Good morning. One of my jobs around here now is to arrange for speakers on Saturday when Mel's not here and to introduce them. So I'll introduce myself to those of you who are here who don't know me. My name is Peter Overton, and I have, again, practicing at the Zen Center in around 1970 or so, but initially at the Berkeley Zen Center when it was at Dwight Way. And we don't have enough time to tell you everything. Can you hear me? Oh, should I speak a little louder? Does that help? I'll try. How's that? Is that better? Good, thank you. I want to talk this morning a little bit about some of the words we use.

[01:18]

I often feel it's useful to kind of reflect some on some of the things we chant frequently. because they are, you know, words we're using all the time in our liturgy and we often, you know, they have some kind of special power and meaning. At the same time, we say them often enough that we sometimes stop thinking about what that power and meaning might be. I have a feeling that I'm not being heard. Am I being heard? Oh, it's okay. I can be a little louder. I'll try. this morning during the bodhisattva ceremony and then after we finish here we will chant the four bodhisattva vows to save all beings to end all delusions to enter all dharma gates and to become buddha's way and

[02:20]

The four bodhisattva vows describe the attitude and the effort of the bodhisattva to save all beings, to end all delusion, to enter all dharma gates, and to become Bodhis Way. And when we say kind of a shorthand version of this, the part we leave out is that although I... not although I vow to save all beings and I also do not seize on or conceive of beings, I do not... I don't attach to an idea of a being. And yet I vow to save all beings. The part I want to talk about today is where we say, Dharma gates are boundless.

[03:24]

I vow to enter them. And what I'm hoping is that my remarks and whatever discussion we have will prompt you to have some inner reflection on on the meaning of these words and not necessarily to come up with, you know, the right meaning or the correct meaning. I think it's useful for us to have some discussion and arrive at a shared understanding of these kinds of things. But I also think that proceeds from each one of us reflecting on our own experience. When I chant or hear, Dharmagates are boundless, I vow to enter them. I always, what comes to mind are these large temple gates, usually painted red, and I don't know why, I never figured it out, but this image always comes up, and then it goes away.

[04:25]

It brings to mind a story about the kind of energy that's sometimes required when if you're going to continually enter all dharma gates and usually what we're referring to here is we're referring to the kind of moment by moment breath by breath intent to be present with just what's ever happening and and usually in the same breath there is you know, some question about how I'm going to continue doing this moment after moment, breath after breath. And I think part of the difficulty therein lies that in different circumstances, whether they be internal or external, something, some different level of energy or attention may be required to actually meet the moment.

[05:35]

This reminds me of a story about Dan Welch. Dan Welch was a, when I came to Zen Center in 1971, he was, when I went to Tassajara, he was sort of, at least from my point of view, kind of an ordained senior student. I don't know if he's that much older than I am actually, but he'd been involved in Zen and determined people I've ever met. And the story goes that as a young man, he went to Japan to study Zen. You know, I'm just going to go do it, you know. And he arrived and went to, I believe, Since there's nobody here to contradict me, I'll just say it the way I want to. But I went to Ryutaku-ji, which is a famous Zen temple, and expected to be admitted, and of course wasn't.

[06:40]

Because you can't do anything in Japan without, you know, knowing somebody or having some kind of introduction. So you just came and they weren't going to let him in. However, there is an exception made for people under these in these kinds of cultural circumstances an exception made for people who can demonstrate their sincerity and in this case that takes the form or took the form of Dan kneeling Like this on the stone stems of the temple gates for two days and You know, you have to think about what kind of determination and energy and perseverance is required to do something like that. I mean, we don't recommend these kinds of austerities in our lives. But there are circumstances in our lives which come up, and if they haven't come up yet, they will, where some kind of tenacity of that sort and, you know, just desire to be present through the experience

[07:48]

that capacity, your capacity for that will be tested. You know, a sudden loss, you can imagine all sorts of circumstances. Myself being a parent, it's easy to imagine how I might cope with the loss of a child, how it felt when I learned that someone discovered their three-month-old was deaf suddenly. You know, they kind of a crisis in your relationship, whether that be a spouse or your partner that you don't know where it's going to lead. These kinds of circumstances call forth, if we can kind of step up to the plate, they call forth a very deep and determined energy. Now, also as Grace, I don't know, Grace Shearson was here some weeks ago and talked about a kind of different kind of attention that we sometimes don't talk about so much, but the kind of attention that gives us access to just the subtle beauty that may or may not be present in a situation.

