Good morning, everyone. I'd like to introduce our speaker today, Raul Moncayo, also known as Imo Denke, which translates as Suchness Field of Blessings. Denke's Field of Blessings have been shared with us for nearly 40 years now. He grew up in Chile and moved to Paris as a young man and was introduced to Deshimaro Roshi's teaching by a friend and then came to Berkeley in the 70s and studied at the Wright Institute and became a Lacanian analyst. He made a deep connection with Sojo Roshi, our teacher here at Dwight Way, Berkeley Zen Center's original dwelling place. and practiced there for a number of years, and came here in 79 when Berkley Zen Center moved to Russell Street. Denke is Chilean by birth, but is bilingual, as you will soon hear.

[01:00]

I'll be speaking in Spanish. He trains students at the Mission Mental Health Clinic in San Francisco. and he also has a private practice here in Berkeley, and he teaches in Spanish in San Francisco. Denke is a published author and travels annually to Europe to present his findings on the interface between Zen and psychology. He's a father of two young boys who are now grown and fairly independent, and he lives with his companion Debra and their little dog Tussauro in Marin. He gets up very early in the morning and comes over to the East Bay quite a few times during the week to support our practice here. Please welcome Nicky. Thank you very much, Ross, for that lovely introduction. Do all that standing in one leg.

[02:02]

Swallow the whole lotion in one gulp. Just this. So, Ross was talking about different aspects of my practice, our practice. This is my home temple, and Sojin Roshi is my teacher and has been my teacher for a long time, and you're all my Dharma brothers and sisters. And we have this particular form of practice, quasi-monastic practice, that Sojin Roshi has given us through... Suzuki Roshi has given us through Sojin Roshi, or whichever order we want to say that. And where we have this monastic schedule, which is shared with

[03:10]

most of Zen Center, meaning San Francisco Zen Center and Green Gulch and Tassajara, of being rooted in this deep practice of Samadhi. And monastic practice really facilitates concentrated practice. But it's still been said, Zazen is not a practice of concentration. So what is it then? So in our way of practicing here at BCC, we go back and forth, practice inside the gate, practice outside the gate. In the rest of Zen Center, it's just practice Mostly inside the gate and going outside the gate is discouraged So you have to leave the outside the gate outside the gate and just practice inside the gate And we do more of that when we do sachins Although our sachins also have a fair amount of back and forth between

[04:37]

inside the gate and outside the gate to sometimes to the frustration of the session director and our teachers. But I think that's a distinctive, a markless mark of our practice. And we might as well own it as a distinctive mark, which is no marks, nothing to become distinguished about. nothing to assume anything about, even though we discuss the assumptions that we all have. And we need to discuss them, because if we don't discuss the assumptions that we have, then we misrecognize perception on how we see things, because we don't see the assumptions through which we're seeing the world. And this is something that our teacher Vasubandhu gave us with his teaching. deconstruct our perceptions.

[05:41]

So we come back to this non-assuming mind, so we discuss our assumptions, not pretend, they're not there, nothing to talk about, nothing to think about, and yet we perceive through all these assumptions, so we might as well discuss our assumptions, but how we discuss our assumptions without raising the banner of the ego. Because then we just bring down the Dharma to the bitterness of ordinary life. And so we always return to this non-assumption or thoughtlessness, which he did not mean rejection of thought or words.

[06:44]

And he made that very explicit through his teaching of idealistness. So this non-assuming mind, as we discuss the matters of the world, is very fundamental. And that's what we cultivate in our practice, in our practice of Samadhi. And this is the teaching of Beginner's Mind, and I think this is Sogen Roshi's teaching. Maybe his version of Beginner's Mind would be the Nonassuming Mind. And that has been a teaching that he has really been hitting me with. all these years. Sometimes getting it, sometimes not getting it. Sometimes pushing back, sometimes being pushed back.

