Can you hear me? So once again, for those online, good morning.

[02:05]

I always get so happy sitting up here and looking at all of you, whether it's just during the period of Zazen or like this. It's amazing. It's just very reliable, and you are feeling this sense of joy and connection and being with all of you. The Berkeley Zen Center Sangha and people, zendo, practice, all of it. And all of you online are such an incredible resource for me and I believe for each other as well. So thank you all for making it. literally creating it. So last Sunday we had a priest ordination for Clay Taylor and Joe Buckner, and last Saturday I talked about the power of the rope, Jogan's classical, about the okesa, about the kushaya.

[03:16]

But it didn't say so much about the precepts, So I want to say something about the precepts and then something about the paramitas today. So an ordination, whether it's a priest ordination or a jukai, a lay ordination, is fundamentally a precept ceremony. It's taking the precepts. Same thing for a full moon ceremony that we do every month. The Bodhisattva Full Moon Ceremony, Bodhisattva Precepts Full Moon Ceremony, is, I believe, the oldest ceremony in Buddhism. It goes back to the time of the Buddha. And at that time it happened twice a month on the full and new moon. All the monks from all around would gather in specific places to come together from where they were practicing in solitary, out in the forest, and they'd come together to renew their vows. And usually when we talk about the precepts, we talk about the ten grave precepts, the prohibitory precepts, not to kill, not to steal, not to lose his sexuality, etc.

[04:35]

But today I want to say something about the three pure precepts. So the sixteen bodhisattva precepts are the three refuges, the three pure precepts, and then the ten grave precepts. I think the precepts overall really ground our practice. Especially after studying the Lotus Sutra together, you can go to some pretty far out places in practice. You can be with the Cosmic Buddha, you can be with emptiness, but there can be an There's the whole mystery and reality of interconnection with each other, but there can be times when it feels a little ungrounded and the precepts are right there to ground us, ground us in action, in activity, in speech, in how we actually live our lives.

[05:44]

And they're extremely valuable that way. The precepts in the Buddha's time evolved quite a bit. The Buddha did not start out by having precepts, nor did he have an ordination ceremony per se. It was just somebody wanted to follow him, then it would be just a brief interaction, so come, come practice. But over time, it became necessary to have guidelines for the Sangha. And those original precepts continue to this day in Theravadan Buddhism and I think maybe in some Chinese traditions as well. I don't know so much about that. But the precepts in the Mahayana have continued to evolve from the Brahmajala Sutra where the

[06:50]

the ten grave precepts first appear, and then of course every time it's translated there are different wordings, so it gets a little bit different over time. And I've been really interested, reflecting lately, on ways in more recent years, in the past few decades, the precepts have evolved to have, in some versions, in English, both the positive and that is what we do, as well as the negative or prohibitory side, particularly with Thikmah Han and with Norman Fisher. So these kind of hold up both sides. And even more recently, the Zen peacemaker order, they have precepts that are much more focused on bodhisattva activity in the world, concrete activity to relieve suffering.

[07:53]

And the way they talk about that is actually in the precepts that they take. They may take both sets, I'm not quite clear, but I'm so interested in how the Dharma has evolved over time to meet the situations in which we find ourselves, to meet the context, to meet this moment as it needs to be met. So the balance between this deep 2,500-year-old tradition and the continuity with the core teachings and then how they manifest in the moment, this interplay, is always a question, always a koan. Is this true or Is it getting a little off base? So the three pure precepts, they are, I vow to refrain from all evil.

[09:03]

Here we say, I vow to do all that is good. Another translation is, I vow to make every effort to live in enlightenment. and I vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. So these three are clearly doing a little dance together, refraining from evil or do no harm. For some people, evil has a particular connotation that makes it not such a helpful word. So whatever word works for you. to do no harm, to do no evil. And Dogen's comment that we do in the full moon ceremony is, it is the abode of the law of all Buddhas. It is the source of the law of all Buddhas. Do no harm is probably fundamental to most religions in the world.

