Oh, hi. It's really always... It's so wonderful to come back to Berkeley, which is my dharma home. It's where I began sitting, and it just always feels like coming home whenever I come here. Even though where I began sitting was up in a little Alexander which was not as grand as this one. I love this Alexander. Well I had in mind, this, well it's not, this is the last day of April, but next month is, is a month with a blue moon. Next month is a month with two full moons, tomorrow and I guess the 29th of May.

[01:04]

So I assumed there would be a full moon ceremony today, since this is the Saturday closest to full moon, but this is April and the full moon is, I don't know, somehow, there isn't one happening with this full moon. But I had in mind to talk about about refuges a little bit, thinking that we would have just finished chanting a full moon ceremony together. So perhaps to... Let's see, there are some new people here who perhaps have never... Are there some people who have never participated in a full moon ceremony, the bodhisattva ceremony? Quite a few. So let me say a little bit about it, what it is. It's probably, well, it's our modern form or current form, not so modern, been in this form in Japanese Buddhism for several centuries probably, but as Buddhism goes, our modern form of probably the oldest ceremony in Buddhism.

[02:15]

In the beginning of Buddhism as a religion, there was a teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha and there were people who practiced meditation with him who became monks and who practiced individually as he had taught but they would come together twice a month at a time which they could easily recognize on the night of the full moon and the night of the new moon to review together the sort of fundamental understandings of their practice, the precepts, their guidelines for the practice as monks, and how, what difficulties they had had during the previous two weeks in following the guidelines for practice and to encourage each other to continue.

[03:22]

sort of to confess their difficulties and repent their difficulties and re-commit themselves to following this way. And the ceremony which we have now in our tradition once a month at the time of the full moon is... the name in Japanese, ryaku fusatsu, means something like abbreviated... of the abbreviated ceremony, since we don't chant all of the precepts as is done in the full ceremony. But it begins with a general repentance of actions which may have caused harm.

[04:27]

Well, I might as well do it. It goes like this. O my ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, Born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So, in this chant, we take responsibility, complete responsibility for all of our actions. And in the second part of the ceremony we evoke or invoke the presence of all of the Buddhas of the past and the great Bodhisattvas and the lineage of teachers up to our present teachers to be with us

[05:47]

as we continue our effort to practice this way. And then we chant together the bodhisattva vow. Again, perhaps I will go through the vow and mention just a few words about it. The first of the four vows is Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. So beings are numberless. Sometimes that's translated without end or without edge, without boundary. We are connected with all of them.

[06:57]

So, when we awaken, we awaken with all beings. Not separate from all beings, but we find our awakening is to find our total connectedness with all beings. That we are with all beings. Essentially, that is our awakening. That we are never separate from all beings. Just that, the experience of that connectedness, of that boundarylessness or boundlessness of how we actually exist in the world, is itself awakening. And then the next of the bodhisattva vows is, delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.

[08:21]

There's one. Delusions are inexhaustible. They continually arise. They arise in each moment. I have to admit, I don't understand a vow to end delusion. Delusions are endless. So that for me that is a vow of continuous effort, never giving up in this endless effort to see clearly, to not be distracted by our delusions. But to see clearly what? To see clearly this connectedness to all being.

[09:23]

in spite of the continual delusion that we are separate, which comes up in countless ways. The next is... Dharma gates are endless. I vow to enter them. There's a saying, there are 84,000 gates to the Dharma. Can't you find another one? So 84,000 is just in Chinese, just a traditional way of saying innumerable, or it's just a big number. There are gates to the Dharma everywhere. Our opportunity to see clearly occurs on each moment, just as delusions are occurring endlessly.

[10:34]

So is the opportunity to enter the truth. The Dharma means the truth of just how things are, how things actually are. And each moment is an opportunity to see the truth completely. Each moment is an entry to the truth. Each, wherever your foot is, it is stepping on the way. The way is not somewhere else, it's right where you are. Negate to the Dharma is right in front of you in each moment. Each moment is an opportunity to see See clearly to observe clearly what's right in front of you And the fourth of the vows is a Kunda's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.

