Good evening, everyone, and welcome. Tonight I want to talk about what is American Zen, which is a very foolish question, or rather a meaningless question, for a variety of reasons. Well, first of all, there's many different American Zens. Second of all, we don't know yet, maybe in a hundred years or two hundred years, if the species survives, we'll know. But also, it's kind of not up to us to ask that. We're just Americans doing Zen, so it's whatever we're doing. As we follow this practice that's been passed down from India to China to Japan,

[01:05]

from California to Chicago, here we are. But I'm moved to look at this as a question from a book that I'm reading, not quite finished, but a book by my friend, the Zen scholar Stephen Hein, who's spoken here a few times and will be here again this summer. One of his new books is called From Chinese Chan to Japanese Zen, A Remarkable Century of Transmission and Transformation. So, he discusses in this book the transformation, or the transition, or the translation. He uses a bunch of Ts and a table of contents from Chan, from Chinese Chan to Japanese Zen from about 1220 to 1330. And it's pretty interesting. And so he talks about traditions and transitions and

[02:13]

transmissions and transplantations and transformations and teachers and temples. Anyway, so how Chinese Chan from the Song Chan period moved into Kamakura Zen and then Muromachi period Zen in the 1200s and 1300s and how Japan adopted it and adapted it is an interesting story. He talks about it in terms of the different versions of Japanese Zen. And so it's that book, this book gives me occasion to reflect on what's happening here. So, in some ways, as I've talked

[03:20]

about before, the transition from, well, the transition from India to China was huge, very different cultures. The transition from China to Japan was, reading this book, was not as small as I sometimes thought. There were transitions that needed to be made and the actual process of that involved Japanese monks like Dogen, our founder of our Soto tradition, but also great Rinzai masters going to China and then also Chinese teachers coming to Japan. And a whole range of different expressions developing in Japan, adaptations of Chinese literature and

[04:22]

adaptations of Chinese aesthetics to Japan, Japanese gardens and calligraphy and painting and especially poetry as ways of expressing Zazen and koans, which were the hallmarks of what was Zen then. And in looking at that transition, it's an interesting contrast to what we are doing and in some ways similar and in some ways very different transition of Japanese Zen and Chinese Chan to what we're practicing and how Zen is evolving and transforming in America. But it also involved American practitioners going to Japan and studying. I was only there a couple

[05:28]

of years, but there were people like Aitken Roshi and Kapler Roshi who spent a lot of time there. There were people like Paul Disko who's going to be coming here this spring, who Suzuki Roshi sent to study carpentry and temple architecture in Japan, who was there for six or seven years. And in terms of developing Japanese Zen forms to American Zen, that's another example. And of course, many Japanese Zen teachers, Suzuki Roshi, Katagiri Roshi, Maezumi Roshi, Kobuchino Roshi, Sasaki Roshi, many Rinzai teachers also who came and are still coming. So this interesting

[06:33]

transcultural process. But what is American Zen if there is such a thing? Well, of course, there's such a thing because here we are doing it. But to look at this ancient tradition of practice, this centers on this practice we've just done of Zazen. And then how does it get expressed? How does it become part of a new culture? How does it transform? How is it transplanted? It's a fascinating question. And we're right in the middle of it. So we can't really see it. We are it. And yet, this book from Stephen is interesting because he's an academic scholar, but he's also a

[07:36]

friend. And he's not exactly a practitioner, but he's very simpatico with practitioners. He sort of understands in a way that a lot of academic scholars don't. So he somehow gets inside what it is to be in the tradition. For us, there are lots of obvious ways in which this tradition has adapted and integrated and taken on various aspects of our culture. But one thing that's really different to start with is that Zen, when it came to Japan, came to a culture that was already very much Buddhist, very much dominated by traditional forms of Mahayana Buddhism, Tendai and Shingon and Mahayana Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism. So Zen, Dogen and Eisai and both Soto and Rinzai pioneers

[08:49]

in that period of Japan defined themselves separately from that Buddhist tradition in terms of their practice of zazen and koans, particularly. And for some of us in my generation who first encountered Zen, that's what we first heard about in the writings of D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts and these dramatic stories. And then there was this practice. We heard about this practice, this thing you could actually do. It wasn't just a philosophy. You could actually just do this practice of stopping and sitting. And so people came to Suzuki Roshi in the 60s because they were interested in learning about, well, there's this practice. There's this thing we can do. It's not just some philosophy. But of course, there was also the aesthetic aspect, which is

