Nester. His Darda name is Solon Soto, which means kind, plain, simple, ancestral way. And Ron began practicing at BCC in the early 70s and he was a resident at the original location on Dwight Way and then again here at Russell Street. He was Shuso, our head student, in the early 90s and received lay entrustment from Sojin Roshi And he's held many positions here over the years. And he's currently, for several years now, been our class coordinator. So we welcome Ron and look forward to hearing what he has to say. Thanks, Bethany. And it's good to hear my past, because I forget the years since I got me a little biography. Is the volume OK in the background? Can it be a little louder?

[01:05]

Is that better? How's this? How's this? A little bit louder? Okay, we're getting there, Bruce. Bruce? Okay, all right, that's good. You'd think a stage manager could really get this right. Sojin can't be here today. He's rehearsing for a memorial ceremony for Blanche Hartman. A lot of you know her or knew her, and a number of you don't. She actually started practicing in the early 70s with Sojin up on Dwight Way, and I was there. I have a little card for her on the altar. She was 90. And my first memory of her is in Dwight Way, the shoe rack was out on the, basically facing the street. And coming out of Zazen one afternoon, my shoes were gone.

[02:08]

There was no shoes. And so Blanche and her husband Lou gave me a ride home to North Berkeley, because I was just in my socks. So that's my first memory of Blanche. She also, I worked with her to sew my first rakasa. And I mentioned it at a work meeting today apparently, but also this is Sojin's birthday today. He's 87. And I thought it would be nice to sing Happy Birthday to him, even though he's not here. But I also thought it would be nice to sing it to him softly, because he's not here. So like, you know, usually it's like really rousing when somebody's here, you really get into it. But because he's not here, just to sing it, he doesn't have to whisper, but just a little bit softly, okay? Thank you. He's very important to us.

[03:11]

And I have mixed feelings about it, but I think it might be good just to mention, just to briefly mention the last couple of weeks of people killing each other in this country, and police mostly against African-American people and back and forth. and not to say anything about it except that that's the background that we practice with. And I don't have any special insight into it, only that We need to acknowledge that at the same time as we practice meditation and practice this kind of very organized and gentle practice. That's the background that we're within.

[04:36]

And hope the country can find some way out. I don't have much hope, actually. So I want to talk about a few words that I heard a few years ago. And I don't know if you, I think most people have some experience where you hear something in a Zen context, and for whatever reason, about all the words you hear, these particular words stick with you. They come back to you, because somehow they have meaning to you, because basically of who you are and your practice, those words mean something in particular to you, and you remember them. So I was listening to a cassette recording of one of Sojon's Book of Serenity class, that he gave like 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, and that I was actually at that class.

[05:40]

But I listened to it in a cassette recording of somebody because we got rid of all our cassettes. And somebody put them out of the community room porch, so I picked this one up, and it was this class that I was in. And in this class was a previous former member of BCC, Quan Lam. Quan Lam was Chinese, and he's an architect and a nice guy. He actually helped design the bathroom, the patio bathroom. It used to be one big laundry room. He helped to make that into a bathroom and a laundry room. He created that whole roof peak that's over the front of the bathroom and the laundry room, and also was instrumental in the remodel of the community room many years ago. So in this class, Quan Lam said, you know, we were studying the Book of Serenity, which is one of our main koan collections. Quan Lam said, you know, the literal Chinese translation of that is actually Book of Not Forcing Things.

[06:51]

And that really stuck in my mind. I mean, the difference between Book of Serenity and Book of Not Forcing Things. And that was his translation. I have no idea how accurate that is. Another translation that I just looked up on the internet to be curious what somebody else would translate it literally as. It's like calm, natural state where there are no struggles. But I like not forcing things. And actually, it wasn't that they called this column collection that, it's that that was the temple that Wong Tsung, who compiled the Book of Serenity, was staying at when he compiled the Book of Serenity. So, you know, why not forcing things seems important to me is it's just so key to the way that I consider effort

[07:55]

And the way I see effort and behavior in other people, especially in American society, which we're so, I would say, aggressive and outward and accomplishment-oriented. And then in particular, also in relation to practice, that You know, our instinct is to want to make something happen in our life. To make our life the way we'd like it to be. To be helpful to others. All kinds of reasons, but we're all engaged in accomplishing something. We can't help it. So how do we do that without going overboard and of straining. Where is the line between straining and an effort that's more harmonious?