[11:47]

So the fourth of these Bodhisattva vows, I should say something about Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means awakening being. We are all here today, bodhisattvas. We are all awakening. We are all on the path. A bodhisattva is not someone else, somewhere else, or some being somewhere else. It means awakening being, and we are all in this process of awakening. And we never, there's never sort of a finished product of this practice. You know, I used to be discouraged. But however long I practiced, I didn't seem to get anywhere. I was still right where I was.

[12:51]

However long I practiced, I'm right here. And I'm still me. And I still All of the ways in which I wish I were different or better or just a little more like Buddha or like my idea of Buddha, I don't know. It never seemed to happen. But the Bodhisattva... The Bodhisattva is one who is always awakening. Awakening oneself and awakening others in the world with suffering beings. Vowing, in fact, never to... never to leave the world of suffering beings until

[13:57]

as we said in the first of the four vows, until we awaken with all being, till all being awakes with us. But my initial kind of disappointment that I didn't seem to be really getting anywhere, you know, really didn't seem to be kind of, oh, that I just still kept on being myself, And because I'm a Pollyanna, I always see the silver lining somehow. Which for me is now a great encouragement that this practice, this practice never wears out. It never gets old. You know, you never use it up. This practice is for my whole life. And maybe many more to come. I don't know about that. I don't care to speculate, but probably. for many more to come.

[15:00]

This practice is beginningless and endless. And there'll never be a finished product that, well, I can say, well now, so I'm a fully realized Buddha and what do I do next? It's not going to happen. And in fact, that's a great joy. there will always be more to do, or more to be. Because this practice is, as I'm sure Mel has talked about often with you, this practice is about being. It's not about doing so much. This practice is about being completely who we are. fully awake, being completely who we are.

[16:04]

And there's no end to that. It's not like you have a project that you're going to do and you're going to finish and that's that. So these are the four Bodhisattva vows. And then we recite the first three of the precepts. And all of the precepts are contained in these first three. So we recite the first three precepts which are the refuges in the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Buddha being your own true nature. Dharma being the truth of things as it is. And Sangha being the harmonious interaction of all who practice together.

[17:08]

Sangha being, in the narrow sense, the group of practitioners, and in a broader sense, all being. So again, because I love I remember the excitement when we first heard the ceremony. We had been practicing for some years, many people a lot longer than I had, and all the chanting that we did was monotone. Just like I just chanted the Bodhisattva vow and the repentance. But these refuges had a little bit of melody. The first melodic chanting that we had ever done here at Send Center was very exciting. The refuges go something like this. I take refuge in Buddha.

[18:14]

Before all being. Eversing body and mind, deeply in the way, awakening true mind. I take refuge in Dharma, Before being

[19:44]

Entering deeply the merciful ocean of Buddha's way, I take refuge in Sangha. Aum. Before all being, bringing harmony to everyone, Free from hindrance.

[20:50]

So it's these refuges that I want to talk about a little bit today. I want to talk about them a little bit differently than I do every time I come here. The last time I was here was also the Saturday of the full moon ceremony, so it brought it up for me again. And today should have been the Saturday of the full moon ceremony in my mind, so I thought I would bring up the whole ceremony today. I wanted to talk... I usually talk about taking refuge in Buddha. Buddha being our own true nature to have confidence in. the fact that we're already Buddha, that we are never separate from Buddha. It is never apart from you, right where you are, Dogen Senji says.

[21:59]

But how we become more familiar with our true self, how we become more able to be completely who we are without trying to... always trying to be some idea of who we ought to be, is what our practice is. And in that practice, Sangha is a real treasure. We say Buddha, Dharma, Sangha are the triple treasure. And so I want to, today, appreciate the treasure of Sangha, the treasure of having good friends to practice with, who will help us see who we really are and be who we really are, be completely ourself, in its largest sense.

