Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome our speaker today, Tso-Wan Soto, Ron Nestor. Ancestor Nestor has been with us from the early 70s at White Way, the original temple of Berkeley's Ancestor. Ron got involved in Buddhist practice, originally with Frippo Rinpoche. of teaching, but as fate would have it, as years went by, he found himself coming to a more simple practice, which is what you have here at Berkeley's Ed Center. Ron is a husband of over two decades, married to Karen, who is a librarian in Alameda, and given her predilection for her study in library and he's always got a book going, and he's very sincere about inquiry of Dharma in the formal sense of study, but as his name implies, he's also very simple in expression.

[01:12]

Ron's trained directly or indirectly all the practice leaders here at Berkeley Zen Center, so the practice forms have come through Ron, and the very, very long arms of his, which you may have seen carrying pockets of water up to the barrier plants, taking care of the entry to the temple outside on Russell Street. I could say more about my dear friend, Ron, but I'd like to leave the rest of the morning lecture time to him. Thank you, Ross. And Ross should be the emcee of skit night coming up in practice today. A practice period, I should think. Have you ever done that? Yes. So, last week Sojin talked about the Genjo Koan, Dogen's Genjo Koan, which is not easy to grasp.

[02:14]

He read a good portion from the book that he had a major hand in creating, the Three Commentaries on the Genjo Koan, and we all tried to keep up with it as he was reading, and try to understand what Dogen was talking about. So, I'm going to go to the other side of Dogen and present the simple side, the easy side of Dogen, which is the Fukan Zazengi. The first thing that he wrote when he came back from China after meeting his true teacher, Hu Jing, this is about 1225, 1227, something like that. And the Fukanza Zengi, I'm just going to take a few sentences from it. Because, although Ross alluded to the fact that I study and so forth, actually, I'm not very good at studying. And my mind is easily scattered.

[03:15]

So, for me, to study in a way that's really satisfying, lately I've been realizing it's just to take a little bit and really focus on that little bit. and not worry about if I know that it's endless, but just take a small part and try to really understand the small part. Have the confidence that the small parts are so good that if we can really understand the small part, we'll be doing fine. That's my feeling. Especially with Dogen. His words are so concentrated. Fukan Zazengi is an introduction to Zazen, instructions on how to sit. It's the most elemental thing that he wrote, as far as I can tell. And it's only a couple pages long. Fukan Zazengi means something like universal guidance for the principles of Zazen.

[04:20]

there had been a number of zazengis prior to the one that he put together. Instructions for how to sit from mostly or all from Chinese teachers. And he felt that they were inadequate, particularly one that was prevalent during his lifetime, he felt was inadequate and had been around for about a hundred years or so. he felt like the person that wrote it, the monk that wrote it, didn't really have a deep understanding of what Zazen really is. So he rewrote the existing Zazen-D into this version, and then 20 years later, when he was in his mid-40s, he rewrote that, and this is the version that we work with. So, with the Fukuzazenki, it's not difficult to understand it if you read it through, and most of you have read it and heard it many times. If you read it and listen to it, it's fairly easy to get the gist of it.

[05:28]

It's not complicated. It's not all so much about non-duality, duality, and things intertwining and turning upside down and right side up and spinning around, which some of his other work feels like that when you listen to it. It sounds pretty straightforward, and you can kind of understand what the words mean, but I'm thinking maybe kind of understand, because if you really look at the words, specific words, you really ask yourself, what do these words really mean? Even though we have a sense of what they mean, if you look at it more closely, are you sure that you really understand? There's words like way, like the way, suchness, illumination, and others. And what do these words really mean to you, to me?

[06:31]

Not just like a definition, but how do we really understand these words? How do we bring it beyond the conceptual level into something that we understand from inside? I had this image this morning. It's like if you take some dried fruit or sun-dried tomatoes and you add water. The original is very concentrated, but if you add water, you can digest it, and it's more tasty. So, I want to work towards helping us to digest the concentrated words that those are saying, and help myself. So, I'm just going to take a few sentences, and I'll read the sentences. And of those, I'm only going to really focus on a couple of them.

