I love this rain, just the dharma rain in this coming winter is really, it's encouraging and nourishing. And I'd like to thank Sogen Roshi for offering me the opportunity to give this talk. I was thinking about, it took us a while, actually, Alex Cantor found the case. After Master Tozan's teacher, Ungan, passed away, which is actually not the case in our situation, fortunately. We're not going to conduct a memorial service in advance. What?

[01:03]

Yes, they did a memorial service for Tozan before he died, and he basically said, wait. And he postponed his death for a week, right? So, I'm not dead yet. Anyway, after, before Tozan died and after Ungun died, he conducted a memorial ceremony and one of the, there's a bunch of dialogues, and one of the dialogues is a monk asked, about your teacher, did you agree with him or not? And Tozan said, I half agree and half don't agree.

[02:05]

And the monk asked, why don't you agree completely? And Tozin said, if I agreed completely, I'd be unfaithful to his teachings. So I hope you'll forgive me. I may half disagree today. In advance. In advance of what? You'll see. Oh, I see. OK, thank you. For some reason, this is making me think of Howard Margolis and the pissing contest. Anyway, I want to acknowledge that today is Bodhi Day. Are we doing the ceremony tonight? Saturday, yeah. But today, December 8th, is Bodhi Day. actually means the eighth day of the 12th month.

[03:14]

And it's typical for Zen practitioners to do Seishin to celebrate Buddha's enlightenment. And it's actually traditional. If we were going to do this in a traditional way, we probably should have stayed up all night last night and meditated. but we don't do that, but we could. And it became formalized as December 8th during the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century when Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar. So December 8th is Bodhi Day. At any rate, I am really grateful that we are here practicing together this week. I noticed that when I'm occupied with the tasks and the practice of Sashin, I feel really well and feel alive.

[04:28]

And then, When I confess, I look at the news and I ruminate on the state of the world and the state of our relationships and my family, things that are going on in my family. Actually, Lori and I are fine. And the kids are fine. I feel troubled and rightly so. So this doesn't mean that I wish to, or I'm advocating a retreat from the world, or see that as kind of the appropriate response for myself or others. But over many years, I feel like this is how I've learned to take care of myself, to sit with Sashin, to sit Zazen daily, take care of myself to deepen my own resilience and stability in the face of my all too obvious shortcomings and flaws, the weaknesses and anxieties that I have and that all of us have.

[06:01]

And so to step back in this way and practice so that in a small way I may be of help to myself and of help to others. So I was thinking that maybe it's time for a song this week, if that's okay. I've noticed, I don't think I've done this song for a couple of years, but I'm gonna teach it to you. And I'd just like to say, this guitar is, 83 years old. It's old and it's beat up, like some of us, and it sounds true.

[07:13]

It was not fancy at the time that it was made. in the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was marketed, it cost $25. And I paid a little more than that. There's a cartoon that I saw which said, I only hope when I die that my wife won't sell my guitars for what I told her I paid for them. but it's quite beautiful. It's just, there's no frills on this guitar. It's just, just clear. This is a song by Jesse Winchester and I sort of turned the first verse into a chorus and I'll teach you. Words are, I live on a big blue ball. I never do dream I will fall. And even the day that I do,

[08:17]

I'll jump off and smile back at you. I live on a big blue ball I never do dream I will fall And even the day that I do I'll jump off and smile back at you. Why don't you sing that? I live on a big blue ball.

[09:23]

I never do dream I will fall. And even the days that I do, But I'll jump off and smile back at you. I don't even know where we are. They tell me we're circling a star. Well, I'll take their word, I don't know. I'm dizzy, so maybe that's so. Say, I live on a big blue ball. I never do dream I will fall.

[10:31]

And even the days that I do Well I'll jump off and smile back at you You know I'm riding a big blue ball I never thought one day I'd fall But even the high must lay low So when I do fall, I'll be glad to go Yes, I live on a big blue ball I never do dream I will fall And even the day that I do I'll jump off and smile back at you Well, I'll take their word, I don't know

[11:48]

So when I do fall, I'll be glad to go. Yeah, when I do fall, I'll be glad to go. So I'd like to expand on something that Sojourn Roshi was talking about yesterday. He was speaking of intuition. And so I went back and I was reading about Srinivasa Ramanujan. Is that my pronunciation right? Ramanujan. Ramanujan. Okay, thank you. He didn't live long. He lived from 1887 to 1920. And just as Sojourner Rushdie described it, was the case, at least as described in Wikipedia, which of course is the source of all truth.

