In unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma, it is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. Good morning. Good morning. It's a lovely morning here. Not too hot. Very bright. And we just had our new members entering ceremony, which was wonderful to see all these new members who've been contributing to our practice. And that's what I want to talk about. today is becoming a new member.

[01:31]

Actually talking about it, telling a little bit from Sojin's memoirs, from my own memory of from myself and maybe hearing from some of you about how you came to practice But I had a few announcements first, there's a lot going on. And I know we have the announcements at the end, but I like to plug these things. So we have the second round of many communities, one Sangha, our training program in diversity and equity and how we deal with difference in sameness and that's going to be it's going to begin in the late fall but the registration is happening now on their spaces and it's uh it's looking like we're going to actually invite uh because there's some still been plenty of spaces we're going to invite people from some other local sanghas to to join who have similar interests and so

[02:52]

I think it will be a kind of cross Sangha opportunity to experience, which is, which I think will be really rich. So you can see that on the website. And then there's three events coming up one day after the next in the week, not next week, but the week after. So the 21st, 22nd, 23rd. On the 21st, there's a class that's beginning, which is going to be class dialogue between myself and Sheikh Yassir Chablis, who is a Moroccan Sufi Sheikh, very well known in the wider East Bay community. He's an incredible person. He's a wonderful teacher, a wonderful musician, and he's spoken here several times in the past.

[03:59]

And we've been friends now for almost 25 years. And I thought we would have, we will have a dialogue and a community conversation about What is a good life in our respective traditions? What's a good life in our Zen tradition? What's a good life in his Sufi Islamic tradition? And there'll be music. It'll be really, it'll be, it will not be dry. It'll be juicy. And I think some members of his community will probably join us as well. On Friday, that's on Thursday evenings, the 21st, and then three, it'll be three evenings, three Thursdays. What? In person? In person. It will be hybrid, but it's going to be here in the Zendo.

[05:02]

And also in person in the Zendo on the 22nd, we have a special teacher sent by Soto Shu. They do this almost every year. Reverend Kasai Ikeda, and he will be lecturing in English. And that'll be on the Thursday afternoon slot at 540. Friday, thank you. Also in the Zen home. And then on Saturday, the 23rd, we have kind of a study session day. And since we've been training, trying to train new cooks, because we're sort of ramping up towards having a fuller program of Oryoki dining in Zendo. The study text will be Dogen Zenji's Tenzo Kyokun, instructions for the cook.

[06:06]

And I sent that out to the listserv and I'll send it out again. We'll be able to scratch the surface of that rich text. But it's not just about, it's not about cooking. It is about cooking. It's not about cooking. It's about how to cook your life. And so I think we'll have an interesting time with two study sessions on Saturday the 23rd. Okay, end of announcements. Let's just take a couple breaths here. So over the last month, I've been dipping into Sojin's forthcoming book, and this is it.

[07:14]

I don't know if you can see it. It's called Seeing One Thing Through. And I'll actually tell you what that means. And this is an advanced copy. You can show it to the camera. Oh, yes. Can you see? Oh, yeah. It's lovely. There's a picture. The picture is of Suzuki Roshi shaving Sojin's head in the Dwight Wei Zendo. And it'll be out, the book will be out in early November, early December, rather. But I would thought as long as we're talking about what it's like to come to Zen, I thought I'd read you a few sections. So this is kind of the background. So in speaking of himself as a seeker.

[08:17]

During this period, I was looking for a spiritual teacher and community. This is, we're talking about the early 1960s in San Francisco. I was inspired by Martin Buber's Tales of the Hasidim. I was completely swept away by the deep mysticism, the simplicity, the power of faith, the idea of the person as the pillar connecting heaven and earth and the insightful logic of the tzaddik, the holy man. I liked the way the disciples gathered around the teachers in small communities, studying and practicing together. I also liked the concept of the hidden tzaddik, the one who appears as an ordinary person, a fool or an idiot, but who is in reality a great sage. In Zen, I also found some of these, some of the same parallel qualities.

