Good morning. Good morning. Can you all hear me okay? Yes. Good, good. My name is Greg Fane. I'm a teacher here at Brooklyn Zen Center. It's a great pleasure to be talking with you all this morning. Speaking of talking with, why don't we take a second and turn to a neighbor and say hi. Especially welcome the new people. Hi. That was a treat. Good morning. Love it. And hi, everybody on Zoom. So Linda Roshi and I, last week we were in Tassajara Zen Mountain Center where we lived for a long time.

[01:10]

And it was a real delight to go back there and be with the community and we had a good time. We were also kept pretty active. Linda taught this whole two-day seminar for the senior staff and crew heads about leadership and right use of power. that I think they found very helpful. And we did a lot of Doka-san practice discussion with students there, students that we know, people we practiced together with, and new students. It was a delight to meet. One conversation I had was pretty typical for people who've been practicing at Tassajara for a while, namely, should I stay or should I go? Yeah. After a while, you know, people might start to feel like, this is amazing.

[02:12]

I like practicing here. And if you've never been, it's a very narrow valley. It's very confined. It's got this quality of being a pressure cooker, which is good. It's effective. But after a while, it can be like, yeah, maybe I should be doing something else. And that's legit. That's a legitimate thing to be asking, for sure. And it brought up for me a very well-known Zen koan that I know my teacher, Sojan Roshi, liked. It's referenced in his book, Seeing One Thing Through. It's case 16 in the Mumonkan, the gateless gate, collection of koans. This is a statement from the great teacher Yunmen who lived in China during the Tang Dynasty around the latter part of the 9th century and the first part of the 10th century of the Common Era.

[03:28]

It's the golden age of Zen, they sometimes call that. Of course, in China it's Chan, but same thing. Yunnan was such a famous and significant Zen teacher that for a while there was a whole school of Zen named after him. When there was the so-called five schools of Zen into the Song dynasty, one of those schools was the Yunnan school. Anyway, here's the koan, and I think you'll see how it relates to the conversation that I've had. The great teacher Yun-Men said, the world is vast and wide. Why, at the sound of the bell, do you put on your robe and go to the meditation hall? I'll say it again. The great teacher Yunman said, the world is vast and wide.

[04:33]

Why, at the sound of the bell, do you put on your robe and go to the meditation hall? Why indeed, there's so many things we could be doing, like this morning. What is it? And for me, well, what I want to talk about actually wouldn't be of much help to the conversation that I had at Tazahara. But I got to thinking about it and it does, for me, point to an approach to practice, an attitude towards practice. that, well, it works for me and I feel is what I got from my teacher, Sojan Roshi, the old Buddha of the East Bay.

[05:42]

And so this is my commentary on the koan. And it starts with a story, a story that I remember from when I was a little kid. And so I have to say at the outset that I can't say anything about the veracity of this story, the truthfulness of this story or how much it's been embellished or anything else about it. Actually, it's a story. That's all. It's just a story. The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin was founded and grew very quickly in the middle of the 19th century. It was settled primarily by German immigrants at that time. Many, many German immigrants came and found a new life in the New World in Milwaukee.

[06:50]

And Milwaukee, as you may know, is very famous for beer. brewing uh germans they know how to brew beer and they took this art with them of course in settling the city of milwaukee wisconsin actually there were historically many breweries in milwaukee there's still a few left that are very famous but um there were a lot uh maybe these days you might call them micro breweries i don't know I can't speak to that. But the story that I heard is about a horse in a brewery. They used the horse's labor to turn a mill, to grind the barley, to make the mash, to brew the beer.

[07:52]

It's called a horse mill. And this is technology that goes back, I don't know, two or three thousand years. It's very ancient technology, where it's very simple. You take the horse. The horse is tethered to a long pole. And the pole has a counterweight. And the horse, when it's time to start grinding the barley, walks forward and walks in this large circle and turns the barley mill. Because there's a counterweight, because it's such a large circle, it really didn't take much effort on the horse's part to turn the mill. Just walk forward slowly and the mill would turn. This was the horse's job. The beginning of the shift at the brewery, beginning of work, the work day, back in those days, they had steam whistles to let everybody know when the shift was beginning and when it was ending.

