Well, welcome to Berkeley's Zen Center on Labor Day weekend. We're actually having a two-day Sashin today and tomorrow, giving all workers and Zen students the day off on Monday. I was looking, refreshing my memory about Labor Day and was reminded that it seems that it was created by the Congress in 1894, six days after they had just shot down a whole bunch of workers in the Pullman strike, which was one of the one of the historical markers in the labor movement. And the Congress, at the direction of then President Grover Cleveland, rushed through this holiday as a gesture of reconciliation.

[01:14]

And I guess that's good. I think they rushed it through in part because they day, which was which was May Day. But the thought of Congress doing anything within six days, particularly one that is attempting to reconcile violence against the working class is kind of inconceivable nowadays. But that's what I'm going to talk about. Just to you know, and see where we are, where we've come from, and where we are now. Before I do get to what I want to talk about, I just want to let people know that next Saturday, after the lecture, which is September 11th, we're going to have an open house here at Berkeley Zen Center.

[02:26]

and there will be food, there will be music, there will be guided tours of the various buildings. But the objective of this is so that people can see the work that's been done to take care of the temple, can also have us get a sense of the work and projects that need to be done to sustain the temple, and just to make that available. Often, I'm sure not many of you have been in, some of you may not have been in any of the apartments, certainly not in all of them, and also to look around the grounds and understand what are we doing with the porch, what are we doing with the community room, how are we How are we seismically supporting and retrofitting the buildings that we have?

[03:30]

So people are invited to come. Everyone is invited to take part. As I said, there'll be food and music. And this will run from about 11 in the morning or after lecture until about 1 in the afternoon. So hope to see you then. So this weekend in Sashim, we're doing something slightly innovative and for people in Sashim we'll talk about it a little more and actually do it in the afternoon. But I want to look at creativity. And I want to look at, it seems like appropriate on Labor Day weekend to talk about recreation. or re-creation, or re-making ourselves.

[04:32]

And we remake ourselves. Zazen is recreation. Moment by moment, making ourselves anew. But on this weekend, since we have a couple days, and since we have some people poor lady have some particular skills that can be shared, we're going to delve into some of the creative arts. I was inspired, I've been inspired over the last number of months seeing the brush paintings that Alexandra has been doing, and so this afternoon Those of you who are in Sishine are going to have an opportunity to try your hand at that with some instruction. And also, as I've been teaching out at the Women's Federal Prison in Dublin,

[05:41]

Actually, Bob Rosenbaum teaches out there with me, and Colleen Bush does, and each of us has different weeks. Colleen has been doing writing exercises with the women that they really like, and just spontaneous writing that comes out of your practice, that comes out of the moment. So that's another option that we'll explore this afternoon and Sunday afternoon. But I've been thinking about creativity. And I'd like to explore it a little in this talk. Creativity and recreation. And also combine that with an honoring of one of my teachers, Robert Aitken Roshi, who passed away several weeks ago. in Hawaii at the age of 93.

[06:47]

I wrote a long, well, I wrote a remembrance, a personal remembrance and a little bit of an obituary in the newsletter that came out, I think it just came out, it's online now, I believe, and it just came out a couple of days ago, the BCC newsletter. And so I'm not going to recapitulate that whole thing, but I'd like to say a little about him and then say a little about creativity using his words and his explorations because I think it's relevant. First just a bit about Robert Aitken. Some of you, I imagine many of you, know him from various books that he wrote, from Taking the Path of Zen, Mind of Clover, his translation of The Gateless Gate, and a whole bunch of other books.

[07:49]

He was a very disciplined and relatively prolific writer. What I find, and he was writing up to the day he went into the hospital. died at 93. He had been in ill health, but his mind had been quite clear, and he maintained this practice of writing every day, every morning. In his quarters at the Zendo in Palolo, Palolo Valley, They built the Zendo there in the late 80s, so that instead of Iken Roshi traveling to all these far-flung places, people who wanted to practice with him and come to Sashin could come there.

[08:50]

And it's a beautiful location. It's sort of at the... where the road ends and the trail begins going up the valley. one of these finger-like valleys that extend up into the mountains around Haolulu on Oahu. I did a practice period. I was lucky enough in 1996 to do a practice period there with him. It was his last practice period. It was a work practice period, so we would sit zazen We'd get up early and sit zazen or have dokusan, silent breakfast, a little more study, a little more zazen, and then we would spend much of the day working on the buildings. And in the morning when we got up, there, I don't know if you, probably many of you have been to Hawaii.