[09:23]

So this is before he had taken a cent and he looked and he couldn't find the Judaism that he found at that time was dry and it didn't have that spirit of community and warmth that for him that he was looking for. It's not, I wouldn't say that's overall true of Judaism, but I know exactly how he experienced that because it has to do with how I experienced Judaism And it's unfortunate because there are other people who really got that that rich warm communal feeling But he didn't find it And he looked around for sin And he'd heard about Suzuki Roshi and heard about Zen Center, which was then at Sakoji on Bush Street from some friends.

[10:37]

And I'm just going to read you a couple of paragraphs from his introduction. So he came to Sakoji. There was this bare room with tatamis around the edges along the walls and an altar on one side. We went in and sat down and faced the wall. Somebody came up behind me and adjusted my posture and showed me how to hold my hands. Not saying a word, just all feeling, all touch. It was Suzuki Roshi, of course. I was sitting there and it was just wonderful. I thought, here I am just sitting here all by myself with nothing else but this wall, this seat, and this place. It felt like I had come home. Right there. This was my first time at Sakoji.

[11:41]

Suzuki Roshi would ask for questions. One time I asked, what is Nirvana? He looked at me and said, Seeing one thing through to the end, which is what I, seeing one thing through is what I drew on for the title. Seeing one thing through to the end. All the teaching I had absorbed from him up to then came together and became a confirmation or a turning point. Or a turning point from my practice. Master Dogen said, Our practice is like one long rod of iron. Suzuki Roshi once said, the Soto Zen practice is like sucking up one endless Zen noodle. When you have Japanese noodles, and you're supposed to make the sound actually.

[12:48]

I think of it as the long distance runner who forgets about the finish line. rather than a sprinter who runs as fast as possible in order to receive a medal at the end. So we come to practice for different reasons. And sometimes we come to practice for different reasons at different times in our life. As I've told in the past, I came to Zen practice twice. The first time I came to Zen practice was on Dwight Way in the summer of 1968. And at that time, I, you know, I've been very influenced by taking psychedelics. And I think, you know, to put it roughly,

[13:56]

I wanted to find a way to stay high, you know, a natural way because it was exhausting taking these drugs. But I thought, you know, maybe Zen is a way that you could find this natural eye or dare I say enlightenment that would then kind of be with you. And so I came out here with some friends and we We found the Berkley Zen Center on Dwight Way and we went up the stairs to the kind of pear wood and sat and I did not get high. It really didn't work. I remember sitting the eaves, you sat so that the eaves were kind of slanted in front of you. And I just remember seeing and seeing kind of patterns of light kind of moving on the wood.

[15:03]

And I just thought, well, it's patterns of light moving on the wood. This is not very psychedelic, you know, and I'm not feeling high. It was hard and it was painful. And I did not achieve or even vaguely approach what I did. thought was in the offing. And still there was something there that called to me. There's something that I wanted to continue and I tried when I got back to East Coast but given what was going on in my angst and politically ridden 19 year old life, I couldn't sustain it. But there was something some seed was planted.

[16:04]

And then we fast forward another 15 years. And I was back out here living on the West Coast again. And at that point, I had reached a kind of existential crisis, I I'd been in a band that I left, you know, I didn't, you know, I was, let's see, probably 36, which is not young. And I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing with my life. And I felt, it was clear there was something I was supposed to be doing. And I had just, the way I describe it is I had just completely run out of script. And I read a couple of books at that point in time. I read The Snow Leopard by Peter Matheson and also The Empty Mirror by Jan van der Wettering, both of whom talk about doing Zazen.

[17:21]

And I read those books and I thought, I could do that. And then I read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which I hadn't read yet, and realized that I should do that. And so, and I've told this one, I don't, you know, you get to a certain age, you tell the same stories over and over again, it'll happen to you, you know, and your kids will mock you for it. But I called Berklee Zen Center because it wasn't on Dwight Way. I didn't know where it was. And I said I had sat there in 1968 and had Zazen instruction and, you know, was interested in practicing and what should I do? And the person on the other side of the phone said, you should find a blank wall and sit down and stare at it. And I thought...

