My name is Laurie Sanocki and I've been living here at BCC for about 35 years married to our late abbot Hozan Allen Sanocki and who passed away exactly two months ago. And I wanted to start by just expressing my gratitude for the mind-boggling amount of support and help and just sheer accompaniment I receive from all of you and wider Berkeley Zen Center Sangha and Alan's wider world of people being together in this, you know, birth and death, life and death, whether you go gentle, whether you do not go gentle, being together, that we're not alone Being together in this is what makes the unbearable bearable.

[02:05]

We're not alone. We're in this together. And you may not feel that way. You may feel alone. You feel isolated or disconnected. That's understandable. And in that, you're not alone. Lots of people feel that way. some of the time or most of the time, all of the time. So what we're doing here right now, me sitting up here talking, you listening, it's sort of ordinary. But what we were just doing for half an hour before this, sitting and still sitting all together in stillness, silence with no agenda, that is extraordinary. That is really extraordinary. It's hard to remember how extraordinary it is or to think of how extraordinary it is. It's not like anything else. You might think or feel that you did have an agenda during that period of Zasana.

[03:17]

I don't know, but don't worry about that. Zasana takes care of it. Zasana turns your agenda into a no agenda. Did you notice that? So I thought it would be nice to just take a moment to revisit that few breaths. Just sit still together. Allow ourselves to experience what's happening directly. One of the things I miss most about Alan was his thinking, the way he thought.

[04:23]

He had this incredibly integrative mind. He read widely, he read deeply, he listened to people, he took stuff in and he just synthesized it. And then you could ask him a question about almost anything and he would pause for a moment. And then he would just come out with something usually incredibly grounded and helpful. So I've been wondering what he would think I should talk about today. My first talk after he passed out of this world. I didn't often ask him for advice in all my talks because I had something I wanted to say or something. But I've been wondering what he would think, what he would say. For example, as it says in the koan, what about the world? Would he say something about the world? Would he think I should say something about the world?

[05:25]

I'm not going to talk mostly about the world during this talk, but I did feel like it's important to reiterate and say often, the problems of the world are not separate from what we are doing here. The problems of the world, most of the problems of the world are caused by human nature all twisted up. And what we're doing here with our sitting, our precept study, is trying to untwist human nature somehow. There's a famous quote in the Jata Sutta, the early Pali Sutras that are purported to be the words of the Buddha. A man named Jatta asks the Buddha a question. The inner tangle and the outer tangle. Beings are entangled in a tangle. Gautama, please tell me who succeeds in untangling this tangle.

[06:37]

Oh, I wanted to say, I love how it goes this tangle rather than these tangles, like it's a little thing, but from our Buddha's perspective, the inner tangle and the outer tangle are not two separate tangles. And so the Buddha answers, those established in virtue, discerning, developing discernment and wisdom, sincere and astute, they succeed in untangling this tangle. And I might say it this way, Those who study the precepts are nonviolent, making a sincere effort, developed in wisdom and compassion. They succeed in untangling this tangle. And I found some words from Hozon about the tangle from not that long ago online from July 2022. So he references the Dobbs decision. He references a number of shootings that had happened. and he references the hearings into January 6th, and so here's what he said.

[07:45]

I'm going to read. So let us meditate, investigate, strategize, and act. Then let's look again, correct our course, and go forward. From my perspective, this is engaged Buddhist practice. I'm grateful to be sustained by the voices and actions of many Buddhist teachers, speaking clearly about how they see things and what they are doing. What is to be done? Well, many things. But for now, I bow to my sisters and brothers. May we keep on despite heartbreak and loss. So what I really wanted to talk about today is about my life with Hozon. A few vignettes from our early life together, and then maybe something about his teaching, what we might consider his teaching.

[08:50]

And then, assuming there's time, something about what I learned this last year, perhaps. I'm not going to talk about how I'm dealing with my, practicing with my grief right now, currently. It's just too much in the middle of it. A couple of years actually before I met Alan, something very consequential happened, at least in the story that we tell. Tassajara in 1985, in the fall, did not have the usual three-month practice period. They were doing this big bath remodel, and so they asked Sojin if he wanted to lead Sojin Roshi, for those who were new as the previous abbot for 50 years or more, if he would want to lead a one-month practice period at Tassajara. And so he did that, and many Berkeley Zen Center members who had never really gone into the whole San Francisco Zen Center system went to that, and Alan was one of them.