[09:56]

Hawaii is subject to microclimates. It's like the climate in Palola Valley up there. It had its own life. Every morning it would often be like the wind would come down the valley and the rain would just pour down. And everything was lush and green. One of the constant chores at the Zenda was to keep the jungle from encroaching on the meditation hall. It's sort of right there in back about 20 yards in back and you just have to keep cutting it back because it has a will of its own. It wants to recreate itself and just extend itself and so we were trying to find some harmony and balance between our ability to practice and live there, and the forest's ability to thrive.

[11:02]

It was a wonderful experience to me, and I went back two weeks ago for Akinboshi's memorial, and it was very... I hadn't realized how much that would feel like home to me. I'm lucky to have a number of homes. But it felt very much like home, and I could see, oh, there's the stucco that we put all over these buildings. We stuccoed the whole grounds, which is by hand. Nowadays, when you stucco, you spray it on with a machine, generally. We did it by hand. It was not easy, especially for people like me who really didn't know what they were doing. And I saw they have a bridge that goes out to a dokusan room. And we built that bridge in that room with instructions from their work leader, Don Stoddart.

[12:10]

And so it's quite wonderful to go to a place, as we also feel here, where you can see work that you've done, creative work that is used day in, day out. At any rate, I did have an opportunity to study that summer with Heiken Roshi, and I also had an opportunity to work with him quite regularly over the years while I was at Buddhist Peace Fellowship. But I think What I wrote, maybe I'll just read you this section of it and then take off from there. I wrote, Akinroshi was a disciplined writer. That was an essential part of his daily practice, writing for several hours each morning, trying to avoid interruptions and distractions.

[13:18]

Several times, both there and in other places, I found him reading aloud to himself, polishing his language and voice until it sounded right to his ears. You can hear that distinct voice in every page. So, what I realized in the last couple of weeks, I've been rereading things by Ikenoshi, and noticing in a way that I had forgotten how strong a voice he is in my mind, in both the shaping of some of my ideas about Zen, some of my understandings, also certainly about his vision of the intertwining of Buddhism and social action, social justice, in which he was a very fierce advocate.

[14:35]

He was the person, really key person, responsible for the founding of Buddhist Peace Fellowship. And of late, we had an image of him holding a photograph. This is not, this is only a couple of years ago, just an elderly man with a hat holding up this sign, with a big grin on his face that said, the system stinks. And, you know, there aren't, at the time that he began, there weren't many voices that were speaking from within the Buddhist community of practice for social justice in a really strong, clear way. And that's something that I admire him for very deeply. But what I also realized was he is one of a handful of people, you know, everybody influences us.

[15:47]

Everybody that we practice with everybody that we study, anything with, all of our teachers in any field. Sometimes when we're looking at ourselves or we're laying back in bed thinking about our work, even our jobs, we can see our teachers in ourselves, which is a very sweet feeling. We are not them, but they are in us. And what I find as I read and reread Robert Aitken's work, I'm kind of learning afresh actually how influential he was on how I write. The kinds of ways that

[16:48]

I structure things, the way I hear things, for a long time. I told this story, I may have told it here. As I said, about 20 years ago we had an institute for Buddhist peace fellowship and Iken Roshi was there and he was seeing students in between his presentations that he had to do, which were not numerous, but he was seeing a lot of students. we were in the same on the on the hallway uh i woke up to go to the bathroom about two in the morning and i heard voices coming from his room and i just you know i just thought wow you know can his students leave It concerned me for his health.

[17:50]

And I kind of tiptoed back to his room and listened and realized there were no students in there, fortunately. He was reading aloud his talk for the next day. And you could hear him reading, making a minor correction, just a word here or a pause, and then reading again, and really You could say rehearsing what he was doing because he wanted the voice to be thorough going. He wanted the understanding to be deep. And that really impressed me. For a year or two after that, on the occasions when I had to give talks, I wrote them all out. And I did that. And then I decided not to do that. Then I decided, OK, make a mistake on purpose, as Sisaku Roshi said.

[18:57]

But still, this model of attention to language is very powerful to me. So I'd like to read you something from him, a couple of things. First of all, He was big on this idea of recreation and play. When we were at Pololo, working, he never wanted us to work beyond the appointed hours for work. He said, you know, he said, there's a time for zazen, there's a time for work, and there's a time for recreation. And all of these make up a whole life. And so he would encourage us, we would finish, we would knock off work about five in the afternoon, and he would say, why don't you go to the beach?

