Well, today, can you hear me okay? Today, better? I want to address this question of what is the Berkeley Zen Center? Every once in a while, it's important, I think, to evaluate what it is you're doing. Are we doing what we think we're doing? Are we drifting off in some way in some other direction? off the path some way, or are we right on? Of course, everything is developing and transforming and changing. So I think it's important to not necessarily make a strict definition, but to look at

[01:30]

What are real purposes? What are we really doing? We're doing a lot of things, but what is it? What does it mean? There's a saying to to be on the road, but not to be in the tracks. So I want to look at that and talk about it. 1964, I came to Zen Center in San Francisco on Bush Street. So the old Sokoji Temple, practiced with Suzuki Roshi, and I moved to Berkeley a few years later.

[02:49]

And Suzuki Roshi used to come out to people's houses every once in a while. Someone would have in their house a Monday morning zazen, and Suzuki Roshi would come over from San Francisco and sit with us. And I've told you this story before. Give a talk, have breakfast, and it was quite wonderful. It was a small group of people. And then we would go to San Francisco. The people lived here in Berkeley in the mornings. I would drive people over in the mornings, often, pick people up. Sokochi was kind of on a monastic schedule in that every day with a four and nine in the day, it was a day that there was no zazen. But we'd go over there not realizing that it was a four or nine day.

[03:55]

Sometimes he'd look out the window and say, hi, goodbye. Anyway. So one time at a Saturday lecture we were talking about, he was talking about Berkeley and there were three places that Suzuki Roshi, three small zendo's that Suzuki Roshi supported. So he said, he asked me during that time if I would find a place in Berkeley for So I found a place on Dwight Way. So Suzuki Roshi wanted to see, I think, what we would do given our propensities and our understanding of practice.

[04:57]

So he authorized me to open the Zendo in Berkeley, find his place, and Bill Kwong in Mill Valley, and Marion Derby in Mountain View. Les Kay now then took that over. So those were the three places that he He said, well, he didn't say this, but it was understood because he didn't tell us what to do. That's an interesting point, actually. This is very typical teaching for a Japanese teacher, is to not tell the students what to do, but give them something and see what they do. And then if they don't do it right, you scold the hell out of them. This is very typical.

[06:03]

The teacher's scolding, but with compassion. It's like granting with one hand and taking away with the other. and sometimes giving everything and sometimes taking away everything. It's very difficult for a Zen student, but that's the process. So I learned from a Japanese teacher. I had actually more than one. When Suzuki Roshi was Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center, we had three or four Japanese teachers, Chino Sensei, Yoshimura Sensei, Katagiri Sensei, and we learned from them too, and they were all different. Each one of them was different. They were all very compassionate,

[07:07]

And, you know, the adjunct teachers were much kinder in some way because they weren't not your boss. Whereas the main teacher had more authority to be scolding. And that also kind of carries over into our practice. So Suzuki Roshi authorized us to set up these zendos. So 1967, I found a place on Dwight Way. There are people still practicing here from then, from that time. People in this room who were practicing with us at that time.

[08:12]

And my idea, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted an idea. The place at Dwight Wing was pretty ideal for that beginning. Big house. We created the Zendo in the attic, which was totally against the code. Steep stairs going up to the attic. And this wonderful little house. Anyway, so at that time I was into organic gardening. I really wanted to do organic gardening, 1967. And so we had this big yard, and I created this garden, vegetable garden, mostly out of this yard. And my idea was that it was a grassroots kind of operation, like just mushrooming out of the ground, and a local.

[09:19]

We didn't ask wealthy people for money or anything like that. We started out, I wasn't interested in money. I've never been interested in money. I don't know anything about it or how to handle it. But it always, somehow money always comes to me for some reason. Maybe because I'm so stupid. The universe is looking out for me. Anyway, so I would spend the day working in the garden, and people would come, and that's where we'd talk, and they'd maybe help me. I didn't think of myself as the teacher. I was like the caretaker, taking care of this place. And we had zazen every morning. We didn't have zazen in the afternoon. I start out very slowly, little by little.

