I don't care about how close it gets, the truth goes out. Well, this morning we have a kind of unusual sasheen for us.

[01:08]

Usually it's five in the morning until nine at night, and today it's nine in the morning until five at night. It's a lot easier to get up this morning than for a sasheen, usually. And we thought we'd take advantage of doing this maybe a couple times a year so that we could actually have an opportunity to do a little training and have some discussion about practice here and about the forms here at Berkeley Zen Center. And I see there are a lot of newer people here and they're also plenty of people who've been sitting longer than myself, so I hope that we can have a free discussion. I thought that I probably wouldn't talk for that long this morning and just leave time for questions about any realm of practice, formal practice, and what we do here at Berkeley Zen Center that may come up.

[02:19]

and some I may be able to answer, others, other people may be able to answer, and some will probably just remain questions. We also talked, I talked with Mel about whether he wanted, usually he would give practice discussion, or doksan, during one day sitting. and what he suggested was actually let's bring all of our questions up to share publicly so that we can benefit from both the circumstances and struggles and questions of all of us together. So we can do some of that here during this hour, and then later in the afternoon we'll also have tea, a longer tea than we usually have during Seshin, at which time would be also an opportunity just to bring up whatever questions are on people's minds.

[03:25]

We don't often have a kind of extensive opportunity to talk in the zendo, and it's actually a good place to bring up questions about practice. Oh, I also wanted to say, I think there are, at each one of your places, the various a sheet, aside from the sutra books that we use for service, there are the sheets with various Zen center chants that we use. One, we just did before lecture. And then after lecture, we take the four vows together. There's a chant between sutras that we use. And also, at the end of the day, we'll all take the refuges together to close. You'll find one of these at each of your places if you don't know it.

[04:28]

So the practice that we have here began really with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi coming from Japan in 1959. That's his picture over there. And he came to take care of the temple at Sokoji on Bush Street in San Francisco, which was largely a Japanese community Soto temple. And it's interesting to sort of speculate on why did he come to America, why did he Why did he come to the East? Especially for some of us have been to his temple in Japan, which is quite a beautiful and vibrant, beautiful place with a vibrant community.

[05:30]

But I think that he was, he just had an adventurous spirit and was looking for something else. And I'm not sure that you could put your finger on why he came. But he came, and very shortly, some of the Western people in the sort of Bohemian community, I guess at that point, discovered that there was a teacher there who was very interested in Zazen. Actually, not very many people in the Japanese community were interested in that, so he took care of his responsibilities with the Japanese congregation and began sitting with Westerners who came. And that's kind of the inception for Zen Center. It just grew from that kernel of people sitting together. And he said, well, I'm going to sit here every morning, and invited people to come and sit with him.

[06:34]

In the middle 60s, about 1965, I think, was when Nel Weitzman Sochin Sensei began to sit with that group on Bush Street. somewhere along the line, I think 1967, talking to Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi suggested that maybe he could come over here, he could set up a sitting practice in Berkeley. And he found a large, wonderful house on Dwight Way that a number of people here sat at, a number of people lived at. Dali did, and Ron did, you know, anyone else here did. And I had the fortune to sit there for a little while in the summer of 1968. It was quite beautiful with the zendo in the attic. And Suzuki Roshi would come over once a week and lecture.

[07:41]

And there was just regular zazen practice. It was about that same time in 1965, mid-60s, 65, 66, I think, that Zen Center, yeah, it must have been a little later, 66, 67, that Zen Center bought the land of Tassajara and set up the first Zen monastery in the United States. And from all reports, it was a fairly wild place. I heard, I met somebody last weekend who was involved in the the food wars down at Tassajara when the macrobiotic people and the non-macrobiotic people were battling it out for control of the kitchens. And it was a lot of pretty free and adventurous spirited young people who were taking up Zen practice who were drawn to Suzuki Roshi.

