Good morning. Traditionally, we introduce the speakers here at Berkeley Zen Center aside from the abbot and the vice-abbot. So I asked Colleen, our Saturday director, not to introduce me today, which is a little outside of our protocol, because I wanted to talk about identity. And I was thinking, leading up to today, how we have an idea of our identity and other people have an idea of our identity. And when we give that little talk or introduction at the beginning, it puts in your mind who this person is. And while that's an indicator of who this person is or was at a certain time in their life and all that, actually the identity of the person is constantly changing. It's a very fluid moment-by-moment thing and I hope that my talk today will help illuminate that and will enable you to see your own identity in a way that is more fluid and encourage less investment in your own identity, because when we identify

[01:25]

with the self, and that's our identity, that is beginning of the sense of self and suffering with regard to the twelve causal links of dependent origination. Welcome back from Italy, Jerry and Paul. Is that identity? I have a 23-year-old present that I've never used, and I almost re-gifted it. But I thought that today would be an appropriate day to use it and hopefully help illuminate what I'm trying to share with you.

[02:27]

So we'll see if this works. Can you turn it up just a little bit? There's a fire extinguisher there. I read something in a newspaper a while back. I don't remember the story, but I like very much what the author wrote. They wrote, consumers are building a self through sustenance, an alternative way to find an identity when so much is out of our control and uncertain. Well, all we need to do is look at our possessions and see what we've chosen to have as part of our life.

[03:36]

And we can see how we identify with the things around us. At best, they support us and inform us and encourage us in our life. And at worst, they become distractions and cause more suffering for ourself and others. Yesterday was my 25th anniversary of working at Pete's Coffee and I chose that day to leave. So I'm no longer working at Pete's. And as you may imagine, leading up to today, I thought about my identity with peace. Many of my talks have been partially informed by my experience there. And as a lay practitioner and resident here at Berkeley Zen Center, what my self-imposed mission in practice is how to take what we learn on the cushion here out into the world.

[04:46]

And if you have a job to go to, that's naturally the first place one goes to see, is this practice or is this just a job? The day before I left, I felt very sad and became a little And the inside of my body was kind of like butterflies. It was a very unusual feeling for me, because I'm pretty set and set in my ways. And I have a nice little rut that I have been living for the past 55 years. And it doesn't upset me. But I was visibly and physically changed the day before I left, last day. And then the last day was kind of dreamlike, actually. And I walked home and someone looked at me and said, well, how does it feel to be no longer working at Pete's?

[05:58]

And I said that I don't know yet because I typically worked Sochum Roshi encourages us to find texts to help illuminate and clarify what we think and do and manifest in our practice. And I've chosen a couple old documents that I hope will do that. The first one is Case 10 in the Mumonkan, Seizei and the Poor. A monk, Seizei, eagerly asked Master Sozan, I am solitary and destitute.

[07:05]

I beg you, Master, please help me to become prosperous. San said, Venerable Sei. Yes, Master, replied Sei. San said, you have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine, and still you say that you have not yet moistened your lips. So, I'm not going to do a commentary on the koan as such, but a couple things to bring out, I feel, is that the practice that we're doing here is very unusual, in that we're not monks or nuns, we're out of the world often, trying to support ourselves in one way or another. So, when one reads it, it says, well, I'm not alone, there's all these people around, and I don't feel particularly poor, I've got a few bucks in my pocket. But that's not what he's talking about.

[08:05]

He's talking about that we're actually alone on the path trying to tap into what the Buddha was teaching. And even though we have a Sangha to help us, it's up to us to find that. And the poor and So by not having so much, it enables you to have quite a lot. Well, it's provisional.

[09:12]

It's the cause and conditions that come together that present to us and we either take it up or we don't. So we have a choice and we have free will. So with regard to my job, for instance, it's been a long time coming to walk away from it. And I thought about, well, why am I staying if there's so many things I don't like about it? Well, partly it was my identity, and I felt good about my job and my customers and all that interaction. I really thrived on that. resignation letter and refined it over a period of a few months and sent it to the CEO and a few other people just expressing my gratitude for working there as well as my disappointment for how things had evolved over the years.