[07:53]

Taking the backward step. Dropping all assumptions. And then we pick them up again. But the second time when we pick him up again is with a difference. It's the same way in which we pick up again the world when we leave the zendo. Is it the same world or isn't it the same world? Which moon is it? First moon? Second moon? Third moon? Same moon? Okay, so that was kind of an introduction to my topic of today. I wanted to talk with you a little bit about Zen and psychotherapy.

[08:54]

So I had to talk a little bit about this question of assumptions to be able to perhaps begin to approach this topic that can be controversial or or not in this relationship between these two different worlds. Actually, my preferred term would be, say, Zen and psychoanalysis, but psychotherapy is the politically correct term, so I can get less into trouble or less race, less worldly dust in the conversation. But on the other hand, there's just political correctness that keeps the peace, but it doesn't raise the stakes. So how do we, shall we say, speak truth to power, but with an unassuming mind?

[10:06]

Otherwise, it's just ego. In this country, the term psychoanalysis is controversial because we're having science wars. We used to have religious wars, and now we have science wars. I don't know which one's worse or better. Or, you know, the old war between science and religion. which ushered the modern world. And we have small versions of that going around. And, you know, is Buddhism a religion or not? That's one of them. Is it a philosophy or not? It's just a way of life without a theory. There's no teaching, particular teaching. There is a teaching, but we don't get attached to the teaching. Because as soon as the teaching starts raising the banner of the ego and the dust starts swirling around and we got everybody's opinions going, then we lost it.

[11:20]

So at that point we have to set it down and drop it. There's no teaching there. Buddha never said anything. He didn't utter a single word. And yet we have volumes of the Guddha's teaching. All those volumes of words, you can count them, it would be a kind of countable infinity. But within that countable infinity, there's the uncountable. Not a single word. So, whatever words we use, should always come back to that place of zero. nothing not use words as things to hit each other with so that's part of the science wars in buddhist terms we could say psychoanalysis is a kind of mahayana form of abhidhamma

[12:36]

And I don't know if people know what that means, so I'm just using big words. I think I can assume that's an assumption, right? Mahayana, Hinayana. Abhidharma, it's another assumption. Different schools of Buddhism. We have different schools of Buddhism. We have different schools of psychology. We have different schools of psychoanalysis. We have different understandings of science. We have different forms of science. And then we have cognitive psychology or behaviorism, which is a kind of Hinayana Abhidhamma. And both Mahayana and Hinayana are Indian. So they both stem from a single root culture. and then it's spread to different countries.

[13:41]

So then we have different countries embracing different forms of Buddhism. The same way we have different countries embracing different forms of psychology. And the science wars in the social sciences in this country are between the German and the French thought on one side and British empiricism on the other. Well, this emphasis on evidence and evidence-based practice and all that, that's English and it's British. Although the British also have that and is the source of that, but they're also, you know, a lot more pluralistic than the US is in many ways, paradoxically, even though we're supposed to be the revolutionary country. So you have, for example, departments of psychoanalysis in England.

[14:45]

Psychoanalysis was rooted out of the university in this country by behaviorism and cognitive psychology. Oh, the unconscious, big mind. Oh, that doesn't exist. So a dualistic understanding of non-existence. What is not, doesn't exist, non-existence? Neither is nor is not. That's a basic teaching of the Heart Sutra. And it's not just a mental thing, because the mind is not just intellectual or mental. This question of is or is not is a question of being, of our experience. But in the US, at the same time, we have a growing interest in this interaction between psychology and Buddhism, and between psychoanalysis and Buddhism.

[16:00]

One of our Sangha members, Bob Rosenbaum, he's a cognitive psychologist from Kaiser, And he wrote a book on Zen and psychotherapy from a cognitive behavioral perspective. But there have been several influential books on Buddhism and psychoanalysis, and across the nation there are various Buddhist teachers who are also psychoanalysts. And there's a book on that that was produced by the New School for Social Research in New York City. And this professor there gathered a bunch of us, I was included in that, who were both Buddhist teachers and psychoanalysts from different schools of Buddhism and different schools of psychoanalysis. And he wanted to get all of us sort of in one room and start discussing and dialoguing these questions.