[08:42]

which I think was easy to do. I mean, I didn't know him, but I practiced with his son, and you can just see this magnetic presence in somebody that you want to be around, because you feel good when you're around him. And my sense is that Suzuki Roshi had a lot of the same kind of feeling. But during that time, the first years, even at Tassajara, my understanding is that the formal side of practice was not emphasized, that really the emphasis was on zazen, which is our emphasis here, and that a lot of the service would be taken care of, the instruments rather than having Ross ring the bell, you would have Katagiri-sensei or Kobinchino-sensei ringing the bells, leading the chanting. you know, taking care of all of those aspects of practice and leading ceremonies.

[09:52]

So they were, Katagiri Sensei, who then became Katagiri Roshi, and Chino Sensei, who is now Chino Roshi, came over as, they were brought as assistants for Suzuki Roshi. And it wasn't until, I believe, 1970, which was the year after Mel was ordained, that Suzuki Roshi invited Tatsugami Roshi from Japan, who had been head of practice at Eiheiji, the Soto Zen, one of the two main training monasteries, a huge place, very strict formal practice. And Tatsugami Roshi came to Tassajara and set up all of the monastic forms that are still used at Tassajara. And many of which, we're not a monastery, but many of the forms that we use are the forms that Tatsagami Roshi brought over.

[10:54]

And some people who have, every month when we do the full moon chant, the people who lead the chant, some of them have learned how, or tried to learn, like myself, how to do the chanting from this very distant dim tape of Tatsugami Roshi doing beautiful chanting in Japanese. So he came and set up the forums and pretty much from that point on, that's the kind of formal practice that we followed. And it was about the same time that Zen Center was ordaining the first handful of priests, people like Sojin Sensei and others who were quite devoted to practice, who wanted to make that their life, and also had the first Jukai or lay ordinations in a couple of fairly large groups.

[11:56]

And there was a recognition that while Zazen was the core there was also more to Zen practice that could be delved into. That's some of what I wanted to just bring up here today. I noticed my own relationship to formal practice. For many years, I've worked as a folk musician, and I still play that. And I love formal practice here in the same way that I love a well-worn folk song or a fiddle tune, something that's been handled, sometimes that's been used, sometimes roughly like a tool, but handled with great love and passed on from generation to generation. But I also sometimes come up against my resistance.

[13:05]

I come up against the limits in my relation to formal practice. They tend to go in the area of long, elaborate ceremonies, or bowing over and over and over again, or chanting texts that are in what Sometimes they're wonderful to me, and sometimes I find the language impenetrably mystical. Actually, sometimes it's in Japanese, which is even more impenetrable to me. Actually, though, I like the Japanese better. I like chanting in Japanese better because it's more rhythmic, and you can put more energy into it. So these forms are rooted in devotional practice. and I might hazard to say they're rooted in issues of faith.

[14:05]

My own religious background included years of enforced religious education in the synagogue, the reason for which I could never quite fathom, because my parents didn't practice Judaism, but somehow it was something I was supposed to do for my grandfather, who was never around anyway. And I had years of that. And when I was bar mitzvahed, I walked out of the temple, and with the exception of weddings and funerals and bar mitzvahs, I never went back, which I think is too bad, actually. And I think that many of us have walked away from the traditions that we were born in, in this country. So we have a wariness of devotional practices. And when we're doing formal practice here, I know for myself there comes a time, actually not often, but there sometimes comes a time when I just say,

[15:15]

You know, this is as far as I want to go. And when I was in Japan, I found I reached that point a lot sooner. But actually, this saying, enough, is coming up against these barriers. It's really a great challenge because it brings me back to what Suzuki Roshi called beginner's mind. And it brings me back to this despite many days, many long days, many hours in the Zen Do, year after year. So there's always an opportunity to encounter this beginner's mind with these resistances that come up. Here's an example, actually. As a priest, I wear, this is an okesa, which is constructed on a patchwork pattern like rice fields. It's traditional. The colors vary from tradition to tradition, but sometimes it's orange, sometimes saffron, sometimes brown, and in our tradition, it's black.

