Good morning, everybody. On this cool day, I'd like to ask us to give a warm welcome to our speaker, Raoul Mankaya. Raoul started sitting here in the 70s when Berkeley Zen Center was owned by Dwight Way. And he came over from Dwight Way to Russell Street to continue that practice. He's been a pillar here for many, many years. Raoul originally is from Chile and has been living in North America for quite a while now. He has a couple of grown sons, and he's a professional psychologist who practices his psychology in San Francisco at Mission Mental Health. And he also has a private practice here in Berkeley. So through all the practices of biculturalism and multilingualism, practicing as a priest and as a layperson, he received Dharma transmission from Sogyal Roshi last year. He is well-read and well-versed in the teachings.

[01:05]

He's a published author. He's written a number of books about psychology. Some of them have some zen in them. I think some books are going to be published later this year or next year. I think he's speaking a little bit about that. So, without any further ado, let's do the teaching. Well, thank you, Russ. With that, we can all go home now. Or go have tea and cookies. So I wanted to say something about, Ross mentioned my name, Raul, but this last year I've been practicing with getting used to my name, dharma name that Sojourn Roshi gave me, Denkei. And I was sort of surprised during the transmission ceremony that my ordination name is Imo Denkei, which was the ordination name I got for lay ordination.

[02:07]

When you have a priest ordination, you still keep the same lay ordination name. And when you have a dharma transmission, you still have your lay ordination name. And I was used to Imo, but he said, no, you can't use Imo. Your name is Denkei. And so your priest name is Tenke. So I've been sort of practicing getting used to that name this past year. And it's an interesting kind of recapitulation. Because my birth name I never liked. And I didn't like Tenke that much either. And so It's funny, you know, how we're named by the other, and then we have to do something with it. We have to appropriate it in some way. So I spent a long time trying to, or appropriating Raul and Onkayo until I think in my maturity I came to actually feel good about it and like it and sort of recognize it as me.

[03:24]

And so I've been doing the same thing with Denkei. And it means, Denkei means, feel the blessings. Which is a nice meaning. But the sound of Denkei was sort of... And the meaning, sort of, It's nice. Sort of, you know, flowery, you know, like the sutras. And then I came across this word in German. Because I was thinking, well, they gave field blessing. Does that have to do with me? Do I see myself as that? Do other people see me that way? You know, what are my conditions? And how do we bring out the unconditioned out of our conditions?

[04:30]

Not without them or at their expense. So we are what we are and yet we're much more than what we are but what we think we are. So I was reading something and came across the word in German, denkin. And denkin is like the character shin in Chinese, which means both to think and to feel. And so thinking and feeling, yeah, that's kind of like me. And that's probably my conditioning, you know, how people see me. Kind of thoughtful, or maybe too much thinking, or too much feeling, or too emotional.

[05:37]

And then, but that can also has the root with danke. So it's, which has to do with gratefulness. So thinking and feeling in a grateful, maybe graceful way. So thinking. So it's starting to, starting to feel more like me. So anyway, so aside from that little introduction, The topic of my talk today is non-attachment to Buddha nature is the Buddha nature. Or letting go of God for God's sake. And so I want to start with an introductory poem from a fascicle from Dogen.

[06:52]

It's the Kanjin fascicle. And it says, if the mind is deluded, the sutras, or the teaching, turns us. If the mind is enlightened, we turn the sutras, or the teaching. If we transcend delusion and enlightenment, then the sutras, or the teaching, turn the sutras, or the teaching. So I asked myself the question, well, what does it mean for the teaching to turn the teaching, or for the sutras to turn the sutras? So in response to that, I wrote this poem. The mind that turns the teaching is the same as the teaching, since the teaching are the mind of Buddha. The sutras that turn the deluded mind is none other than our true mind.

[07:58]

Thus the sutras turn the sutras and the mind turns the mind. Sometimes the teacher turns the student. Sometimes the student turns the teacher. Sometimes the speaker turns the audience. Sometimes the audience turns the speaker. We're all turning and returning. Because we move together, we sit still together. Because we sit still together, we're all slowly changing together. Like the Earth. So, uh... So now to the main theme related to the title that I gave to this talk today. There's a traditional symbol of Soto Sen that Dogen used instead of the five ranks to transmit the Dharma.