[09:58]

And he was sitting in the dining room with Sojin one night at dinner. And Sochan was talking about what he wanted to do at Berkeley Zen Center. And he said something like, and I hope this doesn't hurt anybody's feelings, probably nobody in this room, but I don't have anybody to help me. And Alan had the thought, I could be that person. I recently read somewhere that when he went from private elementary school to public high school, and when he got to public high school, he first saw his peers playing guitar and singing folk songs. And he immediately thought, I can do that. And then he went home and took guitar lessons, and that's his history. So, you know, So we have moments in our lives when our capacity meets our inner prompting, meets a request of the world.

[11:09]

And those are big, you know. Some people think that I saw Alan as sort of ambitious. Maybe he was, but I see him more as just always moving forward from that moment in time. Another story I have about our moving forward. So, Alan was ordained as a priest in May of 1989, and then we got married in September of 1989, and then we had our daughter Sylvie in October of 1990, and then he took the Buddhist Peace Fellowship job as Executive Director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship in February of... I think, January, February of 1991. So, less than two years. And it feels to me like everything about our life thereafter grew from those things.

[12:11]

Then nothing new was at it. You know, his life as a Zen priest, our family life, and his life in engaged Buddhism and international work. Sometimes it seemed to me at that time, like after those all things had been assembled, it was like he was shot out of a cannon. And then, you know, as head of Buddhist Peace Fellowship, he had a column, he had a, I think it came out quarterly, Turning Wheel was the magazine, and it came out quarterly, and he had a column every time in there, and a very early column the situation in the Middle East with Palestine and Israel had flared and I remembered this quote from the Book of Serenity. I used to have a much, much better memory.

[13:15]

I was very proud of how I could memorize things. Anyway, the line is, create an understanding of holiness and you will succumb to all errors. Create an understanding of holiness and you will succumb to all errors. So I told him about that. To me it's amazing that was written in China in 1200 or something and Wansong is actually quoting the Shirangama Sutra which was like 500 or something. A whole bunch of stuff hadn't even happened by then. A whole bunch of issues around holiness. So I told Alan about that and it made it into his column. And another thing that happened around Buddhist Peace Fellowship was, you know, they had an advisory board. In addition to the board of directors, BPF had an advisory board and there was all these illustrious international, you know, national figures of socially engaged Buddhism who were on the advisory board.

[14:23]

And once a year, or maybe possibly even once every two years, anyway, there would be these meetings of this group. And in person, of course, I mean, they're talking the early 90s here. And we would often have one of them staying with us. They would be put up by various members and such. So one time this amazing person, Ruben Habito, I don't know if you know about him, but I looked him up on IMDB so I could tell you, about him, and here's what it says. I mean, not only to be, sorry, Wikipedia, one of those. Born in the Philippines, Ruben Habito started out as a Jesuit priest doing missionary work in Japan. There he began practicing under Yamada Koan. In 1988, Habito received Dharma transmission from Yamada. He subsequently left the Jesuit order and founded

[15:24]

the Maria Canon Zen Center, a lay center in Dallas, Texas. Abito has been a faculty member of the Perkins School of Theology since 1989. So Ruben was the same age as Alan and had married late and also had two kids. Anyway, he was staying with us and I remember, given memory, I think I was in the kitchen making breakfast and he came down or he had come down and I came down making breakfast and then greeted each other and I sat down at the table with him and had some pleasant words of greeting. And then it just became clear that he was ready to have some kind of Zen moment. Like he was always ready to have some kind of Zen moment. And I have no memory of the content of that, but it was something Dharma joy. It was Dharma joy. So even though Alan and I had sort of divided things, I faced towards the family and he faced towards the world.

[16:27]

I mean, it was very permeable. I was able to influence, you know, his relationship to the world and the world could come to me through him. Another moment that has stayed with me, this may be in sort of the middle period, because that was the early period. the middle period. I had joined the senior student group by that time, and we were having some kind of brouhaha on the senior student group. Feelings were running high, tensions were running high, and there were these camps, and it was very intense and very upsetting. You know, I always want to understand things psychologically. I always try to figure things out and understanding the psychological underpinnings of things. Like, that's just where I go. So I came to Alan with my, like, complicated explication of what I thought was going on.