[16:28]

And it's about as much cloth as anyone might ever want to handle on their person. And every day after the rope chant, I put on the okesa. And I put it on so that this piece goes over my left shoulder. And that also is traditional. All Buddhist monks wear their okesa over their left shoulder. So I've been doing this for about three years now. And almost every day, when I go to do my full prostrations, this flap comes like this. It falls down, and I see other people who's where it stays up. I always, you know, sometimes I wonder, well, maybe my occasus is a little too small, which actually it might be, or maybe I'm not wearing it quite right, although I've been assured by Mel and by Blanche Hartman and others that, yes, it's on fine, it's wearing quite right, and I take care of, I try to wear my robes correctly, and yet every time I bow, I have to

[17:43]

pay attention to what this robe is going to do and I have to sometimes fix my robes quickly before the next bow and readjust things. So sometimes even if I'm bowing very sincerely while I'm getting up there's a moment of awkwardness and there's a moment of question and there's a moment when I have to when I'm thrown back into beginner's mind, when even though outwardly it may appear that I know what I'm doing, you know, I dress right, but actually I don't have control over this kind of errant piece of cloth. And I keep feeling, well, I should be able to master this. And yet I don't. And I think that's really good for me.

[18:45]

That really helps me to feel that awkwardness. It's nice to feel some grace as you move through the world. That's extremely important. And I think that that's also part of what we practice, to have an ease in here, the same as we have an ease, and to carry that out into the world. But it's also very good to have this kind of awkwardness, because it reminds us of our own and everyone else's suffering, and helps us be more compassionate. I mean, this is really a small thing, but I actually have to pay attention to it all the time. So in Zen, we have this saying, not one, not two. That's the Zazen. That's what we're doing when we're sitting Zazen.

[19:47]

We're not an individual. and yet we're one person sitting on the cushion, we're one mind, with your body, your cushion, your seat, the room, and the universe. And with our zazen we're thinking, non-thinking. So our practice with forms is a really perfect vehicle for this. You might think of it as not two, not one. Everybody in the zendo is making an effort to move in harmony with everyone else. We're chanting together, we're sitting together, we're bowing together, we're eating together, and I think of it as like one organism with many limbs, like some very strange centipede sitting on a hundred zafus.

[20:48]

sitting Zazen, but also each of us is expressing our individuality completely. Sometimes I know when I When I first started to practice, I had a lot of models for bowing, and I can still see them in my mind. I can see my friend Tom Lomax, how he would bow when he was across the room. We were bowing to each other during Sashin, or I can see how Mel bows. I can imagine different people bowing. We might try to bow like that person. We might think, well, that person can really bow. She does it the right way. But no matter how much we try to do it like that person, it's our bow. It's our self being expressed completely in that bow. or think of, uh, orioke.

[21:51]

Many of you have eaten orioke meals, and even though we have a manual for it, and we teach it pretty consistently, uh, I don't think there's one person here who does it exactly like, uh, another person. Even Mel has his own idiosyncrasies. He does it different than we teach it, and different from San Francisco Zen Center. So, there's this level of harmonious action of moving through all these activities in the same way, in a way that creates a good feeling and a strong feeling, and also there's the element of individuality, so it's not one, not two, sort of exemplified at every moment of our practice here. And so practicing these forms over and over again, this is a way to study the self.

[22:54]

It's like applying scientific method to our mind and bodies, so outwardly we're recreating the form of sitting, the zazen posture and breathing that we do, and all the other things that we do together. And inwardly, we see that each time we do this, it's new and different. And we have this great realm of inquiry about impermanence. There's no two times when you sit down to zazen that it feels exactly the same, or that you can remember that it feels the same. There's no two moments that feel exactly the same. So while the form is clearly defined, whoever it is that is recreating that form is never the same. And so in Zendo we have this kind of laboratory for exploring impermanence that way.

[23:59]

And if I try for perfection, try to observe a form perfectly, I'll never get there. And yet, if I cut myself a lot of slack, if I zazen like this with my hands like this, which sometimes is exactly what I feel like doing, I will notice that my life is getting very ragged around the edges. and that actually, whether I cut myself all that slack or I try to sit really strong and not move, I find I don't treat people quite right. So either way, being too rigid or being too slack, I risk losing touch with this sort of delicately shifting balance of life, a risk-losing touch with compassion that is at the heart of our life and the heart of our practice.

