So I'll say again, it's a lovely, crisp winter, and I hope it's fine where you are. We are having our one-day sitting, and we are still in hybrid mode. We're still all about the pandemic. Today what's really nice is that actually all of the residents are sitting. And we have been in the zendo this morning and now we're back in our respective places so that we can hear the lecture and participate. But it feels really good to be in the zendo. And I assume that most of you know that we have, that we are planning to have our staged opening beginning on March 14th.

[01:14]

And you may have some questions about that, which we can get to in the Q&A, but we're really happy to be coming back. with social distancing, with required vaccination, and for the present with masks for zazen and for chanting. But we will be back in there on weekdays anyway, and then we'll extend after we get all those wrinkles ironed out, we'll extend that to afternoon, and then we'll find out how to extend it to Saturdays and Sashin's. So, at last, that is in... I didn't really compose, certainly did not compose a talk this morning, but there are a number of things that are on my mind, and I wanted to begin with

[02:25]

a quotation that Edward Brown in his excellent lecture last week shared. And then follow it in a few moments with another one that has been really important from Shinryu Suzuki Roshi. And Edward quoted this one. One day Suzuki Roshi said, Life is basically impossible. Life is basically impossible. Then he got up and he left the Zendo. The next day a student asked, Suzuki Roshi, yesterday you said that life is basically impossible. What are we going to do? And Suzuki Roshi replied, we do it every day. So this is how we live.

[03:35]

We think of there's so many obstacles and barriers and challenges in our life. And yet we do it every day to the best of our ability. We just move through our life step by step. And it's the life that we go through is quite amazing. You know, it's earlier days on the planet, your life was governed by the seasons and by the time of day and by the agricultural tasks that you make to support yourself. And now, just think of the complexities that we face, the number of machines that we interact with, the technology we have to deal with, all the exigencies of society that we have to work with and see ourselves part of.

[05:02]

When you think about it, it's impossible. Anyone ever do this. Remembering when I was a kid, like maybe five or six, every weekend out from our home on Long Island to across the Long Island Sound to a place called City Island, which is sort of on the coast of the Bronx, which is where my grandfather kept a boat. And it was kind of a complicated journey in our car. And I think at that time we had like a 1948 Oldsmobile convertible.

[06:03]

And I remember wondering, how does my father know how to get to this place and what turns to make, to arrive where he wants to? And thinking, am I ever going to know this? Will he ever know this? It seemed impossible. And I think that's one of the impossibilities of life that Suzuki Roshi was pointing out. That life is basically impossible. What we're doing today is basically impossible. We are now two years into this pandemic. We're two years doing something that we never imagined.

[07:12]

We never imagined that the whole society would be masked and socially distanced and that so much of our relationship and communication would depend on these media like Zoom. And the thought that our Zen practice would depend on that is completely imaginable, impossible. We had, you know, I'm part of an organization called the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, which Sojin was one of the founders of. And, you know, we had, We had a big controversy because there were some places that were promoting online zen.

[08:20]

What an outrageous idea, online zen. It has to be in person. It has to be face-to-face. You know, and we said, online Zen is not okay. A teacher who is doing that exclusively cannot be a member of our organization. Well, guess who had the last word on that issue? We're doing this. We've been doing it with a certain amount of grace. and facility, we're doing the impossible every day. Which doesn't mean that we devalue this face-to-face. And warm hand to warm hand. That's also... But we've come to

[09:31]

You know, we've been stretched and pulled and sometimes certainly against our will and against our wishes into this new era. And that's what we're dealing with. This is what's presented to us. That's what we're dealing with. That's what Suzuki Roshi meant when he said, you do it every day. And I'm so grateful that we have this practice to rely on. We have this practice as a refuge. Refuge in Buddha, refuge in Dharma, refuge in Sangha, all of which are embodied in our refuge in this zazen practice, which extends to everything that we do. and zazen itself.

[10:35]

You could say zazen is basically impossible. Because I don't think there's anybody on this who could who could say with absolute precision what zazen is. Who can't We can't really get our mind around it, and yet we do it every day. So I was inspired by that quotation. And there's another quotation that I heard a long time ago, and It's very powerful to me from Suzuki Roshi again.