[13:08]

So he was a genius, clearly, and like many great women and men, what they can do and what they know is completely beyond our understanding. It's intuitional, whether it comes from God or from Buddha or from the universe. It seems, some people just seem to have abilities that are beyond one's human kin. Although obviously it's not, because it's humans that are doing this. But it's also true, it's also true that each of us is a genius.

[14:15]

that the word genius from Latin means the kind of guiding spirit or sort of leading deity of a person, of a family, of a place. And it comes, the root is similar to the word for generative, or regenerate, or it's to bring into being, to create, or to produce. So, to my mind, and also for the Greek word, it's really it's a Greek word for birth. So, to my mind, each of us is a genius. We are the ultimate expression of who we are.

[15:26]

Now, of course, the problem is that it's complicated by the fact that we have habits, and there's all kinds of things that we've learned, and it's a mixed bag, right? But in our uniqueness, we have genius. And that genius, the genius of being Laurie, the genius of being Bruce, the genius of being Mira, it's like nobody is better at that than those people. And I think that this is in part what Suzuki Roshi was saying about being ourselves. Of course, we also need some improvement. We have various habits and delusions and coverings. So I think that this relates to, I think two days ago, Sojin Roshi was talking about training, whatever that means.

[16:46]

Zen training. And this was in the context of a talk that he began with a list of seeming opposites. Black, white, wrong, right, day, night, flee, fight, and so on. And he spoke about the good Zen student and the bad Zen student. You know, it's like you could say, I'm a bad Zen student. Well, you know, don't be so arrogant, you know. And yesterday he was reading from Beyond Consciousness, a chapter from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, where Suzuki Roshi says, actually, good and bad is not the point.

[17:59]

I was thinking today, good and bad is like That good and bad is not the point, it's like trying to decide that great ultimate existential question, the Beatles are the Rolling Stones. Each one represents something that's strong and true and fresh. But what Suzuki Roshi says is, Whether you make yourself peaceful is the point. That's what we're trying to do here. So you could say, maybe simplistically, maybe profoundly, that Zen training is about becoming truly oneself.

[19:11]

and whoever that is, whoever or whatever that is, I don't really know. Because, maybe because I'm insufficiently enlightened, or maybe because the eye that I'm looking at is changing from moment to moment. So in another place, Suzuki Roshi says, the point of training, and that's kind of what I want to talk about a bit, the point of training or the purpose of Sesshin is to develop stable practice. We live in California. Actually, I just heard there was a 6.5 earthquake off of Ferndale last night.

[20:25]

Where's Ferndale? It's where is it? Okay, so is everyone okay up there? Did you hear anything? Yeah, but at 6.5, that's pretty large. So in California we know how in a moment the ground can shift. And in fact it is always moving. The earth beneath us is always moving and also our lives, our emotional lives, our actual lives is always moving. So the training that we're developing here in Sesshin and we develop in our day-by-day practice is how we learn to stand with some flexibility and fluidity so that we can meet every way that the Earth moves in every circumstance.

[21:31]

It may be a kind of dance, It may be that we have to hold on to each other's hands to support each other because we can't, we're shaken around on our own. So this is what we are practicing here, I feel, this week. This is what I'm practicing. And I notice, constantly notice the ground shifting. You know, at the end of day one, beginning of day two, I felt myself having to make a physical shift into the mode of Sesshin. And it was hard, there was resistance. but I've been doing this for a really long time and so I know that pattern and I accept it and I don't necessarily resist the resistance.

[22:43]

And then yesterday, somehow at the end of the day, I found myself sort of hitting an emotional wall. And I, I just take this as part of the experience of Sashin. It's not that I take it as the truth. It's just like, it may be, if you like, the momentary truth right now. Right now I'm having a hard time, or right then I was having a hard time. Right now I'm not having such a hard time, but it can happen in a moment. and it won't necessarily remain. So we were talking about intuition and where it comes from.