[25:13]

I thought I would end what I was going to say by just reading the prologue from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. People say practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged position or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense. The Zen school developed in many ways after it was established in China, but at the same time it became more and more impure. I do not want to talk about Chinese Zen or the history of Zen. I am interested in helping you keep your practice from becoming impure. In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means beginner's mind. The goal of practice is to always keep our beginner's mind. Suppose you recite the Prajnaparamita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times or more?

[26:21]

You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. Same thing will happen in your other Zen practices. For a while, you will keep your beginner's mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind. For Zen students, the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our original mind includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose this self-sufficient state of mind. This doesn't mean a closed mind, but actually an empty and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. If you discriminate too much, you limit yourself. If you are too demanding or too greedy, your mind is not rich and self-sufficient.

[27:23]

If we lose our original self-sufficient mind, we lose all precepts. When your mind becomes demanding, when you long for something, you will end up violating your own precepts, not to tell lies, not to steal, not to kill, not to be immoral, and so forth. If you keep your original mind, the precepts will keep themselves. In the beginner's mind, there is no thought, I have attained something. All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Dogen Zenji, the founder of our school, that's him here, always emphasized how important it is to resume our boundless original mind. then we are always true to ourselves in sympathy with all beings and can actually practice.

[28:28]

So the most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner's mind. There is no need to have a deep understanding of Zen. Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, I know what Zen is, or I have attained enlightenment. This is also the real secret of the arts. Always be a beginner. Be very, very careful about this point. If you start to practice Zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice. So, we have some time for questions, and I would just suggest that the questions can be as particular and mundane as you wish them to be, or general, if you wish. What is a Zen master and what's the relationship between that and being an abbot? Well, that's an interesting question. Well, I think a Zen master is just somebody who is an accomplished teacher, who's been teaching for a long time.

[29:39]

The word Roshi really means something, translates into something like old guy, venerable person, somebody who is really rooted in practice, who has been sitting for a long time, who has a lot of experience with people. Now, in our tradition, the abbot is the same as the teacher. which is kind of a temple tradition. The model is modeled on a small kind of temple or a training temple in Japan. But in other traditions, the abbot is an administrative post. In China or in Theravadan traditions, the abbot will be, it'll be a job like It'll often be not even a very coveted job, like the head of a department in a university, you know, and you'll get it by seniority.

[30:48]

You know, just the oldest monk would get it, or they would have it for a period of time and it would rotate. And right now, San Francisco Zen Center is actually putting a term on the abbacy. It'll be, I think, four years, renewable for four or something like that, so that some of the senior people who are coming up will have this kind of role. But it'll probably be a combination of teaching and administrative. But there's no fixed. This is the way we do it here. Mel is the abbot, but he has to be voted on by the members every year. Actually, he has very limited term of office, only one year at a time. Although, what would happen if we voted him out? I don't know. It would be hard to imagine. I have two questions. One is, did you and Tali fall down, too?

[31:50]

I can't remember. No, that gets wrapped around your neck. Well, there's one here. I see people all the time. tilting it over their shoulders. So I was wondering whether you didn't do that. It might be something. I don't remember doing that. It has a tradition to do that. Right. The other question is, you used the word faith. And I was struck by it. And I can't remember the first part of the sentence that you used it in, but I was struck by you using it. The first part of the sentence had to do with the fact that a lot of the practices we do here are devotional practices. And very little is said about that, because sometimes when people hear the word or the idea of devotional practices, they run the other way. But fortunately, our devotional practices are rooted in zazen. They're rooted in meditation. And actually, our zazen itself is devotional practice.

[32:52]

When we take the four vows, the first vow that we take at the end of this lecture, and we'll take it during full moon ceremony, is we vow to save all beings. And so the devotion we're offering, we're not necessarily to the Buddha or to some theistic spirit, but actually to all beings, to the interconnection of all life. And that's very much the tradition of Buddhism. In southern Buddhist, Theravadan Buddhist tradition, the lay people don't have Sometimes they do meditation, but mostly their practice is to offer. They offer food, they support the monks so that they can do the meditation, and actually a lot of the monks' role is to be a vehicle for the offerings to be made. In this practice, we're all offering together.