[09:49]

very important in Japanese Zen and in American Zen, I would say. All of the Japanese arts that were ways of expressing the practice in everyday activity, the fantastic Japanese garden art, Japanese calligraphy, which is just something that all, I don't know if it's still the case exactly, but that all Japanese schoolchildren learn, just basic handwriting, writing characters like that in the back there, but doing it beautifully. There used to be English handwriting as an art. We don't do that anymore. We have computers and we just sit at keyboards. But anyway, that was part of it. But in America, there wasn't this background of Mahayana Buddhism. So actually, a lot of my own teaching and writing and academic work has been about bringing the

[10:55]

background to American Zen because we didn't have the background of Bodhisattva teaching and the sutras. And so we're going to be doing it for our practice period in the spring. This year, we're going to be looking at the Bodhisattva figures from my book on the Bodhisattvas and looking at the Bodhisattva practices and that background that was very familiar to everybody in Japan when Zen came to Japan. We didn't have that context and they didn't have that context when Suzuki Roshi brought Zazen to America. And Zazen doesn't make so much sense if you don't have the Bodhisattva idea. It can become just some other self-help practice or some other therapeutic technique. So we have to approach it in a different way.

[11:58]

So that's one basic difference in the process of adaptation and transformation. And then there are all the ways in which already in the last 50 years or so since there has been Zazen practice, American Zen, if there is such a thing, has been adapted from our culture. So Western psychology and many, many American Zen people are first in Western psychology or have gone to therapists or are therapists. When I was practicing in California, I used to call California Zen Jungian Zen because so many of the people in California were interested in Jungian

[13:04]

psychology, which in some ways seems to fit. Then we have the mindfulness movement, which is maybe the dominant way in which Buddhism is integrating in our culture and is now recognized in mainstream Western medicine. It's recognized as being helpful. At some points, I thought it was sort of Buddhism-lite and not really took away all the Dharma, but more and more I kind of feel like, well, it's helpful and it's a way that people are actually meeting some kind of Buddhist sense of things. So I'm just going to list some of the ways in which American Zen has been influenced by Western culture, but not totally out of context. All of these are aspects of

[14:16]

meet with aspects of things that are part of Zen and part of Buddhism. So the integration with Christian contexts. So one of the things that Zen, when it came to Japan, the Zen people were trying to distinguish it from the Mahayana tradition, but also the other new contemporary adaptations of Buddhism at that time in Japan, the Pure Land tradition and the Nichiren tradition. So, but you know, that Pure Land tradition has some resonance with kind of Christian feeling. So we've talked about this recently here, the ways in which there are ways to see Buddhism from a Christian perspective and vice versa. Another aspect is environmentalism. And and this certainly fits with the ways in which Japanese and Chinese Buddhism were influenced by

[15:24]

Taoism and the sense of nature and environment and the garden art and the landscape art and yet our modern environmental and ecological sense somehow meets our, the sense of interconnectedness that we can develop in a sustained Zazen practice. And that is part of the older philosophy of interconnectedness from Huayen Buddhism in China before Zen. So there are all these strands of Buddhist thought and of the background of Zen that the people who were bringing Zen to Japan were, you know, kind of not rebelling against, but were not emphasizing, that are now part of how Zen is becoming American. Then there's also feminism in America, which has

[16:29]

really transformed American Zen in a really healthy way. I think that we have many women practitioners and teachers and people in important positions in Zen temples in the West, and that's really a healthy thing. And then there's the aspect of social activism in the West, which, you know, there are aspects of the Zen and Buddhist tradition that support that, but it really takes on a new form when meeting the Western activist tradition. So all of this is, you know, just a point in each of these areas we could have long discussions about, but these are ways in which how we are practicing and the expressions of our practice are

[17:37]

not other than the tradition, but are new emphases in the tradition. Another one is what's sometimes called, in religious studies, syncretism. This was part of the tradition then too, and this was, there were different approaches to this. So, you know, one of the important things to say is Zen is not one thing. It wasn't one thing in Japan, and in the transformation to Japan, it's not one thing here. There are many different, it's not just Soto and Rinzai, within Soto, within Rinzai, and within the forms that are combined of each of those. Both in Japan and in America, there are many different lineages, different ways of approaching it. So even to say, Dogen said, there's no such thing as Zen. So to talk about Zen is, you know, where we use that word because, well, I don't know what that means, as I said in the beginning,

[18:47]

but, and yet we have this practice that we're doing. So, you know, we could provisionally talk about it, but in China and in Japan, and in the transformation from China to Japan, there were various ways of combining things, of not seeing, of including, you know, Koans and Zazen were never really separate, but also of including Confucian thought, including Shinto thought in Japan, including veneration. So some Japanese and traditions, lineages, including some of Soto lineages, included veneration of Japanese Shinto spirits. Some didn't. Some were trying to be more so-called orthodox, just doing Zazen.