[20:05]

Which is, that's, you know, you have to listen to what your Zen teacher says. So we should go down to this beach, San Su Si, and hang out and enjoy ourselves, really recreate. Not so much remaking ourselves, but making ourselves whole, whole people. So this is from an essay of his in As I said, a book that's quite influential on me, Original Dwell in Place, Zen Buddhist Essays, which I believe is still in print from Counterpoint Press, his publisher. Interaction is play because it doesn't amount to much or even to little. On your cushions in the meditation hall, nothing impedes your interaction with thoughts.

[21:10]

you view one thought frame after another. When your thoughts wander and you notice what has happened, then easily and smoothly you return to focusing on Mu. Here we would suggest focusing on your posture. And then your breath. When the bell rings for the end of the period, you bring your hands together, rock back and forth, swing around on your cushion, and stand up. In the work-a-day world, again, interaction is play. Nothing impedes your response to your child's demands. When the telephone rings, you type save on your computer, pick up the receiver and say hello. When the bus reaches your station, you get off promptly. Then he quotes, there's a couple of quotations from Zen sources, he says, farmers sing in the fields, merchants dance at the market.

[22:28]

And Laman Pong wrote, how wonderful, how miraculous, I draw water, I carry kindling. All the world is a stage. We play roles. Zen teacher, Zen student, parent, spouse, friend, worker, pedestrian, and so on. We play as if. As if we were Zen students. Zen teacher, student, parent, and so on. The child plays house as if she were a mother. The mother plays house in exactly the same way. And when the play doesn't make you laugh, that doesn't mean it isn't play anymore. Tragedy is play, too. Tragic to the very bottom, perhaps, but still play. I was looking... Robert Eakin's first book is called Zen Wave.

[23:39]

And I hadn't read it for a long time, actually. I had an older copy, and this one hadn't even been opened. But I guess I had to replace it. And so we do a couple of things. First of all, the introduction, or the forward to this edition, is by W.S. Merwin, who was probably some of you know his wonderful work and he's, I think he's the poet laureate now, is that correct? Yeah, and he's very close with Eikin Roshi. He's talking about translation because this is a book of, this was Eikin Roshi's PhD thesis which he turned into a book and it's about Basho's, the great Japanese Zen poet, Basho's haiku and Zen Buddhism. And I like what Merwin writes, and then we'll turn to Eken Roshi, he says, everyone who uses translation is reminded regularly that all translation, however the word may be construed, is impossible.

[24:53]

We have to accept this and to recognize also that translation of poetry and translation of Zen contribute barriers of their own to this basic absolute impossibility. But once we have admitted this, we must set it aside if we wish to read translation or anything at all. I think that you could also say that zazen is impossible. It's impossible in the sense that you can never point directly at what it is. Here we are doing it all weekend sitting side by side together. I mean, you know, we don't know really what the hell we're doing, because it's impossible to categorize. It's beyond, it's an activity that's beyond our understanding.

[25:56]

So then he says, he talks about art, and I think you could substitute Zazen here. Merwin says, for art itself, is not altogether possible. That's one of the things about it that we prize. And yet it exists for all that. Just as we live not only in the absolute but at the same time in the world of the necessary and possible. A little later down this page he says One sentence in the Diamond Sutra, a sentence of crucial importance in the early evolution of the Zen tradition, reads, Mind that abides nowhere must come forth. Mind that abides nowhere must come forth. In other words, the mind, the true mind, the big mind, has no location.

[27:05]

It can't be pointed to, and yet it is constantly coming forth, manifesting in words, manifesting in painting, manifesting in music, manifesting in sport, manifesting in tears, in laughter, manifesting in zazen. Still, we can't point to it. We can't say, oh, this itself is it. This stands alone. And we'll talk about this a bit more tomorrow, actually, when we look at something, a fast called Dogens. See, he says he's talking about poetry.

[28:11]

He's talking about poetry in translation. There's really no way to say what the source, the original, is. Which source are we talking about? The closer one looks, the more completely it vanishes. Yet no one who can read it, certainly no one who loves it, ever doubts that it is there. How can one represent, in quotation marks, it? And how will a representation represent a second or a first time? I think that's quite beautiful. But now let's turn to poetry. This is a late haiku. Actually, this is the Lekha Krupadvaca, which A.K. Roshi writes about.

[29:12]

What I actually love about this book is, first of all, it's all about poetry. The language is a curious mix of A.K. in a kind of nascent curmudgeon stage. He's quite critical. He gives other translations and he can slash and burn at will. And yet there's something poetic about the language with which he's unpacking it. And he always ends with one of his own poems. His own response, like a capping verse in a koan, his response to this haiku. Now being seen off.

