Please unmute the zendo. In a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tuttagata's words. Good morning. It's a lovely summer morning here in Berkeley. Not sure, is it supposed to get really hot today? Yeah. So during her talk, Sue Osher's talk in Sashin, came upon the subject of play.

[01:02]

And I've been thinking about that further. And so the title of this talk is At Play in the Fields of Zen. I borrowed the title from the title of a novel by the wonderful novelist and Zen teacher Peter Matheson a play in the fields of the Lord. I actually don't think there's much play in that book. But here there is. And I wanted to start by reading something that was given to me at a resident meeting this Tuesday. We were celebrating Joe Buckner's birthday? Preston's birthday. Preston's birthday, oh right, I'm sorry.

[02:05]

Preston's birthday. So who wrote those things? I wrote them. It was Preston's birthday, and it was Joe's check-in. And he gave a little card with a handwritten quotation, and the one that I got was entitled, Playing with the Buddha Ancestors. And it's from, it's Dharma Hall discourse 118 from Dogen's Eheko Roku. And Dogen says, I tie up the bags of patro monks and play with them as a ball. Within this bouncing, numberless Buddha ancestors appear. I give them to the monastery so they can raise horses and onsen.

[03:10]

I tie up the bags of patro monks and play with them as a ball. Within this bouncing, numberless Buddha ancestors appear. I keep them to give to the monastery so they can raise horses and oxen. And I realized as I was reading this, was he tying up the bags that were possessions of the patrol monks, or was he... It felt to me like he was glomming all the patrol monks into a bag and turning them into a ball. Actually, does anyone ever thought about that? Alan, what is the adjective before the word monks? Patch robe. Like me. I'm wearing Sojin Hiroshi's patch robe, which I love.

[04:18]

And it just keeps getting patched until... It actually ends up being more patches than your original material. And Dogen was, you have two kinds of monks. You have patrol monks and brocade monks. Brocade monks celebrate the the wonderfulness of being a monk, of being a Buddha. The patro monks celebrate the ordinariness of being a Buddha. And Dogen was a patro monk, as was his teacher Ru Jing, as was our teacher Sojin. And I appreciate that ordinariness very much. But anyway,

[05:23]

This piece is called Playing with the Buddha Ancestors. So, usually we see Zen as a very serious and arduous and sometimes even punishing. and we wear these dark robes and often it's practiced in dark rooms and they're long painful hours of sitting. It doesn't necessarily look that from that angle look very playful. But I think it's I'd like to encourage us to pursue a sort of contrarian exploration of what we're doing here, of playing.

[06:36]

And I'll say that the teachers that I've encountered in my life, Sojin, Oichu Suzuki, Shota Harada Oshii, seeing His Holiness the Dalai Lama, seeing Maha Gosananda, and others. They all had a very joyful and playful demeanor. And I just am very moved by that. You know, I'm trying to get out of my own way to let that playfulness bubble up. And that's what I would encourage in you. And this is in the control chapter of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. Suzuki Roshi says, you know, the best way to control someone is to encourage them to be mischievous.

[07:51]

encourage that playful dimension. I was reading another thing by Suzuki Roshi earlier today where he talks about happiness and suffering. And he's talking about the non-duality of happiness and suffering that there's happiness within suffering, and there's suffering within happiness. And if we pursue one to the exclusion of the other, we're likely to get the other. If you pursue, you know, as the... Is it the Declaration of Independence or the... I think the Declaration talks about the pursuit of happiness. If you pursue happiness, you're probably going to run smack up against suffering.

[08:59]

Whereas if you engage with suffering, you may find that there's happiness within you. It seems contrarian, but I really encourage you to explore that. So we see that in Sashin, I think. can be really hard. And in the midst of that difficulty, there's something that lightens and lets go. And we find a kind of freedom and allow that joy to bubble up. So when we're playing, you can look at the same kind of dynamic between playfulness and seriousness.