[19:51]

In America, too, there's a range of how much people include combinations with other traditions. One of the things that I personally appreciate about this Sangha is that we have people who have, some people here have just started sitting here, and that's great. And some people here have practiced in other traditions, or even in other religions, and are here now practicing, you know, in this mode. And I think that really enriches things. So I guess I'm sort of sympathetic with some kind of syncretism, I don't know. But just to have, but also in America, it's not just about Japanese Zen. We have a good Tibetan Buddhist places in Chicago. We have Chan, Chinese Chan

[20:54]

people, people who study the Chinese Chan traditions who come here, too. We have senior people here who studied in Korean lineages. All of that is, well, they say America is a melting pot. I don't know if that's going to be true anymore when we build all the walls. But there's something really, I think there's something really healthy about that. And yet there's also something really confusing about that, perhaps. So what is it we're doing here? Well, the best response to that is to say, well, we don't know yet. Or whatever it is, it's what we're doing here tonight in your body, in our bodies here tonight. And yet to think about, to recognize that there have been these transitions in the past, as there was in that remarkable century that Stephen Hine calls it, from China to Japan,

[22:01]

that there were transitions before, and that somehow there is this tradition of teaching and this tradition of practice. And that we're connected to it. Not just that we're connected to it, that we're actually doing it somehow. And yet we can't be Japanese. We can't. I spent a couple of years practicing in Japan, but I couldn't. And I was in a Japanese monastery, but I couldn't be Japanese. You can't do that. And yet I'm very grateful that I had that time. And it's not that any of you have to go and do that. So in his talking about that remarkable century, there were many great teachers in Japan after a little while who never bothered to go to China. They didn't need to. There were enough people who had done that, and there were enough

[23:02]

Chinese teachers who had come to Japan that they didn't need to go to China anymore. They could get enough of what the genuine tradition was from just being in the practice centers that were there and absorbing that. So we're in the middle of this great experiment. And to ask what is American Zen is, again, maybe a meaningless question. And yet it's interesting to, or maybe it's useful, to reflect that we're doing something new. And that all of these elements of our culture that I've mentioned are part of what that is that's new. And they're also connected to something that's very old, that goes way back in all of these traditions. And we can kind of trace that, and we can see how there are valuable teachings

[24:09]

and philosophies, and also valuable physical yogic teachings that these all refer to. And that through these practices, there is transformation. And it's not just personal transformation. It's something that we are bringing into our society, our culture, and our world, which certainly needs help. And somehow our engagement with this, I believe very firmly, very clearly, has something to give to the world. And yet, by the very nature of this new adventure where each and all engaged in, it's not clear what it is,

[25:13]

and won't be for a long time, if ever. So okay, maybe that's enough for me to say. Comments, questions, responses? Any pieces of this that you want to take on? Yes, hi. I was going to say, there's something I was curious about. In your opinion, what is the essence that stays in these transformations, that if it's removed, it's no longer sin? Okay, that's one of those kinds of questions that we had a talk here yesterday morning, where the student asked the teacher, referring to an old case, where the student asked the teacher something like that, and the teacher hit the student. But I won't hit you or even yell, I'll just say that the point is to see ourselves, and to see that beyond ourselves,

[26:19]

that our idea of, so Dogen says, to study the way is to study the self. And I would say, that's to see through our idea of ourself, and to see that our true self, as I was talking about during our Rehatsa Session, includes everything and everyone, and that we are connected to everything that's happening in the world, and where we share responsibility with everything that's happening in the world, and that everything we do makes a difference. And that, especially now living in very dark times, we can make a difference. And I can keep babbling about all this, but the heart is just to stop, to settle, and to sustain a practice of settling, to face the wall, to face ourselves,

[27:26]

to face this background, ultimate reality, and bring it back into the world, into the world, each of us in our own way, in our own lives. Thank you for the question. And then all of these different forms in Japanese culture, in American culture, and wherever, are modes of expression of that. I was wondering when you were studying in