[09:10]

Really loud. Like on a steamboat. I think they were pretty popular in the 19th century with the rise of steam and industrialization. Anyway, a really loud steam whistle. And that meant it's time to go to work. And the horse, horse's job was to just walk forward slowly and they would pour the malted barley into the mill and grind the barley up to make the match to brew the beer. Now, horses, our sentient beings with feelings and thoughts and subject like all of us to birth, old age and death. So after what I imagined was a good long life of service, turning this horse mill, horse was retired.

[10:24]

They let the horse go and put out to pasture, which is a real thing. Horse is out in the pasture. That's the horse's retirement. But there were no suburbs. The end of the city was just farmland immediately. No suburbs at that time. So where the horse was put out to pasture was really close by. And so it could still hear the steam whistle in the distance. And the steam whistle would go and the horse would start walking. The horse would start walking in a perfect circle in the middle of an empty field. Perfect circle.

[11:33]

Empty field. I like this image very much. No more barley to grind. No more mill to turn. The horse just kept doing it. That's how I want to practice. In Japan, in Japanese Zen, there's an expression, Dokkan, which means the circle of the way. You hear it pop up in various places in Zen literature commentaries. Dharma talks, etc. Famously, it's in the opening paragraph, opening sentences of a very well-known essay by Eihei Dogen.

[12:52]

Dogen was the founder of this school of Zen in Japan, in the 13th century and he was very literate and possibly one of the greatest religious thinkers in any tradition. And he wrote a lot, especially he wrote this collection of essays we call fascicles for some reason, collected together in what he called the Shobogenzo, the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. And the longest fascicle in Shobogenzo is called Gyoji, which can be translated as continuous practice. In fact, it's so long, he divided it into two parts. Opening paragraph, I wrote it down.

[13:57]

I could have tried to memorize it, but I didn't want to chance it. Opening paragraph of Gyoji, part one, the first sentence is, Logan says, on the great road of Buddha ancestors, there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment's gap. Continuous practice is the circle of the way. On the great road of Buddha ancestors, there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off.

[15:03]

Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana, there is not a moment's gap. Continuous practice is the circle of the way. So, I find it kind of interesting that Dogen chose to say aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana. Because it kind of sounds like step one, two, three and four. It kind of sounds like, could be taken as the way a lot of people think of Buddhist practice. You know, you start out, you have this aspiration and you investigate and Maybe you come to Sassen Instruction at Berkeley Zen Center and say, oh, this could be interesting, and et cetera, et cetera. And then, boom, there's enlightenment and nirvana.

[16:08]

Hey, hey, great. Sojan Roshi liked to say, actually, practice starts with enlightenment. Because we're enlightened, we come to practice. We come to practice because of the enlightenment that we already have. Dogen often wrote practice enlightenment as a single compound word in Japanese. There was no separation. Practice, our Zen practice, what we do together as a community, especially all the upright sitting that we do, but everything, actually, everything. Services, oryuki meal, washing dishes, the listserv.

[17:12]

It's all practice. It's all continuous practice that we do together. And it's all the expression of the enlightenment that we already have. Last practice period, Lunda Roshi and I, we taught the Loda Sutra. So I know you all get it now. It's the parable of the jewel in the sleeve. You know, poor guy, destitute and hungover. Didn't know all this time. His friend has sewed up precious jewel in the sleeve of his rope. Never knew it was there. That's us. We already have it, but we forget. That's what brings us to practice. Enlightenment is what brings us to practice. So yeah, in fact, there isn't a moment's gap.

[18:19]

And it's not a straight line. It's a circle. That's why I love that image of an old horse walking around in a perfect circle in the middle of an empty field. I love that so much. In a horse's case, not the sound of the bell, sound of the steam whistle. Just do it. Just do it. and create for ourselves and each other a life centered around practice. This is the Zen school of Buddhism.

[19:21]

The word Zen means meditation, so this is the school of Buddhism that puts the greatest emphasis on the practice of seated meditation. In Japanese, za-zen. Prefix za-sitting, zen, it just means meditation. So we do a lot of za-zen. Together, as a community. It's very powerful. Very powerful experience. And I feel that, well, in my experience, overthinking it has not been a good idea for me. Is today a good day to sit Sase? I wonder, should I go to the Zendo today? I don't know. I'm kind of tired.