[07:35]

And I'm just going to take a part from the middle, or actually it's near the beginning, but this is just a portion. But I don't think it matters if I take it out of context because it makes enough sense on its own. Nidai mentioned the Buddha who was possessed of inborn knowledge. The influence of his six years of upright sitting is noticeable still, or Bodhidharma's transmission of the mind seal. The fame of his nine years of wall sitting is celebrated to this day. Since this was the case with the saints of old, how can people today dispense with negotiation of the way? You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech. Study the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate within body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.

[08:42]

If you desire suchness, you should practice suchness without delay." So the first part about that Buddha sat for six years and Bodhidharma sat for nine years, I'll just sort of briefly mention that Of course he's setting a high bar for us. If we feel complacent about our practice, if you think about somebody sitting in a cave for nine years looking at the wall, or Shakyamuni sitting for six years, and you take that seriously, it's difficult to be complacent or have a whatever attitude about Zen practice. And also, interestingly, during Dogen's time, there was a group of people, a group of practitioners, who felt that since Zen was everything, since Zen was not limited to just sitting cross-legged, that walking with Zen, lying down with Zen, everything is Zen, there was no need, beyond just the beginning part of your practice, there was no need to sit cross-legged.

[10:02]

And he just couldn't stand that attitude. So he thought they were totally deluded to say that the concentrated upright sitting is not important because it extends everywhere. Our understanding extends everywhere. So that's also, I think, part of his wanting to say that. So moving down to the next sentence, He says, you should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech. So of course, the first sense you would make out of this is if we get too wrapped up in studying and listening to talks and that's it, we don't actually put ourselves into it. But instead we have this mental framework

[11:03]

Or, you know, we love philosophy, we love the mental aspect of philosophy, but it stays very mental. We don't actually actualize it in our being. Or when we hear words about Buddhism, we feel good, but we don't challenge ourselves to actually live those words. This is true for every religion, not just Buddhism. So that would be the first take on those words. And in every religion there's people that really love the words, but don't really want to practice too much. But what I take out of these words, because I don't, you know, actually I'm somewhat resistant to words. I have difficulty with words. So that's not so much a problem for me, but what the problem for me is the words that are in my mind. and the mental dialogue going on in my mind full time.

[12:10]

Not exactly words, but images. Some words, images. Always moving to the future or to the past. So, it's not exactly what he's saying, but that's how I take what he's saying and understand it for myself. that to be absorbed in my mental drama is being... I should cease. And cease from that kind of conceptual fixation. And even Dogen, who was a genius, who had read more than you could ever imagine, and knew references to classical Chinese literature and everything else, even he said he regretted how much time he had spent reading and studying, that it would have been better spent just sitting.

[13:17]

And also I think about what's really scary is to think about today, with everybody walking around with their devices, which are filled with words and images, and just walking around, walking down the sidewalk looking at their devices, you know, and walking their dogs. Half the people I see walking their dogs have a device in their hand, or in their ear. And I take carpoolers over to San Francisco when I go to work, In the last couple of years, I'd say maybe 80% of carpoolers are looking at their devices the whole ride and not looking out the window, not enjoying the weather or the day or anything. But they've been there, they've done that. So how do you catch up on what's really compelling? I wonder how compelling it really is. And then there's this great quote that Colin Ajo, who was Dogen's disciple, said, Don't seek reality, just let go of views.

[14:23]

So, don't seek reality, just let go of views. So, the next sentence is, study the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate within. You get the gist of this, right? This is not difficult to understand what he's getting at. If you really look at it carefully, challenge yourself to look at this carefully. How do you experience this? How do we experience what he's saying? Sounds good, but how do we experience it? And what's light? Is this just sort of a metaphorical expression? What does he mean when he says light? How do we illuminate within? What is that? When you come and sit in the Zen Dojo, do you feel like you're illuminating within?

[15:28]

Does that really feel like what's happening? Would you use those words? Maybe. And if he says study the backward step, what's the forward step? What kind of forward step are we taking? So this line is really meaningful to me because it makes me see what my forward step is which is ego, an egocentric way of relating to the world and particularly, I was thinking of instances where it just comes very clear and they're usually positions situations where I have some power, where I can really see that forward step, which is diluted and very self-centered.