[10:09]

And what I've always said is, I've felt this for years, even before I came to Zen practice, that It's good not to take yourself very seriously, but to take what you do seriously. In other words, to pay a lot of attention to your activity, but not a lot of weight placed on self. Which reminds me of something I was supposed to remind you about. I think Ross sent out something to the list. At the end of Oh, two things I want to remind you about. I'm sorry. A little scattered today. First of all, at the end of this talk, and at the end of every Saturday, we chant the bodhisattva vows.

[11:12]

So, the words are, beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them. So when you do that, lighten up on the I. and dig in on thou, because that's what's actually important. So beings are normalists, I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. So just kind of downplay the I and emphasize the activity. And that's what I'm talking about in terms of taking yourself lightly and taking what you do with a kind of seriousness. The other thing I was supposed to encourage you to do as I'm looking at the screen is if you are able to, please turn on your video.

[12:23]

It's It's really nice to see you all and I know the temptation, there's always a temptation to multitask and I know that because I can be guilty of that myself. But I just want to encourage you, and some of you, they're actually doing it. Some of you are doing that, which I really appreciate. We should be able to see each other. So, to pursue this question of playing, playing in the fields of Zen, there's a passage which I may have actually read not too long ago from Sochi Roshi, from a piece in his

[13:28]

upcoming book called The Formal and the Informal. It's commonly thought that Zen practice is very formal and rigid and that thinking and emotions are cut off. Formal? Yes. Rigid? Not really. For every activity there are rules, directives, and procedures. The formality of our practice allows access to our ineffable, fundamental, formless nature. What looks like narrow confinement becomes, with maturity, vast freedom. What is formal becomes informal. So when you think of any kind of activity, and I think I said this in the last talk where I was referencing playing, you know, you think of baseball, how many rules there are. You know, if somebody coming from the outside who doesn't, hasn't grown up with it, it's like, they'd have a hard time fathoming it.

[14:31]

Just as I will admit, I still have absolutely no comprehension of how you play cricket. It's totally a mystery to me. Maybe someone can explain it, but not in the Q&A. But within those rules, we have these extraordinary efforts and performances and we recognize the amazing qualities of athletic qualities and heart of the players. The same thing is true with any artistic endeavor. Same thing is true with music. I was thinking about this earlier today. So the music that I play is not written down. I learn it by I've learned it by ear, I've learned it by listening very carefully, by paying attention to other musicians, particularly older musicians, live.

[15:44]

And there's a form, there are rules to this music. And the more able you are to pay attention, the more able you are to enter those rules and to find freedom within it. And I was thinking about that in relation to classical music, where the notes are actually on the page, right? But there's still... So those are the rules. The rules are the notes on the page. Within that, there's an infinite field of expression. No musician the same passage of the same piece, they each play it in their own way. So within the constriction of the actual notes on paper, you have full expression.

[16:47]

And this is what Suzuki Roshi was saying. He often said, you know, when you're sitting facing the wall, then I can see who you truly are. So when we reveal ourself, we reveal ourself in the playing within these rules, within these limitations. And we find, again, as Suzuki Roshi said, he said, we have formal practice with informal mind. So the formal practice is playing within the rules. The informal mind is anything goes. So later in this same piece by Sojin Roshi, he says, the life of a Zen student is mostly improvisation. Improvisation works best within a solid structure or container.

[17:53]

It is so in music and the arts. A well-trained Zen student feels comfortable within the forms. and approaches the activity with gratitude, awareness, and confidence." And he closes this piece to say, formal and informal. They are just two sides of the same thing. My teacher said, even though there is no self, still there are rules. So I was thinking about improvisation. I may have talked about this a long time ago. There's a little book that I love that I got from Laurie years ago, I think close to when we first met. It's called Impro, Improvisation and the Theater, by a theater teacher named Keith Johnstone.