[23:07]

and see where our small self, or the self that is sort of our idea of how we ought to be, our idea of what we want to be, or our idea of who we think we are, obscures us being completely who we are. And I want to bring up today a lecture of Suzuki Roshi's that's in a wind bell that I ran across recently and read a bit from it and recommend to any of you. Is anyone here planning to sit Sashin in June? Those of you who are thinking of sitting Sashin in June, I really would like to recommend that you read this whole Lecture a little bit. I would like to study it together with you at that session because this was a session in June of 1971 Which Suzuki Roshi led and which he lectured may have been the last session he led I really Don't know he became ill on a session in Oregon in August I'm not certain if it's the last one he led but in any event

[24:30]

I was very moved by this Sessien lecture and I want to read a few excerpts from it and recommend to you that you read the whole thing. It's in this Windbell, Volume 20, Number 1, Spring of 86. There are probably lots of them around in the library and those of you who are members of Zen Center probably all have your own copy somewhere. It's got a picture from the Tassajara Road on there. It says, Shikantaza, our Zazen, is just to be ourselves. We should not expect anything. Just be ourselves and continue this practice forever. That is our way, you know. This practice is not so easy. You may not be able to continue it for even one period.

[25:36]

You must make such a big effort. And he talks about the next five days of Satsang and then he says, how you extend our practice is to expose yourself as you are. You shouldn't try to be someone else. You should be very honest with yourself and express yourself fully. And you should be brave enough to express yourself. Whatever people may say, you know, it is all right. You should just be yourself. And later he says, and you should open your eyes to appreciate others' practice too. You should be able to communicate with each other without words. Your eyes should be open to see others practice. This doesn't mean to criticize others, but to appreciate or know others.

[26:40]

And then he has a paragraph on how He sees us. And he says, and it's easy to know each other even though you are not trying to understand. If you practice together, eventually, naturally, you will be good friends because you know each other. You know too well, so you have difficulty because of your small mind. But as long as your mind is big enough to expose yourself and accept others, You will practice zazen or rituals together, then you will be good friends. To know your friend is to know something beyond yourself, beyond even your friend. I remember when I first was practicing it, At the Berkeley Sendoh, we had then just recently acquired Tassajara, and it was the only residential practice place at Send Center at the time.

[27:58]

And I heard people talking about Tassajara, Tassajara, and I said to Mel, what's so special about Tassajara? What's the big deal? He said, well, they'd had, I guess, two years of practice periods at Tassajara by that time. He said, well, at Tassajara, you know, we live together, we sit sazen together, we eat together, we pass each other all the time, we get to be so intimate with each other that everybody knows us, you know. We can't hide anything. People see us, so we might as well see ourselves. It's sort of as everybody sees you before you see yourself. And the value of Sangha is like that. Even though, except for a few people here at the Berkeley Zen Dome, it's not so much that you're living together all the time.

[29:02]

But you sit zazen together regularly. You eat together sometimes. You have classes together. You clean the altar together. You break the grounds together. You see each other many days a week. You begin to have this familiarity with each other, those of you who practice together, even without living together. You become Familiar with each other and at ease with each other and willing to allow each other To see you more and more It's it's not so easy To expose yourself to be seen You know, we all have our protections. We all hide behind something, you know and So little by little, we are able to allow others to see us.

[30:05]

And little by little, we give others permission to let us know what they see. The value for ourselves, since, you know, it's always said that to study Buddhism is to study the self. What we're here for is to study the self and to come to know ourself fully and completely so that we can be ourselves, so we can be completely who we are. This studying the self is greatly, greatly facilitated by practicing with good friends and by giving our good friends permission to tell us what they think. by being willing to expose ourselves to our friends, and being willing to hear from our friends what they see. And we can also be good friends by finding, by accepting each other completely as we are, and letting our friends know what we see.

[31:09]

So that we can be mirrors to each other. And so we can allow the sangha with whom we practice to be mirrors for us. Sometimes, you know, some of the things that we may see don't fit our idea of who we are. They don't fit our self-image and so it's really uncomfortable. So it's a little hard to give that permission to our friends. But my own experience is, as I look at the people within my practice, my best friends are those who will say what they see. Not in a way to be critical, but in a way to help me see what I'm not seeing. To help me see the ways in which I'm still trying to

[32:14]

be who I think I am, and not allowing my actual being to just be here, not allowing myself to just be who I am, but always doing, always busily doing something to look good, to look like what I think is good, to look like my idea of what it would be like if I were good. But it's not so useful, actually, in the world to be continually trying to be somebody else. I mean, we're actually here to be who we are. That's what we're doing here. This is the Buddha we have this time to manifest in the world. Not someone that you have an idea of, you know. This one. This is what we've got.