[10:12]

It's such a starting place. I think I've mentioned this here before, but for a while Gil Fransdal was teaching, what he said was, I guess he was asked, what's the, can you just kind of distill Buddhism down for me? And he said, don't make it worse. Just so simple, so brief. Don't make it worse. And if you can, make it better. Do all good. So, this refrain from. So much of what we're doing in this container of sashim is refraining from many of the things that we do in our daily lives. We're refraining from speech, for the most part, unless it's functional speech or it really needs to happen.

[11:15]

You may be refraining from other things when you go home. You may be choosing not to engage with devices or news, or you may be thinking about how you interact with them. So this refrain from, this taking a step back, particularly in Sushin, from what we might call heedlessness. You know, just kind of going with the energy, going with the flow of whatever we're karmically up to. Interrupting being on devices is so powerful that way because it can really get going and to stop, you might really feel it. Or even to be more mindful with it can be very different. And it's not easy, you know, to refrain from, to stop doing something that you have come to a place of considering to be not helpful, not valuable, not something you want to do so much anymore.

[12:35]

And Sashin offers us this container, a physical container of the space that we're in, in the Zendo, or the space that you've created in your home, and the container of our bodies sitting still in the posture that works best for you to be able to be upright in your own way with heart open and settled in body and settled in mind. It's very hard to refrain from when we're moving quickly, when we're feeling driven, when we're agitated. But when we have this intention, particularly with other people, when we share this intention together and we come together at particular times in particular ways, to let go

[13:51]

to drop off, to just, as Greg says, be present for whatever arises. This container is so helpful. And we make it together. I wanted to say a little more about generosity. Donna Paramita and Greg talked about it yesterday. Silence and stillness is a gift that we give each other. You know, we feel it so much. It's like you come in the zendo. It's like, ah, it helps. It helps to let things settle. And there are so many gifts of the practice

[14:55]

of the Buddha way that we give each other in sashimi. We have a generous heart. If you're serving, you're bowing, and you're offering food and water. If you're eating, you're receiving, offering your bowl to be filled, letting the other person fill their bowl, Everything is giver, receiver and gift. And we also have time to be generous with ourselves, to give ourselves to ourselves. And all of this helps us to settle and have the clarity to see what is not helpful, to see what is not wholesome.

[15:56]

to let go, to drop off, to put it down. It is the abode of the law of all Buddhas. It is the source of the law of all Buddhas. Law not so much like rules, although there are guideposts, but also means true, the truth. It is the truth of all Buddhas, to not do all. I vow to make every effort to live in enlightenment. It is the teaching of Anuttara Samyatsambodhi and the path of the one who practices and that which is practiced. Anuttara Samyak Sam Bodhi is complete perfect awakening.

[17:01]

That is the teaching of complete perfect awakening, is to do all that is good. So that gives you a wide field to play in. There's a lot that's good that you can do. You can't do everything that is good. Maybe this is where a refrain from comes in again. Don't get greedy about doing every good, but do the good that you can do. Do the good that's in alignment, in embodiment, that meets this moment, whether it's on this very moment or this wider moment. It is the path of the one who practices and that which is practiced. giver, receiver, and gift. These three wheels are not separate.

[18:04]

And how do we understand these first two precepts? Through the lens of I vow to live and be lived through the benefit of all beings. I love this, not like I am living for the benefit of all beings. who are outside me, but I am being lived. To let go of separation means that we simply are lived. We are lived by our practice, by our vows, by our connections with others. And how that manifests is like a kaleidoscope. What have you been reading lately? What have you been studying? What's been awake for you? Who have you been interacting with? You know, it constantly changes that there's fundamental things that come up over and over again, but they have different flavors, different manifestations.

[19:15]

This is so silly, it just popped into my head, maybe because we had tofu for breakfast today, but tofu is always tofu. but can appear in infinite ways. It readily absorbs flavors, tastes. Sometimes living and being lived for the benefit of beings shows us going and helping someone out and sometimes it's saying no for whatever reason. There are many ways it can appear. But when we're close to the heart of things, we have the discernment we need to find the best way forward that we can in that moment, even though we don't know exactly what will happen. And if we're on top of that moment, on top of, inside of, in relation with,

[20:24]

We're open to knowing how that's going. We're getting feedback from the moment, from the response. Call and response on every moment. So, Another thing I wanted to talk about today is two of the paramitas. Since we're talking about the Lotus Sutra, this practice period, and the paramitas are the basic fundamental practice of bodhisattvas. And the two that I want to talk about are often paired patience and effort. So patience can be translated as tolerance, forbearance, calm, composure.