[33:58]

So to me, it's an act of faith that we do that in. Although it's very hard to clarify precisely what it's faith in. But you're making that effort all the time. Well, I have two questions also. I hear you speak about that, and I wonder what is sentient being? And the other question I have is, I've been reading a book, and my husband gave me my Dyson Suzuki. Is that the father of? No relation. No relation. But probably the seminal figure in bringing Zen to the West in general as a writer, and not so much as a religious teacher, but just making the ideas of Zen available throughout the intellectual community. Right.

[35:05]

Actually, he didn't die very long ago. He may have died in the 70s or late 60s. He was active for quite a long time. Apparently, translating from Sanskrit to Japanese. Right. So your first question, say it again. What is a sentient being? You're a sentient being. Yes. A sentient being is any being with life in it. And that might include trees, grass, and insects. And then it might include the wood that this temple is made of, or the bronze that the bell is cast from. I don't know if that's something you might think about. That's a good question, why does the same thing be?

[36:07]

And that's a good question to carry with you. Because it sort of points to whether there's... It sort of points towards what the effects of your actions are on everything, even when you close the car door, how you close it. Yes. I have difficulty when I'm sitting because my knees tend to not fly down to the floor, but they're in a V shape. And I use cushions under my knees to alleviate the problem. But I noticed that I have difficulty sometimes with feeling balanced. In other words, I feel like I'm going to start tilting back. Right. I noticed that actually when I was sitting out. You might try putting a higher cushion under your seat. because it's hard to sit with your knees above your bottom.

[37:09]

It's not the most balanced way to sit. So you might try putting a firmer pillow or putting a support cushion or two under that. You should experiment. You can do it here or you can do it at home. getting up and changing my cushion or things like that. Well, I wouldn't do it in the middle of sitting, but even before, like when the people are settling in. to realizing I had a cushion that was too soft to go rummaging around the Zender for a firm cushion. What's your recommendation as far as things like that? I'll bet you wouldn't do, I'll bet you wouldn't be rummaging around for long. You know, I'll bet pretty quickly you would you would know that when you came into the zender you had to find a cushion that was you don't have to accept the one that's at that seat whatever seat you're at you can you know root around and find one that that suits you and you probably after doing it once after having to get up once the next time you came in you would you would take care of it i don't think uh i don't think it's a problem you should just do it it's better to have a comfortable place to sit than to you know to sit off balance for 40 minutes

[38:34]

to lay down a cloth before you kneel for two prostrations, and what mouse scepter it is. Yeah. The cloth, the bowing mat, is just to protect my ropes. And there's not an awful lot of dirt or dust in here, but when you So, again, when you see where it comes out of traditionally, you're traditionally in an area where your robes would get dirty, and out of respect to them, you would lay down a bowing cloth to bow to protect your robes. And as far as I understand, the stick that Mila carries, it's just sort of a mark of authority. It's something that you're given when you complete Dharma transmission with your teacher, and it means that you're a teacher.

[39:51]

And he uses it. There are other people who wear robes in the Dharma. Right. Like Karen is wearing a robe here. There are sitting robes and priest robes. And sitting robes, anyone can wear sitting robes. And they're very comfortable to sit in. They keep you warm. And you can move freely. And if you talk to me or talk to a couple people here, they can tell you where you can get some if you want them. So those are robes. The robe that I'm wearing is a priest robe which has a few more pleats in it and theoretically that was given to me when I was ordained. I bought it someplace, and someone made it for me. But as part of the ordination ceremony, it's wrapped up and given to you by your teacher, in the same way that the raksu that some people are wearing is.