[33:15]

You know, how can we let this Buddha manifest in the world? You know, there's that old, old Christian song, I love it. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This one. Any other one is not going to be able to really shine light in the world. So how can we actually have the confidence to expose this light and manifest this Buddha in the world? The friends with whom we practice are a real treasure, a real treasure in helping us find how to do that in giving us the confidence to drop one after another of our little shields and protections that we think are... that we're hiding behind.

[34:31]

Because by and large we're not really hiding behind them, we just think we're hiding behind them, you know. Because as we practice with each other and become more intimate with each other, nothing is hidden. Nothing is hidden And that might seem a little scary at first, but actually it's a great gift To know that we really can't hide our light We really can't hide our light it's there And we can little by little gain the confidence to let it shine And the friends with whom we practice this Sangha, this Sangha treasure, can be a tremendous help for us in finding out ways in which we obscure it. Ways in which we get in the way of our own light.

[35:35]

ways in which our compassionate connection to all being is gets muddied up by our concepts and ideas. There's a poem by Rumi which speaks to this. I love it, noticing how Wisdom is wisdom in all traditions. Rumi is a Sufi poet. The Sufis are mystics from the Islamic tradition. And this particular poem seemed to me to be exactly on my subject of the day. When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one.

[36:45]

When you're with no one but me, you're with everyone. Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone. When you become that many, you're nothing. Empty. So when you see completely your connection with all being, your idea of yourself disappears and you just are who you are.

[38:02]

You're free to just be. So I would like to read just a bit more of this lecture of Suzuki Roshi's. We should extend this kind of practice to city life and we must have more friends so that all of us can be good friends with each other. It's not difficult when you decide to be honest with yourself and to express yourself fully without expecting anything. Just to be yourself and to be ready to understand others is how you extend our practice to everyday life.

[39:04]

But it is not so easy to be free from selfish practice. So even if only for one hour a day you should try to sit Shikantaza without moving, without expecting anything, as if you're in your last minute Moment after moment, you feel your last minute. In each inhaling and in each exhaling, there are countless units of time. And you should live in each unit of time. So what is Rumi saying in his poem?

[40:12]

When you are with everyone but me, you are with no one. If you're with a particular person, to be completely present and with that person, that's when you're with everyone. If you're present with a person and you're with everyone else, you're not with anyone. The person who is there in front of you, If you're with the person who is there in front of you, completely, that includes everyone, to be completely present where you are. And if you're completely present where you are with no idea of self, then you're empty and completely with everything. But as Suzuki Roshi says, it's hard, it's hard to not have some selfish practice come up, some idea of self come up.

[41:20]

And so we continue our practice endlessly, each moment. Are there some questions or would somebody like to talk about anything? I don't really remember what our timing is here, but I think you do have discussion in the talk here. Yes? The first part when we realize that we're one with all beings, I awaken with all beings, At first, when I, you know, that awareness, every now and then, pops up for me, some suffering, that twinge hits me. It's like, because I, um, and what I realized with, you know, talking today, it's helped me a great deal, um, is that it's my idea of what that relationship should be, and I need to release that, and that's where the suffering comes in when I feel

[42:36]

when I think I know what that relationship should be, that as I am one with the cat next door, for instance, really, that's true, I feel that, and I see that maybe that cat might be suffering, it's because of how I think our relationship should be, how that cat should be existing in the room also. And so my frustration is to get beyond that, beyond that getting caught again in that I'm doing it and not letting it be. And I guess one just continues to practice. I mean, one sits. That's what... I get frustrated at myself and I allow myself to get caught in our ways and I realize what is catching me and that I'm... I had to try to do something, or control.

[43:37]

Yeah, I don't think that this practice is not about sort of not doing anything, you know. It's about being able to act appropriately in each moment without preconceptions. If you are completely present in a situation, then you'll act as the situation demands. But if you have all kinds of preconceptions about it, your freedom is really very limited. I don't mean to present this practice as a practice of doing nothing, but that doing isn't the main... If you can completely be yourself in each moment, you will do whatever you need to do. But not from some idea. Go back to what you were saying.