[21:39]

I like composure because it has this very body aspect to it, like you're composing something, you're bringing the body together, as we do when we sit and when we have an upright posture, then we have a sense of composure. Or a sense of composure may be more available to us because we're gathering everything in and settling. And that allows things to settle and to hold, to hold things rather than kind of shooting off sparks. other than being reactive. In the time of the Buddha, one of the images was of pond water, is how our mind often is, cloudy, stirred up, you know, opaque, that if you leave it undisturbed for a period of time, all the sediment will settle out and the water will become clear.

[22:50]

Its natural state is clarity. I used to like to think of it as that particular type of a coffee press where you put the coffee in the water and stir it up, and then you put this press in when it's done and you push all the coffee grounds to the bottom. And I thought, oh, that's like when I sit upright in sasana. I'm making a little coffee press for my body and mind and expending some effort our next to create this stillness. There's some intentionality. Another translation from Thich Nhat Hanh is inclusivity for patience or forbearance.

[24:00]

Often we can hear, I think, tolerance or forbearance as heavy, as a burden, as a struggle. And sometimes it is, definitely. Refrain from might feel not so good, especially for the long term. But inclusivity rather than kind of shutting down or holding back, has more of a feeling of opening to, of creating space for whatever it is, which has a very different feeling. It's a much more open feeling, a much more responsive feeling, and welcoming. Can we welcome whatever it is?

[25:01]

How the children used to talk about leaning into the pointy places, the sharp places. Can you let it in? If you're getting some deep work in massage and you've got some really tight points, rather than trying to tighten up around it, Can you let the person's hands in? Can you let them in? Can you soften around it? And sometimes when that happens, there's a shift, and sometimes the shift is immediately relaxing or pleasurable. It lets go and it's like, Wow, I've just been holding on to that for so long and it feels so good to let it go.

[26:06]

But sometimes it's really a knot, whether it's physical or mental or emotional. And sometimes it's tied to really old stuff, how we think of ourselves, things that we're very invested in that are very important to us. we want to stand up for, we feel threatened, all kinds of stuff. Sometimes the patience, the forbearance, the inclusivity, the opening can feel like a lot. Especially when it's something that maybe needs some attention, some letting go. But maybe before letting go, it needs just to be there, not to try to, I'm gonna relax this away.

[27:14]

I'm gonna, you know, like just, I'll relax and then it will be okay. The little if-thens are trouble. Because they so seldom work out quite that way for very long. It's just a way of managing them. So here in this really pretty safe container, whatever arises as you sit, as you move, as you be, just let it be. You don't have to do anything with it. But you can just let it be. You can practice letting it be just as it is. To include it. To be as soft as you can with it. To have a generous heart towards yourself and whatever's arising to include it all.

[28:21]

And if it passes, great, delightful. And if it doesn't pass so quickly, to have patience, to just let it be there and try to let go of any expectation that it be otherwise. I think fundamentally, We're all trying so hard to be better. And if we could really believe that we're absolutely okay the way we are and don't need to change anything to be completely lovable and beloved, that would be a big support to let that in. And whenever we've received that from another person, we know how

[29:30]

Powerful that is. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to do anything. You're fine, just as you are right now, including this. Every version of you is okay. Sometimes it has harmful effects. Take care of those. But the feelings, the feelings, take care of those tenderly. I should say sometimes they have harmful effects even when they're not expressed in outward actions. So attend carefully if you're subject to beating yourself up about things. I think Suzuki Roshi would say that's extra. And the other side is, you know, there's the patience side, the allowing, and then there's the effort, the energy,

[30:32]

the energy of doing, the energy of manifesting, the energy of coming forward, and these balance each other, sometimes within the moment and sometimes over time. Virya, kshanti and virya. Virya is the same root as virile. It means life force, life giving. Perseverance, sometimes it's just hanging in there, you know. Bye, I'm going to show up again. And you just do it. Years ago, somebody came here and she said, you know, I was totally planning on sleeping in this morning. I've been really tired and I've been kind of sick. I'm getting over something. And I made the decision. not to come.

