I'd like to tell you a little bit about my last few weeks and how I got to choose the topic that I did. I've been having some trouble during Zazen in that I've lost the feeling of connectedness and flow and peace that there are moments of at least in Zazen and I was looking for ways to renew my practice and my zazen. And I, a week ago Wednesday, which was the third, I went and had dokusan with Mel. And we talked about it, and he said, well, when you give your lecture, you should talk about renewal. And then I came on Saturday, and Mel talked about renewal.

[01:01]

He spiked my lecture, because he had gotten to many of the same things that I had thought about. How many of you were here for that lecture? Well, I went in afterwards, I knocked on his door, and I said, Mel, that wasn't fair. And he said, well, it's a big topic, and it's a good topic, and if you tell it from your point of view, it'll be different than mine. So today we're going to have Renewal II. The other thing he said to me, being Mel as well as Sojan Roshi, he said, besides, you can tell him how all these things I said don't work. So I've really been thinking about this a lot, and I'm going to talk about it from really four points of view. And one is conversations with sangha members. One of the things I had done was I got this big pile of books of things that I knew I should read and review about this and find who said this that I knew was important.

[02:08]

And then I decided I would just talk to the people I knew and I talked to about it and about their experience, and I talked about seven or eight people, and I, just in glancing at my notes today, I realized that there must be about 300 years of practice between these people, so they may have something that would help us. So I want to talk about those conversations, And then, of course, I spent a lot of time in introspection and thinking about the times in my life when practice was going well for me and when it became more difficult. But I mean, not that those things are two separate things. Often when it's more difficult, it's when it's going well. But when you feel, you know, somehow you've You're in the doldrums. I don't know. Maybe none of you ever feel that way. Maybe none of you ever feel like you have to sharpen your practice, but I do.

[03:14]

And then I want to talk in a way about our opportunities for sharpening that practice and being more in the moment. within our formal practice here, and then about some sort of personal practices that I've come back to over the years that have helped me get through the rough spots, whether they're just the doldrums or the third day of a seven-day session or whatever. I know that some people are here for the first time and I'm annoyed sometimes when people slip into terms that I know a lot of people don't understand. And I just caught myself on one and that was talking about a seven day Sashin, which is a long meditation sitting where we sit a lot of Zazen and do a lot of other things. So if I keep saying things that people don't understand, please let me know.

[04:21]

And then, so the opportunities for renewing your practice in formal, through formal practice, And then last, and as I said, some personal practices that have helped me get through some of the difficult spots. I think this is an interesting topic also, aside from the practice part of renewal. I think it's a part of everyone's life. It wasn't until this morning when I woke up that I thought about how much right now in my family life, and my personal life outside of the Zendo, that renewal is a theme. We've been living in this house now, that we live in, which was an old house to begin with, which is, we've been living it for more than 30 years, and we've done a lot of work on it, but all of a sudden, it's time to renew and look at that house again, and we're doing a lot of physical work on house and garden now, and having both retired,

[05:36]

We really are spending a lot of time in the last couple of years looking at the renewal of our marriage and inventing, reinventing it in a way almost. Because we're together much, we have opportunities to be together much more of the time than when we were both working. So it was interesting that here, to me, that I had put the, practice side over here and thought about renewing that but hadn't looked at the rest of my life and realized that right now that's just a constant theme for it. Anyway, one of the things among the people that I spoke to was And one of the things he didn't mention when he talked in his talk on renewal last week was a very basic thing, and one of the things was waiting for inspiration. And how inspiration can fuel your practice and your zazen, your zazen practice.

[06:48]

But you have to be doing it. to be there with it, to wait, to be ready for the inspiration to come. And if you leave, then it's harder to find, you know, to refuel your practice, to separate from it, to find that inspiration. And a lot of it seems to be waiting for it. Just waiting and leaving the space in your practice or it reminded me, when he talked about this to me, it reminded me of something that happened to me when I went to the zoo in San Diego. I mean, that's a great place for inspiration in your practice. Because they have this huge birdhouse, and you walk into it, and you see they're birds, you know, there are a lot of birds, it's amusing. But because I had been practicing, I sat down and sat still there and just sat peacefully.