[44:44]

You were talking about when you started to practice and you said you weren't getting anywhere because as you went along, I just saw all these old habits, and here it is again, and here it is again, and here it is again, you know. So, what is it that's continuous that way? Beats me. You know, I don't know what it is that's continuous that way. And there's something that feels continuous. The teaching is basically that it's not continuous. It's a big problem. It is a big problem, yeah. You know, the Tibetans who start studying the Buddha Dharma when they're quite young and they don't watch the television, they don't go to the movies, and they don't, you know, learn to be jazz musicians or biochemists or anything.

[45:48]

They just study Dharma. And they have these big debates about what is it that continues? What is it that continues life after life? Lou got kind of interested in this Well, maybe I should explore, what is it? He's never thought about life after life or anything like that, but it keeps coming up. So he thought, well, he'd go see this Tibetan teacher and ask about that. So he asked, well, what is it that continues life after life? And the teacher says, never mind what continues life after life. What continues moment after moment? It's a real, it's a real, that's the only don't know thing. What is it? I don't know, but it's... I think this is probably a very fundamental question for us that doesn't have any easy answer. There is certainly some experience of something continuing.

[46:52]

But for me it has to be in this area of, you know, when Some on it. When Xiao Zhou asked someone, who is it that thus comes? He says, I don't know. And Xiao Zhou says, not knowing is most intimate. To know that you don't know really gets right down into the most intimate part of you, doesn't it? Or Sung San saying, this practice is only don't know. There is this thing, you don't know what it is that continues. But it is not a fixed self. Whatever it is, there's some, there's continuous change in how it manifests. But this habit energy we have of some

[48:00]

Idea of who we are. I mean like I get an idea There are things with which I identify myself, you know, I think I am this and this and this I think I am the mother of my four children and so Events that happen around that idea of who I am Can cause me a lot of turmoil One of my children does something that I think is wonderful and I get all inflated and excited and think that's wonderful. Then one of my children does something I think is terrible and I get really depressed about it. My whole experience of my life is very affected by my identification with being the mother of these children. Well, that's one this much of who I am. It's true, that's part of who I am, or part of what has happened in this lifetime to this being.

[49:05]

But that's such a narrow identification of who I am. And as I notice myself identifying with this and, you know, identifying with being a Zen monk, you know? It limits me, or identifying with being a woman, it limits me to only that. Anything I sort of define myself as makes it appear that that's what I am, and I'm not, and it makes some boundary, I'm this and I'm not that. But our actual experiences You know, if we can drop that idea, our actual experiences of being that too, as if including more and more in our experience of who we are, as we drop the limitations of these definitions or identifications that we habitually make. So it's very liberating to be able to let go of the definitions that we make for ourselves.

[50:16]

And say, well, this thing which is continuing is like this. It has this shape and it fits in this box. And then what about all the rest of it? It gets cut off. So little by little, we notice, oh, it's bigger than that. And it's bigger than that. And it's bigger than that. And it really has no end to it. It's big. But it includes. It does. It does. And in this moment, it's manifesting here. I have the responsibility for this manifestation, and other beings have responsibility for this manifestation, and this one, and this one. But they're not separate, they're connected. So being Being is, you know, there's being and beings.

[51:21]

Beings are sort of the individual manifestation of being. But we all participate in that being. We all are just a momentary manifestation of that vastness, which we sometimes in Zen call emptiness. You know, the book is a guide to what happens after you die, before you're reborn, and a section of it in which the deceased sees, has these horrifying approximations of these monstrous, terrifying deities, right? And the instruction in the book is

[52:25]

to recognize that those things that seem to be outside of you are really the projections of your own mind. They're mirrors of what's going on in your mind and that they aren't other than you. And the quote that I remember is, the lures of death are my own hallucinations. My desired body is the body of and void. Voidness cannot give you voidness. That's the way to recognize this. And I like the line, that desire body is a body of propensities. Propensities seems to me to sort of imply kind of leaning in a direction, but not... I'm not a pumpkin. There's not some solidity there.

[53:27]

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? It's time? Oh, my timekeeper went off.

[53:45]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