[17:04]

This is Jeremy Safran is the name of the professor there. And so there are different ways of doing this. And some people want to mix them up, and some people want to keep both in their own place, which is more my position, is to build a bridge, but keep each one in its own place, interdependent and independent at the same time. And part of that is, I believe in that, part of that is what I believe to be to honor the wishes of my teachers. I think there are many Zen teachers who are concerned about psychologizing Zen or psychologizing Buddhism and reducing this deep practice to some kind of pop psychology or to something purely mental or intellectual.

[18:06]

And because this understanding of mind that we have in our lineage, that's very deep and has very deep roots and goes way back, doesn't seem to be there just to a great extent in Western psychology or Greek thought or Judeo-Christian thought for that matter. So there's something about our lineage that is unique and that needs to be preserved and transmitted and not mixed it up. And similar concerns are on the other side. One of the things that Freud said was he felt really strongly about is keep this away from the priests. But, of course, we are different kinds of, we are different, not assuming, but different kind of priests that we have here.

[19:16]

And some people even wonder, you guys are really priests. Well, maybe Sojourns are priests, but the rest of you? No, no, no. Don't think so. So Norman Fisher says, well, we're lay priests. Which is kind of one version of Suzuki Roshi's, you are neither monks nor lay people. So what are you? So he left us with that question. and we have to find that out through the practice not outside the practice but through the practice investigate that question which is what we've been in the middle of doing so it is a kind of non-dual teaching which can be perplexing and confusing to people who want to see things one way or another you know when I think of a priest

[20:26]

This is what I think a priest is. When I think of a layperson, this is what I think of a layperson. And this kind of doesn't fit in either one of those categories. But a lot of people in the psychedelic world kind of look at me and say, I don't know about that. And it doesn't help that in Google, One of the things, the first thing that comes up in Google for me is like my transmission photograph that Mary Mocene took. So there I am with my shaven bowl. I can't hide it. I wish I could, but I can't hide it. Because, you know, it's good not to be able to be pinned down.

[21:27]

It gives you a lot of freedom. And to be able to, you know, be in the process of transformations, which life is. So you can transform as you go. Does it mean, oh, you don't have a definite identity? That sounds crazy to me. Well, I do. So I don't want to be closeted either. I don't want to be a closeted priest, and I don't want to be a closeted psychoanalyst. Sometimes I am, though, to be frank, because I think strategically people wouldn't understand So, I don't mix them up in that way, although I am being mixed up.

[22:36]

It's okay. And then the clients don't care, really. A lot of the clients don't care. This is all the professionals, you know, and all the teachers. But people, ordinary people, often they don't care. They're just going with the real with what's happening in the moment the real thing the real dragon not the ideas we have about the dragon but the real dragon right now so most often people will give you the benefit of the doubt and some people come to see me uh because they know of of that I was a priest or I was in practice. Sometimes people come to see me because I'm a Lacanian analyst or sometimes they just come to see me because they just need help and they're hoping I can help.

[23:41]

So, you know, I try not to make too many assumptions because then that's kind of working politically, strategically also. Because that's part of the deal is how do you work with systems? And I'm working with several systems at the same time and transmigrating from one to the other. But my root practice is my root teacher is Zazay. That's the foundation. That's like the bottom of the ocean. And then on the surface there are all these different winds and tides and pools in one direction or another and all this trash, you know, circulating. So you have to kind of stay away from the trash and then that the trash sink to the bottom.

[24:54]

And then when the trash sinks to the bottom, then you can see clearly where everything is and what everything is. Or another way to see it is like an electromagnetic wave. So we're sitting in the deep ocean or we're sitting in deep space. The tail of the Naga or the head of the Naga. The head is on the surface with the waves and the tail is at the bottom. That's where the wisdom of Nagarjuna is kept. It's the tail of this electromagnetic wave through space. So we can feel that stillness of the deep ocean.