[09:10]

And this is part of what you study as part of the process of transmission. And the five ranks, which you may have heard or not heard about, had degenerated into scholastic polemics. So Dogen sort of put it aside because up to Dogen, that's what people studied during the transmission process. So he developed all these these symbols which are diagrams, actually. And so first there's a black circle. that represents that Buddha's and sentient beings, or priest and lay people, enlightenment and delusion are one, or at least not two. Then inside that black circle, there's a red circle, and the red circle inside the black circle represents the world of duality, or not one.

[10:21]

And the distinction between Buddhist and sentient beings, priests and lay people, enlightenment and delusion. And then inside the red circle, there's a cross that turns into a swastika turning towards the left. And the Nazis took the swastika and used it turning towards the right. and the spokes of the swastika represent the four wisdoms and the transformations of wisdom and how reality is always in a process of change and the four wisdoms are in a process of transforming into one another and one another so there's nothing stable as wisdom it's always in the process of change.

[11:23]

Then the horizontal line inside that cross, inside the circle, inside another circle, right, lines up with the black circle, and the vertical axis lines up with the red circle. And the core of the axis, the place where the two axes meet, where they intersect, represent the inconceivable or the unobtainable through ongoing practice. No matter how much you practice, no matter how hard you practice, there's something unobtainable or unattainable in practice. So therefore, all we have is ceaseless practice. And ceaseless practice is not causation. This is the teaching of Beginner's Mind. This practice that we're doing here, at its core, we're not obtaining anything.

[12:32]

So Dogen says, ceaseless practice enhances ceaseless practice by more ceaseless practice. So, like this morning, we had the Tencel, Lori was the Tencel, so we could call her Ceaseless Practice, or the Tencel, or Lori, we call Ceaseless Practice. Then we had the Head Server, who was Ross, and so the Head Server, or Ross, is Ceaseless Practice. And then you had the Doshi, in this case me, also could be called ceaseless practice. So ceaseless practice is enhancing ceaseless practice by more ceaseless practice. Or Lori is enhancing Ra's by more Raul or Denke.

[13:36]

So this is how we practice together. We're turning each other. We're turning and turning each other. just by Morsi's Dispractice. And that's it. And there's nothing, there's no enlightenment outside that practice itself. The whole teaching is right there. So this is kind of extra. You know, the talk is kind of extra. It's a teaching on the practice. But it's actually just more practice. And Suzuki Roshi said that enlightenment comes before practice. Or that it is enlightenment that takes us into practice. It's not that we go into practice in order to get enlightened. It's because we are enlightened that we practice.

[14:43]

And this is often how, when we read the stories, the stories of the Koans, sometimes all these stories about somebody getting enlightened, you know, and they kind of get enlightened right away. And you say, you know, how can they get enlightened? And then people think, well, they were so much better than we are, you know. I mean, it's all been downhill ever since. That was the real standard. Those were the days, the good old days. But that's sort of the dualistic way of understanding. That's pointing out how enlightenment comes. I mean, it's inseparable from practice. But because we are enlightened, then we practice the practice enlightenment. It's not that we practice in order to get enlightened. So we awaken within enlightenment. or from an enlightened dream, or from a dream that we have.

[15:48]

We have to awake from the dream that we have about enlightenment. And we spend years practicing in the midst of this dream about enlightenment. And then we have to awake within that dream that we have about enlightenment. Or maybe it's an enlightened dream that wakes us up. So according to Dogen's graph, first we realize the non-dual Mahayana teaching. That Buddhist and sentient beings, priests and laypeople, delusion and enlightenment are one, we're not two. That's the fundamental principle. And then, we turn away from the world to practice. And this is the left-leaning swastika. and the wisdom of non-attachment and separating from the conditions that interfere with practice.

[16:51]

Right? So if you have a job that interferes with practice, or you have an addiction that interferes with practice, or you have a relationship that interferes with practice, then sometimes you have to leave that in order to practice. And this is sort of the metaphor for monastic practice, or for Hinayana practice. Hinayana is the small vehicle. I think most of us here are old-timers, so that doesn't require much explanation. But the Hinayana practice always has to be practiced with Mahayana mind. So that's what Sukhiroji said, our practice is Hinayana practice with Mahayana mind. And that's very much the spirit of Sojourn Roshan. or at least that's something that impressed me about him. I mean how he had this kind of strict monk's practice but yet he didn't seem like a monk or didn't have the attitude of a monk.