[10:23]

And then I asked Suzuki Roshi one day, I said, is it okay if we have zazen in the afternoon? He said, yeah, you can have zazen in the afternoon. He said, you can do whatever you want. So I I used to ask people for donations of books. And I'd take the books and I'd go to Mo's and trade them in for trade. And then I would buy Buddhist books at the trade. And that's how I learned a lot about the Dharma. Getting all these books and reading them and putting them in the library. So I built a library out of donated books for trade, in which I got Buddhist books. So I was intimate with all the books in the library, and that's how I educated myself.

[11:27]

In Zen Center, we just educated ourselves. Dr. Kanze was teaching from time to time at Cal, and every once in a while we'd go over there and hear his talks and so forth, and he was writing books on the Prajnaparamita. He translated a lot of the Prajnaparamita literature, which was very unique. We didn't have stuff like that in those days. We only had a few books actually on Zen. D.T. Suzuki, mostly. We didn't have an enormous amount of Buddhist literature that we have today. The library at Sokoji was a little bookcase with a few books in it. So Suzuki Roshi just taught by what he had to say. And he encouraged us to study Dogen. The Eastern Buddhist publication, which was a periodical, would come out with Dogen translations, translations of Dogen, in each periodical for a couple of years.

[12:39]

And when it came out, we'd all be really excited to get that book. like going to a movie or something. Dogen was our favorite movie actor. So I created the library, the beginning of the library, of course it's expanded since then in different ways, and generally kept the zendo going. That was my task. But little by little, I became the teacher, just because I was there and this is what I was doing. So I kind of grew into the position, little by little. But I always deferred to Suzuki Roshi as the teacher.

[13:43]

And when people would come to me, they say, well, are you the teacher? I would say, Suzuki Roshi is the teacher. I'm just taking care of this place. But if you learn something from me, or if you feel that I can help you in some way, in that sense, I can be a teacher for you. So I held off. announcing myself as a teacher for many, many years. And then when Richard Baker became Abbot of Zen Center in 1972, after Suzuki Roshi died, I still didn't call myself a teacher, and we didn't get along so well. And it was not until 1984 that I received Dharma transmission from Suzuki Roshi's son and became a teacher, officially.

[14:52]

So it was a long time. You know, one part of me didn't like the fact that I had to wait so long. The other part of me really appreciated it. And I have to say to this day, I totally appreciate the difficulties that I had with Richard Baker and the difficulties I had within Zen Center as an alien. And that really matured my practice. Really matured my practice. Not having an official sanction to be a teacher, and yet being in that position. So I highly recommend it for people. And when I've given Dharma transmission to some of my students,

[15:54]

I always have them, not always, but often, have them start their own zendos, and then years later give them Dharma transmission. because then their students can appreciate them or relate to them because of who they are, not because of their robe, color of their robe, or they're sanctioned by somebody. So I think that's, I appreciate it, and it's a good way. It's a good way. Because then you're teaching on your own authority, without anything. And people appreciate you for who you are, rather than for who they think you are. So, 1984, somewhere after, I can't remember, 85, I think, I became, we had a mountain seat ceremony here, where you become the abbot.

[17:10]

So we had built a mountain here where the altar is. And then the new abbot ascends the mountain and answers questions and does a very ceremonious, high ceremony thing. But before that, we moved to this place in 1979. Ron was one of the first residents. After moving here, we had residents. which is a whole different thing. And things started to change. Before that, it was like Sokoji in the old days, when Suzuki Roshi was there. No residents, just people would just come to Zazen. And Suzuki Roshi ordained about 15 people as priests before he died.

[18:19]

But he was also a great advocate for lay practice. He appreciated Zen priest practice and he appreciated lay practice. And he also made this statement, you're not exactly priests, you're not exactly lay people. There's some kind of practice that is appropriate for you, but we haven't really discovered it yet. But it's somewhere in between a priest practice and lay practice. So he ordained people both as priests and gave initiation to people as lay people. And so he appreciated both sides. And I also appreciate both sides. But when we first started, I was the only priest. So I was the only priest for a long time.

