Good morning. It's kind of a crowd of us here. Can you hear in the back? Yes? Sort of a crowd of us up here. This was an exercise in, I was thinking, crimp and circumstance. But this is a joyous occasion. Can you turn this up just a little bit? This is a joyous occasion after a week of working towards dharma transmission with Kankamuji David Weinberg and Kanno Kenshin Catherine Cascade. David received dharma transmission from Steve Weintraub. A little further. If we put it up too loud, it can have an effect.

[01:01]

Yes, I understand. I think this is good. Do we need that? No, because it's working on this microphone. Anyway, David received Dharma transmission from Steve Weintraub, and Catherine received Dharma transmission from me. And we had a very intimate week. of solid effort. They have to do a lot of calligraphy, and they have to do a lot of bowing every day. They can tell you about that. And Sojin Roshi was their preceptor for the precepts, which they receive as part of the ceremony. And Vicky Austin from San Francisco Zen Center was sort of instructing us and helping us through all the detail, which is complex. Mary Mocene and John Mogey were the cooks who supplied delicious food to us every day, and we all just worked away for a week solid.

[02:15]

It's kind of like sashimi, in that you have this sort of tunnel vision but they will tell you about their experience. I wanted to offer a few comments about what I think Dharma transmission means or represents and we will also leave time for your questions. So, contrary to some people's notion, this ceremony is not necessarily a validation of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, complete unbounded enlightenment, though of course they are.

[03:18]

But somebody, I posted a photograph on Facebook, and somebody asked, from outside the Zen tradition, asked a really pointed question, which I thought was really good. He said, so does this mean that these new Buddhas never have a self-centered thought again? they have to answer that for themselves. For myself, what I will say is it hasn't worked out that way. What it tends to represent in the Soto Zen tradition is recognition that you are a full priest and that your understanding is really grounded and strong and that you have confidence in your practice and confidence in the practice around us and in our tradition.

[04:26]

The empowerment of it allows one to do ordinations, to have one's own students, to step further into the role of being a teacher. Usually, my experience with Sochen Roshi, who has done more Dharma transmissions than anyone in the history of America, I think he has something like 26 Dharma Heirs, and not surprisingly, none of them are like him, nor are any of us like each other. except in our heart for this practice. So, the other thing that different teachers have their own perspective on, some teachers feel when they have a student and they give Dharma transmission to that student, that student's training is done.

[05:45]

You are a full priest, but somehow there's an implication like you're now independent. Now, of course, the circumstances of my own life have been rather different. I had Dharma transmission 14 years ago. And I'm still living here and practicing with my teacher. I still have... I'm not complete. I'm unfinished. And I appreciate the opportunity to polish that relationship. And I think that's really important. This is not Dharma transmission is not exactly a license and you can drive the car by yourself but you're also accountable to everyone and that's the opportunity that I've had and that's how I feel about it and there's also a feeling that I trust I've been trusted by my teacher to teach

[07:11]

And I trust Catherine and even though I didn't transmit David, I trust David, trust me. I think so. And Raul and Mary who are also of this temple to really do the work of our family tradition in the world and in the temple. So that's very gratifying. And to see oneself as always a work in progress. In a technical sense, which I've had to work with and think about, this recognition, there's two parts to the ceremony. The first part is called Denkai. And it is the transmission of the precepts, the same ones that we recite during Bodhisattva ceremony and during lay ordination and priest ordination.

[08:22]

And here they're transmitted and instructed in such a way that you are empowered to transmit it to others. And so that takes place late at night usually like the fifth or sixth night of the process, we got done really late. Very late. We started late and so we weren't done until like one in the morning. And it takes place, some of you may have seen, it usually takes place in a red room that we set up in the community room and it's kind of like It's sort of like a womb from which we have emerged and now we are re-entering and emerging again. I suspect that's what the symbolism of it must be.