[17:58]

So Hinayana practice with Mahayana mind and if you don't practice Hinayana practice with Mahayana mind then it turns into a right-leaning swastika. And the right-leaning swastika is considering priest practice or monastic practice as better and superior than lay practice, and Buddhas as superior to sentient beings or bodhisattvas. And this is where people get turned off with religion, because then religion seems to be like fascism. So, Kinuyana practice, without Mahayana mind, is a kind of attachment to Buddha nature. Usually, practice of non-attachment is not attachment to hindrances, or to desire, or to delusion.

[19:01]

But actually, as Pai Chan, who was this Chinese teacher, Khyapujo, in Japanese and he's credited around 18 something from savings then from being destroyed by the emperor because the emperor was persecuting Buddhism all the sects of Buddhism that appeared to him to be parasitic meaning because at some point if you have 40,000 monasteries Actually, if you want the exact number, something like that. Very large number, 40,000 temples and very large number of temples and monasteries. At some point there weren't enough people to support all the monks. There weren't enough lay people to support all the monks. Sort of like social security nowadays.

[20:03]

You know, there are not enough people working to support people to retire and to get social security. And so, what Pai Chang did, he turned around and he said, because the monks weren't supposed to work, the monks were supposed to do begging, begging, and to exchange food for the Dharma, a kind of quip for food. And so, because the monks weren't supposed to till the ground to plant food, because per mistake they might kill, kill a worm or an insect. So he sent all the monks to work in the fields and he said famously, a day of not working is a day of not eating. And he wanted the government to tax the crops produced by the monks on an equal basis with the taxation that lay people had to pay.

[21:10]

So I think this is the beginning of this teaching, Mahayana teaching, of non-duality between priests and laypeople, which is very much part of our practice, and part of Sojourn Roshi's practice, and part of Suzuki Roshi's practice when he said to his students, you are neither priest nor lay people. So then what are you? That's the koan that we all have, whether we practice as priest or as lay people, whether we wear robes or we don't wear robes. What? Or who? Same question. So, this part of, so he had, Pai Chang has this teaching of the complete and the incomplete teaching.

[22:23]

The incomplete teaching was to explain or study the defilements in the profane or impure things in order to eliminate the profane. or in order to eliminate the hindrances, or in order to eliminate desire, or eliminate delusion. That he called the incomplete teaching. And the complete teaching, he says, explains the defilement in pure things, in order to eliminate the sacred, or eliminate our idea of enlightenment, or of emptiness. So this is part of getting attached to Buddha nature or to Samadhi or to the calmness, tranquillization that comes with Sazen.

[23:29]

Sometimes people criticize, so to say, for being quietistic. Or people who don't meditate criticize people who meditate by saying, oh, you're just trying to, you know, be so quiet and calm. You know, I'll, remember I said that, my uncle asked me that one time, why do you meditate? And that was in my early years, you know, and I said, well, because just to be peaceful. He said, ah, peaceful. I'll be peaceful when I die, that's how I'll be peaceful. Right now I'm too busy to be peaceful. So this kind of duality of stillness and activity. So we have to totally forget about the stillness side of practice, which is actually called the relative within the absolute. In the first rank, Zazen is the relative within the absolute. and activity is the absolute within the relative.

[24:36]

So we have to, it's very important to do Zazen and to have formal practice because the black circle without the red circle, so the red circle without the black circle leads to the right leaning swastika. But the The black circle without the red circle leads you to think, well, if you're already enlightened, then why do we need to practice? Why do we need to make the effort? It's hard enough to get up in the morning, although some people, you know, some people practice in the morning, and it's very good to practice in the morning. Some people practice in the afternoon. Some people are morning people, and some people are evening people. My partner and I, I'm a morning person. I was born at 6 a.m. I don't know if it has anything to do with that. So just as well, I'm the proof that that theory doesn't work because he's a night person.

[25:41]

He can stay up all kinds of hours of the night, but he gets up in the morning to do his. Although at some point you can do that when you're young. But at some point, when you're older, you need to get your sleep. You need your beauty rest. Because otherwise your body starts breaking down and then you die young. So you can go all your youth, you know, sleeping three or four hours and then until your body breaks down and your body says, no more, I can't do this anymore. So, you know, there's a certain amount of sleep that is necessary. So at some point it catches up with you and you have to get enough sleep. But we have people who come to morning zazen, we have people who come to afternoon zazen and both are good and some people come to both. So my girlfriend, she's a night person. She'll stay up late, you know, and I'm a morning person.