[09:07]

You know, the song of the birds, the rain outside. Just the kind of attention that allows us to open up to something very quiet and ordinary but at the same time has a profound and moving beauty to it and that when you think about that it seems to be like a somewhat different kind of emphasis than the sort of fierce determination that might be necessary in a different situation where you were Attempting simply to know you know where the your energy is and focused on not Creating some sort of catastrophic reaction to you know a tragic and unpleasant circumstance But the I Mean what I'm saying is a little oversimplified because if you think about it a little bit at either end of this kind of continuing or extremes I've just drawn

[10:13]

Both of these kinds of energy are to some extent at play, you know, to deal with an extremely difficult situation. You do have to be able to be calm and attentive and sort of with a kind of broad awareness or else you'll, you know, whatever intense energy you feel is required may take you, you know, make you fall on your face. And likewise, you know, to just sit and listen to the wind, maybe it takes some kind of intense energy just to be quiet enough to appreciate the very simple things. But in between the extremes there's a whole world of experience which is kind of not so dramatic, startling, beautiful.

[11:17]

and you don't really have a strong reaction to it. At about the same time in my life that I was first at Tassajara, after I left the practice period, I went on a road trip. I decided to go hitchhiking around the country and visit my friends. see, you know, what they were doing. And as a way, I guess it was a way to kind of check myself out, what I'd been doing in the Ed Zin Center. How did that relate to my recent experience in college and all that kind of thing. And I was someplace in Southern Oregon or Northern California, I can't remember where, and I had my thumb out and the car pulled up and there was a little sedan, the guy in the driver's seat, and that was it. The guy in the driver's seat and the rest of the car was sort of carpeted with Zoffos. And I got in. I thought, oh, this is pretty cool. And it turned out that this fellow, who I've not stayed in touch with, and I can't remember his name, but he was going to a sashim. He said, do you want to go to a sashim? I said, sure, why not?

[12:31]

And so we kept driving. And we went to a sashim that was being held at a state park facility somewhere in southern Oregon in the Willamette Valley. And they had the lodge, and they kind of set it up. It was a zendo. It turned out it was a group of students of Sasaki Roshi, who is a Rinzai teacher down in the Los Angeles basin at the Mount Baldy Zen Center. So he was there, and I think one senior student, and then this group of people who were in the local group in Oregon. It was interesting. I had just come from Tassajar, where even back in those days things were pretty well organized and everything was kind of worked out. And here, suddenly, I was a beginner.

[13:33]

Nobody knew me or anything. They had no idea if I had any experience whatsoever. Nobody talked to me about it. I guess they asked me, did I have any experience, and they wanted to know. I wasn't a complete neophyte, but it didn't seem to matter. So they do everything backwards from us, you see. This is the first part of it, which was interesting for me, was that, you know, you don't hold your mudra like this. You hold it with the other hand on top, and you hold it up here like this, with the thumbs like that. Not like that, but like that. And then when you get up in the morning, everybody comes to the zendo, they serve you tea, and then you chant. Then you do sitting after that. The meal practice and the kitchen situation was all kind of ad hoc. This was a kind of small group and they didn't have a lot of Japanese teachers coming over and showing them forms and giving them little lessons about how to do this and that.

[14:40]

We were just kind of trying to get through it all. It was very, very different. And we went to see the teacher three or four times a day and they'd ring a bell and you were supposed to leap off your seat and run to this mat by the door and then sit there and wait while the snow blew in. Then you go run out and go see the teacher who's in a little hut. And so the teacher, in the Rinzai practice, the teacher gives you a koan or a story or a phrase or something you're supposed to work with and I don't know what. His regular students do, but for people who just show up like me, the phrase was, how do you realize the Buddha while driving a car? Which I realize now, of course, is completely appropriate since I had a ride in this car full of Zafus. And so I'd come in, and he'd ask for the koan, and I'd start to say it, and he'd say, oh, no more zazen, ding ding, and then you're out of there.