[18:57]

And at one point he came to San Francisco Zen Center and did a workshop, and I think that's where Laurie encountered him. And he's the trainer for many improvisers. I think that Peter Coyote, the actor who's also a Zen teacher in Marin, he trained with Keith Johnstone. A lot of people did. So, There's some guidelines that Keith Johnstone offers and some principles that I'd like to discuss in the context of how we practice with ourselves and how we practice with others. First of all, you know, in these three points that he makes, one is that

[20:01]

You can't learn anything without failing. So too, this is how we learn. This is certainly how I've learned almost everything of value, by failing again and again, and by having the... It's important to have the determination and the willingness to fail. and just go at it again. I mean, actually, the essence of what we do, or I don't want to speak for myself, what I do in Zazen, it's sometimes Zen is described as one continuous mistake. And when we're sitting and facing the wall, you know, sitting and facing the wall,

[21:02]

I'm very upright and I'm paying attention to my breath and very single-minded, you know, and then my posture collapses. Failure. Or I'm sitting here very mindfully attending to the flow of my breath and then thinking, what am I going to have for lunch? It's a failure. So the opportunity of the failure, if you're playing with failure, is to begin again. To begin again and again. To return to our intention and not to get caught on the failure, but just to use that as a reminder to renew ourselves. to remember where we are, to recollect ourselves, which is actually a literal translation of the word that we usually translate as mindfulness.

[22:17]

So we fail again and again. There's another expression of John Stone's that is actually in contradiction to what I was talking about a few weeks ago. We talked about... I used the Japanese expression, Ganbate. People remember? Yeah, we talked about that. It seemed to resonate with people. And it does. It translates as, do your best. And it's an encouragement. So that's one side. Johnstone presents the other side, which is please don't do your best. Trying to do your best is trying to be better than who you are. That's pretty interesting. But what he's exploring is who are you right now in the situation

[23:32]

in your meeting of yourself or your meeting of others? Who are you? Rather than positing some idealized version of you and kind of dismissing the present reality for some, you could say, gaining idea. So we live with this. This is a great tension. And this is one of the things that I love about Zen practice is what we're really learning to do is to live and accept that we live in the midst of contradiction. You know, yes, there's a message, please do your best. And then there's always the other side, which is Please don't try to do your best.

[24:35]

Be where you are right now. And those two messages, the vector of those two messages, meet in oneself. The third thing that Johnstone talks about, and I want to speak about this more, in a bit more detail, is it's not the offer, but it's what you can do with it. So Johnstone writes, there are people who prefer to say yes and there are people who prefer to say no. Those who say yes are rewarded by the adventures they have. and those who say no are rewarded by the safety they attain.

[25:38]

There are far more no-sayers around than yes-sayers, but you can train one type to behave like another. He writes about another teacher, Fred Carno understood this. When he was interviewing aspiring actors, he'd poke his pen into an empty inkwell and pretend to flick it at them. If they mimed being hit in the eye, or whatever, he'd engage them. If they looked baffled and blocked him, then he wouldn't. So this is another one of these dynamics of playfulness that we have to reckon with. And we have to reckon with that in ourselves, and in the context of our relationship with all of those around us, our friends, our families, our teachers, or anyone that you meet in the street.

[26:43]

Says the motto of scared improvisers, and he's speaking, he's training improvisers, is, when in doubt, say no. We use this in life as a kind of blocking action. I call anything that an actor does an offer. Each offer can either be accepted or blocked. If you yawn, your partner can yawn too and therefore accept your offer. A block is anything that prevents the action from developing or that wipes out your partner's premise. If it develops action, it isn't the block. So, this is why the essential message for a Zen student is to say yes. When Sojin Roshi would be in his office, somebody would knock on his door and he would say, Hi!

[28:00]

Yes, in Japanese. and allow them to come in. He would never say, go away, I'm busy now. He might have thought that, but his practice was to say yes. And that's a really great model. Our practice, when asked something as a student or as a friend, Can we say yes? It's important to recognize that if we say yes, then we have the grounds to play together. If we say no, then we've created a block and we will separate. We will go in our own respective directions. So this is a good general principle. It's not an absolute.

