Sojourn was explaining about how the Shuso, what is the aim of the Shuso in responding to the questions What is the aim of the questioners in forming and presenting their questions? And he explained that it's done a little bit differently in Japan. In Japan, this ceremony is enacted in Soto, in the Soto school, at the end of the practice period, and all the questions and the answers are predetermined. But in that case, The spirit of the ceremony is flowing from a sense of celebration of this wholehearted enactment of this thing. But for us, it's really about trying to come to a question which is personal to her or himself, each questioner, and which aims at the heart of our practice and understanding of Dharma.

[04:44]

So Sajan spoke at some length about the nature of the questions, and encouraging us to form our questions by distilling our expression down to matters of ultimate concern. and avoiding framing our questions with introductions, explanations. And he also spoke of the Shuso's responses as best delivered, absent the same complications, just seeking to succinctly address the heart of the matter. So, as I was thinking about this, and I always go through a kind of a process of how to arrive at this ceremony, I was asking myself in preparation for this lecture, what is the use of a question? What does it make possible? So I would say, you know, obviously, We have lots of different kinds of experiences of receiving questions, but it's possible that asking a question kind of communicates respect and an acknowledgment that you want something specific from the other person, a kind of honesty about how you're arriving in this moment.

[06:10]

And also holds the possibility that it's an acknowledgment that the meeting between you and somebody else is a co-created event. There's two of you involved. It also stimulates the spirit of inquiry in other people who may be present and presents a context of shared understanding, that is, you're asking about something that's recognizable to the person you're speaking to, And out of that, some greater mutual understanding is possible. So perhaps a good question reveals something about ourselves, and makes an opening for the shiso in this example, to reveal something of herself. Then, if you've come to a question, there's the situation where you are going to open your mouth and say this.

[07:25]

And to me that raises the question of, well, what is the posture of our attitude of a kind of welcoming presence that invites the person into the interaction? If you come too forward, you may be dominating the exchange. If you're holding back, you're not allowing for an actual meeting between people. So in the Shiso ceremony, there's this opportunity to meet the Shiso in some new and unexpected way. You know, my habitual mode of arriving at a situation like that is to kind of hold back. And then sometimes I try to overcompensate for that and come too far forward and be a little too aggressive in presenting my question.

[08:28]

And that doesn't work really well either. But the point is not about getting the right question or being perfect. It's about finding a way to open to our vulnerability to the completely unexpected. This is what Sajan was talking about in his remarks, was you don't know what's going to happen. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Let's find out what that could be. Let's not foreclose the possibilities by yielding to our thinking about how it should be, how it could be. All of those kinds of things are kind of hindrances to an openness to something new. And in some way, preparation for participating in the ceremony is about kind of trying to let go of those hindrances.

[09:40]

For instance, I have a hindrance which involves the great deal of anxiety about sitting in front of a large group of people and speaking. During the period as I was in before, I sort of remembered something in my childhood that was like, yeah! I got up in front of a bunch of people and had no idea what I was doing there, what I should do. It seemed to go on forever. How are we gonna relate to that fact of experience, internal experience? What is our intention, given that you may be feeling like you can't do this or something, that you're getting, You know, your story, your internal story about some kind of experience you've had in the past gets in the way.

[10:50]

What is your intention? So it's not as though I was trying to get rid of that, but to ask myself, in the face of that, what do I want to do to actually form a kind of choice around it? my choice was to clarify my intention to present this talk in a way which is accessible to everyone, in a way that people could enjoy and not give in to whatever it is that comes up around that. So as in anticipation of the shiso ceremony or any other situation in which you don't know how it will go, we often like to prepare.

