Good morning. Gosh, it's a really beautiful spring day here. So this is our mid-practice period day. I think it's a little loud. And so we have a long, we have a celebratory dinner for the whole community, and then we have a night of an entertainment of skits and poems and songs tonight. And then Monday we just, just continue, just continuous practice, as Togin said, gyoji, continuous practice. So we have ceremonies, we have celebrations, and then we just pick up in the same rhythm. So I was away for about 12 days, and I'm not going to speak about that.

[01:03]

I was visiting two priests that I work with in Northern Germany, Juen and Nanzan, who some of you know, and they'll be back here later in the year, and did lay ordination with four of their students, four people from their sangha. And then a very interesting visit with a community of Buddhist Ram, which we know as gypsies, in northeast Hungary. And that was quite remarkable what they're doing to lift up their community. I'm going to, I think I'm going to do a report back on that an afternoon or evening on June 4th. So I'm not going to speak of that today. I want to keep, I want to stay in the groove of what we've been studying here for this practice period.

[02:12]

I've really been enjoying Mary's talks. I've, I heard two of them live and one of them fortunately was recorded and Laurie and I listened to that. And Sojin Roshi has been teaching a class on the precepts. So I'm going to try to speak to that. And what I've been thinking about for, for quite a while is kind of the nature or the heart of what I see as Zen training, what it's been for myself, what I have absorbed in this community, what I've absorbed from Sojin Roshi and from my sisters and brothers in this room. So I think that the, To set a context, I'll read you a koan that some of you are probably familiar with.

[03:22]

It's chapter 12 in the Momonkan, or the Gateless Gate. Zui Gan calls his master. So this is a guy talking to himself. So, Master Zweigahn called to himself every day, Master! And then he answered, Yes, sir! And then Zweigahn would say, Stay wide awake! And then Zweigahn would answer, Yes, sir! And Zweigahn would say, From now on, don't be deceived by others. And Zui Gon answered, no I won't. So this is kind of, there's some parallel I think with Seijo and her soul.

[04:27]

You know, you have a dialogue, a dialogue between one part of yourself and another part of yourself. Mary, in her talk last night, she quoted the writer Annie Lamott. Let's see if I can get this right. Annie Lamott said, my mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone. This is Zui Gan talking to himself. And this is Sejo and her soul separated. And this is me. And I can't speak for you.

[05:31]

But this is me. Sometimes I think of myself You know, we have this expression, the bull in the china shop. Sometimes I think of myself as the Jew in the china shop. You know, as loud, self-centered, assertive, stumbling around. That has been my path of practice. And, uh, When Zuigan says, don't be deceived by others, this is who Annie Lamott was talking about. It's a bad neighborhood out there, and the others are all in here. This is what Winang, the sixth ancestor, said in his his gloss on the Bodhisattva vow when he said, sentient beings of my mind are numberless.

[06:41]

I vow to save them all. That's, you know, kind of like my neighborhood. It's the sentient beings of my mind and they're all pulling in different ways. Uman's comment is quite wonderful. He says, Old Zuigan buys and sells himself. He takes out a lot of god masks and devil masks and puts them on and plays with them. What for, eh? One calling and the other answering. One wide awake and the other saying he will never be deceived. If you stick to any of them, you will be a failure. If you imitate Zwegon, you will play the fox. In other words, if you imitate Zwegon, you're just a comedian. You're just fooling people. Actually tonight, if you come to, I'm gonna sing a song about this.

[07:49]

and I'm not gonna tell you what it is, but during the skits, I'm gonna sing this song. Exactly, he takes out a lot of God masks and he takes out a lot of devil masks. And frankly, if you believe any one of them, you've got a problem. So this is, This is, what we're doing this six weeks, we call it a practice period. In some context, it's called the training period. And we are training to deconstruct the patterns and habits that we internally have. That, to me, is training. When we focus on how to eat orioke, how to bow, how to chant, how to walk in the zendo, all of this is training, but it's not about the form itself.