[29:04]

Yes is not always the creative or necessary response. Sometimes there are things that we have to say no to. And we have to decide that and we have to recognize what the consequences of that might be. But still, we've made some discernment. But generally, yes. So if we say yes to our suffering, then we create a ground for some happiness to arise. And if we say yes to happiness, We accept the fact that there's some suffering incumbent with that happiness.

[30:13]

So we're saying yes to the whole package. And this is really useful information for how we respond to ourselves and each other. And it means we can play. There's usually no play left when you say no. When you lock yourself down because you may have some idea of what you're supposed to be doing, what you're not supposed to be doing, then you've shut off this creative aspect.

[31:21]

You know, this aspect of what Sergeant Rush was talking about is the improvisatory aspect of our practice. So keep that, can we keep that fresh? You know, we've, just to say, it's not always been easy, but we've spent three and four years having to say yes and figuring out really difficult circumstances and trying to change or flow in appropriate ways with these circumstances that we never would have chosen. And at least from my perspective, I feel like we've really grown as a community.

[32:26]

There are new people, there's a feeling of commitment, there's this sustainability of our community. And we did that by saying, yes, you know, yes, this is not fun. Yes, it's not fun wearing masks or asking that people be fully vaccinated or having to let go of our full schedule or our oryoki meals in the zendo. But we said yes to them because we wanted to keep playing together. And we've done that. And we continue to do that. And now, I will say, so we're beginning to have, we're hoping that there will be

[33:34]

and unmasking within the next month or two. You know, finally take off these Fushiguna things on our faces. Fushiguna, that's Japanese. And also thinking about how we can bring back, say, how can we bring back the full Saturday program? How can we bring back oreochi meals? How can we continue playing by actually training new cooks? Because we need new cooks because a lot of the people who were cooking four years ago, quite a number of them are gone. Some of us are getting too old to stand up in the kitchen all day. As a community, we're continuing to play together.

[34:41]

read you again and then we'll go into Q&A. Let me read you again what a couple things from this talk by Sojin. The life of a Zen student is mostly improvisation. Improvisation works best within a solid structure or container. It is so in music and the arts. A well-trained Zen student feels comfortable within the forms and approaches the activity with gratitude, awareness, and confidence. To have a cool head while sitting zazen is to think the thought of zazen. The nature of thinking is to think or to dream. It doesn't make any difference what is thinking as long as it can do its thing. I'm sorry. It doesn't make any difference what it is thinking, as long as it can do its thing.

[36:15]

The point is, who is the boss of the thinking? Formal or informal, they are just two sides of the same thing. My teacher said, even though there is no self, still there are rules. And I would say, even though there are rules, We're still playing. So I'm going to stop there and leave some time for questions and comments. I'd like to encourage you, if you have a question, try to get pretty effectively to the question without a lot of preamble. And if you have a comment, please make it brief so that we have room for for people to speak, people online and people here in Nizendo. And who is passing around?

[37:20]

I am. You are? Okay. We have a microphone. We have a microphone. Okay. So, please raise your hand if there's something you would like to ask or say. A couple back there. Your description in the very beginning, coming from Tibetan tradition, my perception was exactly what you said. Very serious. Very formal. People in dark colors failing. I'd be turning the wrong way, bumping into people. And then, with time,

[38:20]

the forms didn't bring up insecurity. They became kind of pleasurable. And once we started eating outside or having the teas, I could see that people themselves were playful. But what you said was really helpful for me. Thank you. Thank you. Also, we have to, that state of confusion that you referenced of not knowing which way to turn, et cetera, all of that is also, that's being able to play with beginner's mind. It's like, I don't know what's going on here. I don't know. So we have the method of learning the forms is inductive rather than deductive. We don't give out an instruction sheet to everybody when they come to the zendo.

[39:25]

We actually invite them to observe and absorb the forms in your body and to appreciate that state of not knowing. That's a really important, that's an important state because there's so much in our life that we encounter that we really don't know what's going to happen. And do we have the capacity to include that and be open to it? So, thank you. So, there's yes and there's no. How about maybe and maybe-ing? What was it? Maybe-ing? Yeah. You have to... Play on words.