[20:22]

I woke up a little grumpy. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe my zazan would not be so good. I want my zazan to be good. I want to have a positive experience when I sit. No. This was not Sojan Roshi's way. Sojan was like, you just do it. You just go. And you just do it. I remember one time way back, when I was starting to practice here in the 90s. And there was a multi-day sashim, and it just finished. It finished on Sunday. And there was Zazan the next morning, Monday morning. I came to Zazan. What did I know? Guess what?

[21:23]

There was Sojin Roshi. He was here too. And we connected after Zaza and his service Monday morning. And he just gave me the biggest smile. Big positive reinforcement. Yeah. Says she ain't just ended. You came anyway. Good for you. That's the way to do it. I think he actually said that. I think that might be a quote. He said, that's the way to do it. You just gun, you just show up over and over and over. After Linda and I had been practicing in Tassajara for some years in the early aughts, we were asked to go to city center.

[22:25]

and continue our practice there for a while over in San Francisco to support this enterprise called San Francisco Zen Center. They asked me to be treasurer CFO for some reason. My main qualification was it doesn't. But I did some night school to learn about accounting. Just enough. Anyway, that's another story. So practicing the city, I got to be friends with this man who at the time was very faithful in coming to sit with us in the City Center Zendo and would walk four miles across San Francisco in the pre-dawn darkness. to come and sit with us in the morning.

[23:28]

And I found that quite impressive. I said, wow, you know, why do you do that? And he said, well, it really limbers me up for Zaza. My joints are loose, my hips are loose. By the time I get there, I'm ready to sit. I'm like, for real? That's it? And he was thoughtful, and he said, Well, there's something about, I know that you all are sitting Zazen there whether I'm there or not. Logically, that doesn't really make much sense. But I felt like I understood. It's happening whether I'm there or not. And I think I want to be there. I think I want to participate. When I first started coming here, I lived in East Oakland, in the Fruitvale neighborhood, pretty far away.

[24:41]

And I didn't have a car, so I rode my bike here, or I took BART, or I did both, put my bike on to BART. Some combination thereof. Due to the nature of my work, which was institutional food service and healthcare settings, I would always either be working a morning shift or an evening shift because people like to eat three meals a day. So yeah, I could either come to morning zaza or evening zaza, but never both, hardly ever both. Then I was pretty faithful. I especially liked, you know, if I could manage it, riding my bike out here. Kind of like my friend from City Center, you know, kind of loosened me up, quite awake when I got here, ready to sit.

[25:43]

Lori tells me that it was on that account when I applied to be a resident here in 99, that the Resident Committee thought, boy, it makes a lot of effort to come here. Maybe we should let him be a resident. Ah, that's sweet. just to do it, you know. If we overthink it too much, it may not be, as Dogen said, continuous and sustained.

[26:52]

That's the secret right there. Continuous and sustained. I think it's better to come to Berklee Zen Center once a week for a year than it is to come and do one multi-day sashing every year. If there's a choice between one or the other, I recommend continuous and sustained, not some big effort push and then you forget about it. In the Abbott's office, there's a calligraphy that Suzuki Roshi made for Sojun Roshi, and it's a single character, Bones, in Japanese. I remember one time

[28:02]

You know, when I was living in Tassahara, and Mel would always come and visit us in the summers. I don't think he ever missed an opportunity, and he led practice periods there, of course. But this is one of those occasions where he was visiting, and he loved to walk up the road. Linda and I also loved to walk up the road. Anyway. He and I were walking up the road together, getting some exercise, and we turned around somewhere, maybe a second overlook, just to pause, catch our breath, taking the view. And I turned to him and I said, you know, I think this place is getting in my blood. And Mel said, good.

[29:05]

Stick around until it gets in your bones. That's the spirit. That's what I got from Sojo Roshi. Get it in your bones. It ain't up here. This is a body practice. Body, body, body. something we do with our entire bodies and minds, continuous and sustained. I've been talking about Zazen a lot in this practice of Upright City.

[30:13]

But I also want to add, like, so you always hold up the other side. And in this case, the other side for me is, you know, Yung Man says, at the sound of the bell, Why do you put on your robe and go to the meditation hall? Now, not everybody here has some version of the robe, but many do. Genpo, Ben, and others wear the raksu. This is also Buddha's robe. Putting on the robe is putting on the precepts. When we wear Buddha's robe, we are wearing the precepts. We're wearing the 16 Bodhisattva precepts.