[09:26]

And the second part of the ceremony takes place the following night, generally late. We got an earlier start. because we were exhausted. And that's called Dembo, which literally translates as the transmission of the Dharma, and that's a ceremony in which you become a new member of the lineage in a formal way. technically you're seen as a new ancestor but then you have to actually manifest that. There's a verse that comes up again and again in this process in the ceremony where you are

[10:28]

given this entrustment and then said then the instruction is do not let it be cut off in the future. And I think that's a question I would ask of David and Catherine. What does that mean to you? And I won't say what it means to me. I'll let you rather let you answer that. But that's this is sort of a I'm giving you just sort of a general overview and I think maybe I will stop there. Also, I wanted to thank all of the support, aside from Sojin and Vicky and Mary and John, there was also Catherine and the Cheedan crew doing support with flowers, because we're offering a lot of flowers. People were still taking care of the Zendo and taking care of the grounds. There's so much that's going on here that is not always seen, not always acknowledged, but that makes this place kind of thrive.

[11:46]

Yes, there's the gardens also. Nancy would come out, and Nancy was there in the late afternoons. And all of this creates this environment that we have, that we value, and each person's participation is really precious and makes it all happen. It doesn't happen because two or three people are doing something. So I think I will stop there and give David and Catherine a chance to speak, and then you might have some questions. You have to get pretty close to this thing. Yeah, you can lift a little. OK. There we go. Good morning. There are three things I wanted to express to you this morning. First of all, it's only three days ago that this truly intense process ended and I feel like I'm in a stage of recovery and re-entry and a comprehensive perspective about all this is

[13:21]

not within my capability to express, if it ever will be. Alan's given a really helpful outline and I appreciate it very much that you did so. But I wanted to say three things to you. One is, I experienced great sense of gratitude in many different directions during this week. The first awakening of that gratitude was when first I alone, and then I was joined by Catherine, would make the rounds of the altars, a jundo, quite early in the morning before informal zazen, beginning about 5 a.m. and we would chant as we walked from altar to altar.

[14:26]

And I kept wondering, how is this sitting with the residents who are having a little time off from our rigorous schedule to have this mumbling. So I'm going past their windows, Ross in particular, head. I hope he slept through it. And then eventually I realized, nope, that's what they signed up for. And actually I heard from people that it was a pleasurable experience and it was very nice to hear. During the week itself, there were simply too numerous to recount opportunities to feel thanks and gratitude towards the relatively small cluster of people who were really serving us.

[15:47]

There was a very I had this very strong sense that the teachers and the cooks and the instructors and everyone was there. They were all there to help Catherine and me move through this process and with a mixture of sweetness and exactitude. a sort of perfect balance of those qualities. There was considerable pressure on us during the week, for example, to get these three documents completed that we had to copy to a large extent from our teacher's copies of their teacher's copies of these documents. Briefly, the copies are, these three documents are copied onto pieces of silk

[16:50]

which had been prepared for us by Gene Selker, which are 17 or 18 inches wide and six feet long. And on each one there were, well, just hundreds of things to write on each one. And we were bent over the tables that you all know very well in the community room, doing these copies for hours. hours and hours with a brush and ink. You know, I had asked earlier, well, are we going to use those kind of fancy new brushes that are really, Mark, no. We use brush brushes. And ground ink. And ground ink, yeah. Grinding your own ink and getting the right consistency and so on. It was very laborious. and also quite enjoyable to at least touch this new craft.

[17:52]

In my case anyway, certainly not to master it. So there was a great deal of intensity and we were pressed to do things to complete our work on time. The gentleman on my left was instrumental in that But at the same time, there was complete kindness and support for doing this. And this is rare. At least it's been rare in my life to experience this balance. So a great deal of gratitude. And of course, especially gratitude towards my teacher, Stephen Weintraub, with whom I've been studying for 15 or 20 years now. Okay, gratitude. A second element of this intense, in a way insular experience, was the emergence of, I don't know what to call it, sort of radical and crazy humor, almost as a counterbalance to the

[19:10]

seriousness and intensity of what we were doing. And we all wondered how we could possibly convey to you what that humor was like. And it's impossible to do in detail. You had to be there, right? But for some reason, early on in the week, one of us, I don't remember exactly who, channeled of Eddie Izzard's rendition of Death Star Canteen, which I invite all of you to check out on YouTube. All you have to do is Google Death Star Canteen, and you'll see it. And various elements of that routine were incorporated into our week. Not formally.