[18:23]

That's a really weird thing to be saying to somebody who's cold calling on the phone. And then I thought, this is the place for me. And I came and it was just, as Sojin was saying here, I came and I sat down and I felt I was home. And I knew that with a kind of a certainty that I could not account for. But I felt at home, I thought. So this is the initiation. But I do think that what happens to all of us as we take up the practice, whether it's I think somebody's unmuted there, because I'm hearing someone.

[19:28]

What happens is that sooner or later, and sometimes it's sooner, and sometimes it's a little later, you've got to come to the wall. You've got to come to the place where, whether you think you're at home here or not, This is really hard. Sojin, if you read on in his memoir, I think his first couple of years were enormously painful. And his first sishin, he didn't know what he was getting in for. And so it's like after a couple of periods of zazen and service and breakfast when they were about to sit down for another period of zazen. It was like, well, they're going to sit again.

[20:32]

And he left. And then what I love about this story is he went out to the marina and he walked around and realized there was no place else to be. So he came back and finished the session. And I think that's some of the experience that those of us who stayed have. We hit this wall and to some extent we know that this is a fundamental experience in our life. We have to come up against ourselves. And the way we do that, the central way that we do that is in Zazen. To sit here upright, cross-legged or otherwise, and to really encounter what is it that's holding us back?

[21:52]

To meet it. And to, in a sense, yield to it, not to fight it, but to be upright and encounter it in such a way that you accept that into your life. And as you accept that into your life, some inner capacity grows in you. And I think that you could call that that recognition of that actual potential growth is wayseeking mind. We yearn to open.

[22:53]

We want to, even if there's another part of us that is fighting and resisting it tooth and nail. So, you know, I know what my own struggles are. You know, I've certainly heard what other people struggle with. And You know, you could say it seems silly. Why would you sit here and make life hard for yourself? But there's some faith that carries us through. And there's some inner sense that the most important thing we can do is really honestly to encounter ourselves.

[23:59]

And if we have the capacity to do that, then we actually have the capacity to encounter others. Our compassion grows. And we see that the struggles, the difficulties, the quirks and even the things that we don't like that other people do are just like our own encounters with ourselves. And this cultivates compassion for them and compassion for ourselves. And it brings forth, it can bring forth love. And I think that's That's why we're here. That's why we persist in what, from the outside, you may seem like a very foolish endeavor.

[25:10]

And I think a lot of people come for a variety of reasons. Almost everyone in this zendo, comes because there's some spirit of seeking that we have. So it's different than if you were born into some religious tradition, Buddhist or Christian or Jewish or otherwise, where it's something that's been handed down across the generations and it's your, it's your, uh, inheritance and you just accept it or have to wrestle with it in those terms. Uh, for most of us, we come because, you know, really put very plainly, uh,

[26:25]

The Buddha said, I teach about suffering and the end of suffering. And the end of suffering, that sounds pretty good. Suffering I know about, but we don't know in the great detail that maybe we have to know in order to meet it. So we come and we give ourselves to practice and we give ourselves to also to the Dharma. We delve into the Dharma. We study the accumulated wisdom of 2500 years. And we have to not accept that. We don't accept that as scripture. we accept it as help.

[27:31]

And the parts that are helpful, we use. And the parts that are not, we set aside. You know, I set them aside and, you know, I think, well, I'm setting this aside, but I may understand somewhere down the line how this is useful. And we also immerse ourselves in Sangha, which is this wonderful community of practitioners. You have the Maha Sangha of all beings. And then we have circles within circles. And we have the constantly changing and evolving circle of this particular Sangha. And Sangha that does this practice together and that that takes care of this place.

[28:39]

And I would also say it's really important. One of the things about this sensation of coming home is that you come home to a place that The sense of place is important. The intimacy that we have with this room. The fact that these four pillars are like our sisters and brothers who are sitting zazen with us every day. The bare wood. the gardens, the brickwork, all of this becomes sort of the habitat of our larger mind of practice.

[29:48]

And then of course, there's the people. You know, I can remember There's so many people who've passed through here. There's so many people who are here. I've been here a long time now, and some of us have been here a long time, many. And, you know, there are people who are here every day, every Sushi, for 10 or 15 years. And then they cycle out. but I still see them. And when one of them shows up, there's just this kind of flash of intimacy and connection. Because we did this, we all faced ourselves together and we know each other from that, on that basis. And yet this is, it's constantly shifting.