[09:06]

And, you know, we're fairly sophisticated here, I would say. So I'm talking on a pretty subtle level, not necessarily a gross level, but a subtle level if you really go deeply into it. And if I look at myself You know, deep, I can see where there's a kind of, you could also call it clinging, but forcing, trying to force what I want to happen. And there is a strain, there is a kind of a tension. So as a practice, you know, it's wonderful that this whole collection of magnificent koans in this collection are called the Book of Not Forcing Things, that that would be the umbrella where this accumulated wisdom over hundreds and hundreds of years would be under this umbrella, this name umbrella. So I just wanted to read you an excerpt from Suzuki Roshi's chapter on effort from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[10:28]

And by the way, just an aside, Zenmind Beginner's Mind, for those of you who don't know, it's edited. It's well, very well edited. If you were to hear his original talks, it's a rougher kind of Japanese. cast to it. But this is a talk that he gave to a group of laypeople in Los Altos, in my understanding. So these were like sitting around a living room talking to people, laypeople. It wasn't in a monastery, it wasn't in a temple, it wasn't in a room like this. He was just sitting around in the living room giving talks to people as Zen was just sort of emerging in the Bay Area. He said, the most important point in our practice is to have right or perfect effort. Now, of course, if you listen to Suzuki Roshi much, or read what he said, there's about a hundred things that he says is the most important point. Which is okay, right?

[11:34]

It's all right. Right effort, directed in the right direction, is necessary. If your effort is headed in the wrong direction, especially if you are not aware of this, it is diluted effort. Our effort in our practice should be directed from achievement to non-achievement. Usually when we do something, you want to achieve something, you attach to some result. From achievement to non-achievement means to be rid of the unnecessary and bad results of effort. If you do something in the spirit of non-achievement, there's a good quality in it. So just to do something without any particular effort is enough. When you make some special effort to achieve something, some excessive quality, some extra element is involved in it. You should get rid of excessive things.

[12:37]

If your practice is good, without being aware of it, you will become proud of your practice. That pride is extra. And we really have to be honest about this, you know. This is subtle. What you do is good, but something more is added to it. So you should get rid of that something which is extra. This point is very, very important. But usually we are not subtle enough to realize it, and we go in the wrong direction. Because all of us are doing the same thing, making the same mistake, we do not realize it. So without realizing it, we are making many mistakes. People ask what it means to practice zazen with no gaining idea. What kind of effort is necessary for that kind of practice? The answer is effort to get rid of something extra from our practice.

[13:42]

If some extra idea comes, you should try to stop it. You should remain in pure practice. That is the point to which our effort is directed. So this is not the way the West usually thinks about effort. I also thought it was interesting, you know, the practice committee has been meeting since, I think, at least 1976, about 40 years, every week. So I calculated that's about 2,000 meetings of the practice committee, all aimed at getting rid of something extra in the functioning of BGC. You know? Think about that. And think about what a heavy load they started with to get to this point today. It's admirable. And also I just have a little quote from Blanche here.

[14:52]

This is something I heard Blanche say several times in lectures. She sat a period of zazen during shishin with Suzuki Roshi, and she had a period where she had almost no thoughts occurred. So she went to him at dokusan to say, you know, gosh, I went through a whole period. And she was kind of really proud of that. She really accomplished something for the first time in zen. And he said, don't ever think that you can sit zazen. That's a big mistake. Zazen fits Zazen. So he kind of took the wind out of her sails. You know, the word that we use over and over again here, and in the areas in particular, is practice.

[15:59]

We constantly use the word practice. I was at a talk with Chogyam Trungpa long ago, and he was making fun of some of the different practice traditions in the Bay Area. And when he came around to Zen, he said, and Zen people, everything is practice, practice, practice, and you have your black cushions, and you have your black clothing. you know, and everything is practice. So he was teasing us for relying on, holding on to the concept of, holding on to this idea of practice as something that we hold on to and kind of, that's who we are, even though it's central. But we don't talk about effort per se, much.

[17:04]

It's implied when we talk about practice, it's implied that we're talking about effort. But we don't talk about effort so much. So ... You have these two sides. One is if we're making too much effort, we start straining, and now we're forcing. If we don't make enough effort, it's too loose. It's like, whatever, it's all good. But that's a loose attitude. Actually, that's more my problem. It's a little bit too casual. So, you know, how to find that balance between a strain and just sort of being slack is important. And maybe we move back and forth between those two sides.