[15:44]

And sometimes he'd make fun of me, you know, by the way I bow. He'd say, oh, Soto-san, you know. And so this was good, entering this, I mean, in some sense it was great to go, and then of course the way they do kinghin. is you get outside and you run. The teacher, you run around all over the place and come back in. So everything is a different shape and a different pace and it was kind of wonderful. It was kind of wonderful. But I think this koan, how do you realize a Buddha while driving a car, It was a little bit like this experience, you know. What's interesting about learning to drive a car is that it's a skill that we, it's one of the first skills, you know, really important skills that you learn after you become somewhat mature. You know, you learn it when you're, you know, mid-teen years, after you've learned how to read and do lots of things and become competent at many things.

[16:47]

Then you learn how to drive, and you are again incompetent. And you learn, you know, you get comfortable with the machinery and get comfortable physically with it and you start to kind of, you know, develop your judgment about how to navigate traffic and so on and so forth. And there is this period where you're kind of, you know, you don't quite know what you're doing, but you're going to somehow get there, you know. And I remember to do this and, you know, there's a turn signal and look in the mirror and all that kind of stuff and you kind of, you're kind of, sort of stumbling through it, grasping, trying to kind of stay alive all at the same time. Then at some point, you know, you kind of get it. you're driving down the road and you know there's no more car and it's just you and the other drivers and you're in this sort of relationship with other people you know there's not cars and roads and you know it's just you know and this is the kind of experience that often we have you know and at some point you think that this is realizing the Buddha while driving a car and maybe so but I think that there is a there's a there's a point

[18:04]

in that process when you don't know what you're doing and you're really kind of fumbling you're kind of in the dark in a way your body and mind is you're you don't you don't get it and you're just trying to learn how to drive trying to learn how to you know sit with this group of people who have totally different ways of doing things or or you have a new job, new people, new circumstance that you really don't know how to operate in effectively. These kinds of experiences, it makes me want to ask, to rephrase the koan, how do you realize the Buddha while learning to drive a car? While being in that place where you don't get it. and you don't know what the next step is and you're just feeling your way along because you can't really see further than your nose.

[19:11]

And of course, you know, that's like, how do you raise children? How do you realize the Buddha while raising children? That's often the kinds of experience you have where you're not You don't really know. I mean, some people, I think, actually have a gift in knowing what to do. I still believe that, but it's probably false. But there's this sense of, you know, I don't know where to go with this. But these are the kinds of moments where fresh air blows into our life, where we don't really have a grasp. If we are sincerely entering this Dharmagate, moment on moment, the next one moment by breath. In the midst of these kinds of circumstances where we don't really have a clue, you know, if we really asked ourselves, we're kind of unsure about what we're doing.

[20:13]

That's when some fresh air can blow into your life. When we really feel wonderful, like we have it all, it's all sort of coming together. I mean, that's, that is wonderful. In a way it feels inspiring and maybe that's fresh air too, but the the When we when we when our mind has not settled on a Recognizing that we're You know what we're up to then we are a little closer to We're willing to let loose a little bit on this idea that we know what we're doing. And in that way, I think that connects a little bit with the initial remark I made about the Bodhisattva path and that entering Dharmagate's

[21:26]

vowing to enter all Dharma gates and yet not seizing on any experience and saying, yes, I'm really doing this, yes, I'm really... In those periods when we, you know, enact this vow and yet can't quite see what we're doing, that gives us an opportunity to really enter into the situation without preconceptions and without being satisfied that we really have it together and I think is an extremely valuable kind of experience which we probably have more frequently than any other kind of experience. So it's not to be set aside or disregarded. This is the kind of experience I'm having right now.

[22:45]

But I'd like to throw it open for discussion and hear what anyone else would like to say. Yes? When you told about your red gates, I realized that I had an image too. saying that line, because I hadn't really paid attention to that, that I had an image. It's really different from yours. So, the rock of my soul in the bosom of Abraham. That's what comes up. So high, you can't get over it. So low, you can't get under it. So high, you can't get around it. You gotta go into the dark. So that, I had a, Very kind of vague image, you know? Something kind of vaguely too high, you couldn't see the top, too high, you couldn't see the ends. Still you, there's a door. I get some image, some visual image of that every time you say it, but I was kind of subconscious when you talked about red gates.