[30:52]

You know, it was Sojin's way, and I think I've tried to learn this. I really paid close attention. He just, he welcomed everybody who came. He let them go away. I mean, he didn't grab after them. He didn't bemoan. They're going away. And then when they came back, as they often did, He welcomed them back because they were never really apart from this practice. So we do this every day. We come, you sit in the morning. We sit. Now we have zazen like four times a day here because really wild, you know, for a late 6 in the morning, another online period of 7.30.

[32:05]

We have actually a number of people who are coming at noon. It's pretty solid now for half hours of informal sitting, just sitting. And then people come at 5.40, four times a day for a place that is not a monastery. And this is the fundamental thing that we offer. And within that container, everything else that we need emerges to the extent that you can do it. You know, people have jobs, families, we get older, we get sick, we can't show up. So we come on zoom. But we're constantly we're sustaining this practice in just a remarkably regular way. So, um, I think I'm going to stop and I'd love to hear, uh, if, if people have a, what you think might be useful for engaging story about your, um, your coming to Berkeley Zen Center.

[33:29]

We're coming to this practice. It'd be great to share some of these stories. So Lori has her hand up. Probably beating my voice adequately, but... And by the way, what she's doing, you folks out there, in Zoom land, if you have something to... Ed, also just raise your digital hands and I'll try to call on you. Yeah. I like to speak for the people who did not feel immediately at home when they first came. And I guess in a way I could be that. I think a subset of those people are people who felt at home somewhere else first. I mean, who started in the, I think wherever you start in a way, if you stick it out, you feel. you start to feel at home. Maybe some of us didn't start feeling at home anywhere.

[34:33]

So I'd just like you to speak to that option as being equally valid, I guess. Right. Well, thank you. That's really helpful because along with the feeling of being at home, a lot of us, no matter how long we're here, have a feeling we don't really belong here. It's like that I'm not really a pivotal part of what's going on. I don't feel integral. It's like the real activity is going on someplace else. And everyone else is feeling right with it and I'm on man out or on woman out.

[35:34]

Right. And I've, you know, I can feel like that today, you know, and I'm, for God's sake, some of the habit, you know, but that's also, that's part of the whole package. That's part of the wall that we encounter in ourselves. And to accept that, and maybe if you feel that way to actually talk to somebody else and see how they feel about that. I think that's really important. Thank you for pointing that out because the danger is, and I've experienced this in a lot of places, the danger is of a kind of self congratulate feeling like I'm supposed to feel really good.

[36:37]

And it's kind of everybody else is involved in this process of self congratulation and I'm not really feeling it. That's part of our challenge of our encounter with ourselves. And that's also part of the commonality. that we hold. So, thank you. Thanks. Laurie said much of what I wanted to say, but I'll expand a little bit. I first came here in 2012 and did not feel at home. You know, I don't I was here pretty much every morning for say about three months and I don't think anyone said a word to me and I'm not sure I said a word to anyone. And okay, I was shy and that's how it was and that's just what happened.

[37:46]

But I left and I came back again about five years ago because I didn't know what else to do. The welcome was warmer, and I was glad for that, but still didn't feel much like, oh, this is home, and that has come. The feeling of warmth and community has come, but it took some time. And I've often been reminded of the one thing I will say is I've often been reminded of something that someone once told me, I don't remember who, and this may have been a quote from something else, and I just don't know, but I know I heard it somewhere. And that's that home is where, when you go there, they can't kick you out. And whatever else has been going on in my life, and there's been plenty of stuff going on in my life, every time I've come here,

[38:55]

I may not have always felt welcomed, but I also never felt like, I never felt like anyone was going to kick me out. I've always appreciated that. Thank you. You know, when I, as I said, I came in the summer of 1968, and I came with a couple of friends, and I came particularly with my friend my friend, Hilton Openzinger, who was one of my closest friends from college. And when I came back in the 80s, and the whole time that I was here in 1960, I don't think anybody said a word to me, you know, and I was left to my own devices. And, you know, I didn't, but I also didn't speak to anybody else. And You know, when I came back, you know, and was really settled in practice and was telling Sojin that I had about coming in 1968.