[07:55]

And soon my whole vision saw and bird after bird appeared. Some came out, but some were there and I just hadn't seen them. And that, I don't know, that really seeing be a good example of that waiting and the importance of waiting and finding that minute and those seconds between all the monkey mind and thought that comes and goes. There are a couple of things that Mel said that I think bear repeating just briefly and one that we hear often and that is the thoughts come and go and they're there. but you don't invite them in for tea." Well, we'll leave that for now.

[08:58]

Somebody suggested the opposite of what sounds at first like the opposite of Mel's advice, and that was, you know, take a break. I thought that was interesting. I thought about what taking a break can be, and I decided that it wasn't sitting less or coming to the zendo less, but for me it was taking a break, sort of switching my routine, and especially coming in the afternoon, which is a time that I've always loved. So it's a break in the routine, but not in the intention of how much zazen and how many times I sit zazen a week. One of the things that was mentioned most by people that I spoke to was intention and how for them, and these are people who have practiced for 20, 25 years, that it was like going to work.

[10:06]

that you had the intention, it wasn't a choice, you made your intention, and whether your intention was to come to Zazen once a week, whether your intention was to come to Zazen once a month, whether your intention was to come to the Zendo on Saturdays for the Saturday program, or whether it was to come for every Zazen every day of every week, six days a week and then practice on the seventh day at home but to honor that intention and then to renew that intention and to examine it so when you make it it may not be for a lifetime but for this month or for this practice period or for this week but that it's something you get up and do and you've made that intention with and you honor that intention and come if you've made it. So that it isn't important how much necessarily, but that you honor what you've done.

[11:14]

I think the other thing that people mention a lot is how little time we have, not just from day to day, but how short our lives are, and how little time we have to practice, how little time we have in our life, and how finding what is the most important for us that is, has to do the basic quality of our life and the life of everything. I guess the other side of that is the thing we're always warned of not just how little time there is in each individual life and how to value it and find what's important, but

[12:24]

what a great opportunity it is to have this life, this human life, where you can practice, where you have these kinds of opportunities. They say that it's even greater to be born as a human than as a god in the god realms, because the god is what it is, it doesn't have the opportunity to practice and to search for enlightenment. So, if that's any comfort, when your knees really are breaking and you think you may never walk again, think of that. I spoke recently to the person who brought me to the Berkeley Zendo in the first place, and she has a little tiny Zendo in her home where about, oh, any place from two to six people sit every weekday in the morning, sit together, and about once a month they have somebody come and talk, and more people come for that.

[13:42]

And she said one of the things they had been thinking about is how much work it is to stay awake all the time. Just how much work it is to stay awake moment by moment. Sometimes it's just exhausting. So, that's another thing that I think we have to remember. It is a lot of work. And we have to honor our effort in that work. So, is I started more to move into the realm of introspection and sort of the bridge between this. I started to think about some things that Suzuki Roshi, our teacher, had said. And one was that practice was like entering the water. And that beginning practice, you know, it's a really hot day and you're just sweating.

[14:49]

And it's just a delight to put your toes in the water and cool off and wait a little bit. And then you get deeper and deeper and deeper in. And then there, it really gets to a hard part. I know when I go into cold water, the hard part is, if I'm waiting in, is when it starts hitting my torso and that, that's really hard to keep going. So there's those different hard parts where you just have to keep going, but there's the really hard part is some place where you have to take your feet off the ground and swim. And I think that comes sort of over and over as practice goes on, that taking your feet off the ground and swim. I'm not a very good swimmer, and I've just barely learned to snorkel a little bit. And I always want to know how far the ground is down, even if I am swimming, you know, with some confidence. I want to know where it is.

[15:49]

And somehow it's not just swimming, but it's swimming in water that's so deep that you don't know where the bottom is. And that seems to be one of the hard parts that I come up against. that makes me back off in some way and makes myself protect myself in some way by, you know, sort of playing all these games during Zazen and using the part of my mind, the thinking mind, the constructed thinking mind that I want to disappear. I mean, to try to make myself come to the other place and it just sort of snowballs. And letting go of that can be very hard. And sometimes at the worst part of that, before I can find the spot that renews is, I've talked about this a long time ago, I think four years ago, three years ago actually, was what arrives as the well-meaning mother.