[40:27]

Maybe-ing. I know. I know. To play on words. I'm not sure what you're... So you were talking about yes as a way of accepting our situation and playing with people. How about maybe, which feels to me either in between yes and no or outside of yes and no. For me, the word maybe is, in some cases, more playful. Yeah. It's a children's song that I used to do with my friend Jerry Tenney, which said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I won't do it. No, no, no, no, no, no, I won't do it. yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I think I can, and then maybe, maybe, maybe I can't make up my mind, you know. All of that can be folded into the realm of play.

[41:33]

So even no doesn't have to be an absolute. No can offer another option. And no and maybe and yes all depend upon a kind of negotiation that's possible with someone else. So if you say maybe, it's like, okay, just what I did, it's like, what do you mean by that? Which actually opens up a dialogue, right? And so maybe can open up a dialogue. Thanks. Peter? the further play on words, but I've been trying to relate to what she said about improv, it being the initial contact is sort of like an offering. And it seems like that could also be a request.

[42:35]

It could be, and they're in a request. One way of looking at that is that it's never the end. It's only the beginning of the conversation. That's right. It is a request. So sometimes in some language, you can refer to this as an offering or it's a bid. And a bid calls for a response. And if you can do that, then you're kind of off to the races and you're playing together. open for further unfolding of what's going on. And we take this, I think in our practice, it's the play of our lifetime. And now we're seeing it, you know, particularly as we're getting older, we're seeing limitations that may arise or abilities that disappear and how do we continue to

[43:48]

play together. Thank you. Joel? You're very muddy. Yeah, well. Is that any better? Yeah, now it's a little loud. Let me turn you down. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Beautiful talk. You mentioned improvisation and classical improvisation, so I thought I'd talk about that a little bit. There's a tremendous amount. The greatest age of classical music was tremendous improvisation. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were all tremendously famous improvisers, and there's a lot of texts that say people thought... They were greater as improvisers than as composers.

[44:51]

And the basis of this art was, as you said, very strict. I mean, the basis, not to get into figured-based, very, very, very strict roles. And so I just wanted to bring that up. In fact, There are just one more thing. One of the biggest rules, if not the biggest, is you don't have parallel fifths. And there's a famous story about Beethoven where in a string quartet, he had a whole lot of parallel fifths. And a student said, you know, that's not allowed. And he said, I allow it. And play. And he kept the fifths in the string quartet because that's what he wanted. Anyway, I thought I'd share that. Thank you. Sure. Watch out for parallel fifths.

[45:54]

Yeah, do them all the time. Are there any other hands out there? Yes, Sandy. Hi, Hosun. Thank you so much for your beautiful talk. I really resonated with... kind of the tension between being accepting the moment and aspiring to be a little bit better. I think for me, I can kind of play easily when I feel at ease in my body. And it's been, I think, just with my history, harder to get to that point with newer people. But I do realize, especially doing MCOS, that I have a safe container within Berkeley Zen Center. So I feel I can be more at ease and connect with folks. And I feel more like a foundation of safety, the more solid our relationships become and the more I show up in each moment.

[47:02]

That's really, I can't tell you how encouraging that is to me. And that's part of the It's part of what we've been playing at here for the last years, you know. And I just, I hope that will continue. And I hope you and others continue to feel, find freedom in this space. Anyone else out here? Daniel. By the way, Daniel is just back from being in France for a year. He's here for a couple months. I was wondering about yes and no possibility moments, recognizing them,

[48:10]

I often walk by them and have to turn around and see, oh, I just walked by, yes and no. Right. So, this is functional mindfulness. Functional mindfulness is just simply knowing where you are. And I mean that in a, you could look at that in a literal sense, but also to see where, where's my mind? So you could start by saying, where are my feet? And if you ask where are your feet, then the next question that's going to flow from that sort of naturally is where's my mind? And that helps us to bring our attention to the actual space that we're in.