[09:02]

It's about unlearning, or letting go of, actually. Not unlearning, letting go of the deep habitual patterns that we have. And this is very hard, as I will share with you from my own experience. In one of his, one of my favorite chapters, writings of Dogen, Bodhisattva Shishobo, he says, it's just like so blunt. He says, the mind of sentient being, of a sentient being is difficult to change. Well, duh, you know. The mind of a sentient being is difficult to change. Then he says, you should keep on changing the mind of sentient beings from the first moment that they have one practice to the moment that they attain the way. This is about me.

[10:06]

This sentient being that he's talking about is me, it's you. The mind, the sentient being's mind that we need to change is our own mind. Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with your mind. It's all there. Fortunately, when we notice that it's all there and we see my mind is a bad neighborhood, The practice that we have is we have friends, we have teachers who are our friends, and they help us walk through the neighborhood in safety. This is the precepts. This word precept means, the Latin root of precept is to lead before.

[11:11]

But the word that you might like to know, which is maybe not familiar to you, is in the Pali suttas, which we don't chant, but we do them in English, So the first Pali Sutta is, we chant this, is I vow to take the precept of not killing, right? So it's, panatipata viramani sikapadam samadhyami. that translates relatively, I undertake the precept to refrain from killing living beings. But this word that we translate as precept, the word is in Pali is sikha padam.

[12:22]

And pada is foot, padaka is basis or foundation, and sikha is Discipline or study. So we translate this as precept. At the same time it means this is our discipline. Our discipline is not like the right way to fold your orioke cloths, that's part of our discipline, or the right way to bow. The discipline is the way to rein ourselves in. If we are a bull in a china shop, the discipline is the entire path of the ox-herding pictures, the way that we are worked with and work with ourselves.

[13:24]

So, I've been thinking of our lives or my life as in three circular forms, if you will. The first is an arc, which is sort of the temporal course of life, our birth, the course of our life into process of maturing, and now we've come to a place of aging, and there will be frailty, and there will be death. That's thinking of one's life as an arc. If you add, whether you believe in it or not, if you add rebirth as a sort of following death, then you have a circle.

[14:37]

This is another form of our life. And circle, so Dogen often talks of the circle of the way, which is, in Japanese it's dokan, which means, one of the meanings of dokan is infinity. It's like a ring that has no end, it has no inside, and it has no outside. That is looking at life in the, and really in a cosmic sense. The other pattern, circular pattern of life that resonates with me is a spiral. And I came to this by myself long before I came to Zen practice.

[15:41]

realizing that even if I had an awareness of problems or shortcomings, it kept resolving at another level. It kept spiraling up, if that makes any sense. And I was thinking of this quotation, Sojin has cited and Ed Brown has cited. Ed Brown writes about Sesshin with Suzuki Roshi. And he says, on the fourth day of Sesshin, as we sat with our painful legs, our aching backs, hopes and doubts about whether it was worth it. We've all experienced this. Suzuki Roshi began his talk by saying, The problems you are now experiencing, then parentheses, they'll go away, right?

[16:49]

But he finished it, the problems you are now experiencing will continue for the rest of your life. He didn't say they'll stay the same. This is the spiral. So deconstructing these psychological patterns, these spiritual patterns, these physical patterns is very difficult. These family, the family dynamics that we've internalized. And it's very easy by observing the forms. I can tell you this, well, I'll talk about it more from experience.

[17:56]

Observing the forms, you can impress upon the Zen forms, as Mary was talking about last night. All of the distortions of one's family of origin you know you can just take that and like cut and paste those problems and apply it to what you're hearing or what you're experiencing in the zen tradition this is why it's really difficult and you have to be very subtle about offering correction or criticism to someone and how you do it, you know, are they ready to hear it? You know, there's a, I was thinking next to my, the place where I can do practice discussion, there's a,

[19:00]

a very practical quotation that somehow Sylvie, my daughter, did when she was like in fourth grade or something. She was reading a book called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Does anyone know that? And this is her saying, before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away from them and you have their shoes. but we actually have to dare to do something else. So we have to figure out what's right for that person that we're talking to. And that means what's been right for me. So in this spiral,

[20:07]

this spiral of, this spiral as the form of practice is still alive for me. And it's been alive, I hope this is okay, in my relationship with Sojan for many years. And I want to talk about that a little. I've written about this when kind of the two things kind of come together in my memory. One is that at a certain point in my practice, which was I think more than a year or two into my practice, he said to me, you should let things fall apart. And what that was was a direct critique, the way I understood it, of a manifestation of self that tried to control and tried to control others without paying attention to myself.