[10:59]

The coffee and tea is still really good. I encourage people to still shop there. But like any business, you know, when you're behind the scenes, you get to experience something that's different. During the five days of Shin, I believe, Sojiroshi was commenting on a slightly aside topic about just being at home and sitting on his couch. And his wife came in to their house and said, Mel, what are you doing sitting there? And he kind of laughed. in that we have an identity and an expectation that people put upon us and we put on others.

[12:05]

And sometimes it's hard to accept that someone is just being and not doing. But actually, just being is really doing a lot. And I saw it, I smiled, I thanked the person who gave it to me, and then I just kind of put it on a shelf, and it was just a thing that I didn't take up, but I couldn't let go of either, because I didn't want them to come to my little apartment. Where's it? So it sat there, and it got dusted for years. And I think that, like a lot of things, we discard things or don't put too much importance on things that actually can be quite important to us if we slow down and reflect on them.

[13:20]

So the thing that came to mind with regard to this is a saying of Dogen's when he went to China and found his teacher and studied for a number of years And then when he came back and brought Soto Zen, or Zen to Zen, to Japan, he issued kind of schools of Zen, but anyway, Soto Zen is what we follow. Someone asked him, well, what did you learn back there? Or over there? And he said, ah, he's horizontal, nose vertical. unintended, but also that things are horizontal, they're all the same, and things are vertical, and there's a hierarchy, there's a place in our life where these two things meet, the world of sameness and the world of difference.

[14:44]

And if you indulge me another moment or two, as long as we have the flame inside, the heat of practice inside, and sitting upright, then no matter where we go, we will meet the horizontal and the vertical with that illumination, the world of sameness and the world of difference. A tendency that we have is there's right and wrong, up and down. This person is more powerful than this person. So as we sit, and we come back to the still point of just sitting on a couch or sitting on a zafu, what are you doing there? We're just sitting upright.

[15:47]

We're cultivating this practice. So when we get off the cushion, and trips around the world. He's 80 years old and he's retired from the university. So I told him about my imminent departure and he congratulated me and smiled. And thank God he didn't say, what are you going to do? That's a very common thing. He said, you cannot dream of what you're going to do. really blown away by it.

[16:54]

I don't know anything about this gentleman outside the stores, whether he's a practitioner or not, or what, but it just, the whole world of, we dream about things, what we're going to do, but what are we really doing? What's really happening? That's about as far as I've gotten. And you don't have to go too far to find practice and to find answers to the problems that come up in practice. have dialogues and they help illuminate our understanding.

[18:03]

But when the scandal at Penn State broke But when I read about the situation at Penn State, it just seemed about identity. The university is so invested in their identity and the power of a couple people's position in the world of sports and that identity, that they let a crime continue over and over again.

[19:08]

And there may have been some commentary about identity. I didn't read a lot of the pieces about it. But the basis of it was Penn State's got an identity crisis. Actually, we all have an identity crisis. And that's why we're here. We're looking to find out who we are. But hopefully, we don't have such an identity crisis that we can't let go of our identity and just say, I really screwed up. I should go to jail, or what have you. You know, they are anything but alone and poor.

[20:14]

So it's good not to have too much. And better still, it's just good not to be attached to whatever you have, whether it's a lot or a little. There's a teacher in Japan named Abake, from the 17th century, He's a Rinzai teacher, and he spoke about the unborn, which in our language is probably closer to that would be a Big Mind. So Bankei talks about the unborn, and he doesn't say identity, but we can, I think you can see identity here and feel it in between the lines that I'm going to read. in the unborn Buddha mind.

[21:19]

I don't try to make anyone do anything else. We haven't any special rules. But since everyone got together and decided they wanted to spend six hours each day for a period of 12 sticks of incense doing Zazen, I let them do as they wish. That amount of time has been set aside for Zazen, but the unborn Buddha mind has no connection with those sticks of incense. in the Buddha mind, do everything in the Buddha mind, then you'll be functioning as a living Buddha in all that you do in your daily life. There's nothing further. Now in Zazen, it's a matter of the Buddha mind sitting at rest. It's the Buddha mind doing continuous Zazen. Zazen isn't limited to the time you sit. That's why around here, if people have something to do while they're sitting, they're free to get up and do it.

[22:25]

It's up to them. Whatever they've a mind to do, some of them will do kin-hin for one stick of incense, but they just can't continue walking, so then they sit down and for another stick of incense they do zazen. They can't be sleeping all the time, so they get up. They can't talk constantly, so they stop talking and do some zazen. They aren't bound by any set of rules. and confronting students without their tools. Those eyeless bronzes with their tools in, if they don't have their implements to help them, they aren't up to handling people. What's worse, they tell practitioners that unless they can raise a great ball of Dao and then break through it, there can't be any progress in Zen.