[19:23]

And everyone else was a layperson. And then little by little, I started ordaining priests, which I don't do easily. I always discourage people from becoming ordained, unless I want to encourage somebody who I think should be ordained. But sometimes people are very stubborn, and I only pursue it for so long. But mostly, I discourage people. And they have to really want to do this. They have to really fight me to become a priest. Because I don't think that it's not a good idea, but to be a priest means that this is the most important thing in your life. It's not just something else that you do. It's the thing, it's the central center of your life. And everything else takes its place around that center.

[20:25]

And if that's not your understanding, then you shouldn't be ordained as a priest. It's great to be a layperson. You have all this freedom. Yeah. And there are a lot of, a lot of the lay people, some of the lay people who wanted to be priests, I felt disappointed because I felt these are great examples of lay practice. These people, the people that were the most, the best examples of lay practice want to be priests. And then I thought, well, if I ordain them as priests, then people will think that being a priest is the thing that everybody should look for to do, which is what happened at Zen Center with Richard Baker. the priest ideal became the main thing for people to do, because that's what he emphasized.

[21:25]

Whereas Suzuki Roshi ordained priests and laypeople, but he didn't emphasize one over the other. Some people should practice as priests, and some people should practice as laypeople, and there shouldn't be any problem. But it can cause a problem. When I ordained the first person as a priest, everybody was just like, whoa. What does that mean for me? What does that mean for us? If you change one little thing, people get upset. Change one little thing, people get upset. So we have to be careful. But people also have to understand. There's one reason why we have so few priests. Anyway, I wouldn't talk about that so much. So when we moved here, we were very fortunate to find this practice place.

[22:33]

I was looking for a place because Dwight Way was good, but it didn't belong to us. And the owner, I talked to the owner about buying the place, 1968 or something, for a couple of years, and that was when the prices of housing was starting to go up. And he just, oh, okay, you know, but he just kind of strung us along for years, and I thought, he's never gonna sell us this place. So I would ride my bicycle up and down the streets looking for places for a long time, and then one member, He said, I know this guy who owns this place, it has two lots and four houses, and wants to get rid of it. And he likes what you guys are doing. So the upshot of it was that we purchased this place. Very, just in the nick of time, I would say.

[23:39]

Just before it became a million dollar project, The way I raised the money to buy this place was that I had been invited to an EST meeting, seminar, because Werner Erhard had invited all these people who are therapists and religious leaders. I was considered a religious leader. to come and do his seminars. So I said, okay. It was very popular at the time. And he was charging people $200. This was free. But he was charging people $200. And at that time, $200 was a lot of money to lay out to do something like that. And now, you know, you go to dinner and it's $100. But then, $200 is a lot of money. And so I thought, well, I could do that. So I asked the Sangha, everybody, to donate $200 so we could have some money to buy this place.

[24:43]

And it energized the whole Sangha. And some people could do it, some people couldn't do it, some people gave more, you know. But it was a way to start our grassroots thing. We also had sold brownies at fairs. And San Francisco then sent her, they had the bakery at that time on Cole Street. And so at night, we would go there and bake brownies. And chocolate chip cookies. And chocolate chip cookies, right. Brownies and chocolate chip cookies. And we sell them at fairs. And it didn't bring a lot of money. I mean, the place was only $220,000. That's not bad, right? This whole place cost $220,000. Time. There was a lot of money at the time. And, you know, brownies and cookies.

[25:46]

But it energized everybody to make this thing work. And people loaned us money. I won't mention names. Some of them are in this room. and a lot of money, and so it just stimulated. And we had nothing, we had zero. And it just was all done on faith and trust, all done on trust completely. So little by little, you know, the sangha built up. and doing sushins. I remember when we were at Sokoji and Suzuki Roshi said, you know, we don't have to have a big social scene.