[30:15]

Now seeing off. The outcome. Autumn in Kiso. Now being seen off. Now seeing off. The outcome. Autumn in Kiso. So. It's not so easy to unpack. Let me just say what he writes. This poem hinges on the words hatewa, the outcome, at the end of the second line. You have the passive now being seen off and the active now seeing off. Kiso is a a relatively remote district in Japan, actually not far from Eiheiji.

[31:22]

It's heavily wooded, quite beautiful, known for its scenery. And of course, autumn is redolent of many kinds of things. A lot of in Kiso, you can imagine the trees and the golden leaves that are beginning to fall. And you know, just the splendor of that red and gold. Something we don't have enough of out here in California. But on the one hand it points towards seeing off, seeing off the year, seeing off the summer, seeing off our friends, seeing off the stages of our own life.

[32:25]

At the same time, there is such immediacy and power. Nothing could be more beautiful or poignant than a whole hillside aflame with the golden red of autumn. And that's, I think, what he's conveying in this highly, highly compressed way. So, Higinbroshi writes, by way of commentary, Now our friends say farewell to us. Now we say farewell. What is the outcome? Now on the Kiso Road at Gifu. Now at Honolulu Airport. Now at Maui Memorial Hospital.

[33:29]

Now we receive a lei. Now we give a lei. Now we are wept for now we weep for. What is the upshot after all? In the Song of Zazen we recite, Going and coming, never astray. Going and coming would not be exactly the same as saying good-bye and being said good-bye to, but it too is a clear statement of the transitory nature of our lives. never astray. Is this not Bhāṣo's intention? God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, now being seen off, now seeing off. What is the outcome? Ātma-kiśo.

[34:32]

This means, as Hakuin said, This very place is the Lotus Land. This very moment is the place where we awaken. Even as we say goodbye, even as we're said goodbye to. I didn't realize until this morning His home jumped out at me as I was reading this book. And it's like, okay, let's unpack this. Let's go into this now being seen off, now seeing off. And I think I was a little dense because I didn't realize it was about

[35:42]

My feeling, what I'm carrying in relation to Aitken Roshi seems so obvious now, but it was not obvious to me. It's like I was in the shower and all of a sudden I got it. With the water, kind of the needles of water, striking my skin. That immediacy is what he's writing about. It's what he's advocating, what he's always advocating as Zen. It's what Sojin is advocating. It's what Suzuki Roshi is advocating. It's what we have to experience for ourselves without holding on to The fact that I'm going away, this part of my life is going away.

[36:54]

I felt very at home at Palolo when there were old friends there. And then at a certain time, I had to get in the car and go to the airport and think, oh, I may not see that person again ever. and recognize the immediacy of the vast universe and this wonderful, fully alive particularity. And that's okay. If tears are shed, that's okay. Ibn Rushd writes a little earlier in this, he says, people in the West, sometimes quite insensitive to the importance of farewells, can learn from the Japanese, who say farewell to the very end.

[38:03]

They wave and wave until their friends are out of sight. One meaning of the word hate, which he translates as outcome, is extremity. And perhaps one interpretation of the poem could be waving and being waved at until there is nothing left but the autumn at Kiso. So if you've ever been to a Zen temple or hung out with Japanese people, you've had this experience, you know, they just, they'll bow and wave, you know, as a car goes away, you know, until the car is out of sight. Then what? What happens in the next moment? So I will close, maybe take a few questions with his closing poem, because I think it's relevant to that point.

[39:07]

With Atman Kiso, first a little preamble, with Atman Kiso, Vaso expressed his assurance. One is the assurance of the future. The other is the assurance of the present. Now being seen off, now seeing off, what is the upshot? Atman Kiso, rain in Manoa Valley, a gecko at the Maui Zindo. Chi chi, chi chi chi chi. Please stop at that point. Enter that point. And then he has his own haiku here. Sesshin passes bell by bell. What is the end? Sachine passes, bell by bell.

[40:25]

What is the end? Well, we're just in the morning. We're not at the end. So don't be thinking about it. If you have any comments or questions, we have a little time. Excuse me, could you just say the name of the first book that you quoted, not A Zen Way of Living? Original Dwelling Space. Thank you. I'm absorbing this. It's very intense. I just came back from a mini personal retreat at a place that has come to mean unspoiled earth energy to me.

[41:29]

And I thought as I left it, because it is entering something like, I may never see this again. I may never come back. What does that mean? Is there any way to express that And to me, it's almost a way of saying, who are we here on earth to think that we're anything? We're all going. And not just us individually. It's very deep. Thank you. Who are we? That's a very good question. That's the question. And yet, we're coming forth every moment. Completely, every atom coming forth at the same time.