[26:07]

When we come through the gate, we feel it. Green Gulch also has a very strong feeling of that, very deeply rooted in Zazen. So that's our basic Zazen practice. And so when you and I begin a session, there's two cuts that cut the knot of entanglement. One is at the beginning, and one's at the end. So at the beginning, you gather and you meet. And you sit in silence. And let's see what's going to come to the surface. And so somebody has to start speaking. What are you going to say? Oh, gee, I don't know what to say.

[27:11]

What are you going to say? Okay, speak freely. Whatever. Everything is accepted. Where will you start? What's true about you? Or what are you trying to express, reveal? Do you want to tell me about your pain or your suffering? Or why are you coming here? Some people come. Oh, I'm here because I want to be a psychoanalyst. Oh, yeah? And could you say more about that? Oh, I'm interested in the theory. I've been reading this book and that book, you know, And by the way, I saw your book too, and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Well, that's not how you become a psychologist. Like coming to Zen and saying, the books we read, right?

[28:18]

You come to the teacher and say, oh, I read this book and I read that book, and Zen this and Zen that, and you know? Uh, mm-mm-mm, eh. Not Zen. That's it. So if you want to be a psychmentalist, the way to become a psychmentalist is not by talking about the theories. Tell me about some problem you have. Oh, I don't have any problems. I'm just interested in ideas. So that's your problem. So in that case, like Lakhan will throw you out at that point. Get out. Like a Zen teacher also will throw you out.

[29:20]

Oh, what a mean, what a mean guy. You know, what a, you know, what an expletive. And a kinder way of doing that would be to say, well, to become a Saigonese, you have to have a problem. You think you're different from your patients? Oh, but I want to be a doctor. I want to treat people. I want to help people. Oh yeah? Well, you have to be a patient first. What's your problem? Because those are the ego defenses, right? That's the ego, in our parlance we call it ego defenses, but it's the same thing that we call ego.

[30:26]

So, you're told the tradition from Freud to Locke-Harris, you never accept anybody for analytical formation that doesn't come first with your suffering. Openly, directly, in real time, this is my pain, this is my problem. So that's like the Heart Sutra, that's the the heart of wisdom starts with suffering, the first noble truth. And then you also have to, to help people, you also have to become entangled with it. So, you have to make their problem your own.

[31:33]

And then, their problem becomes your problem, and then you bring your problem, which is their problem, to Zazen. So when we say, when we sit Zazen, we're not sitting alone, we're sitting with our problems, we're sitting with all the problems, all of the problems of the world, the immediate world in which we live. Everybody else's problems. They're all there in our problem. So it's not just our problem, it's also their problem. And their problem becomes your problem. How does it become your problem? Because you say, oh, they say, I don't have a problem. Well, you say you don't have a problem, but then you told me this about all this stuff going on. Who said that? I didn't say that. Well, didn't you say this? Because often people don't know what they're saying. Like Jesus, the cross says, forgive them, Father, for they don't know what they're saying or they don't know what they're doing.

[32:39]

Half the time, we don't know what we're saying. We're saying stuff and we don't know what we're saying. So we have to hear with that third ear, not the third eye, but the third ear, to be awake. That's Avalokitesvara. Avalokitesvara's ear is that third ear. that hears what people don't know that they're saying. So then all you have to do is just feed that back. That's the echo. That's the reflection. That's the echo. You're not adding any big theory or anything. You're just saying back what people said, except that what you chose to say back is precisely what they didn't know that they knew, or they didn't know what they were saying. But often people will fight you.