[26:49]

That's paraphrasing. He didn't use the word scene. But he said, you just come to Zazen and go home. just come to Zazen and go home. And it's not that he didn't emphasize Sangha. Matter of fact, he did emphasize Sangha as probably the most important thing. But in Japan, Zazen practice had degenerated pretty much. into kind of a social scene, like church. So Soto school became kind of like going to church on Sunday. And the teaching of Zazen was the thing that most people didn't do, don't do.

[27:51]

Not that that doesn't happen, it does, but it's not widespread. There's a degeneration. And Suzuki Roshi did not want us to fall into that. He didn't want us to be a social scene. For him, the most important thing was for him to present us with Zazen practice, the vital part of Buddhadharma and Dogen's teaching. And so he de-emphasized the social scene because he didn't want us to fall into the social scene, which obscures that main practice. So for a long time, we were not encouraging to people And people go to San Francisco Zen Center and say, oh God, they're so stern there.

[29:00]

They're not friendly and they're blah, blah, blah. They still say that. And we used to say that here. People come here and they're all not friendly and they're blah, blah, blah. And it's true. Because we did not want to give people an idea that if you come here, you will go to heaven or something. or be happy, or find peace of mind, or whatever. If you come here, you will find Zazen. That's all. And Zazen won't do anything for you. Won't make you happy, won't do anything. It's just Zazen is Zazen. That's all. And whatever comes out of that, comes out of that. But fortunately, you're able to do it if you want.

[30:01]

So not so many people do Zazen. Not so many people come to the Zen Center. But over time, we kind of thought, well, it'd be good for us to be more friendly to people, more welcoming to people, not have this kind of stern face. And it will help everybody. Because Suzuki Roshi was welcoming to everybody. He never had a stern face like that. But the students, they have a different idea somehow about how to do things. Suzuki Roshi, although Zen practice is very strict in certain places, our practice was not that strict. Strict in the sense of formal. When we come here, we think this is formal practice. from another perspective, it's very loose. So, a mature Sangha has discipline, but at the same time, compassion and friendliness.

[31:07]

So you can tell the maturity by the friendliness, actually. And you can tell the immaturity by the kind of sternness, you know. uptightness, because you have enough confidence that you can be friendly. Anyway, this kind of maturing process of a practice place keeps going on and on. It's not something that's set. And the development is not something that's settled. It's always going on in some way. And Suzuki Hiroshi gave us that freedom to, or encouraged that freedom to develop, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but But little by little, the changes would naturally take place through the practice.

[32:14]

A lot of people wanted to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to do that? Why do we have to bow? Why do we have to? And she'd say, I don't know, this is just the way we do it. It never answered your question, it's a why question. You'd always say, well, this is how you do it. How replaces why. Matter of fact, that's the basis of Zen practice. It's not, why do we do this? It's how do I do this? How can I do that? When I was practicing with Suzuki Roshi, I don't think I ever asked him, I did ask him why we do certain things, but not very often. Mostly I would say, how do we do it? I would never blame the practice for my inadequacy. I would say, how can I come up to the practice, rather than how can I bring the practice down to me? We have a lot of problems in this way.

[33:17]

How do I bring the practice down to where I am, rather than how can I reach up to the practice? But if you reach up to the practice, the practice will meet you halfway. So we always emphasize your effort. Without your effort, nothing happens. So, what is the main thing? Well, we emphasize always, you know, when I was, before I was in Zen, in the 50s and early 60s, I was, I think you could say a bohemian beatnik. Hippie hadn't really come in then yet, but I was a precursor to the hippie. And I was in North Beach and in the jazz scene and the dope scene and all this, and I saw many people suffering, so many people suffering, the art scene, the music scene, and dying and overloading and all this.

[34:28]

And I also knew that they were looking for something that they couldn't find in a society where they were brought up. And I was looking for something. And I felt that I'd found something. And I wanted to open that up for people. And that was my feeling about opening this place. so that people would have an opportunity to find their basis of their life. And so that's always been a motivation for me. So that's why lay practice I felt was so important. and why I emphasize lay practice as such an important aspect and to develop that.