[23:35]

Instead of teaching them to live by the unborn Buddha mind, they start by forcing them to raise this ball of Dao anyway they can. People who don't have a Tao are now saddled with one. They've turned their Buddha minds into great balls of Tao. It's absolutely wrong. So this is like our Pisa Rinzai monk back in the heyday of Zen in Japan, and he's talking like Suzuki Roshi. So when you think about our identity, when does that form? Well, in many ways, in looking at it, generally speaking, our identity is from birth until death.

[24:46]

And there's a commonly The first one is called division, and that's simply how most of us think. We are born on a certain day, we live a life, and then we die on It's not the Buddhadharma way of looking at our life. The second is called change. And change means that as you're living, something happens. In the Buddhadharma, it's conventionally thought of as an enlightenment experience.

[25:55]

Not necessarily some big grandiose thing, but something that you wake up to and you're born into. kind of like, hey, this candle holder, you know, it was just this thing that was up on the wall or on my little shelf there in my apartment. And all of a sudden I had a life experience. Oh, I could use that and maybe help move my talk along about the horizontal and the vertical. So this has a new life. This candle holder is now a vital implement in this 2,500-year-old teaching that we're all experiencing together. Whereas 25 minutes ago, just sitting in my apartment doing nothing. Well, doing something. It was waiting to come in here with me. I'm reminded of Sojo Roshi's common thought around, what is a car?

[26:56]

And a car isn't a car until you actually get inside, put the key in, turn it, apply the gas to the pedal, and go, and then it's moving, and you're moving in the car, and that's a car. So what is it for that? What is the identity of a car? The last way of looking at life is called instance. What are the instance in our life? Moment by moment we're being born and we're dying. a lot of things can happen.

[28:03]

One is, there's no longer fear of death. Because you can't die. It's just moment by moment. Nothing dies. Nothing is born. You can't fix on it. It's too elusive. moment-by-moment life is to end suffering. We've all been in relationships that instilled some suffering in us because we didn't think there was a way out. We're looking at this sort of long expanse of time, been working for so many years, been married for so long, But actually, if we can say right there, it's just now, there's no more suffering.

[29:14]

And that's really hard to do. And we constantly fall off. We need to get back up and just be now, moment by moment. before going off to work. I was, of course, dreaming about different things, a lot about this talk. And I remember kind of slouching and dreaming really good. And once I got to slouching, I was really, you know, churning. And I thought of the hand-holder, you know, and and it's the most amazing thing happened.

[30:25]

I stopped dreaming. So Jiroshi's teaching is let your sternum up. Oh yeah. I can feel the flame in my heart as I'm sitting here. Yeah. That talk tomorrow might be pretty good. That's my gaining idea of getting ahead of myself so I knew that that was going on and I just stopped and fortunately the bell rang or the clunked and I was able to get up and go off to work and that was that. prepared notes.

[31:40]

And we have about 10 minutes or so that we can raise questions or comments. So if anybody has something they'd like to inquire about, Catherine? Dear friend Ross, you have been an inspiration all these years to many, many people in your role at peace. And I've watched you touch, sort of check in periodically with your dissatisfactions and considerations. So as I hear that you have finally reached that point that you will retire, first, congratulations. Thank you. Liberation. Free at last. Free at last.

[32:45]

And I have a question. Actually, several. But the one I'll ask is, after you wrote your letter, how did it feel? And did you get any response from the powers that be that in any way reciprocated your appreciation? That's a good question. Well, I did not get a response from the principal person that I wrote to. And I felt a little upset about that, but I was kind of expecting it. And then he, well, I take that back. He said, I'm saying that you're illuminate the business model that I was so frustrated about, and this is why we're doing this, even though I understood why it was going the way it's been going.

[33:53]

So we had lunch, but we didn't talk about it at all. He just talked about his, he appreciated my work, and he wished there were more people like me that were dedicated to, you know, all the things that someone that respects another would say, and I respected his Lament and responding, you know with almost 4,000 people to concern himself with he didn't take time to speak with me Yesterday I found out that there could be some people coming in to do some physical work on this on the store the inside that was one of my comments and I don't know if it's a coincidence or there. But it just saddens me that you have to kind of speak up. And one of the themes of my talks over the years is like, well, who am I?