[11:53]

And in some sense, there's no way to prepare. You know, you're going to arrive at your turn to ask a question at some point. It's like death. You're going to be there. And on the other hand, you're always preparing, whether you're aware of it or not. I think some of the best preparation for the shuso ceremony is the checkout line at the Berkeley Bowl. This is a situation in which you are waiting in line. I don't know, what does that waiting in line mean? I'm not quite sure. But you're there, in some sort of order, and you're going to arrive in front of someone who is meeting, I don't know, a hundred people that day? More? And even if the interaction you have with that person in which you meet

[13:05]

is only a moment. Only a moment where your eyes meet and then something else happens. What can you do in that moment? What's possible in that moment? I often find I want to communicate respect and gratitude for their support in helping me get through this stage of the shopping trip. knowing that they may not have the capacity or want to interact with me, but knowing that this is a human being who I'm going to recognize in that moment. So holding back from that seems very disrespectful to me. That's the way I experience it. But coming forward too much may also be that as well, because it's almost as though I need to sense an invitation to come into that space to do anything more than a simple recognition.

[14:23]

And a simple recognition is important. But again, other things happen. Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of a conversation. Sometimes you both laugh out loud. It's unpredictable, but something wonderful can happen in that very brief moment of time if you don't get in the way. Just let it happen, whatever it happens to be. Another situation we practice meeting each other is, for instance, this situation. We we may have some time. In fact, let me know when we're about 10 minutes away in case I don't stop talking We may have some time for some questions and we welcome in this situation we welcome questions from anyone So, please don't ask a perfect question on the other hand

[15:31]

more experienced students can actually teach by the way they pose their questions, providing an example for other people. So in some ways, important ways, I think, the kind of thing that Sojin Roshi was talking about, He's talking about our practice in a specific context, but I think that practice is applicable to these other situations in ways that these other situations can inform us in other aspects of our practice life. So, getting back to the question, how do we find our question? A couple of days earlier in the Sashin, during lecture, there was an exchange between Sojourn Roshi and Linda Hess, in which the phrase, wisdom and compassion,

[16:51]

and various comments about the relationship between wisdom and compassion. And unfortunately, Linda's not here, so she could recite from memory everything that took place in that brief conversation, but I can't reproduce it. But I realized that it stimulated to me a kind of unformed question, a question that I didn't know what it was. And I kept asking myself, well, what is it about this? What is it that sticks for me? And part of what I had to do in order to find out what it was that sticked for me was to exercise incredible patience because I kept going back to the, you know, the content of the, what was being referred to, what was stimulated by the words. You know, often we, we frame an area of discussion or inquiry by a quick phrase, wisdom and compassion, a little dyad which form an emptiness, a little dyad which both encompasses a kind of dualistic view and on closer examination, a kind of more holistic view

[18:19]

And these are really fascinating discussions about the inner penetration of these different ideas. And yet, in the context of the Shuso Ceremony, we were encouraged to not go into a discursive, as I said before, a discussion about what all this means, but to somehow try and find the essence of our question in the middle of it. So this is what I was struggling with, because I didn't really want to ask about wisdom and compassion, to have the shusa speak about that in some detail, although she may have been willing to. I was on the phone with her, with Mary, a few days after the sasheen, and was talking about this, and she said, Could you repeat your question? Just to see how different our perspectives were in the midst of all of that.

[19:30]

So what I realized was that my question was about the way we frame that discussion, the way the words are set up. And often the words in these diets get used all the time in all parts of our life. They're arranged by the way they most easily roll off the tongue. It's pretty common. Wisdom and compassion, compassion and wisdom. Male and female, man and woman. There are these, ways in which, for whatever reason, and there are lots of different reasons, the phrase is held by ourselves in common and in our bodies in a certain format. And I began to think, I began to suspect that my thinking about these discussions, about these ideas, was actually influenced by the order of the words in the label.

[20:43]

And that disturbed me. And reframing, of course, is something that we're used to, particularly in the social-political world. And there's a tremendous amount of reframing going on, as we know. We don't always like it. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we find it useful. Finding a way to unstick ourselves from a pattern which may be influencing the way we talk about something. I remember one phrase that Sojin used in his response with Linda, back and forth, something about compassion is the child of wisdom. Are we saying that because we usually say wisdom and compassion instead of compassion and wisdom, or not?