[35:31]

But, you know, lay practice has many sides. And the practice itself, has one central practice, which is zazen. Anybody can do zazen in one way or another, even lying down or standing on your head. Although Dogen discourages zazen standing on your head. In our busy life, we can always find time for zazen. And every day we chant the Heart Sutra. Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, practicing deeply, Prajnaparamita.

[36:46]

What is Prajnaparamita? What is deeply? What does all that mean? We practice it over and over again. We think we know what it means. But what does it mean? How do you practice the Prajnaparamita? That's the point. We chant the sutra and think, you know, and it just kind of, after you chant it 5,000 times, you know, it really becomes a part of you, hopefully. But then how do you express that in your life? That's our practice. The reason we chant it so often is because The meaning is not in the words, but the words express the meaning. But just parroting the words or trying to explain the words, that's one side. Trying to explain the words is one side. But practicing what's the meaning of the words, that's our practice.

[37:52]

We have to practice the meaning of the words. What in the hell is emptiness? What is space? So we always have to keep coming back and being aware of this in all of our activity. So Zazen is sitting on the cushion and practice is, that's one side of practice. The other side of practice is how we express Prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom in our life, moment by moment. I want to, read you something that Dogen's quoting. A student, not a student, but a lecturer, lecturer Liang and Matsu.

[39:01]

Matsu was a very famous Zen master. China. This is a short fascicle that Dogen wrote called Space. So, once Lecturer Liang on Mount Zi studied with Matsu, who said, which sutra do you teach? Liang said, the Heart Sutra. Matsu said, how do you teach it? Liang said, I teach it with a heart. Matsu said, the heart is like a main actor. The will is like a supporting actor. The objects of the six senses are like their company. How do your students, or how do the people that you teach, understand your teaching of the Sutra?

[40:07]

Liang said, if the heart doesn't understand it, does emptiness understand it? Matsu said, yes it does. Liang flipped his sleeves and started to walk away. Matsu said, lecturer. Liang turned his head around. Matsu said, just this from birth to death. At this moment, Liang had realization. He hid himself on Mount Zi, and no one heard from him any longer. So Dogen says, in this way, Buddha ancestors all teach sutras. Empty space is teaching sutras. Without being empty space, no one can teach even one single sutra. Without being empty space, Means without being emptiness, you can't teach emptiness. Without being empty, you can't teach emptiness.

[41:09]

Teaching the Heart Sutra and teaching the Body Sutra are both done with empty space. With empty space, thinking is actualized and beyond thinking is actualized. Empty space is wisdom with a teacher, wisdom without a teacher, knowing by birth, knowing by learning, becoming Buddha, becoming an ancestor is also empty space. The Heart Sutra, the Body Sutra, the Breath Sutra, the Walking Sutra, the Talking Sutra, the Eating Sutra, the Zen Sutra, the Zazen Sutra, the Compassion Sutra, the Thinking Sutra, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's my edition. So this Heart Sutra comes from you.

[42:16]

And this Heart Sutra that we chant reminds us of that. So the sutra is not out there in the words, the sutra is here in all of our activity. How do we empty out as we proceed? So it's the sutra of renunciation, the sutra of letting go, the sutra of when anger arises, what do we do with it, the sutra of when lust arises, what do we do with it? The sutra, what grasping arises, what do we do with it? So we're writing the sutra. Sutra is being written called my life. when we have our practice period, May and June, the theme of our practice period is going to be, how do you practice the Heart Sutra?

[43:41]

What is the practice of the Heart Sutra in all of your activities? And we are going to have to present examples of how all dharmas are empty, how all the five skandhas are empty, how there's no nose, no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, blah, [...] blah. No old age and death. No Four Noble Truths. What does all that mean? Really? Not just as an idea. Do you have a question?

[44:52]

Yes, this Saturday, Alan and I are going to Los Angeles to attend a conference, a Soto Shu conference on funerals, how to conduct funerals for lay people, I think, or priests. And there's going to be a one-day sitting on Saturday. And so I want to encourage everyone to Take some responsibility and enjoy yourself in Sazen, Sashin, next Saturday. So, think about it. but not too long. Think about it for a moment and then sign your name. Even if it's a mistake.

[46:02]

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