[23:47]

It's extremely important, but I don't want to idealize it. Even though What is it? I can't find it actually. Einstein said intuition is the only thing. Now, of course, that's Einstein, you know, and you know, but for us, I feel that there is a The interaction between honing our intuition and doing our training is about, in a way, it's about moving from habit to intention on the deepest level. Intuition is not necessarily, some part of intuition may come from completely beyond your understanding.

[25:01]

And we have to accept that. It's not necessarily beyond your experience in its totality, but you may not be able to encompass that experience or even recognize it. But there's things that we do that change our habitual energy into intuition. So for example, and I've given this example in other talks, I think, when you're on an icy road and you go into a skid, your habit or my habit would have been step on the brake and turn away from the skid.

[26:05]

Let's get out of here. You know, let's get out of it, which is just what we do. It's what we do in our relationships. You know, if something goes wrong in our relationships, we want to like go the other direction. Actually, that's Whether you can call that intuitive or counterintuitive, it's a mistake. The correct thing to do, stay off the brake and turn into the skid, get your foot off the gas pedal. This is a driving instruction now. Get your foot off the gas pedal and turn to some degree into the direction of the skid and then slowly turn yourself out of it. It's like to go with the energy that's there and turn it. That's not necessarily intuitive. Unless, on an intuitional level, you really have a deep perception of all the causes and conditions that have created the skid.

[27:14]

If you do, then you'll know what to do. But if you don't, your habit energy is going to kick in. So, when we're in, Katagiri Roshi used to speak a lot, one of our teachers used to speak a lot about emergency case. He said, what will you do in an emergency? Well, you'll do what you are trained to do. If you are trained by your habit, you're gonna do something habitual, which will probably, or often is a mistake. If you are really deeply trained, and this is what we're working on here, then you will do what you're trained to do.

[28:20]

If somebody, clutches their chest and falls down in front of you, you know, if you are trained in CPR, you will know what to do. If you are not, you may freak out. So these are matters of training. It's interesting, I was thinking about, you know, Sajan Roshi was talking about the altar. Like, today I noticed when I, I forget where I was when I came in, I was, I think maybe I was doing service. No, I forget, I was setting up for service and I noticed that the, the flower bowl on the founder's altar was, the foot was a little to the left.

[29:22]

And so I just aligned it. Now, that's not, I would argue that's not an ultimate principle of the universe. You know, that if it's a little to the left, a little to the right, the world will still go on. My training has been to align these things and it's like the foot goes forward and so I do that. So that's not, I don't say that's an ultimate principle of alignment. You know, I don't know what the ultimate principle of alignment on the, you know, is there a really ultimate point to the alignment of the altar. One could say yes, one could say no, and we can talk about this, maybe we'll have a chance to talk about it. But I've learned what I think are the harmonious relationship of the objects on the altar, and so I may readjust them, and Sojourner Roshi will readjust them, and we probably won't readjust them in exactly the same way.

[30:37]

But I'm trying to create a sense of harmony in my own sense and each of us has a sense of harmony or doesn't. So intuitive is not necessarily something from beyond. It may be something that we've learned. It may be an aesthetic value that runs deeply within one culture or another culture. What's harmonious musically has different characteristics across different cultures. It's related to values that we learn according to our training. But it's also related to our yearning. This has come back to what Suki Roshi says, Whether you make yourself peaceful is the point.

[31:42]

Everybody to recognize it, that I have a yearning for peace. And from that, I recognize that everyone has a yearning for peace. although it may not necessarily look exactly the same to everyone. It might look different. So our way is to look at things, one way is to look at things in the widest possible way, in the way that Jesse Winchester is singing about, when looking, taking the Buddha view of this big blue ball and one's place on it. and also in the practice of session. So we include that in the practice to see, you know, with this this big blue ball that's constantly spinning.

[32:51]

The population here is changing over the course of the week. It's gradually shifting. Some of us here all week. Some of us are here some days people come people go and the reality just persists and the ball keeps spinning in a wonderful way. But it's also in this very finely detailed way. One should always know where one's feet are. and Bud was quoting Thoreau yesterday. I was looking for that quote, I haven't found it, but another quote from Thoreau said, heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. We have to remember it's in the particulate, just where your feet touch the earth. And it's also in the course of this week to know where is my mind?