[33:44]

Often people have, you can see what their problems are, but they don't see them. And then they complain about all the problems they have in their life and they don't see how the problems they have in their life is exactly echoing the problems that they don't see that they have. Which is like karma. But to get them to see the reflection and how the problems that they have are precisely related to the problems that they don't see that they have, they'll get really pissed at you. They'll get really pissed at you. And you're human too. You're just, you know, this and this and that, and you're just like everybody else, and, you know, and they'll cite you. All the different people that have been problematic in their life, and they don't see their piece to it. And then you may get upset too.

[34:49]

You feel hurt, you feel attacked, you feel criticized, and you get pissed. And then they'll say, you see, you see, that's your problem. You're the one who has the problem. You're the one who needs the venom, it's not me. And that's okay. So that's how you say you pay with your person. To help somebody, they pay you, but you pay big time. You pay big time. Surgeons used to say, you're going to have to buy me a big shovel shove the shit away. But you pay big time, so you're scarred yourself. You come out of this scarred.

[35:51]

But it's okay, because that's the work of compassion. And then you have to really go and sit with all this, and clear it through. And when you're clearing it through, seeing it for what it is, bringing it back to zero, and then allowing creating the space for something different to emerge. And when it changes in view, it also changes in them. It just works that way. How are we doing with time, John? A couple more minutes. I hardly said much of what I was going to say, but I think this is probably better.

[36:55]

One thing that I'm going to finish with this, one of the debates in the field, you know, there are a lot of therapists at Spirit Rock, right, in Theravada Buddhism, and some of my colleagues like to mix them up, you know, like a colleague in New York City, he has his, he's a teacher, he has a Zen Tao next to his office, So people go from the couch to the sock, the cushion, and from the cushion to the couch. And so sometimes he sits with him in Zendo, and sometimes he's talking with him in his office, which is a kind of doku-san, but it's really, it's like one else. I appreciate that somebody's doing that, to tell you the truth, because that's kind of mixing it up and experimenting.

[38:08]

But I haven't. I don't do that. I haven't dared to do that. And he said, why not? What's wrong with you? Why are you holding yourself back? Oh, it must be your teacher. Those Soto monks who just want to do Samadhi and don't understand mindfulness. or don't understand the analysis of mental formations, which is part of Buddhism, too. But we have a rule here that says you don't draw clients from the Sangha. So if somebody comes to me in the Sangha and says, oh, could I see you for psychotherapy? I say, sorry, I can't. But I can refer you to somebody. because we're trying to keep confidentiality and not mix these two things up.

[39:18]

Which I think has a lot of merit because blurred boundaries can create lots of confusion also. But a lot of some of my other Buddhist teachers, they think that Samadhi practice is repression. It's either repression or the oceanic feeling of a fusion state. Or you're just trying to be going to some kind of hypnotic trance to return back to a privileged state of union with your mother. You know, and you're trying to avoid your problems and running away from facing the truth of what's going on in your mind. And that's why you have all the problems that you've had at Sense Center. Because nobody talks about anything and then everything gets acted out.

[40:25]

Everybody's sitting in the cushion trying to repress everything away and then all these problems get acted out. some truth. There is some truth in that. But this goes to the question of how do we understand meditation. And samadhi and mindfulness have to balance each other out. Insight and serenity or stillness have to balance each other out. The Buddha already gave us this teaching. He already gave us the antidote for using samadhi as an escape. or for using mindfulness as a substitute for Zazen. A lot of people are using mindfulness as a substitute for Zazen nowadays. But that's the topic of a whole other lecture. So I'm going to stop there. And there's not even room for questions. Okay, how about a few?

[41:34]

A couple? Is that okay? So, Jin Roshi, would you like to say something? Well, thank you for expressing, opening yourself to the sea. I appreciate that. While you were speaking about absorbing everybody, all the stuff of the world, and then taking that to thousands, But the way I would express it would be, yes, we take in all the suffering of the world, and then when we do Zazen, we offer it all to Buddha as compost. Thank you. And that frees us from having to bear the burden. Ah. Offer it up to Buddha. He's got a really big shovel.