[11:40]

And, you know, I keep a notebook. I keep journal. I do some journaling and I do keep lists. So I have lists. And, you know, when there's something of significance, I do journaling. I've got these now going back. Hmm. More than 30 years. I'm in those lab notebooks, which are very durable. And every time I get a new notebook, I write this quotation in it. Suzuki Roshi said, Life is like stepping into a boat, which is about to sail out to sea and sink. Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail and sink.

[12:43]

I think when I first started copying this out, there was just something about that. the language and the image that caught my imagination. But with the passing years, I realize, oh, my God, it's really true. You know, we're setting sail. We're going out to sea. We don't know what our destination is. And by the way, along the journey, we're going to sink. This is birth and death. Setting out to see. So today, in service, we observed

[14:04]

what would be the Paranirvana ceremony for Shakyamuni Buddha. This is the calendar day for the Buddha's death is February 15th, Tuesday, February 15th this year. And so, you know, usually if we were in person, we would have a large ceremony either inside or at the Zendo. But I abbreviated it this year because I feel that the ceremonies, there are certain ceremonies or many of the ceremonies we really want.

[15:05]

And so we did this as a service today. But I was thinking, again, of in the Paranirvana Sutra. By the way, there's two Paranirvana Sutras. There is a Paranirvana Sutra, which is an earlier manifestation, which is basically... long story of the Buddha's last months. And his last teachings, it's really it's, it's a wonderful text. And you can find it online as the, as I said, the power Nibbana Sutta. And then there's a Mahayana version, the Vana Sutra.

[16:08]

which is quite different. It's not the story of the Buddha's last period of life. And it's also a wonderful sutra. It's not as immediately accessible, I think, as the Pali text. So in that text, we have a record of last words, or purportedly his last words. And those were, all conditioned things are subject to decay. Work out your salvation. Or work out your salvation with diligence.

[17:11]

You have to work this out. Each of us has to work this out for ourselves. In the face of the fact that permanence is the law. That conditioned things are subject to decay. That they go away. In zazen, what we experience is thought after thought goes away. It arises. It might seem very compelling. And then it sinks into the sea. So this attitude that we have We recognize, we may not remember when we stepped into the boat, but we do recognize that we're on a journey.

[18:22]

And I think in a certain point in our life, we also recognize, oh, we're going to sink. Because this body that we have, as it is conditioned, is subject to impermanence. And I think that when the second part of that message, to work out our salvation with care, with diligence, as I've said before, is a message about how we face impermanence. And our attitude towards impermanence makes all the difference. When we resist it, then we are bound to suffer.

[19:33]

So this is part of... This is pertinent to the three marks of existence, which are fundamental Buddhist teaching. The three marks of existence is that things are impermanent, that there's no fixed self, and that there is suffering. That's the early Buddhist version. In certain of the Mahayana texts, the three marks are a little different. They're impermanence, non-self or emptiness, and nirvana. So to me, we can ask,

[20:40]

Why is one one way and one the other way? And I think what this is saying is your attitude, whether you suffer or whether you experience salvation or release or Nirvana, is contingent on your attitude towards impermanence and non-self. if those seem like difficult conditions, or if impermanence seems like that, then you are going to suffer. I am going to suffer. And I'm not immune from those thoughts. If you recognize that those are really just

[21:43]

just the conditions, and that means, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, that our life is just a continuation of one form to another. So, you know, once you... your being takes other forms, it dissolves and nourishes, maybe it nourishes the fish, you know. Maybe it generates oxygen, but it creates life in other dimensions. And when you can understand that, then impermanence and non-self are fine. They're just fine. And I think for many of us, sometimes we feel that way and sometimes we don't.

[22:53]

I think one of the things that comes with a real confidence in the Dharma is a stronger sense of sureness about this. And also, It's a refuge that we understand how our lives work and that their lives are basically impossible and that's fine. We understand that we're stepping into a boat and sailing out to sea and sinking and that's fine. Everyone Is that a sound that you're hearing? Everyone who has ever lived has done exactly that, has set out to sail, set out to sea and sunk.