[18:09]

If you think about And then thinking about simplicity in terms of effort, in terms of zazen. When we sit, what's the effort that we make when we're sitting, when we're doing zazen? When we're just sitting, what's the effort that we make? Well, the effort that we make is to, our posture, to have an upright posture, Not because we're such good Zen students, and we want to look good, or we think we should do this, but because it allows us to be aware and alert and awake, and that's enough. And because that's so simple, it's really difficult, as you found out.

[19:12]

to sit still on a cushion and look at the wall, it's not really necessary to have a lot of stuff going on in our mind. Why would that be necessary? Except that's our habit, and for that reason it's necessary, because it is our habit. But other than that, you know, and that's what he's talking about, letting go of what's unnecessary. That's what's so interesting about it, actually, is all the machinations that we go through when we're sitting, and so much of it is really basically unnecessary except for a biological and kind of habitual And I think having faith in just being aware without turning the awareness into something, turning awareness into something that, oh, now I know this.

[20:31]

Now I know that. So now I feel confident because I know something. I'm competent. I know something. how to just be aware for its own sake. So when we talk about gaining, we're constantly talking about gaining mind. So we're trying to gain something rather than just ... I mean, the question is, why couldn't awareness for its own sake be enough? And I think it involves some faith in that it is enough. And I don't know where that faith comes from. It's not something you would believe because somebody said it to you in a book or in a lecture. So there's that.

[21:39]

So getting back to the forcing quality or the strain of effort, there's a column that I'd like to talk about from the Book of Serenity. And just the flavor of this case is what I'd like to talk about. I don't want to go into depth in this case because And I think it's more appropriate for a study class to do that and go into detail. But I just want to convey the flavor of this case to you in terms of effort, forcing, and harmonizing. This case is called Daizong, Planting the Fields. And this is one that Sojins began this year off, this first talk of 2016 was on this case. And so I think, well, you know, some people have already heard him talk about this case, I shouldn't do it again. But actually what's interesting is these cases, we each, you know, each person sees something in the case, although that's,

[22:49]

It comes at it from a little bit different angle just based on our personality. Something stands out to us a little bit differently than maybe the person next to us. So that's what's pretty interesting about it. And you can read commentaries and you can get the intellectual and conceptual meaning. They're all about duality and non-duality. So you can, for most, some of them are just enigmatic and it's really hard to pierce. But this one is more simple, actually. But it's how, it's the flavor of it, the tone of it, not just the idea of what the case is about. And I just want to say something about the koans in general. I feel like, I don't know how people feel about koan practice. What I mean by koan practice is not renzai style where you sit during zazen and you work on your koan and you go to the teacher and you talk with your koan and you come back and you sit and you go to the teacher.

[23:52]

That's not a Soto way of koan practice. It's not like that. Soto is maybe just to study koans, consider them, talk to your teacher about them, and just let them sort of infiltrate. That's my feeling about it. And there's a quality to these cases that I think if you know the background of how they came together, you would feel, maybe some people feel a little like, intimidated by them, or they're frustrating because they don't make sense. Actually, they do make sense, but just not the kind of sense that we're used to making. And that if you understood the family background of these koans, generationally and within Zen practice, I think you would maybe feel more intimate with them and see the liveliness in them. that basically these cases all emanate from conversations that teachers had during the Tang Dynasty, China, 600 to 900 AD.

[25:02]

Teacher says something in a talk or to a student, somebody else hears it, they write it down. And just like I was mentioning, like they're not forcing, it sticks in my mind. And then those things are written down. Chinese are really good about doing that. And then, and these are some really good teachers in this golden age of Zen in China. Then maybe 200 years later, another teacher comes along in relatively the same lineage, maybe as the first teacher, but not necessarily. Another teacher comes along and decides to put a poem to a collection of these examples. and they assemble maybe a hundred of them. And for each case, they put a poem to it of their own device, their own making. So now you have an original dialogue, and now you have a poem added to it.

[26:06]

And then, a hundred years after that, another teacher comes along and takes the poem, the case, and puts a commentary to the whole thing, creates a compilation, which is what we have to work with today. And we take it for granted, you know, you can get them on Amazon, used, it's so easy. But these are like, you know, hundreds of years of collective wisdom, and people improvising and responding to each other that create the final product that we get to read. So here's a case, Daizong planting the fields. Daizong died in the early 900s. Daizong asked the monk, where do you come from? And the monk said, from the South. Daizong said, how is Buddhism in the South these days? And the monk said, there's extensive discussion.