[31:19]

So, just to say, unfortunately, it's quite possible. And there are, unfortunately, any number of examples that we can point to. Being able to sit like a mountain, for hours at a time, and still make horrible decisions and hurt people. So, the practice has to be balanced. Zazen alone does not cut it. It's a big help, I feel. Practice includes, it's a package deal, and it definitely includes presets. Ethical behavior. So yeah, I just didn't want to let that go unsaid. But why at the sound of the bell?

[32:29]

Could you men have been setting us up? I kind of feel like maybe he was. It's a koan, right? A koan doesn't necessarily have an answer. There could be a lot of potential answers, I feel. If you do this practice for years, for, I don't know, thousands of hours of zazen, you might find yourself exhausting all those potential answers. until you're just like that horse walking around in a perfect circle in the middle of an empty field. I don't know. So there's some time for questions and answers.

[33:33]

And before you, oh yeah, never mind Ben. Do you think, Ben? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes. I was just gonna say, I'll ask the questions. Actually, it's just one question. The world is vast and wide. Why do you do this? Why do you do this? I would love to hear from some of the senior people, especially. But yeah, if anyone has a response, love to hear it. Because we are Sangha. We are a community practicing together soon. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. I don't know. And yet, here you are.

[34:42]

For 20 years I didn't know and it didn't make any sense. I just found myself doing it over and over again. And then for 20 years, I noticed that I continued because I just kept getting happier and happier. What happens if you get unhappy? Oh, the mic is going away. Never mind. I enjoy my unhappiness. When I remember to turn toward it, it's just fine and actually quite interesting. One more thing. A leading question, if you will. Would you say then that

[35:56]

a life centered around Zazen and Zen practice has given you some foundational okayness? Yes, it has revealed that in truth. And I will say that at the beginning, I was like the one searching for the pearl in the pile of poo. And I could not find it anywhere, but gradually it began to reveal itself to me. Turns out Zazen is not what I thought it was. I'm very fond of that bumper sticker that says, meditation, it's not what you think. Linda's referencing another very famous Zen story about Tang Dynasty founder of this school, Zhao Zhao, when he met with his teacher for the first time.

[37:00]

And his teacher said, well, are you joyful? And Zhao Zhao was like, wow, it's not like I'm not joyful. It's kind of like searching for a pearl in a pile of poo. I never heard that translation before. Got it. All right. Oh goody goody. Oh, there's a hand up online. Reverend Jerry. Okay, you're next, Jerry. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. So for a long time, I sat because I wanted to get something. And then I gave up trying to get something. And then I found that I had something. Yes, Jerry.

[38:03]

Unmute. There she is. I could not unmute. We can hear you now. Oh, good. Okay, great. When I first came to practice, I was in love with practice. And I really loved searching for the right practice. And I went all over the world. And I would go to an island in Scotland and sit with a spiritual community there. And then I'd go to a place I'd heard about in L.A. And then I'd come back and tell Sojan about... these wonderful Kencho moments I had. And eventually he got, you know, exasperated and he looked at me and he said, that's very nice. That's a very nice tourist.

[39:07]

But I think what you need to do is just stop and just come here. I want to see you here. And It's interesting because I think while I was searching, I kind of noticed, you know, all sorts of unwholesome things like gaining idea and attached to finding the real thing rather than the sustained practice of being here most days in those days. And my practice changed and it was much more, you know, solid and grounded. Less excitement, but... really delving in and really feeling the roots under the ground. Thank you. You are the real thing. Thank you for that. It's great. This is wonderful. It helps to let go.

[40:12]

Drop body and mind when it happens, as it happens. No gaining idea. Because why have a gaining idea when whatever there is to gain, you already have it. Don't forget. Somehow this went off the gallery view. I guess it does that when somebody starts speaking, huh? It's up in the top right corner. Top right, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Thanks, appreciate that. Yeah, here we go. Why, at the sound of the bell. Thank you for your talk, and happy birthday. Thank you very much. I have the opportunity to try to explain myself to a lot of friends who don't sit at all.

[41:14]

And recently I found myself saying, I sit because this is the most true thing. Everything else that you imagine in your mind is not real. And so it's for the practice of just practicing being with what the closest you can get is to the actual truth of reality. And that's why I think, or that's one of the reasons why I sit. And even that's an approximation, but it's just to try to get closer to the truth. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[42:16]

I come here to sit to almost like the same idea with what Gary said. Wash out, smile, any kind of sadness, concerns, hunger. whatever I have, just to sit down and realizing I'm sticking to me, me, me, or I'm trying to control something that it's not happening, or just to, just to, a little bit of analyzing a little bit to then wash out. So I want to have a little bit of clean blood going into my body. Thank you. Because the world is sometimes toxic and also we create so many things unnecessary.