[24:04]

And for us as two of our children, it's the way of our lives. So I want to just shift a little. Yesterday, a number of us from Berkley Zen Center went out to visit our Sangha member, Stephanie Seaborg and her husband, Chris Price. Stephanie was a head sheet in here for a long time. Wonderful presence. I dug around and I found her Dharma name, which is Engetsu Onko. Wonderful name that Sojin gave her in 2014, which means empty moon, peaceful light.

[25:11]

Engetsu Onko. So I guess, you know, she was towards the end of her life And a few days ago, she had expressed to Chris, her husband, that she wanted to go to the Zendo. And some folks who have been visiting her and helping talked and decided that didn't seem very realistic, didn't seem realistic at all. Let's bring the Zendo to her. So they live out in Canyon. I lived in Canyon for like 35 years. It's an extraordinary place. It's kind of like, right? It's over the hill. You know, when you go up to Tilden, then you go down a little down to the east into the depths of that valley and Canyon is

[26:24]

There. It's a remarkable place where everyone knows each other. And it's a little wild. And it seems like it belongs to another time. But it was just just going there was like it was like. Sort of like entering the shires or something, you know, it's like really entering another world, driving over there. So about a dozen people from the Zendo went out. And there were also Stephanie's family, her two kids and sister and a number of neighbors. And so we brought the Zendo out there. It was a beautiful spring day and the blossoms were opening. uh and stephanie was was on a bed laid out in the middle of the uh living room just light streaming in through the windows and a just a wide wide that you could look out on and she was breathing shallowly

[27:54]

And we chanted. We chanted the Heart Sutra and the Metta Sutta and Rangyo for protecting life. And then an echo dedicating the merit to her well-being, the well-being of her family and everyone. It was just a beautiful feeling. I will say, you know, it's the first time in two years that I've heard 20 people chanting together. And it just filled the room with warm sound. It sounded really good. And that room was also filled with love. You could feel it. as as soon as he walked in uh so i was opportunity to go out there and it saddens me to say that in the early morning hours or early evening hours last night stephanie passed away

[29:20]

It seemed to me, in my inexpert eye, that she was close, but she was really peaceful. And I gather that she died easily and peacefully. So I want to share that with you, and somehow that fits with the Buddha's Paranirvana, And it fits with setting out to see and sinking. It's a loss that certainly the family will feel hard and many people who are close to her will feel I'm just struck by how peaceful it was out there, and also how fitting our Dharma was, and how wonderful that we could offer that.

[30:44]

The fact that that stayed with me all day, and it's with me now, In the midst of this impossible life, we have been given marvelous gift by which we can appreciate even the impossibility. Life is basically impossible. What are we going to do? You do it every day. So I don't really have much more to say today.

[31:51]

I can leave us open for for questions and comments, for feelings about the Buddha's passing away, Stephanie's passing away, our own passing away. But I'd like to open it up and turn it back to Blake to facilitate that, okay? Thank you. Good Sangha members, welcome. So as usual, you can raise your digital hand or type into the chat. And I just ask that we be brief in the spirit of sharing this space together. So go ahead and raise your hand if you'd like. So question for Hozon, please offer anonymously.

[33:14]

That's to me. I ask a lot of. How does sinking in a boat compared to sinking into practice? Oh, that's a really good question. In certain ways, we have this word we call and, you know, it's applied to learning an instrument or some athletic endeavor. We practice the same moves over and over again until there's a unity of thought and muscle memory.

[34:18]

So our practice, our Zen practice, even though we think it's about the mind, which it is, it's also really about the body. And so we practice over and over again. And what are we practicing for? Are we doing the Olympics? Are we practicing for a concert? In a certain way, you could say, we're learning how to die. We're practicing. We're practicing letting go and sinking into the sea. And we're doing that, you know, we do that moment by moment in Zasana.

[35:23]

We let go of each thought of our conceptions. We see them. We can give a small bow to them. but we're letting them, we are enacting the fact that conditioned things are subject to and that that's okay. We are learning this at a molecular level. And so that's kind of the resonance for me within your question about our practice in sinking in the sea. I hope that makes sense to you. I invite Maria... I invite Maria Teresa to unmute themselves and ask a question, if they can put it in video as optional, I guess.