[33:57]

at any given moment. Where's my feet? How are they aligned on my legs? Or how are they aligned in the ground? And where is my mind? And so this is what we're doing. And it's very particular. It's quite beautiful. I've had, I really am grateful to Gary. I've had a bunch of opportunities in this session that I haven't had for a long time, aside from cooking, which I like to do. I had two days of cooking, which I didn't bargain for, but that was interesting. It was really interesting to cook the second day. because I was working with Jerry, Jerry got sick. And so I was cooking her recipes. And it's like, oh, you get to enter somebody else's mind. It's like, oh, this is very interesting. This is not quite the way I think of it, but let's see how this goes.

[35:00]

You know, that was, that was very, that was fun for me. But I've also, I've been Doan. I was Kokyo this morning. and then I led the meal. These are things that I, you know, I used to do it all the time, I think, for like the first 15 years that I was here. And so I have a lot of training in that, which is deeply imprinted, and yet I don't get to do it, you know? And it's really different carrying the imprint than doing it, you know? And it's like doing it, you know, and I make a mistake, At this point, it's like, I don't give a shit. It's like, if I make a mistake, it's like, oh, I made a mistake. Again, the world does not stop. But it's fun to try to do it, to try to recall and tap into that training.

[36:02]

And this is part of what we're doing, I think, to to really focus on very small details of how we do things. This is part of the essence of Zen practice. It's not abstract, it's very particular. It's about how you do things with your body. So, to be Doan, every Doan here has a what I might call a signature sound that she or he gets from the bell. Because how their body and the striker meet the bell, just like any other musical instrument. You have a sound that you may not even know quite what it is, but you go for it consistently.

[37:04]

And the same thing is true, and you have to do that with your body. The same thing is true with chanting. Where is it in your body? The same thing with leading the meal, it's like, if you're thinking about it, it's like, what's the right pace? And looking around harmoniously at the whole zendo, it's like, okay, where are people in the meal? Where are they cleaning their bowls? What's the interaction between the servers and the people eating? To think about the wonderful, really wonderful interaction between all these things. It's like this is a very special opportunity that we have to do. In a way, it's like what I imagine being in an orchestra is like, where everybody plays their own sustaining part in keeping the music going and keeping the rhythm going.

[38:19]

They do it individually and simultaneously they're doing it together. We're doing this existentially in the context of this practice. It's the Zen orchestra. And to me, that's what the value of training is. That's why the intensity of doing Sashin is so unique and so freeing. Because the underlying spirit of this has to be seeking peace. And we need it so much right now because it is a dark time.

[39:20]

And I can't pretend that our sitting sasheen is going to necessarily solve the problems of the world that is still going on every moment. But I do believe that for me, it's the best way I found in my life to expand the capacity and deepen the resilience that I have for encountering the suffering and chaos that we all see, we always have seen, it's nothing new, and it's gonna get worse.

[40:28]

but thus has it always been. This is what the Buddha discovered. It was his intuition that led him to sit under the Bodhi tree and he said, I'm not gonna move until I have found a way to cut through this. And because he did that, we're here. Just amazing. So. We live on this big blue ball. And probably because we're getting older, we realize we're going to fall. And I hope that the day that we do,

[41:32]

We can jump back and smile at each other. So I'm going to stop there. Maybe you have some questions or thoughts and leave it there. Ross. Something like that, yeah. I don't know. It's total dynamic working, which includes entropy, so that includes a perhaps an energy towards randomness, and I include that as perfect, and I'm injecting my randomness, you know, it's not bold, it's not going to stay that way, but you know, I was trained.