[17:30]

And he listened very nicely. And then he said, maybe so, but it's still just a story. Still just a story. Another time, I was upset with something Sojun Roshi had said to me. I think in Doka-san, he criticized me in Doka-san. It's not that unusual. I mean, it's kind of his job. But I was upset, and I came to Alan. I was venting. He listened again very patiently to me then about it. And then he said, you know, he's not saying that's what you boil down to. Both of those stories are similar in that he had some sense of how the way we boil things down, the stories we make up are just always a step out of reality. Not that you shouldn't do that, not that we don't, we do that and we need to do that and it's fine to do that, but we should always remember

[18:38]

Buddhist practice teaches us that those things are always one step back from reality. I was thinking, during the sitting just now, that that's true of the world too. Our ideas about the world, it's important for us to have an understanding of what's happening in the world as best we can. But we should remember that that's not what it boils down to. So lately, you know, I've had some regrets about things I didn't ever ask Alan, didn't think to ask him, or conversations we never had. But these stories, as I'm revisiting them for this talk, make me realize that we talked a lot. We talked a lot. And we always talked about everything. And to the point that when someone asked my daughter, when she was a little girl, you know, what is Buddhism?

[19:44]

And she said, talking. Which actually is not wrong. I realized that everything we have from Shakyamuni Buddha, the original ancestor, is from his talking, right? So she was not wrong. I hope she's not listening because she hates that when everybody laughs. She wouldn't have said that either. Okay, so what was Hozan Roshi's teaching? What would we think of as his teaching? I was talking to Genpo about this a little, and he said, well, one thing he talked about more recently, maybe the last 10 years, that we shouldn't look for an enlightenment experience or an enlightened teacher. We should tune into enlightened activity. We should manifest enlightened activity. So what is enlightened activity?

[20:49]

In our Soto Zen context, we say practice and enlightenment are one. So practice enlightened activity is enlightenment. To practice the precepts to Siddha Zen is manifesting enlightened activity. One type of enlightened activity that was really important to him was to write speech. Almost from the beginning, like one of the first things when we first were married, he was reading this book called, it was on Jewish teachings about talking. It was called Guard Your Tongue. And I think he was one of the first people to uncover what Shakyamuni Buddha said about speech, which is that it should be true, useful and timely, or it should be true, it should be beneficial, and you should know when to say it. I know there's people who were hurt by things he said, so I'm not saying he never made a misstep, but what I do say is that it really mattered to him.

[22:00]

It was really important to him. And as his life and practice went on, deepened and deepened and deepened his understanding of right speech. Part of the chaplaincy training at Upaya is about how you talk to people. A lot of it is training and how to talk to people, and he soaked that up. He soaked everything up. This week, actually within two days of this week, three people told me that Hozan was the only person who understood him. And none of them were native English speakers and none of them were born in the United States. But yet it wasn't like some kind of wordless empathetic communion. It had something to do with the way he talked. He listened and he talked. It was like he learned the universal language or something. Quite remarkable. enlightened activity.

[23:10]

Zazen is enlightened activity. Aligning with the precepts is enlightened activity. Practicing right speech is enlightened activity. You know, I think the way Buddhism is presented actually makes it seem like we are supposed to focus on having an enlightenment experience. And we are supposed to find an enlightened teacher. But I think what he's saying is that as we mature in practice, real maturity in practice is really about paying more and more attention to our sincere effort in our everyday lives. And then Lightened Activity, he also talked about it as something that happens in relationship. relationship, practice enlightenment or enlightened activity is manifest in our relationships with each other and also with ourselves.

[24:14]

You know, he loved and often quoted the sixth ancestor when he said his version of the four vows, which we're going to do after this talk, was, sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them all. So, last topic. So I want to talk a little bit about what I went through last year and how I've come to understand it, my year of taking care of Hosan. It seems like last January was a moment for me where capacity meets your inner prompting, meets the request of the world. And I've come to think of that year as like a year of intense concentration. I didn't used to think of concentration that way.