[42:32]

However inadequate. And even, as he says, in play, even in tragedy. Thank you. Should I give you a couplet of Kabir that happens? Yeah. Yeah. So these little short peanut-like couplets. There's a series that goes, the tree says to the leaf, the leaf says to the tree, and they have this thing. So here's just one. I'll say it in Hindi. Vriksh kahe paat se, suno paat meri baat. Is ghar ki reet hai. Ek aave ek jaan. You can tell that's pretty concise. Yeah. Can you do it again? In Hindi? Yeah. OK. Vriksh kahe paate se, suno paate meri baat. Is ghar ki reet hai, ek aave ek jaan.

[43:37]

So you do want the English, don't you? Yeah, yeah. The tree says to the leaf, listen, leaf, What I say, this is the way of this house. One comes, one goes. Great. Thank you. Thank you for the talk. Something that stood out for me was just the question, what the hell are we doing? Sometimes you meet someone new, or maybe you have to write a short bio on yourself for work, or whatever it is. Sometimes I get to this point where I'm like, well, this Zen practice, is this recreation for me? Is this a hobby? Is this a leisure activity? Is this my religious commitment or affiliation?

[44:40]

Is this a lifestyle? Is this a way? Is this a practice? To call it a hobby or something we do in our leisure time feels like a cheap exit. But, you know, what I'm doing really is sitting. Is it philosophy? I mean, how would you get to the point when trying to describe it to a stranger? It's not my hobby. This would be the stupidest hobby I could think of. There is no point to this one. Let me read you something else because it speaks to this. This is also from the same essay on play. One of my early Japanese teachers and I used to argue about play. His understanding of English may have been a factor in our disagreements.

[45:41]

For him, play was limited to children, baseball, and theater. I understood play as the nature of interaction. Not only human interaction, but all of it. Puppies are more frisky than dogs, but even an old dog knows it's a game. What we're doing is interacting. What we're doing in zazen is interacting with ourself, which is not in separation from anything else. This is why we sit next to each other. This is why we do kin-hin together. We are interacting. And that is our way of playing. with the universe or playing in the universe. It's simultaneously playful, light, joyous, one hopes at times anyway, but it's an essential human expression.

[47:04]

one that there is unfortunately missing from the dominant economic paradigm that wants to strip away all sense of play and turn our attention only to productivity. So, I don't know if that's half an answer. I would keep at it. Just a comment that comes to mind for me about play is that it doesn't have a point. I mean, it doesn't have a purpose. Play is just, you're in the moment playing, doing whatever you're doing. If you think about the way we normally relate to the word, kids play. The goal is the moment itself. It's the act of playing itself, not getting somewhere. If there's no play, children don't know how to become people.

[48:09]

Because they don't know how to interact with each other. They don't know how to interact with themselves, with a self that is beyond this bag of skin. So, playing, I think playing, irrespective of whether it's two people, three people, one person, You can't play without dissolving the boundaries between subject and object. You're merging and interacting with something. Mark? How do you balance the time and effort it takes to translate things, poetry or otherwise, with just doing? I don't know.

[49:12]

I don't... I'm not clear on what the contradiction is. What's the difficulty that you see? Knowing the right way to respond to things takes time sometimes. Right. You have to trust your instinct. You know, it's like For example, instinctually I picked this poem, but I didn't know what it meant. But I trusted that instinct, and it took two days before I understood. You have to give things the space to bubble up. That's what we do when we sit. We give ourselves limitless space. So, we shouldn't be ruled by time. That's the economic paradigm in action, is to feel ourselves ruled by time.

[50:16]

So, give yourself some time. This is really Dhanaparamita giving. Soki? When I was a kid, going to school, they had fire extinguishers in the hall. And the fire extinguisher always had a sign that said, turn upside down to play. Did you ever do that? I always wanted a chance. Did it mean the fire extinguisher or you? One more. Somebody, and I can't remember who, talked about how prayer and clay have apparently some etymological root in common and that are actually very similar. What strikes me from what we're talking about is that they both involve the interaction of the individual self with something that's beyond mundane understanding, with something that doesn't

[51:30]

exist in the mundane, utilitarian, irregular way that we think and operate. I think that's right, and I want to go and look at the etymology. Anyway, we have to end, and for those of us in Sishin, we will get to play a bit, and create a bit, and recreate. this afternoon, and for those of you who are having a Labor Day weekend, keep playing.

[52:11]

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