[42:53]

That's fine. I don't disagree with that. The way we were trained was like for this bowl, It's three feet, one foot is kind of right at the line, and it's in line with that and in line with the Buddha. It could just as well be, oh, I know what I was going to say. It could just as well be the two feet in front. That would be okay. What I was going to say, Sojin Roshi was talking about orioke the other day. you know, as a kind of logical unfolding of, yeah, it's a very logical and sensible way to eat. Some of the fine details are not, they're not

[44:05]

carbon stone. We had an orioke instruction at the Soto Zen Buddhist meeting in L.A. It was very funny because it was led by this woman. First of all, there's a woman who is the Soto Bishop of Europe, which is really, that's unusual. And she was great. She was really cool. And she was giving the orioke instruction. And we got down to it, it's like, immediately, all of the senior priests, first of all, the Japanese priests, disagreed about everything. in the finest gear, which way do the chopsticks point? Are they on the left? Are they on the right? And then there was the habits of the different trained people like ourselves.

[45:08]

It was very interesting. It was conditional. There were some conditions to it, yes. You do it that way. Right, exactly. And that's it. That was my expression. Right, right. And that's exactly what emerged. But it was interesting when you got this aggregation of, you had Sojiji priests, and Tsuyoji priests, and Heiheji priests, and it was all a little different, which is fine. Anyway, John. for example, we were chanting Makahana Haramit, I think, and we're all listening and trying to follow and making mistakes.

[46:13]

Certainly me. And I did care about my mistake. And so what I had to do was not make, as Sojin said the other day, not make the mistake into a problem, but stop or whatever and listen and intuit the position in the chant I wanted to also say is finding that harmony in the moment that answers the question of the moment and it does require us to actually notice what's in the moment that needs attention, like missing the words, missing the oreo, missing the alignment, and that's the question that creates an intuitive action and truth revelation, if I can use that term. Well, the deepest intuition I think, and this is something also the surgeon said, it's like, I don't know what's going on right now, and I better listen.

[47:17]

So it's not knowing and then bearing witness, and this is what a musician is doing. If you linger over your mistake, you're completely out of time. So let go and then find, okay, where do I reenter? in alignment with what's going on. James? took the individuals who were doing this somewhere between 50 and 80 tries before they realized what was going on.

[48:29]

But their bodies were wired to test their pulse, their heartbeat. Yeah, I think I heard that radio program. Yeah. It took the mind five to eight times longer than it took the body to understand what was going on. Yeah, I can do that. Thank you. Are there any women who want to ask questions? It's like all guys. Elizabeth. So, you were talking about subculture and all. You tried to hold that word lightly in a way, but not very seriously.

[49:31]

And then when you shot the thing, there was the other night when you were standing here at the Thomas ceremony, there was a and unbridled passion. There was a concern and a lot of emotion. And I've been trying to figure out, as I watch the patterns of this meditation and this practice, and the volume, the decibel level in my head, because I feel intense anger, intense, an intense sense of betrayal, and huge disappointment. And coming to Rahatsu, and I'm not talking about our new administration, I'm talking about people who I've taught with my friends over the years, and things that I heard over the past 12 months about something that was very important to me on the public scale,

[50:45]

You know, I had a particular candidate I wanted to win. And all I went on to this core of existential, I was like, whoa. And then I thought, I've got to slip into this room, and I've got to couch the emotion somehow. And, but I had this pattern of, I want to come to a place that there's a clergy person that I adore. And yet we have disagreements, I think, too. And I just wanted to say, maybe not change the world, but that is my koan that I'm working on right now. Because I thought, how do I speak in harmony to something that feels so dishonest? And I'm talking about, you know, I'm wearing this is your office, I lost my newer one on the 24 bus in San Francisco.

[51:53]

Glad I had a spare. A spare. And like your guitar, an awesome spare. But I just want to say, I'm here with this clay key. I think this is important. I think it has something to do with the faith of practice, of sitting. Yeah, so I really appreciate that and I take the concern very seriously. And if you remember, or maybe you don't, what I think I said at the beginning of addressing Suzuki Roshi was, I am shorn of idealizations. We should love what we do.

[52:54]

We should love every being. And I believe we should be shorn of idealizations. Don't idealize anybody. I have deep love and respect for Sojan Roshi. And I do not idealize him. And I think that's been the saving grace of our relationship over 35 years for me. I don't know what's in for him. And how do you respect someone and be shorn of idealizations? This is really hard work for all of us, and I appreciate the effort. I think that's a really good place to end. Thank you very much.

[53:44]

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