[25:16]

I think we idealized concentration as the mind rests on the breath without wavering or something. And maybe so. I'm not good at that. But I look back on that time as just really focused intense concentration, and with intense concentration comes energy and clarity, not unlimited energy, not always clarity, but that goes with it. And so I've started to think about concentration in much broader terms. Make sure I'm not forgetting something I really wanted to say here. So another thing that we could think about as concentration is a survival instinct, in a way.

[26:17]

There's a thread of concentration on feeding ourselves and taking care of ourselves. Also, I was thinking we could see habit energy as a kind of concentration. Actually, habit energy is really more like a trance, a kind of concentration, not necessarily the most helpful kind according to Buddhism. So in Buddha's time, the spiritual practice that everybody was doing was this intense trance practice where you got into deeper and deeper and deeper levels of trance. And that was the spiritual practice that he came to when he left home and became a mendicant. And he became an adept at that. But at some point he said, you know, this is not really hitting the mark because I may be blissed out when I'm in the trance, but when I come back, I have all the same problems I had before.

[27:21]

So what he found, to my understanding, was that if you settle the mind just to the level, so you're settled and quiet just before the first one of these trances, That's a place that you can really see reality from. You're settled, quiet, and what's true about how things really exist is available to you then. So that's kind of where mindfulness practice is pointing us. I think that what I brought up in the beginning about Alan having this moment of I could be that person, you know, that's kind of a concentration. Like, he was concentrating on that all for the rest, the next 40, 50 years. I'm having a little trouble with my face, 40 years. 40 years, yeah.

[28:23]

And also just the way he assembled himself around his priesthood and around the international work, you know. I can see that as a form of concentration. And I haven't even mentioned the music, you know. He always had a thread of concentration in the background about the music, and it would sort of blossom and bloom from time to time. I absolutely think he was just starting to really integrate his Buddhist understanding with the music. He took it really slow. A lot of people were out there coming to him with their Buddha songs and stuff, and he just took it really slow. But I am using the back page of songs from this talk. How it takes from everything is broken. So, you know, I can sort of see something like that about each of you, too.

[29:32]

Underneath your strengths and weaknesses and underneath your survival instinct, there's something deeper. There's like a deeper thread, like your unique expression. It's like your light, you know, your inner light or something. Like, you know, Walt Whitman said, what you are picks its way. What you are picks its way. So when you have a moment or moments where your capacity, what you can do, and your inner prompting, what you feel called to do, and what comes together with what's right in front of you to do, that's what I wish for myself and for you all too. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about any of this.

[30:34]

Gallery, yeah. Hi, everybody out in Zoom land. Look at those hands waving. It's beautiful. Look at those beautiful hands and faces. Thanks for coming, zooming in from far-flung worlds where you are. What does it all boil down to? Just this. This right now. Right here. Thank you, Laurie. I like the way you describe how you view people and experience them with a sort of psychological view.

[31:48]

and the cause and conditions and how they are, and how do you draw on that experience with the experience of zazen, which is not a story? So the story and not the story. How does that work in your life as a wholesome process? Right, yeah, yeah, that's good. Well, you might think that if you have a psychological understanding or type of understanding of something, it's kind of blown apart. if you go to the other side, but actually they're meant to inform each other. They're meant to inform each other. Psychology is like a huge field. There's so many different frameworks and typologies and things. So you might be boiling someone down, but then you might benefit from taking a step back and thinking, well, wait a minute. Okay, that's one version. But what else might be happening?

[32:50]

Or what's another way to look at what's happening? What would be a more, and sometimes you can even feel, what is a more grounded way to think about what's happening? What is a more giving or generous way to give people the benefit of the doubt? That's an act of giving, you know? So if you can give people the benefit of the doubt, then When we understand the psychology, it's more like another version of causation, which is supposed to help us not blame, not be so blaming. And psychology, I think, is maybe meant to do that too, but if you have the urge, if your angle is to blame, or if your habit energy is driving you to blame, you can use anything for that, including Zen practice. So I think either way, we're meant to study cause and effect.