[40:04]

Well, he remembered Hilton Olbenzinger, he didn't remember me. So actually, Hilton and I went and visited with Sojin, you know, before he died. But yeah, I never felt I was going to be kicked out, but Uh, and I didn't, but I didn't initially feel at home. I did. I did the next time. Um, Ross. Good morning. Who's on. Can you hear me? Yep. Um, so, uh, we were ordained together in your second iteration at BCC and, uh, at times I also have felt like disconnected or not belonging. and the thing that's helped to sustain me is to sit and touch the place of unconditionality not being conditioned by friendships and connections so that's a little piece to share maybe we could talk more about that on monday at open discussion uh an observation about in your reading of soji roshi's experience of nirvana which is following one thing through to the end that he left sashim

[41:18]

went away, and then he came back to Sashin. So it felt to me like he followed one thing through to the end and experienced nirvana, though he didn't say that. My question is, how do we practice and experience nirvana when things are not sort of time delineated? Like we'll finish this talk at 1115 or so, or there's going to school and classes and all that. So how do we practice this practice without delineated time. Or within delineated time. Seeing one thing through means to practice continuously until your last breath. And so there's a continuity of practice which flows from from one activity to the next activity.

[42:21]

Can we see that? Sometimes it feels very disjunctive, but we're looking for what's the connectivity. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. That reminds me when someone asks Suzuki Roshi, when does Zazen start? And he said it never ended. Right. Well, that's one of the things if you read If you read the introduction to the wonderful book by Victor Sogen Hori called Zen Sand, his introduction, it's a, he describes the Rinzai practice that he did for many decades. And very clear, his understanding, which was really helpful to me was that, that it's completely continuous. There they leave the candle burning. You know, because.

[43:24]

Irrespective of the activity, the practice is continuous 24 hours a day. Thank you. Thank you. I just remember my. Telephone experience with BCC. I remember I'd read a lot of Zen texts in college, but was out in the working world and just felt this dissatisfaction. And so I looked up BZC online and I came and tried to find it and I could not find it. Like I walked up and down the street and I was like, where is this place? And so I went home, I called and I left a message that please call me, didn't hear a word for a couple of weeks. 9-11 happened shortly thereafter. And I remember all of the chaos and anger and chatter in the news was just so disquieting and unsettling.

[44:33]

And I remember nothing is going to keep me from sitting there. And so I found it. And I came and I walked in the gate and sat. And it was for a Saturday lecture. And I honestly can't remember whether it was you or Sojin who said, but I remember it was the conversation with both of you after 9-11. And I remember one of you saying, now is not the time to rush to judgment. Now is the time to listen. That just touched my heart. It's always that time. Thank you. So I think the feeling of coming home is that there was something inside me that was longing for me to find my own home.

[45:38]

And Berkeley Zen Center provided that space for me to find my own home. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to call on one more here because it's somebody who doesn't speak very often. Lynn McMichael. I'm not hearing you. I think it's okay now. Thank you. I remember coming home from two years in Asia. and searching for something. And somebody mentioned Tassajara. So I went down to Tassajara for about a month and then came back and found you guys. And I'm one of these ones that has come in and out in my life with you.

[46:43]

And I've never forgotten. the closeness I felt to both Liz and Sojin and to everybody that I met there. And so in a strange way, I really feel it has been home since 1969. And I just wanted to thank you so much for being there for so many of us. Thank you. And I remember you from... from very early on when i was here and it i'm you know i'm not for why i remember you you were not somebody who was sitting there regularly but uh uh you were there and that's part of the whole uh this circle of of actual community so thank you hands here i see chloe and uh linda

[47:46]

I wanted to share part of my experience that's maybe the opposite of what Hosanna shared in the way I had come to Dawson because I wanted something really boring and repetitive. You found it, right? Boring and repetitive is what she was looking for. Can you read, please? Go ahead. So before down practice, I had maybe a year or two years before that, gone on a seven-day Vipassana Sao meditation retreat because I wanted to feel the psychedelic high. And it did work. But after that, I think during the retreat, I felt great. There was maybe a similar high experience. But then after that, I really struggled for months or even a year because it just felt like I wasn't in control of anything and thrown on a, I don't know where I was taken to or just on a really strange ride.