[41:02]

And the raksu is just a small Buddhist robe. It's constructed in the same fashion as this large robe, in a sort of rice field pattern. And it means that you have taken the precepts, not just recited the precepts, but you have received the precepts from a teacher and have vowed to make them guiding principles for your life. And you also at that time receive a Buddhist name that's given to you by your teacher, usually has some connection with his or her feeling about who you are. It's something about your character and something for you to live up to as well. So that's a ceremony that we have, Chukai. It's actually my favorite ceremony, because it's really entering the Buddhist family in a kind of formal way.

[42:08]

And that happens when people really feel like they're comfortable sitting, they're comfortable This is their home. They would approach Sojin Sensei and ask him for Jukai. Usually you've been around a while. Used to be three years. Now it's not so long. So it's just something that people ask to take when they feel that this is the family they would like to be. I'm intensely aware of my... That's why the practice that we do is really simple.

[43:36]

The practice is just maintaining an upright posture and breathing and following our breath. And so, what becomes critical at this juncture then is intention. What was the intention that you walked into Zen Do? What did you intend to do? And, you know, given the practice is very simple, our intention is to sit straight and relax and follow our breath. So, all of us have this problem. My nose is itching, and my mind is whirling. So whenever you can, then just return to the breath. And you can do it simply by just counting the exhalations from one to ten.

[44:36]

And it's remarkable how rarely I get to ten. The important part is not just succeeding in getting to 10, actually, but the real dynamic part is just recalling what you're doing and returning. It's just returning and returning and returning, because of course you're going to go off. Your mind is going to go off, or your legs are going to hurt, or something's going to be coming up in your body, or you really may not want to be here. And in each of those junctures, there's an opportunity to return to just what you said you were going to do, and to return to it as single-mindedly as you can with a lot of forgiveness. And that's an important part of it, too. You have to forgive yourself for failing, because you're going to fail over and over again.

[45:39]

And if you can't forgive yourself for failing, then you're going to magnify the suffering that you have. So you just let it go. Whatever thought you're having, let it go and come back to your breath. That's as much advice as I can give in that realm. That's as far as I've gotten. But it's also as far as I've heard. We have time for maybe one more. Kathy? What is the etiquette on bowing? Sometimes when you're sitting in your place and there's a lot of coming and going and people are getting the sitting, you can end up disturbing your sitting a lot with bowing to people getting up and down from their seats. And the other thing is related to that, when you turn around, you go bow to your cushion and turn around, and the person across from you and you bow to them, and then the person next to them gets done and they bow, and it gets

[46:51]

I want some guidelines. Why am I doing all this bowing? Well, the first thing I would say is your sitting is not so fragile. And you don't have to worry about disturbing it. Because it'll be there the next time you do it. So it's never... It's always okay to bow if someone's sitting down next to you. I mean, you don't... You would bow just... When someone's sitting down two seats away, you don't bow. Just when they're next to you. And if you don't notice them, if they're very quiet, sitting down or getting up, and you don't bow, that's fine. But if you notice them, just bow. Just lift your hands and bow a little. It won't disturb your sitting. And if you think it disturbs your sitting, then again, just go back to your breath. It's not going to do you any harm to bow.

[47:55]

As far as bowing across, just bow to the person across the room to you. It's never wrong to bow, but we certainly could get excessive about it. So you wait for them to finish taking their cushions and you bow. So you basically do it to people who are across from you or next to you. Does that answer? Yes. Is there something... No, it's just sometimes I get confused when I see other people doing it differently, where it seems clear to me that you acknowledge the person Right. Well, it's a good point to bring up. This is not a monastery. This is a lay practice. And even though some people may have had training in where you bow and when you bow, others don't.

[48:57]

And others just bow. And that's a beginner's mind. And if they're observant, or if they're here at a time when Mel might say something, then they'll figure out what the form is. Otherwise, they are doing their own form sincerely, or raising a question for themselves. Gee, maybe I'm supposed to bow here. And that's a good question to raise. And it may not agree completely with what you were taught. And from time to time, there'll be some instruction in that. And that's some of what I hope to do today. I don't know how much we'll get, because there's a million little forms, but we should probably stop. And we'll have another 45 minutes or so to talk, and we can talk about more of these things over tea. Thank you very much.

[49:57]

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