[20:13]

Well, not formally. There were trays. There were trays. Lots of trays. You have to see it. There must have been a canteen in the Death Star, you know, down in the basement, where Darth Vader could, you know, chill between intergalactic battles. What's the Death Star? The Death Star, you're in the Death Star. This is the Death Star? I thought this was a canteen. You're in the Death Star, and I run the Death Star, and I'm your boss. You're Mr. Stevens? No, I'm not Mr. Stevens. I'm Vader, Darth Vader. I could kill you with a single thought. You need a tray. I could kill you with a tray, if I so wish. It goes on. It goes on. So there was humor. And I can't bring out this point,

[21:14]

very thoroughly, but I had the feeling that it was not only humor as a compensation for the seriousness of what we were doing, it also expressed in some way the very nature of our practice, which is to, we work very hard, we pay very close attention to form, and it's the establishment of form and the conscientious observation of form And then the dashing of that form when one of us makes a mistake or we somehow see through the forms and the form drops away and there's something more, I would say deeper, that just flashes in front of our eyes. So, humor. The third thing I want to mention is that Alan referenced. It occurred during Dembo, the second very intimate ceremony that occurs simply between the teacher, the Honji, and the disciple, the Deshi.

[22:40]

Just two people in this red room. And the teacher says something like, the life vein of the Buddhas and ancestors has been received by me and you're now in that life vein. Do not let it be cut off in the future. And it's just that what goes with that is an enormous sense of responsibility to try to understand how to implement that in my life. How different people will do that, of course, varies with the details of their life. But the challenge to me is to to cultivate our practice and to communicate it in skillful ways to others and to encourage them to cultivate their own practice.

[23:56]

So I feel that is a very deep responsibility and it's not one that I think I can execute alone. It happens in community. But it does rest, that responsibility, I feel, does rest squarely on my shoulders. So those are the points I wanted to make, and now I want to offer this microphone to Catherine. anywhere at the time. We're okay. Could I get a time check from the Daman? How much time do we have? What do you want us to have? Talk for about 10 minutes, then we'll take some questions. All right. Good.

[24:58]

There's more time than I thought. Good morning. Good morning. At some point during the week, Mary Mocene recalled being, I think, at City Center, and seeing a door open. And through the door came two people, just fresh from Dharma Transmission, Vicki Austin and Michael Wenger. And she recalled how they looked. She said they were wide-eyed, like deer in the headlights. I know what she meant by wide-eyed. I haven't felt particularly like that immobilized feeling of the deer in the headlights, but wide-eyed in the way that I felt after giving birth and holding my child for the first time and looking into that child's eyes.

[26:03]

There's been a kind of a combination of images of both being new, being newborn, and also being an ancestor. So, wide eyes. Somehow taking in something about myself. There's an enormous lead-up to Dharma transmission, both the many years of practice as a novice priest, then the weeks of preparation, the two weeks that David and I both did the Jindo and the services before starting this last intense week here.

[27:12]

But there's something about the experience that's impossible to anticipate because there's a mystery at the heart of it. So that's a part of the wide eyes also. And the ritual really activates that mystery. And it did it, beginning in a very, beginning slowly, with the Jungo services that I did at home in Cheshire, in Oregon. I live in rural Oregon. And the jungo involves going around to quite a number of altars. And those altars already exist, for the most part, here at Berkeley Science Center, but we didn't have all of them there at Birdhaven Zengo.

[28:20]

And so I needed to make some of them. And One of the ones that I made was particularly helpful to me in understanding what I was doing, understanding it in a very physical way. And I call it the ancestor's altar. And it's in a little clearing in the woods. there's a sort of a narrow opening. You go through this narrow opening and then it widens out. And so the altar there corresponds to the altar in the Dōkasan hut here. I constructed that altar out of parts of a very large fir tree that we had to have cut down.

[29:28]

It was in a dangerous location. And the pedestal is a section of the trunk of that tree that's maybe two feet. And it's maybe, I don't know, 18 inches across, maybe more than that. And on top of it, on end, are two slices across the trunk of the tree. And they show the growth rings of that tree. The center, that live center that somehow was born out of the seed under the earth and grew up and became the first ring of that tree, and then successive growth rings coming out from it that I thought of as the generations of the ancestors.

[30:36]

And then, right at the edge, under the bark, is a layer that is completely different It's the, I think it's called the cambium. And it's alive and it's growing and it's where the life is and it's under the bark. So one of those slabs I set up on end so that you see it as a circle when you come in there into the dogwoods end, as we call it. And then in front of it is another slice. To make that slice, the saw, the big chainsaw that was used in cutting down that tree, was slanted, and it didn't make it all the way to the far edge.