[21:49]

I don't know. But anyway, this is where my question came from, this suspicion that somehow I was not mindfully dealing with the use of this kind of frame for this discussion. And this is the great value of our study together, because we unpack these things, turn them around, change the way we're thinking or refresh our understanding of the relationship between these different ideas. So I want to say a little bit about

[23:14]

the value of the way Dogen Zenji directs us in his teachings. It always seems to me that what he's pointing to is going beyond the way we normally think of things, and doing so often in a really beautiful way. So I'm going to just come to this by way of looking briefly at the well-known passage in the Genjo Koan, and sort of with somewhat of a running commentary, but to read this This is a translation by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe.

[24:36]

It's a little bit different than the way we usually phrase it, but it goes like this. To learn the Buddha way is to learn oneself. So that seems pretty straightforward. Pay attention to what is directly in front of you. To learn oneself is to forget oneself. Now, we're looking closely at the Self, and we can't find it. To forget one's Self is to be confirmed by all dharmas. That's a lot to take in. Sounds good. I'll go with that, but it's a lot to take in. To be confirmed by all dharmas is to cast off one's body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well.

[25:42]

I'm just barely hanging on here and then it says, all trace of enlightenment disappears and this traceless enlightenment continues without end. And now I'm wondering, what happened? So Dogen very gracefully walks us down the road and leaves us someplace we know not where. And I think that trying to find your question about practice about who is it that you're meeting involves a similar type of journey into being willing not to know where you're going and just enjoy the ride until it's over and the next thing happens.

[27:02]

So I have a suspicion that there is ample time left for questions. There's 10 minutes. Oh, goodness gracious. That went by fast. Questions? I think Jerry had her hand up first. So what are you going to do next year? What am I going to do next? What are you going to do next year when you have to do the Shiso Ceremony? Do you think you're going to have to go through this same process? Yes. Yes, I suspected my... So are you asking, ease up? Well, it might. It might. It might be much worse. But, you know, when I arrive at whatever moment, I recognize what's happening. That's when I will deal with it.

[28:08]

Yes, but don't go outside of this moment. It won't help for me to look at the prospect of next year. There will be storehouse memories. There will be a configuration of dharmas that I will be in one way or another aware of. And that's what I'll deal with. Ken? How did your childhood experience Well, you know, it's really hard to say but the reason why I came up was because the experience is one of being in front of a large gathering of It's a Cub Scout meeting, you know, and I had the job of showing up in front of everybody With the you know, the flags or some sort of ceremonial thing And I think I was supposed to say now we will pledge allegiance to the flag Pretty simple It didn't happen

[29:44]

And nothing, nothing happened. Just went on and on and on. I think, you know, to me it was embarrassing and shaming and I didn't get any help processing it afterwards. And, you know, it creates the impetus for a kind of story about how, okay, this is happening again. Okay, you know, you should be aware that this could happen. In fact, you should be afraid of it. That's sort of what I'm talking about. Does that address your question? I'm getting very interested in these responses. You might say they're habitual responses. Yeah. That are very deep in your response to the world. And how... Were you anticipating that fear?

[30:46]

Oh, well, in some ways, yes. But the key to this is where do you have choice about how you're going to relate to this? Because, yes, that's all happening. And I am bigger than that. I have other things going on. I want to present this talk. I want to meet you in this situation. That's also happening. So it's not just when we give in, we allow it to completely cover the whole world, then we're lost, of course. What was that? is, do you see time, what continuity and what discontinuity do you see in it?

[31:54]

And I think the relevance here has to do with how you act and intervene from the place you've been speaking about. And it might make a difference how you view time. And I think of it really deeply. Yeah, that's a very interesting question. It just strikes me off the top of my head. It's a little bit about that question I raised, what's waiting in line? Is this a discontinuous experience of just, I'm here? Or is it an experience of anticipation of future events? And how does that, so in some ways, you can collapse the two because The experience of anticipation of serial events is a kind of experience. But it's also, there's a flip side to it.