[16:30]

In driving, I drive a lot because I commute to San Francisco, and I'm a pretty careful driver and a considerate driver. I'm not aggressive in the way that I drive. And I love sharing, interweaving with people, and each person takes their turn. I really appreciate that. And I see the sociality of driving, and how everybody's working together in a certain way. But there are times when some primal thing comes up, which is just totally like an eight-year-old kid on the playground, wanting to win. getting angry, well I don't actually get angry, but I want to compete, put it that way. Somebody thinks I'm going too slow and they sort of speed up around me, well I want to speed up too to show them I'm not really as slow as they think that I am. So think about that mentality. That mentality, that's an extreme example, but that

[17:39]

And when that happens to me, it's sort of a little bit below the surface usually. When that comes out, it's very clear. And that kind of way of wanting to move forward. And our whole life can be like that. And Americans are just... We're a very aggressive culture. And we're really into accomplishment and getting ahead. So, the word light, turning our light back, this is difficult. Light is not something that I know from reading and talking to sages.

[18:41]

Light is not something that we can see. The light that he's talking about is not like a flashlight type light. It's more like we illuminate ourself. We become illuminated. It's not like we're shining a light on something. And you may experience that. You may have this feeling of being illuminated, or not exactly seeing light, but experiencing a sense of light. I don't have that kind of experience, although I love light, actual light, I really thrive on actual life and the physical world. So for me there's a question, you know, what is he talking about? I don't feel too frustrated not knowing, but it's a question for me. So rather than just say, oh yeah, light. I would like to know, what's he really talking about? And when he talks about illuminating within, you know, the closest that I can come so far is, and understanding in my own life, is what I would call, it's a drain practice, it's a practice of draining.

[20:00]

So it's like, everything that comes, this is particularly in Zazen, and you know, also the Fukan Zazen is about Zazen, but you can apply it to everything. It's not just for being in the zendo, thankfully. So, what I think about it for myself is that when thoughts come into my mind and emotions come into my mind in a kind of a somewhat manic quality that just to let them drain out and I actually envision, can envision a drain like a sink where the water runs in and then it just drains out. You don't have to flush it out and it works just fine. It's a sink that works just perfectly well. Water runs in and then drains out. Actually, it's very dynamic.

[21:06]

So, I think about letting go of whatever I'm holding on to, rather than trying to stop up the sink so that you can hold on to what's ever coming into it, just let it drain out without having to push it out. So that feeling to me has some kind of energy because of its dynamic quality, which is the closest that I can come to a feeling of illumination so far. But you should consider, what's your illumination? How do you experience that? Or what's the closest that you can come? And I'll just make one little quote from Komiya, which is Dogen's ethical on light. This quote is, because Dogen is always asking us, what is light? He wants us to ask that question.

[22:13]

He says, his description of light is, one of his descriptions is, the brightness gathers hold of the brightness and makes it into subject and object. The brightness gathers hold of the brightness and makes it into subject and object. So, when I hear that I just want to Stop. And shut up. There's something about that wording which just makes you stop. Makes me stop. Then he goes on to say, body and mind in themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. body and mind don't drop away, but our attachment to our body and mind drops away.

[23:16]

Dogen's big enlightenment experience with Ruijin was to feel like his body and mind, he said, sloughed off, his body and mind sloughed off like a snake kind of sloughs off your skin. And your original face will be manifest. So original face is one of these terms, Zen terms, that We can explain it, but the experience of that, what is that? So explaining it, I would say, is that what are we when we don't identify ourselves with our particular qualities? We don't think that that's who I am, the various qualities that encompass me. What are we when we don't attach to our particular qualities, our situations, our pleasure or our displeasure.

[24:23]

My father is 88 and he has lost his memory. He does not have Alzheimer's and he actually can communicate Not exactly well, but he can communicate fine. He had several strokes and that changed his whole mind around. And he has no memory. He doesn't remember his family. He doesn't remember his work. He doesn't know that I'm his son, even though I visit him every other week or so. He just knows that I'm kind of a friend. If I mention my mother's name, who died a few years ago, he doesn't recognize her name. The one thing he does remember is the dog's name, from when we were kids, you know, 35 or 40 years ago, or 50 years ago. He remembers the dog's name, but nobody else's name. It's interesting. But talking to him, his ego is intact, and his personality is intact, actually, in certain ways, very elemental ways, even though he has no reference to his previous life.