[42:43]

Yes? The examples that you gave were, it seemed to me, all of people asking the wrong question. And then we all laughed a lot. And I'm wondering if anyone ever asks the right question. And if so, then what happens? it's a lot easier and faster. When somebody's right there and ready to take responsibility for themselves, for their life, for the interactions they're in, it goes a lot faster. But often it takes a long time for a person to be in that place. You're talking about psychoanalysis, not dota-sign, right? Well, I guess you could apply to both. Sometimes people are ready to open up.

[43:44]

It seems like your concentration was on comparing analysis with Samadhi. And I've been on the couch and the cushion. I prefer the cushion because I've learn more about myself on the cushion. But much of this has come from practice, the practice in the Zen Dojo take outside the Zen Dojo. Like during work practice, you're told what to do, you have a position, you simply do it. And by simply doing it and not resisting, I don't have the right gloves for that. I'm not muscular enough to do that or whatever. And examining those, that's kind of where I get a lot of knowledge about myself. So do people in the psychoanalytic world only compare Samadhi to analysis without taking into consideration practice?

[44:54]

Well, I mean, Samadhi is practice. Indeed. in Zazen or in ordinary activities and so part of focusing on one thing that you're doing it's just like Zazen and just like in Zazen there's stuff going on on the surface there's mental formations and mental objects rising up to the surface and affecting how you are in that moment, or how you interact with people, or how you feel with people, or whether you work harmoniously with people, or whether you get into conflict with people. And so that happens also in ordinary life. It's not always that the ocean is still. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's choppy and murky. So it's good to have a place also to go talk about those things in relationships, in your mind, and so on, that are interfering.

[46:06]

There's Zen practice as a way to work with that too. But this is another way to be able to talk about some of these things with somebody that you trust. And Andrea will have the last question. Thank you, thank you. So thank you very much for showing up with all of yourself here today. My experience of dealing with the problem in Zen practice is that I come to understand the wholeness that's behind the problem, and that's part of the transformation. And seeing that in other people is the transformation. When I hear you talk about psychoanalysis and addressing the problem, I don't, is there also that kind of seeing the wholeness within the problem, or is it more fixing a problem? Just like you think doctors could either see disease and want to cure the disease, or they actually see the health that's already there and help bring it forward.

[47:12]

Yeah. Yeah, so that's sort of the the focus on well-being, which is also there in Zazen, right? Because we experienced our problems within the context of the backdrop of stillness and serenity. I would say that that stillness is also there as a background, although it's not clearly. That's a point of difference, and that's a point where these two can supplement each other. Not that you make one unified thing out of both, but that they can borrow and cross-fertilize. But there's no way of talking about that. I mean, sometimes there is, when people have some sense of release or some sense of happiness or stillness through the process of your conversation or discussion.

[48:21]

There's a way of thinking about it, theoretically, too. But that would, I think, take us a little bit away. But I think the Lacanian field is sort of redefining psychoanalysis. And there are a lot of tools and opportunities to be able to address some of these questions, like this question of the real, or what reality is. So the backdrop is ultimate reality, which is the same question of what is mind. And so that's the backdrop of the psyche. So I would say the psychiatrist, the healer of the soul is working against that or with that backdrop. stillness as you're using it, or ultimate reality, might we call that, out of this practice, Buddha nature?

[49:35]

Or is that getting into the territory Freud warned us against? Well, you can call it Buddha nature. I think what in science they accept now is the infinite, or infinite life. When you say Buddha nature, or God nature, Maybe no nature. Like Dogen says, no Buddha nature. Maybe that's the place where they can meet. When you say Buddha or God or whatever, then... I mean, if somebody is a Buddhist, then yes. But if somebody is not a Buddhist, and then they're going to react to that, or they're atheists, and you're going to say God nature, you know, that's not going to go very well, and it creates all this interference. The words. start getting in the way of the concepts. Speaking out of our own practice, but to be followed up. Okay. Thank you. Sorry for taking so long.

[50:37]

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