[16:57]

And the well-meaning mother is the mother that tells you to sit up straight. It comes up all the time during Zen practice. not to talk while you're eating, to pay attention to what you're doing all the time, and if nothing else, take a deep breath and count to ten. So, and the well-meaning mother often, though, turns into the mean mother in Zazen, you know, it's just sort of going like this to you in your head all the time, and that's one of the walls that's part I can come up to against And I guess another thing is that they don't tell you, you know, and I said to Mel, you know, one of the things they don't, when we were talking, one of the things they don't tell you when you start practicing, you know, is the really ugly part. And that's not the knees or the back that gets tired or the days, but it's that you see all the parts of yourself you don't really necessarily want to see, you know,

[18:09]

The ego, for me, I mean, maybe none of you have these problems, but you keep seeing your ego more clearly and your selfishness. And it seems to be like an unending onion or something that you keep peeling away hoping to find the fresh parts that you can use, but it just keeps going. I guess hopefully it keeps going till there's nothing left. That's maybe what we're looking for. So I guess I guess the other part that is sometimes a trap in what we talk about in our practice for me is we keep saying it is a non-gaining practice and sometimes it's hard for me to separate what the idea of the non-gaining practice from skillful means that we do think about the way we're operating in this practice.

[19:21]

And, I mean, I remember Norman sitting here in this seat and saying, don't tell the abbot that I said this, but we're not fools. We wouldn't be here if it was a non-gaining practice. So that's one of the things as I was going through this introspective thing about when my practice is difficult and when it seems to be in the doldrums and when it needs renewal. The thing that I have to keep remembering is that it is a gaining practice but you don't gain what you're looking for it's like going down a long hall with a whole bunch of doors and you're knocking on them thinking that what you're looking for is behind this door or this door or this door or this door and what you find is not what you were looking for but it's something something a surprise surprises, endless surprises

[20:40]

I guess one of the things that I thought about in this is I guess our most common in Western culture symbol of renewal which is the rainbow and of course I guess almost everybody knows Noah's Ark story and it's part of the Indian mythology as well as the mythology that comes from Europe. It's part of a lot of mythologies. I don't know about some other places. But anyway, almost every child knows that story. And of course, it's when things got really rough that the rainbow appears, and the hope for renewal of life, of all life, comes. Not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the dove with peace comes. with the olive branch and then the place where these seedlings of life, of human life, of animal life can all go and begin again.

[22:00]

So, anyway, I guess the thing I'd like to speak about next is our opportunities for practice in our formal practice that are some in the Zen Do and some out. of the Zendo. And I've been trying to watch those and bring renewal to those, and that really helps me to bring renewal to my Zazen. And one is that Zazen starts as you walk in the door. And I keep watching Maika's show and remembering that Your palms touch, and your fingers touch, and I'm not doing what Mel calls the shotgun approach, you know, where you put your thumbs out like this and, gosh, so, but your thumbs belong there, and your palms are touching.

[23:05]

and your fingers are up your nose, and that the gassho, which I've said probably at least 25 times in this zendo, which Mel taught me, and I think it's one of the most important things I've learned, is that the gassho is not in the going up or down, but in the second of zazen, at the bottom of the gassho, the stopping, the moment of peace down at the bottom, and greeting, and being all together with everything. Mil talk last time about bowing to our cushion and when we bow in the Zen do we just bow but at the same time he says when you bow to the cushion your cushion you're bowing to the lineage to all those before us that brought us this practice and as you're bowing out you're bowing to the universe to everything One of the things that a lot of people here will do soon is to sew a rakasu and take the precepts.

[24:22]

And the rakasu, for those of you who don't know, is this little sort of miniature bonsai buddha robe that many of us are wearing. Each of us sews our own, except this one, I didn't sew my first two I sewed, but this one, a lot of people sewed for me. And you become formally a part of this practice at a different level of commitment than maybe just coming or being a member. And you sew it, and when you sew it, you chant on every one of these stitches And not only do you sew on each stitch, but there's part of the chant that goes with each movement. So when the needle goes in, you say, Namo. And the needle goes in straight down. And as you come and aim it up through the cloth again, you say, Kie.

[25:29]

And when you pull the thread out, you say, Butsu. Then you do the next one. and it's very hard to not be in every moment and to be completely with that as you chant and you see what Kata Geri Roshi told us was called visible mind shadow so that if somebody slams the door can usually see a gap in the stitches or a wiggle. So it's a wonderful, wonderful practice. And at this time, because it's the 25th anniversary of Mel's original ordination, of Sojin Roshi's original ordination. As a gift for him, we're sewing a robe. So everyone has, you know, the robe is the outside garment, the big one of this.