[25:40]

And he's aware that he doesn't have this memory and he's sort of embarrassed because he feels he should know who we are. But once we say, it's okay, we don't care if you don't know. He says, ah, that's great, thanks. And then we can have a conversation. So, in a way, it's like original face light. He's still got plenty of egos. He doesn't have any reference to who he is. And yet, it all comes out. The tendencies that he's always had are clearly there. And finally, this sentence, if you desire suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. So, suchness is again one of these words.

[26:44]

I had a little description. Oh, I say universal flow is what I would call suchness. I had to try to explain it to somebody. But suchness is something that we experience, not something that is philosophy or something analytical. yīng mǒu, is it yīng mǒu or yīng mǒu? yīng mǒu. yīng mǒu is a Chinese, colloquial Chinese word for it. And it, it means, also means the word it. So it's like if you say it is cold, the it is suchness. The it which is the situation right now. suchness. Still though, to live our life and experience this, how do we do this?

[27:51]

And do we do this? There's a great story that Suzuki Roshi tells. He gave a talk on suchness. I'm not sure where he gave it. And in this story, it's a story about himself. He was a college student in a university in Japan. And he lived in a dormitory. And the bathrooms were not kept very clean. You know that story? The bathrooms were not kept very clean. So he decided that he wanted to clean them. clean them up somewhat, because they weren't being done very well. But he didn't want people to see him do it. Maybe it would sort of embarrass the administration if they saw one of their students having to clean the bathrooms because they weren't kept up well, or maybe he didn't want people to think he was a goody-goody.

[28:56]

I don't know exactly what his feeling was, but he didn't want people to see him do it, but he did want the bathroom to be clean. So he had this kind of conflict, because if somebody were to come along and see him doing it, he wouldn't want that to happen. So he was afraid. He had some fear anxiety that somebody would see him cleaning the bathroom. At the same time, and this is in his own words, being stubborn-minded, he couldn't let go of wanting to clean the bathroom. So he had this conflict and he would think about it a lot. He had this personality that this was really important to him, which I relate to. One of my jobs at work is actually taking care of the bathrooms, seeing that they're kept clean. So this went on for some time and he began to get kind of feeling more and more bound up in this conflict and fussing in his mind. And around this time he even got so like at night, you know, if the president of the university was working overtime and he was alone in this particular area and he saw the light coming in the hallway

[30:10]

he would, you know, want to scurry out of there when he saw the light so that the president wouldn't see him cleaning the bathroom. And he thought, this is absurd that I'm going through this kind of drama. So he also at that time happened to take a psychology class. The teacher said, you know, what you think about the past is not what actually happened in the past. Not to mention the future. But what your memory of the past is a different reality than the past. Which makes sense, but we may not really realize that. And it's something Don and I, that how his mental imagery of how he was imagining this, what he didn't want to happen, happen, his mental imagery about that was not exactly what it would really be like. What it would really be like if somebody saw him cleaning the bathroom might be, who knows? So he just decided to stop worrying about it.

[31:14]

And that if it happened, if somebody saw him thinking about him, he would just deal with it. So that's his description of suchness. Just being willing to be in the situation and deal with whatever comes at that moment. Rather than arrange everything so that it would work out nicely for his desire. So, we're short on time, so I just want to read those sentences, not the one about Buddha and Bodhidharma, but just the other sentences just again, and then we can take a couple of questions. You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech. Study the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate within, body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest.

[32:22]

If you desire suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Do you have any comments or questions? like the attitude of some Zen practitioners. That's a really good question. That's a question for me.

[33:31]

I don't know... He might say, you just have to do it. But I don't know if he ever explained why, other than it works. But that's always actually been a question for me. From a reasoning point of view, you would wonder that. Logically, you would wonder, well, what is this? Sitting in this position, what's such a big deal? My way of understanding it is because our minds are so restless and so easily distracted that we need this kind of concentration. That's a very simple mind enhancer. But that's the way I understand it, so far. I don't know what Dobin would say. Oh, Dan, would you like to say something? Well, I can say something.