[33:55]

And one way to study cause and effect is from the perspective of the psychological. But yeah, it's only one way. So it sounds like story and no story, like oscillating back and forth. Yeah, they're talking to each other. Thank you. Mary D or Libby has their hand up. Okay. Good morning, Rory. Hello. It's so good to see you in the Dharma seat. I really appreciate the words. I was wondering if you would expand. I was really intrigued by the connection of concentration with energy and clarity. I wonder if you had anything more to say about that. Well, only just experientially that was what it felt like was the focus that I was able to muster for whatever reason to take care of Alan for that year.

[35:09]

The focus was what brought the energy to do it somehow because I think You know, which is not to say that I was always thinking about that or I never had any other thoughts about anything, but that's what I mean. It's like, if my breath mattered to me, and that's what I'm trying to do now in sitting, is like, if my breath mattered to me as much, you know, that the breath is, you know, like, you don't need to pay attention to me. I'm fine on my own. In fact, I'm almost better off, you know. So, you know, to have that, something about that mattering, you know, brings the energy to do it. And also hopefully, I hope, the clarity of what needed to be done. You know, of course, people were helping me and telling me what to do when I was listening to them to some degree. So it's all very, but that's sort of what I mean is like, there's this whole thing that's swirling.

[36:15]

It's not what I think of as concentration, you know? But if I look at it another way, I see the thread, you know, it was really, in that case, the thread was really strong. It's not always that strong. I don't think, I think, you know, you could say that when you take care of your kid, you know, that when you have children, they matter like that. But if I look back on my parenting years, I was just so much younger and less grounded, you know? I can't exactly say that that was the order of the day, you know, is... Is that... Yeah, and also while you were, it wasn't part of my question, but as you were talking, I was recalling how you were nurturing yourself in the moment, like you would look at Mount Ham every day, and enjoyed, or appreciated, or took in, something, where it was in that moment, and that there was something about bringing that nurturing to you, or participating in it.

[37:25]

I think in the end, sort of being porous enough, maybe. Right. Thank you. Linda, Peter, Peter, and Ree. Lori. Hi. Well, you talked about your life with Alan and practice. So the question that just now rose for me was say something, would you say something about love particular or beyond particular or both? Well, love, yeah. So at the beginning when I talked about how we're in this together. I mean, that is the love, I think. And I would say the unconditional love. Conditional love is kind of more human and ordinary. And of course, I loved Alan in that sense, the human way.

[38:28]

But I think unconditional love is a whole other thing. And, you know, I was thinking this morning during earlier, so I was like, There's two kinds of things in the world, unconditional love and everything else. Do you want something more specific or are you getting at something different than that? I often wonder about the strange and mysterious nature of loving somebody. I mean, I can kind of get, on occasion, that unconditional love that like a light can shine on anybody that you might be looking at. But then some people I would say I love, but not others. Well, I think we're built, so we're built for that as humans. We're built for this secure attachment. Yeah, there we go.

[39:34]

So I think it's very human. It's very human. And you know, like it says in the, Sutra, even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, he's pointing at something there, like we're meant to take this, what you're talking about, love of you, like I love you, known you for a long time, many, many years, and I feel love, feel attached to you, concerned about your well-being and all that. We're meant to take that and have it unconditional. But it's a work in progress, I would say. I mean, I felt with Alan, you know, when he was in the coma, I felt unconditional love. Completely. I think I mentioned this in another talk. And I felt how petty, all my petty complaints, you know. But then, as soon as he woke up and started talking, he was like, oh yeah, this guy.

[40:35]

And I was kind of working with that the whole time, like, I want to get back to that, but this is happening, and I can't deny that this is happening, but that was good, you know? I think Peter C., then Peter O. Thanks, Laurie. You may have just answered my question, but... You spoke about enlightened activity as being studying the precepts, studying the religion, studying the dharma. Can you say something about enlightened activity outside of Dharma practice? That's a good question, yeah. Maybe outside of formal. Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking what, what I popped in my mind was this thing that Alan could do where he could, he could talk to people in a way that they felt he really understood them.