[21:33]

as if by controlling the external reality, I could make things safe or whole for myself. And he said, you should let things fall apart. He really waited, he waited to say that. And he said it at I won't say he said it at the exactly right moment, but he said it at the right moment. He said it at a moment when I could hear it, and I didn't resist it, and I've never forgotten it. And then he kind of nailed it down by giving me a Dharma name. I used the name Hozon, which means Dharma Mountain, which is a very nice name. But the Dharma part of my name, that's my way name, is Kushiki, formless form, which presented me with a problem or a question.

[22:41]

How do I manifest the form of Zen practice in a formless way? You can also turn it on its head. How do you manifest the formless manner of Zen practice in a formal way? Hence, I've been working with this ever since, this wonderful koan. The name, the Japanese think it's a little weird, but it's perfect. So, to let things fall apart, so that presents me with a question, particularly as I've been in positions of responsibility. When do I say something? When do I not say something? And how do I say something? I heard something this morning that I wanted to respond to, to say something to someone about in terms of in service.

[23:46]

And I didn't. And that's okay. Because there'll be another opportunity to do so. I didn't feel bad about that. Another way that he's worked me, so all of these are about one, as Suzuki said, Sugoroji said, the problem you're now experiencing will continue for the rest of your life. So the problem that I have to experience, the problem that I'm experiencing, frankly, is the problem of the assertion of self. So I was trained in my family to speak very assertively. That was just a cultural style. What I find in this context is it's about, that I can hear myself sometimes putting the force of personality, of ego, behind my words.

[25:08]

As if the words were not, the words, what I really feel is the words need to be clear and sufficient unto themselves. And they don't need to be bolstered or driven by ego. If they are correct, if they're accurate, if they're useful, just the words should be enough. This is really hard for me, I confess. One of the concrete, so one of the things that Sojin talked to me about over the years is how do I speak in meetings? And how do I speak in relationship to him in public? And this is really challenging because my training, and I think this comes from a certain New York Jewish training, is that actually my modality of respect is to go, is to kind of go full bore.

[26:21]

into the discourse. Do you understand what I'm saying? And yet, I've discovered this when I moved to California. It's like, this is not a Californian mode of discourse. And so, it's like, I have to pay attention to the context. This is, just to say, so, To say, I noticed yesterday, one of the things also that social distancing is like, don't speak first. Yesterday, I asked the first question of Mary. What we see in our training is, this is my training, I did see it, I saw it as I was asking it, and it's about impulse control. This stuff is so deep.

[27:28]

Just to say, if it's deep in me, I know it's deep in you, in your own respective ways. And it may be your own respective way, may be exactly the opposite. Your way may be to be completely reticent and hesitant to say something. As I'm talking to you now, I feel close to tears. I don't even know what it's, I think it's about, I think it's about our suffering, whatever it is, whether it's assertion of self, whether it's negation of self, This is what we've been trained in our lives and this is what we are trying to retrain.

[28:35]

That liberation means seeing that and being free from that. That is our training. That is everything. So Suzuki Roshi said, when you are you, Zen is Zen. But who are you? Who am I? It's not just say, well, I'm the Jew in the china shop. It's not enough. Because the precepts, if you look at all the precepts, they're about, and Thich Nhat Hanh calls them mindfulness trainings, which is really great. They are trainings. That's another way you could translate Sikapadam as training or discipline. All of them are about how we are in relationship to ourselves and to others.

[29:44]

This is the entire purpose of our training. This is the purpose of our zazen as we're sitting facing the wall, it's we are facing ourselves, we are seeing ourselves in as clear and honest a way as we can. And seeing what choices we want to make about how we live and how we are with people. And we have to, I reconcile myself to the fact that the problem I have now is the problem that I will always have, but it's not the same. It keeps changing. It's changing in the fact that I can share it with you. The spiral is a spiral towards liberation.