[35:01]

And who are my models? Well, my dad has mostly been my model because he's sort of soft-spoken. Well, my parents passed away. But he was always very soft-spoken and compassionate, never said anything bad about people and all that. and looked the other way and got taken advantage of by virtue of his niceness. My mother, on the other hand, had a sense of entitlement and spoke up and didn't give a shit about what people thought about her. And as a result, when they died, when my dad passed away, there was a lot of love and support there. When my mother died, it was a pretty small turnout. got from my mother, which I will cherish for the rest of my days, is one thing that she said, you have a mouth, use it. And I think when you're in a community of people, there's a tendency to defer to others and not speak up because other people are in charge or they must know more because they've been sitting longer or whatever. Or what can I do to kind of grow with that?

[36:16]

And speaking up, actually, and having a dialogue, which is what our life's about. It's a dialogue. It's a dialogue with the flowers. It's a dialogue with the Well, Sogen Roshi is not here now, unfortunately. I don't think he knew you were giving this talk. Did he know that you were giving this talk today? Oh, I don't know. He's at Dussehra. He's arranged quite some time. I see. But it's kind of an important moment. I guess I want to say that you've been, in your work at Peet's, you've been an exemplar of, I don't mean as a Peet's employee, but maybe as a Peet's employee, but also as a Zen student, and a resident here at Berkeley Zen Center for all these years, and very devout in your practice every day in the Zendo, and you have,

[37:42]

embodied pretty much the vision that Sojourner Oshkosh had about having a practice place in the midst of the community. And people would sit like they do in monastic settings, but then go and do their daily practice in the world, work and whatnot. So I just want to say that and acknowledge that. Thank you so much. Also, I think with that, There have been some disappointments, maybe with Pete's, and maybe with this place as well. Yeah, there have been disappointments at Pete's, where it's a very clear bottom line. It's about money. And in order to get money, there's a product, and there's a quality assurance around the product, and serving the product, and all that. But it's pretty clear that if the numbers start suffering, something has to happen.

[38:44]

And the thing that I was addressing is a little bit hard to attach a number to. It was more of a feeling. And I'm kind of a feeling person, and I'm in the store versus people crunching numbers in an office who are not in the store feeling these things that my co-workers and I felt. My limit here at Zen Center has been it's a little harder to describe and kind of put out publicly not because I'm hiding anything because it's not so clear-cut because we're all finding our way and it's not always so to think the ideas that we have in our mind are yes but not always so and that can be a little It's a little more scary speaking up where you put your head down to sleep than at work.

[39:56]

You can always walk out of a job. It's a little bit harder to find a place to live in Berkeley. But fortunately, you know, interestingly enough, I think, well, there's a I didn't knowingly come to practice to have a relationship with a dharma teacher. I kind of fell into it, I feel. And while I derive great inspiration from Tenseka Glaspen, my first teacher in New York, and Sogyal Roshi here in Berkeley for going on 30 years, it's the watching the teachers and learning from observation, responses. But my most intimate time, I feel, well, one of the most intimate times I've felt with Soji Roshi was when we were arguing.

[41:01]

of who he is. And I can think back about my parents and when I would get into things with them, you know, arguments and such like that, I think, I forgot who they were. You know, they're products of immigrants and Jews I mean there's a whole world that I did not experience and you know it's through you know sitting and hanging in that you actually get to see it more clearly and one of the things that came from my talk with the CEO was that I said you know Pat I'm looking back 25 years and he was hired to look forward And it worked.

[42:38]

It's clearly, you know, this. But now we have an opportunity to hear all of our voices. We don't have to go to some lecture circuit and find somebody speaking somewhere else. You just hang out here and there will be somebody offering something. So I encourage all you all to speak up. In fact, we have a timely thing at the moment with regard to the groups that are called Sangha? Council. Council, right. So we're talking about the future of our temple. Now, Pete doesn't do that.

[43:39]

So, Ross, can I change what I wanted to say before related to that? OK. John has a story. So a brief summary, please. So the dream, right? So now you've woken up from the dream called Pete's. So it says, we have to wake up from a dream within a dream. So now you're in the dream called Buddhism. So how are you going to wake up from that dream?

[44:09]

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