[41:44]

And I think, you know, I think some of these people I'm talking about, like they weren't, they didn't feel understood in their own milieu. And they also didn't feel understood as in America, you know, like, and so I think his, heart opening, you know, and expressing, going out of his way to express connection, try to understand, try to have them feel understood, you know, that was enlightened activity. I think it can be a lot of things. I think it can be just being friendly to your clerk at the grocery store, just making a little connection, not demanding anything from them, but letting them know that, you know, that you hope they have a good day or whatever, you know. I think it can be everywhere. I think it can be a lot. You know, general friendliness, you know, the four Prama-Viharas, friendliness, compassion, yeah, sympathetic joy, all those things.

[42:50]

It's many things, you know. Thank you, Laurie. I felt like this is kind of a special moment. Some people saying that they are really glad to see you on the teaching seat. And I first noticed that feeling when we did the introductory regatta. I felt such clarity and joyful energy. And I'm really grateful for that. I just wanted to say that. Thank you. There's someone online while you're walking the mic over to me. Hi, Lynn. You've got to unmute still.

[43:54]

There you go. Hello. Hi. It is wonderful to see you there. Thank you. My heart envelops you. I wanted, you said something that was very powerful that I couldn't quite grasp with the speed or who had said it about holiness and succumbing. Can you repeat that? Yeah. Create an understanding of holiness. and you will succumb to all errors. Honestly, when I thought about that more politically, I think that when that happens, not to go too far down this road, but the understanding of holiness, that holiness is being used as a front for greed, basically. God wants us to have this. God wants us to settle the West or whatever it is, you know.

[45:01]

So I wonder if it really is the understanding of holiness that causes the succumbing to all errors. But I like the sense anyway, it's thought provoking, you know, because as soon as you have something holy, you have something that's not holy. And then those people, they're even, you know, they're even less important than just the tribal feeling or something. It's a way to excuse yourself to do what you want in a way. So I don't know if it's real holiness. I don't know if it's a real understanding. Create an understanding of holiness. Create the khan. Create the khan of holiness and you will succumb to all errors. Where did that come from? It's from the second case in the Book of Serenity, which is about Bodhidharma saying, you know, all empty, no holy. Book of Serenity by Thomas Cleary, case two.

[46:06]

And then he's quoting the Shurangama Sutra, I think. But I didn't look anything up like that. Thank you. Okay. And? Read. Stay there. It's not too personal. I wonder if you'd feel comfortable talking about your coming together story with Alan. How did you guys read? And what was it that... Well, Alan... Alan reached... Alan came to me. Alan... Although I did have a moment. I told Helen about this. I had a moment before this moment. The moment. that I'm gonna tell you about. The moment before that was, I was the APITS assistant for Rev. Anderson, and we were looking at the practice period applications for the Tassajara spring, or winter spring, 1988 practice period.

[47:10]

And the applications had, you had a picture in the application, and Alan's picture was, it was like he was looking, I imagine Jerry or some music partner, he had a mandolin, And he was looking this way, and he had just this big smile on his face, you know, which is not like he smiled all the time. It was not necessarily all the Alan that we knew the most. But anyway, I remember looking at that picture and thinking, why can't I ever meet anybody like that? But anyway, he, so then at that practice period, some winter, spring, 1988, he, we must have had dinner at, a couple dinners in the dining room or sat around before a work meeting or something, just visiting. I had this pressure on somebody else. I had really poor taste at that time. So I was not really tuned so much.

[48:10]

But then he came to my cabin before I left. I thought he was so brave. I just seemed incredibly brave. come to my cabin and say, I'd like to ask you out when I get back to the city. And I said, sure. But my thought was, wow, that was really brave. So then we just started going out after he got back from Tassajara. And it was sort of clear right away. Sometimes you just can see, oh, this is just laid out. And in some ways it was almost like, if you want to do this, here it is. You don't have to do this. Have family and all that. But if you want to do this, here it is. That's kind of how it felt. Does that answer the question? How's the family? Good? Good. Reed used to be here more. Many of us practiced more before we had kids.

[49:13]

Anybody else? Anybody online? Are we out of time? Oh, Aya, who are you? Hi, Aya. Wait till they bring the microphone to you. I came here a year ago, so I thought that was too late to get to know him. Today I'm hearing from you a lot about him. So I am now hearing and learning about him. So my experience that if somebody dies, their existence somehow bigger. Bigger than when they were here. So I hope you and other people who know him keep talking about him.

[50:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_89.65