[26:35]

So everyone has the opportunity to come and do a few stitches or to sew a lot and to learn how to do the stitching and put their few stitches into that robe. It's sort of like a Buddhist friendship quilt. We will be sewing today, and there are a lot of pieces to sew on. If any of you can stay for a few minutes after tea or for longer, we will be sewing then. Everyone is welcome to take part in that. I think I need to watch my time. Another part of renewal, a regular part of renewal, in our practice that's very important is the full moon ceremony where we acknowledge our karma and we take our, we make our vows and take the precepts, recite the precepts again

[27:49]

And I found that on a day that once a month is wonderful, and it's a wonderful ceremony, and it's, I think, the most musically moving ceremony as we chant together and have the call and response and have an opportunity to do a lot of bows, that a month is not enough for me. And that when I'm up against it, in Zazen, I can, and when I start really beating up on myself in Zazen, I can just recite that one line from it and it really helps me get rid of that mean mother in myself. And that one line is, flopped totally on it. Ross helped me out for the line, from beginning with,

[28:57]

All my ancient twisted karma, beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born of body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. I don't know how many times I've said it in the last month and all of a sudden it just left. But I find that that's a big help in centering myself in my Zendo practice. we're now talking about, we've moved on to personal practice. And then there are other vows, and some of them are in this book I love, and I find it's very helpful to me because it's very accessible. It's a book that For instance, a friend whose mother is very ill and may be dying, she can and has no practice of zazen or meditation that she can use with her to help her through the difficult times.

[30:07]

And the name of this is The Dragon Who Never Sleeps, and it's by Robert Aitken. And it's a collection of vows, and some of them are really quite humorous. and their vows that other people have made and that he's made. And most vows have the same kind of form. We may do the lines in different... One of them that I find nice is, When amused by thoughts and thoughts and I vow with all beings to wave them through with a smile and not follow them out the door. So this is about the same as one form of not inviting them out to tea. When a demon disrupts my zazen, I vow with all beings to explain. I'm busy right now. We'll work things out later. When a demon disrupts my zazen, I vow with all beings to remember who generates demons and return with a smile to my breath.

[31:17]

One of the other things, of course, that we do is, especially in the morning, on Saturday, we recite different suttas. And I think that is part of our formal practice. And a practice for me is sometimes I have to listen to the suttas. Sometimes when I've been practicing and reciting them for a long time, you stop listening to them. And this is one we read on Monday morning, or a little part of one we read on Monday morning. And I often forget because sometimes on Monday morning, I get here just at the end of service. Because on Monday morning, we start Zazen 40 minutes earlier than other times. That's the hardest time it is for me to get here. And this is the Metta Sutta, which is the Sutta of loving-kindness and reminds us how connected we are to all beings.

[32:35]

And of course, like many of the vows that we take in this practice, it's the intention of the vow that we have to honor because vowing to save everything is a little great. Anyway, this is a little part of it. Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around, without limit. So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world. May I add, let us remember that we're part of that and the goodwill needs to be toward ourselves. I'd like to leave time for questions or comments. Yes.

[33:36]

It was striking to me that from the very beginning you distinguished practice physically. You made the movement of practice from the rest of life. And I would think that to maintain the practice would be impossible. If that wasn't completely integrated, it would be, for me, an impossible and probably pointless exercise. I agree. I did that for the purpose mainly of organizing the different thoughts that I had. And of course, I think one of the big parts of practice is connectedness. I mean, it's connecting all of our practice. bringing our outside life into the Zen Do and our Zen Do practice into our outside life and then not really being separate as well as our connectedness to all life. Does that... I mean, does that make sense?

[34:43]

That in order to... I was just classifying some thoughts and feelings and that's why I broke them down like that at the beginning just to give a little form and continuity that I... I mean, obviously there are bridges between each one, and even when I talked within them about it, about these things, I couldn't separate them, really. Okay? It's just a helpful comment. Okay, thank you. Yes? In that regard, there's a wonderful essay called Continuous Practice in which he speaks of I was just referring to that it's taking different form in its end up, but that it needs to be a part of one's whole life, and it's integrated into one's whole life, whatever it means, whatever it means to me. And that's really, for me, the most important practice.