[28:47]

Kyoto, right? So, were you in your robes all the time, or were you ever in your street clothes? Yes. And I know that in China and Japan, if you're a Westerner, the people who live there, if they were to ask you what you're doing there, if you say, I'm studying Zen, or even just if you were to say who it is, they tend to be a little incredulous about that, because it would be a sort of cultural element to it, or even a seemingly, for them, a seemingly ethnic element to it. And so, I just wondered what some of your experiences have been. Well, there were several questions there. You started off by asking what Buddhism has to, or how to, so anyway, I'll forget about that

[29:53]

question unless you ask me again. But in terms of, so I don't walk around in Chicago in my robes either. I mean, I guess I could, and some of my fellow, some of my colleagues and teachers walk around in a pari. I do sometimes, but I'm not, and I guess I could. One of the things about the Japanese Zen clergy is that we are not monastics in the traditional sense. We're not celibate unmarried. I mean, we're not necessarily celibate. So it's, you know, Suzuki Roshi talked about being neither lay nor monastic, and there are lots of lay people who are functionally monks at Tassajara and so forth. So that's another function, that's another thing

[30:57]

about Americans then, but that's actually also happening in Japan. So Japanese priests also walk around in lay clothes. And I was not living in a monastery, part of the time I was living in a monastery in Japan, and then I was in robes. But most of the time I was living in, actually between two old, old ancient temples, but I was going and teaching in colleges, and I was going out to a temple out west of Kyoto and translating with Shōhaku Okamura. Anyway, so, but yeah, when just ordinary people in Japan who I talked with, for them Buddhism was this kind of old cultural dinosaur, for the most part. Less so maybe in Kyoto where there was still some of the old cultural feeling. Anyway,

[32:03]

but that does go to your first question. What was that again? Well, for example, when we went to the, it was about the Standing Rock Demonstration, we got together with a bunch of people, and we were wearing robes. Yeah, when I go to political demonstrations, which I do sometimes, I do wear, not full robes, but I do wear a pari and rokusu, and I do go there as a clergy person, like a Protestant minister, because I'm there representing the values of Bodhisattva, the values of our precepts. I'm going there as a clergy person representing those values. So yeah, and I think there is a place for that as part of our tradition. So again, one aspect of American Zen that's

[33:10]

becoming, in current times, becoming more prominent is the American activist tradition, and I think it does fit with the Bodhisattva values and precepts and so forth. But I try to make a point of not, I don't tell people here that you should go to this demonstration or that demonstration, or sometimes announce that these are happening, because I don't think there's one right way to respond to what's happening in our society. I think it's good to know what's going on and to respond. And there will be massive demonstrations, by the way, Sunday, January 21st, and some before then, about what's going on in our government. And maybe I should post more things about that up front. So that's one aspect of what seems to me

[34:22]

part of what American Zen can do. Anyway, but there's lots of ways to represent. There are a lot of people in our particular sangha who are preparing or doing chaplain work, for example. And there are people who are doing teaching, and anyway, there are whole bunches of ways of sharing, going back to what I think your original question was, how to express this. It doesn't have to be expressed as overtly as being Buddhist, but just to the Bodhisattva work is about being in the world and being helpful. So how to be helpful, and each person may have their own way of being helpful in the world, and there are many, many ways. That's really the spirit of this, I think.

[35:22]

Yes, Kyosho. Messy. Clean it up for us. I think it is messy. So there's a little note on a bulletin board out there that says, are you interested in LGBT discussion of Zen? If so, I don't know, call Sarah Lyle. There's a group of young dragons. I've been reading African American sanghas in Seattle who are part of a sangha, but African American practitioners are meeting separately.