[31:42]

So that slice isn't a complete circle. There's the center. There are concentric growth rings. There is the live cambium under the bark. But then there's an irregular edge. There's a piece missing. And for me, that signified the women ancestors, the ones who are missing. We certainly have some of them. We have many of them now. But some of them we don't. There's a part missing. That was really important for me to find a way to be with as I entered this realm that has so much to do with the ancestors.

[32:44]

And so every day I would go in and make an offering to these two slices, one in front of the other. These two representations of growth from the source. the same growth out from the source. Those growth rings are the same growth rings. A lovely thing happened in the course of the two weeks, which was that one of my sons and his wife and their child came to visit us. My daughter-in-law is not a Buddhist, and she's not a religious person. I'm very fond of her. And so I showed her this altar and explained it to her. Later, she's in the process of moving her family, which includes a seven-year-old, a dog, and a cat, from the Caribbean to Brooklyn by way of Seattle in Western Oregon.

[34:01]

So this woman needed a break. And so one day she said, I'm taking off. I'm just going to go for a walk in the woods. I'm just going to be by myself out there. And the next time I visited the ancestor's altar, I found that in her time out in the woods, she had made it beautiful. She had tucked in bits of moss between the two slices. She had arranged pine cones around like a skirt with lichen and twigs. And I thought, something has been conveyed. And I didn't think of it then as, I hadn't yet heard those words, in the entire future, do not let it be cut off. The entire future is kind of an interesting concept, I think.

[35:04]

But even though she's not someone who thinks in our Buddhist language, in our Buddhist imagery, she got it. So that was an important part of the beginning of the activation of the mystery for me through ritual. through this little ritual that I was doing every morning. And entering this container that became more and more intensely contained and focused and required more and more of me. And while it was going on, I felt a kind of a streaming, not an alternation exactly, but a streaming that included surrender, surrender to doing things by a certain time that I didn't really know if I could do.

[36:25]

surrender to continuing on much less sleep than I think that I can competently continue. Surrender and then being born up. Sometimes it felt like rising to the occasion, but rising as much on the effort and the practice of the ancestors, of all the people that David and Alan have spoken of who were here in the flesh. Dogen talks about, you know, the continuous practice of the ancestors. And there was a sense of that continuous practice bearing me up. Alan Watts has a quote that I like.

[37:33]

He says, to have faith is to trust yourself to the water. If you try to grab hold of it, you'll surely sink and drown. So you relax and float, born up on that ocean of continuous practice of that the Buddhas and the ancestors and the Sangha and the trees and the whole earth. So, and you also have to swim for all your worth. So all of that streaming together, surrender and effort and gratitude for what was neither of those things. And there's also this very personal element, this very intimate, personal, warm hand to warm hand, one to one, this person, that person element.

[38:54]

It's very powerful. One of the images that came to my mind again and again is a photograph I have of my brother David holding his first grandchild, Eli. And here is the grandfather, the ancestor, melting, just melting. gazing into this baby's eyes. And here is baby Eli, who has not been in this body very long, looking up at him completely alert, bright-eyed, sharp. And I thought of how, you know, in some orphanages, I think in Romania, there were children who were given everything they needed, fed, and diapers changed, and so on.

[40:04]

But they weren't held, and nobody gazed into their eyes like that. They weren't seen all the way through to the mystery at the heart of the matter. There was not that mutual seeing. So there's something like that in there that's really powerful, a seeing and being seen that creates life. And then there's the precepts. What do you do then? How do you, how do I live? said to me more than once when I've asked him how to do a ceremony, a wedding, or a funeral, well, there's the precepts.

[41:06]

Practically all of the rituals that we have have the precepts in them. And this one does too. And I think I'm running out of time here. I just want to close with something that Suzuki Roshi said about dharma transmission. He said, this is not symbolic. This is a catalyst for the deshi's own practice. So I understand that in the context of Hozon's question of how not to let it be cut off in the entire future. So I hope there's still some time for questions. So we are running a little long, but I'd like to leave a few minutes for questions and then certainly you can talk with Catherine or David outside.