[27:09]

Daizong said, how can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice? And the monk said, but what can you do about the world? And Daizong said, what do you call the world? And that's the end of it. Now here's another alternate translation from Yamada Kōan, or Kōan Yamada. He's not alive anymore, but he was a more Rinzai-oriented teacher. His translation is somewhat different, although basically it's the same. So how is Buddhism faring in the South these days? The monk said, it is widely discussed. Nizang said, planting my rice field and growing rice is better than that. And the monk said, how can you save the beings of the three worlds in that way?

[28:11]

And Daizong said, what do you call the three worlds? The three worlds are form, formlessness, and desire in the Buddhist scheme of things, each one more refined than the other. But there's a difference between comparing and my way is better. And I think that my way is better is not really, my way is better is just challenging the monk. He's not really saying, my way is better. He doesn't really mean that what it sounds like. It's like a challenge. What do you say to that? My way is better. What do you say to that? So, you know, this case, this contrast between these two sides, You know, one is we have extensive discussions. We're figuring out or we're talking about how we can help people.

[29:16]

Basically, bodhisattva practice. How can we help people? You know, especially if you have that feeling now with what's happening in America and just unprecedented kind of presidential election with weirdness going on and violence going on. How can we help the world? How can we help people? And if, on the other hand, here's Daizong. He's got a small temple. He's just taking care of his garden. Of course, he was doing more than that. He was a really good teacher. People were coming by and talking to him. Some people liked him, some people didn't. So how do those two sides go together? And I think we tend to The answer is both. You know, we want to make one side the right side, one side better than the other side, or this is more important.

[30:17]

But I would suggest that actually both sides are important, and that if you think that only being active and doing something and accomplishing something, no matter how beneficial it is for people, is better than somebody who's just taking care of their life, taking care of their family, taking care of their children, and taking care of their job, their work, that you think that the person who's accomplishing something bigger than that in terms of society is better, more important, question that. And if you also think that, you know, you don't need to worry about this kind of impure world, you know, this chaos going on. I'm just going to, I don't have anything to do with that. I'm just going to be, take care of my own little practice and not worry about all that. That also is extreme. On the other side. where the monk kind of gets caught is that Gisan kind of sets him up.

[31:23]

And says, well, how do you compare these two? Or even, my way is better. So then the monk says, well, yeah, but you're not doing this. And then he's kind of caught by being one-sided. And what do you call the three worlds? Look at how you define the world. Look at how you define, look at how your judgment, how you shape your judgment. Question how you shape your judgment. Don't just take your judgment for granted. So, Dizong's style of just taking care of his garden, taking care of growing rice, has more of that feeling of not forcing, more of that feeling of just taking care of your business, your everyday life, thoroughly.

[32:26]

And I think that's the flavor of this case that I wanted to bring out, that that's okay. And if you feel like that's not enough, if we don't feel like it's enough, we have to be more accomplished, we have to accomplish the American dream, or the American Zen dream, or whatever dream that we have. Getting back to not forcing for a minute, or another part of that, we are making a new garden outside of 1933 Russell Street, Alan Laurie's house and Alexandra Bruce's house. those gardens have sort of gone into decay. We've let them go partly because we wanted to be more drought resistant, partly because a few things have died. So we just sort of let them go. And now we want to kind of do something new and refresh them.

[33:34]

And so people have talked about how to do that. And the idea came up, well, maybe it would be a good idea to make this garden more Japanese-oriented, more Zen-oriented, because that's what we're practicing here, in that kind of style. And Paul Ridgeway, who is the work leader, has kind of spearheaded that interest in doing that. So we have been having meetings, several people have been having meetings, including Sojin, about how to do that, and talking to some experts about it, looking at pictures, going out and looking at the garden. And the question comes, well, how are you going to do it? How are you going to make this garden? On one side, there's a kind of a classical idea of a Japanese garden, you know, the whole thing with this little stone lantern and a little bridge and the water running through, you know, on the stone and everything.

[34:40]

And here's a sort of classic Japanese garden. And on the other hand, there's also, we live on Russell Street, we want to harmonize with the neighborhood. where this is American-based practice, although it's Japanese style. So how do we put that together? And there is concern that if we try too hard to make it, if we have an idea about what a Japanese garden is and we try to do that idea, it's going to be forcing. It's going to be trying to make something conform to our idea. So how do we take that idea but let it be softer and be open to how we can evolve that without a specific formal idea in our mind? So we talked to a couple of people and finally a fellow came over who specializes in Japanese guardians.