[23:53]

Thank you. Yes. I remember a... an image that a poetry teacher once used about driving a car. And he said, we are too young to expect the next moment to always be like the one that we have experienced in the past. And that there is no real reason why we should expect or why the next moment will be exactly as we So that there is a kind of reality shift that's possible. And I always appreciated the idea, the notion of being at that threshold. Knowing that there is another reality possible.

[24:57]

what you say brings forth the image in my mind of resting of, you know, what we want to do is rest on the expectation that things are just going to go along and then we always fall off, you know, slip off that resting place and find ourselves someplace else. So, one way to avoid the calamity that sometimes occurs when that when that happens is to kind of, like you say, you know, keep questioning about what am I really expecting here or, yeah, or am I expecting something, you know? It's interesting. Yes? Oh, you know, I really like your topic and the way you presented it, but I realize that There are, the way that you have, with this sort of entering a gate where there's uncertainty, and in some cases you just, you have to go, there's no choice.

[26:16]

It's just a situation. And you may not want to go, but you have to, and somehow be there. But I had another sense of Dharma Gate, which also involves entering a gate. I had a dream of a Japanese gate. I don't think I've ever seen one. But that gate has a sense of entering a sacred space. or from the ordinary everyday world, now you're in a different precinct. And to me, that's another meaning of Dharma Gate, that this can happen at any time, at any moment, if we're... if we have...

[27:27]

attention might be very immediate, always, and keeping your mind a moment to moment. At any time, this wider sense of something can come in, or you go into it, maybe oneself some other awareness comes into what everyone's doing in an ordinary way, another dimension. When you're talking, I'm thinking about how we have the temple gate out there by the sidewalk. And what's interesting about entering the temple precinct or the grounds is that you suddenly realize, oh, I'm entering something.

[28:38]

It's, you know, a lot of times you don't notice that you're entering anything. It's kind of a continuum, you know, but somehow we, the way we do things here, we kind of notice when we arrive and perhaps when we leave and there's a kind of uh something happens i am talking about those um and enter um yes yeah the door that opens uh-huh uh-huh something opens right and what could call the gate or yeah yeah can you just sort of reiterate what is a dharma gate What isn't a Dharmagate? I guess that's what I'm bringing up here, is that when we say Dharmagates are boundless, I vow to enter them.

[29:45]

Is there anything you can leave out? And that's why you emphasize One of the things I like about that is that it follows the delusions being endless, and I think, well, how am I going to vow to end all those delusions? But then there's all these Dharma gates, and I see that as lots of opportunities if you just see it moment to moment. about another term that I see in our chants. I hear people chant them in different ways. In some places we say beings. I vow to awaken with all beings.

[30:48]

And in the Bodhisattva ceremony today, in the refuges, I often hear people say beings. The first line after each refuge I think that's what it says, yes. I think it says it in the singular. Well, I think in that particular line in the chant, I happen to like it that way. But I think also saving all beings kind of recognizes the particularity of this, you know, in your extensive world. I think that's also a good thing too. Yes.

[31:49]

What are things I like? see the same thing and be closed? Well, we could argue about that. But, you know, I think... Yeah, I mean, I think you have a point. But I think there's... One could question whether or not one is really open. You know, are you really seeing things if you're not open? Yes. Somehow, I've been going back through a lot of history we've had together over the years.

[32:55]

I've been teaching sculpture at the University of Chicago and stuff, small stuff. They had this great big thing, but there was room to set down all of these little figures and nothing was touching each other. I was here, and I was teaching, and I had, instead of, you know, a few little things, just piles and piles of sculpture that children have made, you know, piles of them. And I didn't overcome with it, and you came, and you, I stood there, and you just loaded other and fired them, and I just did that with my mouth hanging out. I thought I knew everything, but I had no vision of being able to do all of these figures sitting together.

[34:01]

You put each one in next to the other, one after another, fitted like little tiny things, and you fired them. Not one of them broke. They were big things, little things. these things. And I was just overwhelmed. And then when we opened the kiln, and it was a big kiln, and nothing was broken. Nothing. We were lucky. There were so many things, so many different things that I remember that you knew how to do, stretching the tops of drums and making... Anyway, I'm just kidding. Life goes by. You remember this much better than I do.