[49:01]

So then I wanted something really boring and repetitive or stabilizing, but it's not quite this. Yeah, that was kind of a different side of the experience. Right, well, thank you. I mean, one of the things that we can, you can have some large meditative opening and it can be destabilizing. And I think one of the things that I appreciate about our practice is that it really is, it's everyday practice. And Sashin is a kind of intensification of that, but even Sashin includes all of the elements of everyday life, you know, includes sitting, of course, and walking, eating, working, resting, all of that are, these are not kind of just release from Zazen, they're actually part of the integral

[50:12]

vision of a Zen day. And I think that's, it's different from what you might find in other retreat situations. And then we have everyday Zazen, you know, you'd go to Sashin, then you come back the next day and you sit. So this is part of the process theoretically of the stabilization. Thank you, Linda. Yeah, should I wait? You should wait. Thank you. Yeah, I'm one of these people who comes in roles in different practice places. I've been in the exam center a long time, and I wasn't. But anyway, I wasn't here for the new member welcome this morning. But I was just thinking about it. I was wondering who are the new members? Why don't your new members raise your hands.

[51:14]

Chloe, you're one. And so as this discussion went on, I was just thinking that every one of you will have a different feeling as you are new in some sense. Some of you feel like, oh, I'm home. Some of you feel like I'm alien. Some of you will welcome the spirit, not talking too much. Some people say these people are so cold and unfriendly. It could be none of these responses are wrong. Anyway, what just occurred to me was that the whole years of practice that I've been exposed to, one of the constant things is just when I remember every woman. So, hi. This is what we practice. So we practice right remembering. No, it's true. It's true.

[52:14]

That's actually, and that is the, I think, a more accurate translation of what we translate as mindfulness. Judy? I can pose on. One of the things I keep returning to with this is the role of representation in the song. In one of the first songas I joined when I was in for quite a while, when I arrived, I was really surprised that about half of the sangha identified as gay. And at that time, the cultural expression of that was a way of expressing warmth in a way that was unfamiliar to me.

[53:23]

It was more hugging. for instance, and then the way people would greet one another, changing their own robes or putting balloons in a certain place before sitting. And I remember that what really was so touching and felt safe to me was that the embrace felt bounded. that people have a sense of being careful. And so if you were completely new and you didn't have somebody walking up to you with open arms and you're welcome, that wouldn't be safe. But there would be that spirit. And so what I noticed in that is over time, I had entered identifying the street. And I hadn't thought of that as even a consideration.

[54:26]

But the representation in that sangha actually set up a situation where I started exploring my sexuality. And I also started noticing kind of hidden assumptions in myself about what gay might look like gay women gay men all this kind of stuff and and what i open to and it's not like you know this was in new york and certainly i'm not unfamiliar to that but the way that was expressed within the container of practice and practice place was really opening and challenging to me and so it stayed with me particularly through our many communities once sangha training practice last year around you know expanding that to all kinds of representation and of course being white bodied now i'm i'm just pondering this in a new way and so i'm wondering how you see that well i think that um

[55:40]

With each person who comes in the door, we have, all of us, have an opportunity to redefine what home is. In other words, each person brings the entirety of who they are in the gate. And we have two choices. We have many choices, but there's two fundamental choices. One is to communicate that, okay, you're here in our space. And so you're supposed to adhere to certain ways of thinking, certain ways of seeing things, certain values.

[56:49]

That's often a dimension of this dynamic of a dynamic of inclusion exclusion. That's not what I want. What I want is that when somebody comes in, we come to know what their contribution is and expand our notion of home to include that. And so, in other words, to learn from whoever comes in, whatever their background, whoever they are, each person is bringing something unique and rich.

[57:53]

And our Zen tenet of not knowing and bearing witness expands to include that. And that's, you know,

[58:15]

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