[43:26]

That's in Dogen's Zazen instructions. He says, set aside all worldly affairs. Don't think good or bad. Don't judge. You know, just drop it. Just, you know, for that precious hour or 40 minutes, you can just let it go completely. What a gift. What a gift that is. Yeah, no kidding. And I also I said this before in a talk a long time ago when I was visiting from Tazahara when I, you know, I live here now. Wow. It's amazing. And we really love it. We love living here. Resonant again. Speaking of the circle of the way, 25 years later.

[44:31]

But this was one I was visiting and I was invited to give a talk. And I said that I feel that Berkeley Zen Center comes closer than any other place. And Lynn and I, we've got around. We've practiced a lot of different places in Soto Zen, particularly in the Suzuki Roshi tradition. Yeah, we've been doing a little bit of that, traveling teachers. Berkeley Zen Center comes closest, I feel, to actualizing Suzuki Roshi's vision for Zen in America, which he would always say, not quite priest, not quite lay. This hybrid, this amalgamation, this mashup of the two, where people, regular people, regular folks, can come as a community, practice together.

[45:38]

You don't have to go off to the monastery. It's right here, this temple. And when you're here, this is what we're doing. And it's so wonderful. And I feel this is really what Suzuki Roshi had in mind. It's accessible. You don't have to make big arrangement in your life. You don't have to, as they say, leave home. You can come here and do this practice completely. There's no difference. There's no difference in the practice we're doing here and the practice people are doing in some remote mountain monastery. Same practice. Very important point, I feel. And there's a couple more people online. And it looks like Ken and Katie. They're both there.

[46:41]

Hello. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. Happy birthday. Thank you. I just, the story of the horse spoke to me in a very different way. I found it very sad. to think of this horse that had lived its life shaped by a human industry. And it reminded me of how we all shape our lives and minds into the form that is needed to sustain ourselves. And then can we let that go? Can the horse retire? And so I... I found it very sad that this horse, you know, yes, he was expressing effort with no gaining, you know, just doing it. And also, it wasn't his desire, probably, you know, or his... I'm not sure what he was getting out of walking in a perfect circle in a field.

[47:50]

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, to stretch that into... something about my own practice. It's a little bit of a leap. I lived at BZC for six years with Sojin Roshi as abbot and his style of practice never quite fit me. And I think it is equally important to you know, I, for, for me to, to practice and, um, come out of it with whatever unexpected things happen. That's, that's why I practice something like what someone else was saying of, I experienced my life in a different way and it comes together in a way that I was not intending. Um, and I walk out with something new and, um,

[48:58]

I guess what I'm saying is that no one's idea of practice is going to be a perfect fit. I agree strongly. And I kind of figured somebody might bring up the issue of animal rights. So when I started out, I said, it's a story. It's just a story I remember hearing as a kid. So, yeah. I like it because of the image. And all the other things that you held up are certainly true. Yeah. Or anyway, Carol, I think, had her hand up first. Go ahead, Carol. Yeah, I'm trying to actually put myself on camera.

[50:02]

There she is. Here we go. Thank you, Greg, and happy birthday. Okay. My birthday was the 14th. But we've been celebrating all week. Thank you very much, Carol. Thank you. How are you doing? Just going. Good. I got this brace on holding me together. What I wanted to say was there was a point in my life when I had this inmost request, you know, as Suzuki Roshi talks about. It was so strong. I mean, I couldn't turn away. I couldn't turn away, and it was no longer a choice. The choice was made. You know, this practice. This practice that includes everything, as you say. Zazen, breakfast, service.

[51:03]

It's just showing up. And it's just, it's the greatest gift for me. Thank you. Hope to see you soon. Thank you, Carol. Likewise. One more question. Gary says one more question. Hi. Hello. In my house, we celebrate birthdays the entire month. Happy birthday, everyone who has cancer. When I first came to Zen Center, I was certainly to try to get something. I don't know what. And along the way, I realized there's nothing to get. And then at some point I realized the world is vast and wide. And so Zazen is an expression of that truth.

[52:06]

Thank you. That's a nice piece to end up.

[52:16]

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