[26:45]

So we've achieved a kind of modus vivendi understanding because then, you know, we have some space from each other, right? Because in relationships, for it to work, you have to have time together, but you also have to have time apart and do things on your own, right? And so in the morning I do things on my own, and at night she does things on her own. It took a little, you know, it's not always, you know, it's not always free of difficulty. Those are the conditions, right? So how do we practice with the conditions that we have? We all have a set of conditions. And we don't pretend they're not there. Like, that's that mistaken notion of non-attachment. So not being attached to Buddha nature is like pretending the conditions are not there. That you don't have certain conditioning or certain personality traits.

[27:47]

So we have personality traits, personality attributes, and then we have Buddha's traces. And so in any one person, you have the Buddha traces, and then you have the personality attributes. And it's hard to separate the two. And sometimes in a teacher you see the Buddha traces, and sometimes you see the personality traits. And which are the conditions. And you say, oh I like the Buddha trace, but I don't like the personality attributes or the traits. And ultimately we have to transform our traits into Buddhist traces. Which is where Buddha went. Where did he go? Where did she go? So that's where we want to go, right? That's the way. The way is leading to that place where Buddha went. And left the Buddha traces for us to follow.

[28:52]

So we practice the path, which the path is Buddha's traces. Tsa Zen, you know, chanting, bowing, all those are Buddha's traces. which point in the direction of where Buddha went. But Buddha didn't go anywhere. Right? So, where is Buddha? Right? So, Sojourn is in Tassajar. But, not really. It's right here. So is this same or different to Tathagatagarbha? Nathakona. And you can fall on either side of that cone and say, well, this is this kind of practice and different, better, worse, or Tathagatagarbha is the real thing.

[30:05]

You know, that's the real monastic practice. Then you have the swastika, leaving left, leaving right. That's the process of wisdom. And it's also the process of everyday life. Every situation throughout our day, every interaction, every person we have a little situation with, we're always practicing in all these different situations. And in all those different situations, the four wisdoms are in process of mutation and transformation and transforming us and we're transforming each other so with practice we learn to live that way so this is ceaseless practice and then the ceaseless practice is not just in the zendo

[31:05]

So, just like we leave, the bell rings, and we get off from Zazen, we forget all about Zazen. Oh, that was, you know, that was good Samadhi. That's, hmm, I like that. Oh, that, my legs were killing me. Thank goodness the bell rang. Those are all the conditions. Regardless of whether it was wonderful Samadhi, or regardless of how painful the legs, we just get up. And then we do service. And then we leave the Zendo and we forget all about the Zendo until we come back again. And then we meet our life and our circumstances. We don't, you know, sometimes, oh, you know, my work, when am I going to leave my work? I can't stand my work anymore. I want to go and live in Tassajara or I'm going to go live somewhere that's peaceful and I can really practice because my ordinary life is, this is not practice. It's, my practice is somewhere else over there and then you go over there

[32:14]

And then you see the conditions over there, the conditions in the monastery, the conditions in the community, the problems in the Sangha, you know, the problems with the teacher, and say, ooh, maybe I want to go back. to maybe my life over there was better and then some people you know leave in this rope and go back to that or they get sick of that and come over here you know this is the nirvana and samsara right this the turning so you might as well take the turning where it is in a moment to moment whether it's in the monastery or whether it's in the temple in this city temple or whether it is in our job and we just immerse ourselves in the activity of what we need to do and forgetting about the sacred state

[33:18]

or the altered state. If you get attached to that, you can't do anything. But we also have to, if we also have to, it also has to be in our activity because otherwise pretty soon we get lost in the first problem that we meet. You know, sometimes I, you know, go to work after Zazen, you know, go get in the bar and go to the clinic, you know, and I'm kind of just kind of feeling wonderful, you know, and the mission, oh, it's so pretty, and all the homeless, you know, the drug, people with drug addiction and whatnot, but even that seems wonderful. and then we start working and then we're in urgent care.