[36:29]

It's as if there's a culture, a need to share culture within a larger practice group that I'm not sure I understand all of, or even much of, but I think it's some transitional. I mean, I think it's, that's what I say, it's sort of messy. It is. People are trying to figure out what part of this is real for them, or is true for, you know, their truth. It's sort of your question, what's the truth within the language and the culture which are different in Japan and U.S. and Korea and China and so forth. And we live in a messy country. We have a lot of chaos going on. So there's another layer, but I think it's, you know, I've heard people say,

[37:34]

I think I've heard you say, I mean, I've heard myself say, I wish our sangha were more diverse culturally. We do have a pretty diverse sangha in terms of age and race and things, but, you know, also could be a lot more so, but we don't really know how to do that. I mean, I think it's just, it's trial and error and doing our best and looking through and being as accepting as we can, you know, know how. But I really appreciate you bringing up the question. I don't think we need to try and be more diverse, just to throw something in there. You know, we don't have to try and recruit, you know, people from this group and from that group. You know, I think we just have to be open to anybody who comes as welcome because, you know,

[38:38]

and so that's part of our job is to learn how it is to be welcoming. And also we have to speak our truth. So sometimes I do talk about, you know, what's going on in the culture and climate damage and injustice, and some people get uncomfortable when I do that. And yet, I feel like I have a responsibility to do that. So I'm not going to stop doing that. So in your 30 years of being involved in this... It's more like 45, but anyway, I'm getting older. Whatever number of decades. So that's a time when women have not been having a much model of having a very comfortable role.

[39:49]

So then my question is, how has that changed in practice? I don't have the answer to it, but I think it has. I can think of a few specific ways, but those are the superficial ways. When I started practicing in San Francisco, we carried a stick around to hit people. And there are some places... Do you do that at Dempster Street still? Yeah. I can't remember the name. Kiyosaku. Yeah, that's right. You know, I liked it. I don't mind it at all. Yeah, I don't mind it, but I know that some people... Not the actual experience of being hit in the shoulder, because it sort of relieves some tension, but the sound of it scares people. Oh, yeah. So I don't do it here. She was so under the influence. Yeah. Anyway, part of what's... But that's one example of how, in terms of...

[40:55]

Do you think that's true of women? Yeah, just because particularly... Well, what's happening now with women calling out sexual assault and stuff like that, that there are women who've been traumatized, and that sound... Not the actual hit. The sound has... Some women particularly found that... Felt unsafe hearing that sound. That was the experience we had at San Francisco Suicide Center. Yeah, I mean, I sat for eight years with the sound of it. I don't know. It's interesting because I've used it too. But that's just a superficial example. I think there are deeper examples. You know, another difference is when I started practicing at different places, you were supposed to sit.

[41:57]

I'm just talking about my own sense and how we do things here. There's so many different versions of what American sound is. So I'm only speaking for my own sense of things. But there was the idea of you have to sit perfectly straight and you can't move. And I don't know if you still emphasize that. But here I tell people, if you need to change your position in the middle of a period, if it's really painful, go ahead and do it. Just do it quietly. I was in one group. I made myself a meditation bench. You know, it would fold. It was very, very strict. And the bench started collapsing. I mean, now it seems pretty funny. But, you know, it's like that. And then the monitor comes around and shouts, go away! And then it starts folding.

[43:01]

And now they're quietly collapsing. Well, my story about that was one of my first sessions. I was practicing with a Soto teacher in the Upper West Side of New York. But I went to a session with Edo Shimano, who's now known as one of the worst sexual predators in American Zen history. But anyway, I was sitting behind him. It was one of my first sessions. And I was sitting behind a divider. And I don't know, I was changing my position or something. So he couldn't see me directly, but he could tell. And he yelled, Don't move! Really loud, you know. So the whole Zen door just fell. I got through that session. It's funny because I do Tai Chi and I had a Tai Chi teacher who was a woman who died one night

[44:02]

from another Tai Chi teacher who turns out to be a man. And they both have the same teacher. She was so much stricter than he is. So the other way around. She was terrifying. He's like a piece of cake. But I think men have been influenced by women, more women practitioners. Anyway, it's complicated. That's his one word. Yes, Dylan. I just wanted to briefly respond to Gyoshu's point about separate sitting groups. I think in addition to it being about expressing the truth, I think it can also be the use of a shared language that can get to the root of the practice quicker or more effectively. It's not just

[45:02]

proclaiming, this is my version of the truth, but it's when there's a distinct community that has a shared experience that they know is a little bit different than a traditional experience that sometimes and often times it can be easier to know how to talk about the practice in a safe way or in a way that makes sense and that's a little distinct to that group of people. I don't think it's ever meant in a way of being a separatist in some ways. I think it's more just in the examples that I've heard about or read about it's just a little bit it's a way to encourage the practice for folks that are different in some way. Yeah, I think we are at a place where we need to find ways to accommodate and welcome different people in different ways and try things. So, yeah, thank you

[46:05]

for that. So, we're past time, but this is interesting experiment that we're doing.

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