[35:04]

Well, I remember a lot of things, a lot of garbage. Anyway, thank you. Yes. Can you say something about your take about saving all beings? Talk about saving. I've been reading, this year I've been reading the Diamond Sutra and in one of the early chapters of the Diamond Sutra the Buddha is asked how do bodhisattvas basically carry on? What do they do? And the Buddha says that the bodhisattvas essentially a vow to save all beings, to enlighten all beings. And yet, a Bodhisattva does not form an idea of any being or a notion of any soul or anything like that. In other words, it doesn't... Yes, the Bodhisattva makes that vow and will do that.

[36:12]

And yes, it's not yet, it's sort of yes, the Bodhisattva does not attach to any idea of a being. And so there's a... that takes you right to the edge. And I wish I had thought more carefully about that verse and could talk more about it now, but I was really thinking more in this kind of practical side. and not so much in terms of those ideas at this point. But we can talk more about that. So people who are going out to protest war have an idea of what saving Well, they might, I don't know. But that is one of those things.

[37:14]

You know, what's happening when you take, when you do something like that, or go meet a friend, or, you know, what's really happening? What is your attitude? You know, are you kind of leaning one way or another, or are you just trying to remain upright? And are you, you know, fixated on an idea that you're doing something, that you're doing something good? Or are you kind of just going to be with what's happening? And this is the only way I can be with what's happening is to join with others in this particular circumstance. Yes? Peter, you just used a phrase that I hear used here at the Simcenter.

[38:17]

It's a simple thing. It's very simple, but I'd like for you to tell me what exactly it means to you. You mentioned meeting with another person and simply being upright. And I mean, you know, we have a book on the priesthood. Yeah, yeah, right, right. But I don't think that's it. I mean, I'm not interested in the book. Yeah, right, right. To me, it means a kind of being awake, but not grasping at anything and then being upright is a way of sort of what I'm trying to evoke is what that's like being awake and not grasping or pushing away and or being fixated

[39:25]

to sort of say something about you. How does one exercise that energy? Well, taking off on the comment I made about being upright, there are occasions when, you know, your emotional circumstances or something's going on where it's really hard you know, like what you would naturally do is really go off in some direction, you know, be angry or desirous or, you know, just go off into some kind of cloud nine somewhere. And sometimes in those circumstances, You have to really focus your energy intensely to just sort of stay in the ordinary circumstance of your life and not kind of veer off in one of these particular ways. Or act in a way which is, even though you are tremendously upset, you find the wherewithal to

[40:55]

to remain centered and in some way calm enough not to strike out at somebody or withdraw. you know, from the situation. A lot of times when people, you know, we're upset, we get defensive and we think the best thing to do is to kind of withdraw into ourselves, be calm. That's not really what I mean by feeling of being upright. I mean just being up and exposed and present in the situation. But giving ourselves the you know, the gift of just to be present, not to kind of, you know, be flying in all directions or something. And sometimes that takes some considerate energy. Yes? Would you tell us a little about being a priest, what that's like for you in your life now, how that plays itself out?

[42:05]

Well, that's an interesting question. I've been thinking about that a little bit lately, trying to figure out what the priests are supposed to be doing and why we have ordination and wear robes and that kind of thing. And I'll just say what happens to be on my mind now, which won't be a satisfactory answer, I'm sure, but I think of what the priests do is to kind of take care of the form of our practice and to the extent they can to follow, take on and follow these forms and in a wider sense to take a very old and venerable tradition of Buddhism and to bring it alive in those forms, and to figure out how to adapt those forms as we go forward.

[43:12]

In other words, to deal with the form of it, whether it be the clothing or the teachings, but the responsibility is mainly to make those things come alive, because they can so easily be dead. You know, it can be, you know, I mean, we all know that there's, you know, there's two sides of this thing. You know, in some ways it's wonderful and useful, but it has to be brought alive. You know, doing arioke, or the way we bow, or the way we chant, just to give you some examples. The question is always, how is this vital? And if there's another, you know... And gradually, you know, the forms change. The way we do our chants change, translations change. All that stuff slowly is adapted. And that's part of... part of that. How are we doing for time?

[44:13]

Just after 11 o'clock. Oh my goodness, well... Um...

[44:19]

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