[42:13]

But does anyone have a question or a comment for any of us? Annette? Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, David. I'm struck by what you said. You put everything I think is very precious. I'm a woman and I'm forgotten. Looking into the eye, which is so life-giving. The possibility of getting it without being a practitioner. So I'm very grateful to you. Thank you. It was more a statement of gratitude than a question. And Annette was acknowledging the pieces that had been mentioned, women who had not been included, seeing and being seen.

[43:14]

There was a third. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to be a practitioner of my opinion. Yes. the transmission to all of us, not just to people who are doing a particular practice. It was really an acknowledgement and gratitude. Catherine? I have the same feeling of wanting to acknowledge gratefully. Catherine, I'm so touched by you always, but this story of your daughter-in-law undid me. Because I remember myself as a young mother of I'm very out of touch with the spirit, spiritual world. And the times when that duty locked into my life were transformative, and I feel as if you gave that to her. And I just want to bless you for that, and I wish you were going to be around, but I'm glad to know that you're needed with her. And David, I hope that this means you'll be giving yoga song too.

[44:15]

I look forward to that. Someone else? Could you tell us the stories of your staffs? Are they special in any way? I mean, I know they are, but... They're very special. They're made of wood. My teacher, Steve Weintraub, asked me to make mine, so I did. You've seen Sojin use one similar to this many times. It's called a kotsu, and it's a relatively informal staff, and after transmission, if the transmittee is giving a talk or leading a ceremony, then it's carried and used in that connection.

[45:32]

If a person is not leading the ceremony, then you leave it aside. Typically, there's just one person who carries and uses the stick. There are also a couple of other sticks involved in transmission. One was a huge long staff, generally six feet or more long in length and very kind of bent. There are a great variety of them, but they're kind of bent and gnarly and so on. And anyway, that's another staff which you only use very infrequently. I wanted to say a couple of things. One is that this is to recall the shape of the spine, Siddhincasana. And one of the amazing surprises for me in the Red Room was to receive this and learn that it was made by Ejo McMullin.

[46:44]

who is the head priest at the Eugene Zendo, which is one of the places that John and I practice where we are. We practice with two sanghas, actually. But he made this for me, and I had no idea. And it's in the shape of a fiddlehead fern, which we have a lot of. And I don't know if I'm going to learn to use this part. And let me just say, this one was made by Sojin Roshi. who makes beautiful kotsus. And it is the brother to the one that he made at the same time for Maile Scott, which sits up on her altar, the altar, memorial altar to her in Arcata. And it's also in the Dōkasan room. It's used to if you have to hit a bad student. You can really whack them with this.

[47:45]

But I've never seen it used that way. Till now. Till now. Oh, yeah. That was a re-enactment. That was a re-enactment. Thelania, this will be the last one. OK. I just wanted to thank both of you, because I need to pause off, because we just had a late ordination. I was wide-eyed. It was so hot. And how does that keep Al from scaring us? What to do next? And when you said they were so beautiful and touching, we were both back here in tears. Ancestors, and I want to be old. Thank you so much. I had one, can I say one last thing? You mentioned Maile Scott, and it's a part of what we did every day for three weeks. We said the name of each ancestor, rang a bell, and did a full bow. And one of the names that I said was Kushin Seisho Meili Scott Dayo Sho.

[48:53]

She's our ancestor. So I'd like to thank Kinshin and Kankai, and thank all of you. And deep thanks to Sojin Roshi, without whom None of us would be sitting in this room. The room itself would not exist except as a place in space. He's in Europe, by the way, for the first time. He and Liz left about two or three days ago, and they'll be back on the 11th or 12th. And meanwhile, just to say, as he's been saying lately, we're having a party next weekend over Labor Day weekend. It's called a study session. And there's room there. And one of the things we're going to be, what we will be studying, which we haven't studied here before, is a wonderful fascicle by Dogen that's called Raihai Tokuzui, which translates something as like bowing to get to the essence of things.

[49:59]

And it's remarkable in that he's telling his students, he's basically saying, you need a true teacher, anyone can be a teacher for you, anyone can be a true teacher. And then what he's doing, basically, he's telling stories about women ancestors. which was highly unusual, and it breaks down into two parts, which he did on two different days. I think the sense is his students really didn't get it, so he went back. So this will be, I think, a really interesting study and stories that probably you've not heard before. So if this is your idea of fun, join us next weekend. Again, thank you to Genshin and Kankai.

[50:59]

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