[36:33]

Thank you. Good morning, Hosan. Good morning. Hi. Very well. Thank you. Thank you for this very inspirational to me talk. I want to ask a question that seems maybe rhetorical, but what passes away? That's a really good question. Certainly what passes away is, I can say with some sureness, or perhaps faith, our idea of our self. I really remember vividly, it was a very powerful moment,

[37:36]

Our friend, one of my early mentors or guides here at Berkley Zen Center was Fran Tribe, who some of you remember. And she died, unfortunately. and pretty swiftly of cancer. And actually when she was in the hospital, the entire Sangha got together and in one day, a Wonjo brown robe and Sojin gave her Dharma transmission in the hospital. It was really wonderful. And one thing she said, I think it might have been on that occasion was, this is, you know, in her last, she observed that the skandhas were coming apart.

[38:54]

That was her perception. So the skandhas are what we, they're the element Perceptions, formations, consciousness, that out of which we form or construct a sense of self. So I think that certainly that's something that that disappears when we die. And then there's great There's great debate. You know, of course, the orthodoxy that we're given is that there's no self that continues from one life to the other. And at the same time, this is a conundrum in the theories of very, very complex theories of rebirth that there is something energetic that continues.

[40:05]

And you start looking even more carefully at some of these Mahayana texts, and they actually seem to say, there is a self that continues, but it's not the self that you think it is. And all of that is beyond my understanding. Or, you know, when talking about rebirth, I've heard him say, I don't remember. So I think I have to leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you. Raghav, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question. Good morning. Morning, Raghav. I just wanted to share something. When I heard about

[41:08]

that quote last week, it didn't, not much came to my mind, but then I'd been dealing with a few things this week and what came to my mind is, you know, life is impossible in the sense I am trying to keep my child from dying. That is kind of, I noticed that was a clutched idea, very deep. I don't want them, my children, to get sick and die. At the same time, that is what happens. And another clutched idea is, you know, I don't want the same thing to happen to me. I don't want to get sick and die, but that is what happens. what I was going through was like, how do I reconcile the both?

[42:13]

And that was causing a lot of suffering. And what happened is as I was listening to you talk, I was going through all those emotions. But then, you know, when I just said, notice my energy, just pay attention to what's going on. the thoughts went away, those thoughts went away. And then there was just the body. And that, I think, tense question a week ago or something about belief. What is the belief? What are the belief? For me right now, belief is belief in the practice. When we practice it, when we notice the change, when the ideas drop away, sense, That is belief in practice. And the ideas will come up again. You know, it'll create a storm again.

[43:15]

But belief is that I can get my mind maybe back to thinking, paying attention to the body again. Yeah, just wanted to share there. Thank you. For me, let me just propose the word faith, which has more power to me than belief. I'm wary of belief, but I'm not wary in the same way of faith. You know, and it's... He is just, you know, the thoughts that you had about your children about yourself, make complete sense. You know, and, you know, the peculiar thing is that we give birth to children knowing what, you know, really

[44:34]

If we think about it all, at all, we know what the windup is going to be, right? And still, we do that. To do it every day is an act of faith. And that is, I think that's really important. And this is our faith in practice. A faith is not an idea. It's actually an activity. Doing it every day is an activity. So thank you for that. Sally and or Ed, I invite you to unmute yourself and speak. Hi, Hozan. Hi, Ed. My question involves when a dear loved one passes away, how do you deal with that sometimes feels like it will go on and not suffer?

[46:03]

I think that we have to really, really have to embrace the whole mess as part of our life. Going to banish suffering. It's not going to happen. It helps, for me, it helps to first to have some awareness, look for how that awareness appears. The awareness is that the suffering is not seamless. It's not the entirety of what's going on moment by moment. At first it really, it may be pretty close to that, right? Yes.

[47:13]

But generally, it doesn't stay that way. Yeah. Although there's a fear, I think, and this is also something to look. The fear is that we will be cast back into that eternity of suffering. Mm-hmm. Because there is still a seed of it there. We have to respect that. It seems like when I just let myself grieve, there's no suffering. Right. So you can let the tears come. You know, you can rage. all of that, all of those expressions of emotion are part of being human.