[30:54]

It's a spiral towards freedom. And you can't rush that. The final point I want to bring up is, how do you work on that? My first principle is the principle of mutual accountability. As a practitioner, I could say as a priest, but that's not relevant, actually. As a practitioner, I have promised myself to be accountable to my teacher and accountable to the community.

[32:05]

And the mutual part is I also feel that he's accountable to me and the community is accountable to me and I'm accountable to them. And it's a tricky dynamic. But I feel as I occupy the position of being a teacher, that's what I feel. And that's actually explicitly what I say to people that I ordain, particularly priests, because I think that that's that principle of mutual accountability has to be there in that relationship, otherwise I wouldn't do it. And that means I want them to check with me about what they're doing in their lives, which doesn't mean that I'm going to veto it or say no, I'm just gonna, but I feel like I have permission to say what I think.

[33:12]

And I also feel like they have permission to say what they think. about what they see in me. And that's a, that's a, that's a primary, that's a prime directive, if you will. Ah, this mutual accountability. Sojourn never directly, um, or explicitly asked this of me. I felt it was implicit, and I articulated it for myself. And this is, I think, we all know this story of when Sojin was ordained, he went to Suzuki Roshi and said, well now, he was just ordained as a priest, he said, well now, What should I do and Suzuki for that super?

[34:14]

Oh, she said I don't know And he then you went to category Roshi and he said the same thing. I don't know and it's like It's not that they didn't know it's it They wanted him to find out for himself what it was and I feel like I knew that story going in. And I felt that it was my responsibility to figure out for myself. So it's like not, we don't have in our style this like very rigorous, clear-cut path of training. You have to do this and you have to do this and you have to do this. It's like, sorry, it's on you to figure out. how to practice. And that's irrespective of whether you are practicing as a priest or a layperson. The whole field, there's no difference.

[35:17]

The whole field is wide open. It's on each of us to understand how we want to live. And if that's what we're doing, then we can ask our teacher about that. And also, because it's a really kind of hazardous neighborhood, we can also ask our friends about that. And so everyone here is my teacher. Whatever we find as our path of practice is not going to be exactly the way it was, say, in Japan in the early 20th century or Japan in the 13th century.

[36:35]

It's here now. And our training is about really facing ourselves. We do this, we fortunately have this fantastic gift that's been given to us to be able to sit and it, you know, Mary was talking about, I forget, were you talking about joy or ease or something? What was it yesterday? You were asking about Zazen? to enjoy it. I'm remembering when I was in Japan, and this is my, maybe it's an overgeneralization about Japan, we had this, the Tanto, the head of practice at the monastery that I was training at said, he said, nobody likes Zazen, but we have to do it. And some of us,

[37:39]

said to us, we like Sasa. We like doing it. It's actually, we actually enjoy it. And we enjoy, I enjoy sitting, facing the wall, facing myself. When I do that, I'm at ease with myself in you know, as I've said before, you know, it's like in, in, in, for instance, any domain talks about, he talks about the kind of Zazen instruction in Fukunsen saying, he said, the Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It's simply the dormant gate of repose and bliss. And it's like, okay, you know, for like 10 years, I'm ready for this repose and bliss. And then one day That's what it was. Sometimes my legs hurt. Sometimes as I'm approaching the age of 70, and I recognize I may not be able to sit Zazen in the same way forever, but right now, it's still pretty easy

[39:02]

And it's really enjoyable. And it is a way to be with myself and actually work with myself. This is what we're doing. We're working with ourselves. That's our training. But we're doing it in a way that sets us at ease so we can let go of the places we're stuck. There's not a lot of assertion of self when I'm sitting Zazen that I can see. It's when I begin to talk that the problem arises. So I think I'm going to stop there and leave a few minutes for conversation and discussion. Thank you very much. Sue. Thank you, I take it.

[40:10]

Thank you. Well, one thing that's interesting that I noticed, and I noticed this when I was a kid growing up. When I was a kid growing up, I was a lot angrier than I am now, and I slammed the doors, and I stormed around, and I did that at home. It's somehow like there's some permission or license that, it's like, what I'm saying is, I kind of act differently here than I do in other contexts. In other contexts, I'm a lot more careful. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I really don't, you know, but. No, I would not. And we could work it out down to the final bottom, realization and letting go of who we really are.