[49:15]

You know, as apart from the hazards of being lost in our thoughts. So bring it down, bring it on down to earth. Where am I standing? How is my body holding itself? And then very naturally, it will reflect on the whole environment that you're in. That's my suggestion. Is it Ken? Thank you so much for your talk. One thing I've noticed is that when I am opening it up to engage with someone else, it really changes the conversation if I am speaking from my heart rather than speaking from my ideas of things.

[50:22]

Like I can't tell you how many negotiations often we have over email and stuff like that. And it just feels like it circles around these kind of fixed ideas that people have. And I've noticed that when I'm feeling reactive, like that's a clue to me to stop and to breathe, breathe deeply and pay attention to my breath. And then in that moment, I feel what my heart wants in that moment. And I can express that. And it's usually much more of a completely open invitation to somebody else. That's good, thank you, that's helpful. And it can be your heart, it can be your belly, but I think we're talking about what I was just in a way saying to Daniel that there has to be a physical grounding to it.

[51:34]

To look, this is why we take this maybe a momentary backward step, and if we're having a really strong blocking or no response, you may have to take a larger backward step and ask, what's going on in here? You know, and take that time with the intention that I want to keep playing. And I will return, but I need to know what's going on inside me first. So thank you. Maybe one more if there are any... I see the strikers up. Anyone else in here? Joe. In my experience, when there's plague, inevitably someone gets hurt.

[52:41]

Do you think that's true? Was that a question at the end? Yeah, do you think that's true? Not necessarily. You know... This is a risky business, being alive. Someone's always getting hurt. And we're going to... we're going to be hurt, we're going to suffer. But if you don't, if you don't try to play, things are dead. You know, you're missing the whole challenge of Zen practice and of life. And, yeah, people don't always get injured, but it may be that the risks are part of it, and you may evaluate the activity and just say, you know what, the risk is worth it.

[53:55]

People do that. Thanks. Thank you. So thank you all. Let me just say, remind you, As we're doing the bodhisattva vows, lean into vow and lighten up on I. Okay? What's the second thing that you wanted to remind us of? The second thing was I wanted people to turn on their screens. But I can see you. Your screen is on. Right. Thank you. Beings are numberless. who's new here.

[57:13]

My name is Pauline, and I'm one of the co-directors of the Saturday Morning Program. Announcements for Saturday, July 15th. This coming Monday morning, Chloe Sue will give a Wasingy Mind Talk. Next Saturday, Hozon will deliver the lecture. On behalf of Clearwater Zendo and Mary Mussine right after we exit, Susan Marvin will be selling tickets to Jazz in the Garden, which is a Clearwater Zendo summer party and fundraiser in Vallejo. She'll also be selling raffle tickets for several prizes, including dinner for two at Green's Restaurant in San Francisco. Address and info about the party are posted on the Patio Bulletin Board, which is out there. A group's been meeting to consider ways for Berkeley Zen Center to address racism. If you wish to participate, contact Karen Sondheim. Her email is in the links for recurring activities in the Zoom chat. The Wednesday drop-in group meets from 7.10 to 9 p.m. The group particularly welcomes newcomers to Zen practice. For more information, contact Ikishin Jerry Oliva.

[58:16]

Her email is also in the links for recurring activities. For more information about any of our programs and membership, please check the bulletin board out in the courtyard, see the Zoom chat, or visit our website, which is brookleyzencenter.org. To make a donation to support BCC, please use the donations box, which is on the table out in the courtyard by this large offering of plums that some bodhisattva of plums has brought us. Or you can see the Zoom chat or visit our website at the Brickley Zen Center. There's a generosity tab on the website. Those who are in the zendo, please maintain silence till you're off the porch. Then feel free to socialize out in the courtyard. If you picked up one of our folded chant cards from its alcove right on the zendo porch, please return it on its bay out. If a couple of people are available here to stay behind and help set the Zendo in order, that's always appreciated. And those online may now unmute and share greetings.

[59:27]

That's what I really saw.

[59:34]

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