[35:51]

Coming aware of that, trying to remember that. that it is continuous, it sort of needs to be seamless. I think in a way, of course, it is seamless, but I think, at least for myself, that I have to use some means in some situations of bringing myself back to that and remembering that. I think I spoke once about teaching, you know, and when things really, you know, when my anger arose or, you know, when there were 30 kids wanting, each wanting something else and needing something else that even if I couldn't

[36:54]

you know, stopped and got show in the middle of the classroom without causing some big furor about the separation of state and religion, that I can do it in my head and I can got showed to my class and to everyone, or to the child, especially to the child who may, you know, just really getting me on edge because, oh, you know, I love this child, but what is he doing to all these other children next to him? Or her? Anyway. time of continuous practice, to have the same kind of feeling you have when you practice zazen in the zendo, and to have that pervade your whole life at all times. I guess the other thing that maybe I didn't say explicitly, too, is that sometimes when we're looking at our zazen, we look at it as separate.

[38:08]

you know, it's out there and I'm me. And so then when things start falling apart, we've already made that duality and lost the idea of unity of one, not two, and two, not one. But we've also separated out, when we look at what's going, what is difficult, is looking at our life and finding, maybe even looking back and finding, oh, what made it smooth? One of the things that I left out when I was talking about things that people said to me was somebody talked about how her dream life at home and being aware of that enriches her zazen and lets her really flow with her zazen because she gives time to that outside of the zendo. And it brought back to me a wonderful period in life when, and my zazen, when what I did was to fall asleep every night, following my breath and with my eyes open.

[39:21]

and then I would wake up in the morning and automatically be following my breath when I woke up and I tried very hard to carry that into the zendo through driving down and not turning on the car radio or not doing all these other things to break that flow and it was just a marvelous, rich step I don't know, step isn't the word, but something. There are two people that sort of... Yeah, I just wanted to say that I've heard what you quoted, perhaps as if you were saying that thoughts come but don't invite them for tea. And you also read that Gatha by Robert A. Kennedy about when demons come knocking and you say, not right now, I'm busy, I'll talk with you later, something like that. Sometimes I find it helpful when demons do come knocking to invite me in for tea.

[40:31]

When I'm sitting, they come on in. That's interesting because I think I do do that sometimes. And then it's like, you know the story about the Zen nun who's always seeing snakes and they're driving her crazy and they're attacking her. And instead of going into deep Freudian things about snakes, the abbot says, look at them very carefully. And, of course, when she looks at the snake very carefully and tries to see what color it is and what the pattern of stripes is, they disappear. So maybe that's what happens when you invite the demon into tea.

[41:33]

And Susan? When you started out listening, you came to this topic because your zazen had lost its freshness. How your zazen, did it help thinking about renewal? Did it work for you, these things you're doing? Yes, it's helped. It's helped, and it's... I've been able to... It's difficult, but I've been able to wait and find that place of... What do you call that place? That place... instead of that place where you feel like you're a brick wall and your posture is like a brick wall without a foundation and you're trying to push those bricks back together and slap a little mortar on but there's no foundation so it keeps falling over and your thought is like that and your posture is like that and somehow you come back to whatever the foundation is.

[42:39]

Is that helpful? I think the man who's signaling me to stop has the signal in his hand. My watch must be a little one minute slow. Could we have one more? Oh, sure. Okay. I'm curious when a more experienced You mean at the same time? Well, you experience resistance when you're sitting in Satsang. If the experience of Satsang has been integrated into brushing your teeth and driving the car and all of the things that we do during the day, is that same resistance experienced in all

[43:55]

I think it's because it's easier to see. You see it there first. I mean, it always seems to me, for instance, like on the outside, if I look at myself from the outside, that there are some things that I seem to be able to do wholeheartedly, bring myself more wholeheartedly to, without any separation, than And it's just easy for me to do it. And one is drawing from a live model. I mean, it's just like there's no me. You know, somehow there's a pencil in the model and the space and whatever. That's what it seems like. And it's a very inspiring feeling. Or working with clay on the wheel is the same way. It's not because it's more wholehearted or more, it's because I don't see it as easily, I think.

[45:08]

I don't see the resistance or the part of me that's saying, oh, is this good or is this bad? Do you understand what I mean? Well, I don't know if what I'm talking about is resistance. I don't know. I think part of it is that you come up against another layer of yourself and it comes out in the Zazen. I'm not sure. That's a good question for Mel.

[46:15]

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