[31:33]

I thought that was the best thing. And somehow in the middle of zaza and I went, here, I got up and came without even thinking about it. You know, her body just got her up and went. So sometimes perseverance looks like that, despite ourselves. And sometimes it does have kind of that head-down quality. And that's when we also need the opening. But the keeping going. Because it doesn't happen, none of this happens overnight. We don't talk so much about reincarnation. We talk about like, you know, new rebirth on each moment. But I love the idea of rebirth. Okay, we've got time here.

[32:34]

I'm going to keep coming back. It just gives it a longer framework. And as the Buddha said, if you can maintain this one-pointed attention for seven days, yeah, you can do that in seven days. It's not dependent on time. But it's available to you in any moment, and that moment can be now. So I wanted to end with a quote from Franz Kafka that many of you may already be familiar with. So I was thinking when all the parts of ourselves and the parmitas or the pure precepts or the teachings or the body and the mind or a whole is somehow working together, this arose for me.

[33:37]

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting and listen. Do not even listen. Simply wait. Be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. It's just waiting for you. The world is waiting for you. The whole universe and all beings, all the bodhisattvas, your friends, yourself, we're all waiting for you. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. I'll just read the whole thing again. You do not need to leave your room.

[34:42]

Remain sitting and listen. Do not even listen. Simply wait. Be quiet, still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. Thank you. I think we have time for a few questions. Thanks. Thank you for your talk, Linda. I especially appreciated the translation of patience or forbearance as inclusivity. I had an experience in a sashim.

[35:45]

I was doing a task with another person and I was experiencing a task and they were not and found myself kind of tightening the careability, which I sort of turned to that feeling and just thought, what if I gave this a lot of space? and kind of like that including, and that's what I did, and it immediately sort of softened, because it was suffering. Why aren't things going how I want them to be going? And instead, oh, this person learning this thing, which then kind of made room to see, think about the Lotus Sutra, like, they are already experienced in this thing, even in this moment where they're doing it, maybe for one of the first times. And that was a really powerful experience. The question I had is actually about the precepts, the pure precepts. I often wondered, these precepts seem to encompass the ten grave.

[36:50]

So why the specificity of the ten grave? Like to do all that is good seems to refrain from... And I'm curious if there's like a historical context or reason for that, or even, I don't know, less of a practical and more of a... some other way to think of it. I wish I knew more about one. They may be a Mahayana edition. I don't know if they're in... I haven't studied the Polycanon deeply enough to know if that's there. But I think that my sense is that maybe the pure precepts were kind of a summary and an overview, which provides such a good basic orientation. Like you don't have to get too much in the weeds on things. But also because, you know, there's like justice and the law, right?

[37:55]

And both of these sides are necessary. So justice is like the pure precepts. This is a principle. And then the law is like the grave precepts, or divinia, which gets down into the specifics. If you just say, do justice, that doesn't say, I am doing justice, because everyone has their own point of view about what justice might look like. If you just follow the law, the letter of the law, you can get confused about what justice is. So I think they really need each other. Thank you. See someone online. Heather, hi. Good morning. When you were talking, I was

[38:58]

realizing i'm really struggling this machine and um i'm not struggling emotionally i'm struggling to unplug from my sense of responsibility so it's almost emotionally neutral but the to-do list just keeps rolling [...] and part of it is um I think it's way better to do Sashin in the Zendo. I'll just admit that. But also I feel really accountable to all the people connected to all those things that are running through my head. And I'm curious about, it's one thing for me to say, Oh, I'm not going to do the thing that I want to do for myself. But to,

[40:01]

but to keep 30, 40, 50 people at bay for multiple days. And then the world. I'm just really struggling with that frontier of dropping into the present moment when sort of the mind just keeps churning like that. I'm curious if you have perspective, especially the accountability to other people piece. Yeah, okay, so first I'll talk about one and then the other. When the chiron of to-do lists is scrolling across your mind, what is it like in your body? I don't even feel my body. I just feel my head. Oh, well, your head is... I think part of your body.