[34:33]

Original face, that's interesting. Original face just simply means light. But Satsang itself is to be a vehicle for light. That's what Satsang is. It's very simple. Be a vehicle for light and see your original face. But see, there's no explanation about why. That's good. I told you so. But I don't want to explain it. You have to do it. I would like everybody to come to Shishin next Saturday and be a vehicle for life. Speaking of vehicles, Ron, maybe I should do some driving with you. I was wondering why you think you're just, why are you a calm, considerate driver? Is it just, it comes naturally to you? I mean, I don't consider myself an un-calm, un-considerate person, but

[35:39]

so often in the car, I feel like that eight-year-old. So, do you have some words about that? Yeah, I enjoy, you know, at the Monday talk I mentioned physicality, of liking the physical, just being in movement and action, and I enjoy the whole, it's kind of beginner's mind, I just enjoy the whole process of driving is so, if you don't take it for granted, It's incredible that we're moving around in these big tons of steel and going this way and going that way and thousands and thousands of cars and they're not running into each other generally. And the fact that they're all people inside who all have minds and feelings and they're all relating to each other. That's how I see it. When you see a car, you don't think about the person in the car. But the fact that we're all people actually just driving around in cars.

[36:42]

Then it's fun to just interact physically. Because we're all going someplace. I made a bumper sticker about that. It says, I am traffic. Thank you for speaking today. I'd like to go back to the light. Attaining it, but not becoming attached to it, is it an emotional feeling when it becomes and awareness if you're sitting. Where is elusive? It seems like it's somewhat mercurial, elusive in some way. So, can you talk about that some more?

[37:45]

Is it an emotion? No. One thing I know is it's not something that you can pursue. it's because we're always pursuing something. So we know that. Taking the backward step means you stop pursuing something and yet there's still energy and effort to be awake, for its own sake, but not pursuing. I think maybe when we genuinely I think that the contradiction is that we can see light in other people. I mean, when you've sat for a number of years, people assume a kind of glow. You can see a kind of luminous feeling in the people around you.

[38:50]

But I don't know that you see it in yourself. I guess that's the question. Or know what the experience is that goes together with that. I don't know. That phrase about brightness and brightness and subject and object, it sounds like, well, anyway, it sounds like... It sounds like you have to stop thinking about it. Read it again. Well, subject-object is a division. Yeah, but he's saying that the whole... The brightness gathers hold of the brightness and makes it into subject and object. In other words, everything is already bright. Brightness is just existing. So, I don't understand.

[39:55]

Well, it's almost like some primal... some primal reality where our whole world, which is subject and object, duality, our whole world that we're aware of comes out of what he's talking about. This is sort of a definition for our whole world, our whole way of understanding subject and object. Okay, it's like... He doesn't want to get caught by duality, he doesn't want to get caught by non-duality, He just doesn't want to get caught. He doesn't want to... When brightness gets full of brightness, it becomes subject and object. Right. It's like when the... I was thinking that when the jishya sets up the little table during shosan, and then does this, that's what he's kind of saying. You have to kind of just stop.

[41:00]

You can't tick it apart. That's what he's trying to tell us is stop trying to tick it apart. So it's maybe the subject object stands for like the 10,000 things? Yeah, and our dualistic way of seeing things. But I'm wondering why he's going into the dualistic way of seeing. Because he wants to include everything. He doesn't want to leave anything out. That's the point. And I have to ask Linda, because Linda always has a good question. Oh, that's too much. A difficult question. For me, it's always a difficult question. I've been flowing in the universal flow, so my original question has been replaced several times. That brightness and brightness, I just wanted to say to Mary that The brightness you see is the brightness you are.

[42:03]

My question was the quote you gave about views, the sentence that ended with views. All we have to do is... Let go of views. It's not necessary to seek reality, just let go of your views. Uh-huh, right. And this is also my question that I always ask. I live in a world, in my work especially, Having views is the highly prized thing. She's a professor at Stanford. It's a thing where you have, you know, where that's what you're getting paid for. Yeah. At least you're making money at it. So really, my heart has been crying out for decades, as you know. Like, is there any value in having views, or is this just a really ridiculous life I'm living? It's a game.

[43:07]

I think it's okay to have views. It's that when we hang on to them and attach to them, this is a problem. I mean, I'm a manager at work, and I have certain views about how things should go, and I'll stand by those views up to a point, but then there's a point where I have to be flexible and be able to let go if there's some resistance or I'm seeing something else or something else comes into the picture. So views are a kind of a pious or a kind of means? Yeah, yeah, they're functional but they're not function... but if we hang on to them and we cling holding on to them for this is who I am and I know I'm secure because I have this view then it Everything turns out to be like the way the world is. Okay, I think we need to stop. Thanks for being patient.

[44:01]

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