[42:02]

I'm really okay with that. I like strong people. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass, but I want to see all of who somebody is. I had, I think, maybe not unusual, but I would call it special training in manipulation and situation control from my family and my experience as a child, I guess. But then I would get pulled over by the police for speeding. And I would work with the cop in my own way to try to get something like not a ticket or a less ticket or something. I had a track record that was phenomenal. I guess things have changed. But there was a point I finally got to where I said, I'm going to take the ticket. And when I did that, I stopped speeding so much.

[43:05]

Which is a relief to all of us. And the thing was that I was free from a lot of things all at once. Well, I gradually realized the freedom that I'd taken by saying, okay, I got a speeding ticket, and I didn't file to the police necessarily, but I accepted it. And just changing, I don't know what the point of that really may be, except that I let go of a habit of control that seemed to be an advantage to me, and yet denied me really experiencing what I was doing. Yeah, yeah. Well, without going into a great digression, this I think is the, in the discussion between Sojin and Mary yesterday, Sojin was talking about the two kinds of self-consciousness. And the first kind is not liberative.

[44:12]

It's purposeful. It has a gaining idea. And the second kind of self-consciousness is actually taking responsibility for your actions. That's what I would think, I don't know. That's one way of putting it. Yeah, yeah. Penelope? I'm hearing as a theme, starting with Mary's talk. your spiral on your form of speech, a cutting edge, I'm imagining that. My cutting edge is almost in your opposite and closer to what Mary was describing yesterday. So I go into, I can go into self-consciousness about judging what I would say were I to speak and very often

[45:15]

One of my practice edges is noticing that, noticing the impulse to pull back and not speak, seeing if I can stay with myself and not separate from my own self in that, and then to speak and let the chips fall where they may, in effect, without judgment. So, yeah. Thank you. What I would say is, you know, For my money, both you and Mary, I really listen when you talk because you're very clear. And I appreciate that. That's only, clarity is not to be overvalued, but I do feel that. Megan. I noticed you spoke of speaking first in the group. I notice this very often in a group of big paws because nobody wants to be the first to speak.

[46:32]

Sometimes it's a kindness to open that up. Hear it, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. It's not usually a problem, which is good. People speak and they feel comfortable to speak. Sojin, do you have a comment? without excuses, without any defensiveness. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I honor your truth. Thank you. Let's not leave it there. I can't stand it. Criticize it. Yes. coming up against.

[47:48]

And it seems to me that the transformation then is really about accepting that. Not trying to change The way I see it, you know, um, I love stories. Uh, and I love the stories that we have about ourselves. I love to read stories. Uh, and I think that the Buddhist perspective has, uh,

[48:52]

What we're being asked to do is not just to get rid of the story. In an ultimate sense, perhaps that's what the objective is, but I think in a practical sense, it's to see through it. It's to render one's story transparent and therefore to have a measure of freedom within our difficulties. And also to recognize that if I act out my story, it's going to impact another person, including myself, in this way or that way. And so what do I want to do? Do I want to double down on my story? Because it's my truth. Or do they want to just, can I say, hmm, this is a story, and as, you know, Hakuin said, maybe so.

[50:09]

You know, also, maybe not, you know, but do I have some freedom within that? That's our goal. One more, if there is. Yes. Well, I think in Hakuen's story, don't be fooled by others. Also, I think he's implying don't fool yourself. Yes. Yeah, and I thought I had said that, yeah, the others are the sentient beings of your mind. It's the people of that bad neighborhood, you know. That's also me. And our notion, I think the way we talk about rebirths in our tradition is not so much in a traditional way, you know, rebirths in like past life, present life, future life. It's like our rebirth is moment by moment. And, you know,

[51:13]

If someone insults me, then I could be born as a fighting demon, or if I don't get a nice word, I could be a hungry ghost or whatever. That's rebirth. That's a sentient being of my mind. That's there. And when the stimulus, when the seed is watered, then that being is born. So the question, the practice in my mind, thinking about winnings, sentient beings in my mind are numberless, I vow to save them all. It's like, how do I hold that sentient being with a measure of boundary loving kindness? without letting him take control. So this is just to say, as Suzuki Roshi said, you'll be the boss of you.

[52:16]

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