[48:32]

Yes. But this is, you know, the Buddha realm that we live in, which is the Buddha realm where Shakyam, uh, the eternal Shakyamuni Buddha is, uh, in charge or watching over sort of like God, I'm afraid, uh, except he doesn't do anything. Uh, but the, the world that we're in is, is known as the. And so the very condition, so, In order to wake up and to become a Buddha in the Saha world, you have to deal with the conditions of the Saha world. And Saha means a world in which things have to be endured. Oh boy.

[49:34]

You didn't ask for this. This is, this is, this is, you know, this is not what we signed up for, but it is what we got. It feels unendurable. Yeah. Well, this is, this is our practice is enduring the unendurable, bearing the unbearable. And all. by looking at human history, it's safe to say, you can do this. It's not to say, I want you to, or you want to, but so many people are bearing the unbearable every moment.

[50:37]

And we have We do have our practice. This is what refuge means. Shelter in that practice. Thanks. Take care. Perhaps in that spirit, Hosan, Jerry Oliva writes, what about reframing this to life is full of possibilities or in life everything is possible? Yeah. That's, I think that that's accurate. so long, you know, it depends on what you mean by everything. I think that in these expressions, Suzuki Roshi was trying to give us some very perhaps strong

[52:06]

that he felt it was important to convey. It's also really important to remember, and this is something I've been thinking about, I meant to say, sorting through Liz Liz Horowitz, with Ross's help, has gathered like hundreds of photographs that were in Sojin's photo albums and in sort of piles of photos. There's a lot of photographs from very early BZC days and also early Tassajara days. So going back to the 60s and early 70s, and all of the people, including some who are probably here today, lo and behold, they were very young.

[53:20]

Really young. They were kids. It's really amazing to see Ron Nestor, you know, in his early 20s, and others who we know, Meili, all these people that we, you know, we now see in our seniority, the young. So the message that Suzuki Rashi was giving in these settings often were to people whose experience of life was relatively limited. So when we hear that life is basic, that's like setting out to sea and sinking, some of us at this stage of life, it has a kind of different impact. But he was preparing his students.

[54:27]

So yeah, you could, I think reframing that is fine, And it's also important to get the strong medicine. Any last questions before we close or any last comments? There is a comment here. Can you talk about bearing the pain of someone who may die but may not? But the outcome either way is not so good. Yeah. Well, I think that there's, you know, spoke to someone this week.

[55:28]

You know, in a circumstance. similar to what you described, where their partner is in that situation. And I think that Chris Price and his family experienced that with Stephanie. When I think about the friend that I spoke to earlier this week, All I can say from, there's, to hear this story is, how do I hold it? How does the partner hold it? And how does the person who is actually experiencing hold it? Those are three different things. I really, I felt, I found myself feeling primarily for

[56:37]

the person who was in decline. And I think that it's a person that I care about and that I know. And that person is seeing their increasing fragility, physical and mental fragility. And I really feel for them. And I also feel for the partner is often, that's a whole other thing to explore. A partner can be really left alone with the burden of another's decline in illness. And this is why

[57:40]

Again, I'm grateful for this practice because within this practice, we actually do our best to support each other. And we're taught to support each other. And again, this is something that we've had to arrive at ourselves on resources that are really out there in terms of hospice and chaplaincy and just presence. But again, some of the conditions of our, say, our Japanese teachers who came here, they, at least from what Sogen said, Suzuki Roshi was kind of, he particularly didn't train his students in how to do funerals and memorials and all of these things.

[58:45]

This was kind of the rabbit hole that Zen priests went down in Japan. Part of what they wanted to leave behind. And they were fortunate they had mostly a young sangha, so that wasn't happening. It's happening all the time for us. And we need to know We need to know how to take care of the living and take care of ourselves and each other who are taking care of living. And we also, I'm really grateful. I feel that Sojin taught me very carefully as kind of apprentice. I watched him really carefully how he took care of people who were dying and how he took care of people who had died and himself in that circumstance.

[59:49]

So these are important issues. These are important matters for us to study and help each other with so that we don't feel alone. This is why we, this is the Sangha refuges for feeling alone. So I think that's a good place to end for today. Thank you. And for those in Sashin, let's enjoy the rest of the day. It's still beautiful out. And for those large, well, you enjoy it too. Thank you.

[60:32]

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