[41:03]

Oh, Linda, you're so close. The head part of your body. It feels like all the energy is in the top and all the blood and everything is in the top four or five inches of my skull. That sounds intense. As we're sitting here together now, can you check in with the rest of the body? Can you bring some attention and awareness? You don't have to make anything in the mind, either the chiron or the sensations go away, but can you widen your field so that it includes maybe a sense of numbness in the body or flatness? Well, listening to you speak has helped me get the energy down to about two-thirds of the way down my heart.

[42:09]

I still don't have legs, but I've got... So I think generally trying to make thoughts go away, especially if they're really persistent and meaningful, important feeling, can be kind of a losing proposition to try to like strong arm them away but coming back to the body and not feeling is actually an awareness of the body like you could tell I don't have awareness of the body and if you can bring your curiosity to that it's like what is it like to not feel like I know that my The back of my legs is definitely touching something. Can I feel that? I definitely have clothes on my skin. Can I feel that? Can you even rub your fingers together?

[43:14]

So that can help a lot. And that can help let the thoughts subside enough to include something else. The accountability piece So you talked about being accountable to others, but there's a 51st person that you didn't mention, and that would be, of course, you. So how can you include yourself in this field of accountability and have clear choices about where you're going to show up? I'm going, you know, my sashim work, during work is going to be accountability. And actually, apparently I have another sushine job that takes some other time, but can I bring my mind of practice to whatever I have to do in the accountability realm? You might set yourself a timer so that you're on a schedule, that you decide, and then you do that.

[44:22]

Experiment. But with whatever, it's like sushine, schedule. Whatever you commit to trying, just do it, and later you can revise it, but not in the middle, so that you know in seven minutes you can get up and answer emails. But now we're here. Anyone else here? and they went online. Oh, Deborah. I don't have a question per se. Good morning, everyone. I do not have a question per se, but I was so taken with the Kafka quote. It doesn't sound like it's... Am I supposed to hit it? I don't have a question per se, but I was taken with your Kafka quote.

[45:28]

It just felt... playful and generous and, you know, just kind of dropping body and mind. It's really, he kind of said it in a different way for me when I heard the quote. So I just wanted to thank you. Thank you so much. Not how I think of Kafka, which I love. Anyone online? I don't think so. Okay, I see one. It's hard to see your name. Hi. I have a question. Thank you for your talk. My question is, how do you live for the benefit of all beings, but take care of yourself and your family?

[46:31]

Because... Yourself and your family are also included in all beings. They are not separate and they're the ones that you are primarily responsible for. So we live from the place that we are living and being lived for all beings. but we can't actually care for every being in the world. So we have our responsibilities and our commitments, and then we also add a little extra stretch to, you know, and depending on the person, maybe a lot of extra stretch for how do we meet the suffering of the world. And there are so many ways that we can do that. that are in our neighborhoods, that are, you know, when I'm crossing, I walk a lot, so I'm always crossing Shattuck Avenue, which is our, I guess it's Adeline there, and people may or may not stop, you know, in the crosswalk.

[47:52]

Usually they do, and I always smile and wave. That's my little moment of connection. Thank you for stopping. Just a tiny moment of connection rather than something else. Thank you. Yes. Hi, Carol. Hi. Thank you, Linda, for your talk. I've always wondered about that, to live and be lived, relived. Is that just expressing a mutuality? I think it goes, for me, it goes beyond that. It's like, I'm not trying to do this. It's arising, but it's, you know, I have to make way for that.

[48:53]

But it's like, if someone throws you a ball, you catch it. If someone puts out their hand, you kind of take it, you know, it's like there's this... It is mutuality, but it's... It arises from the inside. It's allowing ourselves to be lived without, like, thinking through, because we are deeply interconnected. You know, we can't help our interconnection. You can try, you know, we... can try to separate ourselves, but these days there aren't very many people who, like if you're out in the middle of the woods by yourself, you're maybe, you know, on your own, but totally depend on each other. We're being lived. It's like what I said at the beginning of the talk, I don't think

[49:55]

I'm going to come in the zendo and experience a sense of connection and joy and love through the sangha. I am being lived that way. The sangha calls that forward in me. And also really everything, the trees, the plants, all the natures being lived through us. I like to think of that too. If I'm in a grumpy mood, usually because I've been spending too long on computers, not the happiest place for me,

[50:34]

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