[35:46]

He's an American, although he had Japanese teachers. And immediately when we talked to him about this kind of, you know, not dilemma, tension, yeah, kind of interesting tension between these two sides, he got it immediately. He was totally enthusiastic about what we were trying to figure out and about how to make it natural and not straining. and really willingness to work with us, even though he's an expert and he knows a lot. We know nothing. Still, he was listening to what we wanted and helping us how to evolve this. Sojan likes big rocks, so I'm afraid we're stuck with that. That's a given, I'm afraid. But other than that, it's open. So the idea is we'll be starting with a big rock, and then evolving that as we go, and seeing what works.

[36:53]

Given your introduction, I would like to say something about it. The first thing that's, or the first, this landscaper that we're working with, the first thing he's gonna do is do some rock placement. That's his art, is the placement of rocks, arrangement of rocks. But part of the deal is that in order to make it inexpensive to do this, or less expensive to do this work, we're gonna do as much of the manual labor of the work of building this garden ourselves. And so before rock placement, I've agreed to do the landscaping that he's described, which is moving, shoveling, moving the dirt around that's in that space. So if anyone's interested in doing this shoveling with me, I would love to...

[38:13]

So I'd like to end now, and if you have any questions or comments, please go ahead. Just a matter of detail. I mean, you can go line by line, which is interesting, but you have to have time to do that. And sometimes when I hear somebody talk about a case in a lecture like this, I feel like, and I have some feeling for what that case is about, that it's hard to really grasp the nuances that are actually there.

[40:03]

I hesitate because I don't want to get too tangled up in language, particularly language that I don't know. And I wonder if what Quan Lam was translating is what is conventionally translated as equanimity. And your other translation kind of had that implication. And it just, it also occurred to me that equanimity, that's a good name for a temple. It's one of the factors of enlightenment, as is ever. and somehow they fit together.

[41:07]

But now, I made a note, so now I'm gonna try to go back and see what the Chinese word is. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. It's a very good point. But they're both factors of enlightenment. Yeah. Which actually you'll be talking about in your class. Oh, right. Coming up in late August. Stay tuned, folks. And also, it's also called the Book of Tranquility sometimes. So you have tranquility, equanimity, serenity. Not forcing. There's something really vivid about that. Not forcing. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Okay, go ahead. Thank you for the talk. Nice. You were talking about Zazen and you were bouncing on the point of eight in awareness.

[42:17]

you sit as you're saying it's simple that you just sit and you are aware of your breath for example and all the extra stuff comes along and that's what it is just to be aware of that extra stuff and say that's extra and just to just let maybe let go of that extra and also the When that clinging does arise, that grasping arises, what do you do with it? Just be aware of it. But awareness can also lead to action too. So you might say, this is getting tiring. Thank you Ron.

[43:37]

It sounded to me like one way to encapsulate this koan about the world is what am I drawn to and what calls to me. And as I was listening to you, I forget who said it, but that those famous words, you know, as Nazism was on the rise, first they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew and then they came for the gay. So, you know, given the world as it is, how do you attune to That's just that question. As soon as you come up with a formula, as soon as you come up with a formula for it, it gets static. But I think

[44:38]

I don't have a good answer for that. As soon as you come up for an answer, it might sound pretty profound or good, but... I don't think that there is something... You just have to go deep inside, that's all. I can't say. of Buddha's teachings, and the Sutra of Totality, in which he talks about what is totality, and anything that you can see with your eyes, anything that you can smell with your nose, anything that you can taste, or hear, or what the mind can think about, that is totality. You said totality, or? Totality.

[45:46]

And anything else, you can't really confirm. So, I don't know if that helps in terms of like, that's what came to my mind, which is the world is, whatever, the totality to us, and what we can perceive. I have to untangle that later with you. I have to take more time. Just last one, Jerry? I've struggled not forcing. And one way that I, I mean, the way I generally am starting to work with it is more as a body, almost a body feeling. You know, when I think I should do something, I should make an effort, the right thing to do is to make that effort. To say yes to things, to do things. And I'm starting to think, I don't know if you can see this,

[46:48]

The difference between right effort and forcing is the role of ego. That where you get caught is, I want to do this, I want to do this. Or even pride, I'm doing this. And when that happens, it becomes forcing. Yeah, I agree. Totally agree. And just to go back to you for a minute, what's your name again? Raga. I would say, that's Italian, and also to what you're saying, I'd say open mind. You know, you can't go wrong with open mind. Unless you get spaced... Unless you get spaced out. Thank you.

[47:39]

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