[34:29]

And then pretty soon there's one, then there's two, and there's three, and there's four people. needing this, wanting that, in varying degrees of frustration. And then there's the staff, and working with one, two, or three, or four staff people in relationship to those one, two, or three, or four people who need something. And then the staff start getting upset about this or about that. And pretty soon, you know, the whole thing blows up. So we have to beat the stillness in that new situation, not the stillness that was there before, in Zazen. So how do we find then Zazen, the corner of everyday life, in that situation, as it's fastly moving? And sometimes if we're back thinking, I want to be in the quiet over there, then we get, we're frustrated, get frustrated.

[35:33]

That has happened to me, I get frustrated. and then I have to kind of re-gather, because then it's the conditions, right? Okay, one person is okay, two people, but then three, four, five, ten, twenty, so then how do you practice Vimalakirti, right? Where hundred, thousand, hundred thousand, million, And then the number doesn't matter anymore. So. So, we have to practice with the situation that's in front of us.

[36:52]

And that's ceaseless practice. And manifest the practice in that situation. That's what Dogen calls, the present moment refers to the time of ceaseless practice. The present moment refers to the time of ceaseless practice. And then we can accept the situation and what we have. Because we either have the situation that we have and we are kind of clinging to the situation so it doesn't change into something else. Because we want it the way it is. And then it's slipping, it's changing into something else. slipping from our hands transforming into something else that we don't want so we have to practice there with impermanence or we want a different situation or we have a relationship and we're afraid of losing them so we kind of cling and the more we cling

[38:15]

the more the person wants out. Or, we don't accept the person we have, the person we have chosen, and we want somebody else. So, then we cease as practice, we can just, since what we have we don't really have it, we might as well enjoy what we have. So I think I'm going to finish. I'm going to read another sort of prose, really, from Dogen. Then I'll stop and take questions or comments, whatever you'd like to say. When the moment of arriving has not yet appeared, the moment of not arriving is here. When the moment of arriving has not yet appeared, the moment of not arriving is here.

[39:23]

The moment of not arriving is the moment of arriving. So this refers to the two circles. Or Bodhisattva practice and Buddhist practice. When Buddha has not arrived, the Bodhisattva is the practice of not arriving. And Bodhisattva practice is Buddha's practice. Thank you very much. Peter. In various places, I can't point to a specific instance, but in various It seems so long for the past. Seems so longing for the past?

[40:27]

Longing for the past. How wonderful things were in China. How do you understand that? I don't read him that way. I haven't heard that. We all hear what we hear. I don't read him as longing. So how do you read the references to the people we should emulate because things are not so great these days? Well, again, it's sort of like the two circles. In some ways, you know, our ancestors, we need to emulate our ancestors. On the other hand, Buddha is always going beyond Buddha. We're always finding and rediscovering Buddha anew. So in some ways, that's our burden.

[41:30]

To rediscover Buddha right now, not in the past. At the same time that we, you know, honor and I wouldn't say worship, but honor and are devoted to the practice of our ancestors. So you see it as a source of inspiration and connection with the past? As pointing to the present. Yeah. Meaning the past being realized in the present. Okay. Not in the past. Yeah. Yes, Jeff? So when circumstances are really challenging, And I don't have good words for this, but we might say that reality arises and passes away in each moment. Where does stability come from? Is that the arising of practice in each moment? That you don't create a polarity from the challenge, from the situation.

[42:41]

There's nothing there to polarize you. So it's like an instrument, or an arc, or the bow and arrow, right? The bow. So, you have to harmonize the tension. And I think with practice, the tension is harmonized just like the tension in our body is harmonized. Right? So it's us and our legs. Right? My legs are killing me. You know? Why are the legs doing this to me? And so we're fighting with ourselves. We're fighting with our bodies. And at some point, we don't fight anymore. And so the tension is harmonized. In the same way, just like you and your legs, is you and the situation, or you and somebody else.

[43:45]

Can I chime in on that? Maybe the question is the opposite question. It's not what creates instability, but what creates instability. And it's that duality which is constantly pulling back and forth against that. Well, the instability is that the situation is changing all the time. So, stable doesn't mean at the expense of change. That's rigidity. So, impermanence is what's happening. So, the situation is always changing. So, we find our stability in that instability, that constant change. Is it time? Yeah? Okay, thank you very much.

[44:45]

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