[32:59]

So how do these two show up in the same situation? How do you allow anxiety about something, anxiety generated by thought, conception, perhaps stimulated by thought patterns that you may be familiar with? And also remain mindful that in this moment, none of that applies. That it's, you know, that it's, that there are other, that there's more, that there's something beyond that present in this moment.

[34:06]

So anyway, it's a hard question and worth thinking about carefully. Thank you. Judy? Connecting to that is also space, continuity and discontinuity in space. What I hear you speaking to is something about... I might be misremembering, but my memory is that Thich Nhat Hanh offers another spin on patience to call it inclusiveness. And so there's also the teaching of everything's included in this moment. So how do you engage with valuing inclusiveness in a situation where it seems like people are excluded Yeah, so, where do you find your response to what's alive in you?

[35:21]

How do I find my response to what's alive in me when I experience, where my response, where my In some level, my response is toward inclusiveness or patience, and I perceive others in the room or in the space I'm in to not be viewing things that way. How do I include them? Because I can't include the person who's excluded without including the person who's excluding them. I don't know if that's what you're referring to, the kind of setup, but I think Everything has to be included to find the right response. Mary? So the idea of freedom to choose in this moment seems to me to be something about figuring out how the embodiedness that you were talking about, Ken, is about learning.

[36:34]

and when do our past selves give us good information about our current moment and when is what they're telling us not applicable to the current moment. I remember having this aha moment when a therapist said to me, I was describing something I said to myself when I was 11 years old, Yes, that vow. A vow, like an 11-year-old vow. And she said to me, do you take advice from an 11-year-old? That reminds me that the best preparation for Shisho ceremony is not the Berkeley Bowl, it's raising teenagers. Those people who, you all know them, who ask you the unanswerable questions because they love you.

[37:41]

And that's true. But you were saying... You have to find a way of acceptance and great patience in order to be able to make that determination. If you can accept everything that's going on, then you have the choice to discern. John? Do you think that including your 11-year-old self is required then from what you've been saying? Don't ignore your 11-year-old self. Yes, Susan? It seems like what drags me down is if I think Oh, I'm in the same situation, or... Oh, yeah.

[38:42]

So, I was just wondering if you could say, like, I think it's helpful to remind ourselves that we're not in the same situation, and that that can be very uplifting. Yes, I think you're exactly... I'm calling that in a Pollyanna kind of way, but in a kind of, for lack of a better word, revolutionary kind of way. Well, that phrase, the same situation, is like, OK, I guess I'm just enacting the same old story. I don't have any choice. That's what it sounds like. And I can see why it's so debilitating, because I find it that way myself. How do you find the space for a different possibility in that moment? You know, is it really, maybe that's the question, is it really the same situation?

[39:46]

Not to deny that it's the same situation, not to say, oh, it's a different situation. Say, is it really? There's similarities. That's right. That's right. I don't know, but I think of it as letting things come to rest. You know, they may not disappear in front of your face, but they can come to rest. How are we doing on time, Laurie? Okay, so, okay, well, one more, okay. Go ahead. Yeah.

[40:48]

Thanks for your talk, and I love the idea of the spontaneity of the shuso ceremony. I was reading a while back about this term, dharma combat, which sounds really jarring, because it kind of implies competition and violence, and who's going to win and who's going to lose. My question is, how do you incorporate that competitive or one-upmanship thing into the Shusamsa? Well, I think it gets in the way. Because I think what's happening is that we are meeting somebody. Where do you create the space to actually meet somebody? Now, it can be that that kind of energized, intensive interaction I'm not trying to say that intensity is out of place. The question is more fundamentally, how will you meet somebody if you present in that way? Will a meeting take place?

[41:49]

Will that person match your intensity or not? If you feel very strongly about something, there is always a way to meet. I don't know what the path is, but the style of interaction may not be the key here. The question is your intention. Ah! Thanks very much. I really appreciate all of your questions.

[42:23]

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