Is this actually on? It is. Can you hear in the back? You can? Good. Well, this morning and all day, for those of you who have just come, we're having a one-day sitting. It means we're sitting about nine or ten periods of Zazen, eating our meals, silence in the Zen Do, doing walking meditation, working together, inquiring together, and it's just a very rare opportunity in one's life to be able to do something like this, to for the moment step outside of life, or work, and to just sit down together with friends and watch what arises.

[01:16]

And that's basically what I think we do here. This morning I wanted to talk about a And quite honestly, there's a lot of it that I don't have worked out, but I thought I would talk about it anyway and hopefully leave some time for discussion. There's a quotation of Suzuki Roshi's that I have quoted before that I really like a lot, which is that giving a talk is making a mistake on purpose. Sometimes my talks aren't like that or other people's talks aren't like that. We sort of work them out. It may be a mistake anyway, but we don't think it's a mistake. And sometimes one really just has to

[02:24]

So there have been a number of things that have been pointing me in the direction of inquiring about how do we structure our help support our practice and support our lives and support our overall effort to be alive. And things that I've been reading, people that I've been talking with, problems that all raise this question. I mean you could think of it as a question about, you could think of it, there are aspects of it that relate to power or authority, there are aspects that relate to responsibility and the interrelationship between responsibility, personal responsibility

[03:52]

the collective responsibility, the community that we explore together. And this is an old subject in Buddhism that's been taken on sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. When the Buddha Bodhi tree after awakening, his method, basically he just said what was coming up for him, he talked to the people that he met who were also on a they found a compelling truth in what he was saying, and what he was saying was largely to find your own truth, but he was also showing by his personal example that it could be done, and so that they

[05:14]

they were able to see that it was encouraging and they became renunciates. They stepped away from the worldly life that they were in and took on robes, became home leavers of one kind or another, and that very shortly thereafter, women as well, although it took some convincing to open the community to women. And while I might think that there's a regrettable aspect to that, but also an encouraging aspect in that sort of demonstrates to me that the Buddha, at least the one that we read about, was human and was conditioned, even though he saw the absolute, he was conditioned, at least to my way of reading it, by the mores, the

[06:29]

gender relations, class relations, etc., in his own time, and so he had to be convinced of the necessity for an equality of practice, or sort of an equality of practice. In the end, there were still some inequalities, and I will neither try to but it means to me that the Buddha was human and he saw a lot of things. He didn't see everything instantly, but pretty shortly those monks and nuns who were just sort of a they formed into monasteries and formed more institutional bodies and things became more, on the one hand, they reached out wider, perhaps, and on the other hand they became sort of more rigid, more formal, more inside-outside.

[07:58]

those kinds of tensions have existed within Buddhism and within all organized religion from very early on, from pretty shortly after whatever founder came along. So now, maybe I'll skip ahead 2,500 years to our situation. there's something different going on in the practice that we're trying to create here in the West, in Berkeley, in other places, and I was put in mind, but Dali was saying yesterday I might remind people here, because it's coming up soon, that we're going to have an ordination on June 5th, just Saturday.

[09:11]

Saturday, right? Saturday, June 5th, in the late afternoon, and it's going to be an long-practicing and well-respected and loved members of our community are going to take the precepts as priests. And Raul is one of them, Raul Moncayo, and Rebecca Maeno, and David Weinberg. And so there's, I was thinking about that and I don't want to preempt Mel's comments in any way, but over the years, each time there's been an ordination, he talks about the ordination and he tends to say the same kinds of things, and that is essentially, well, people want to

[10:18]

have various ordination, one have lay ordination or priest ordination, but really our practice is that we're not quite priests or monks or nuns, and we're not quite, the priests and monks and nuns are not quite priests and monks and nuns, and the lay people are not quite lay people, they're more like, they have more practice like priests, and frankly every time I hear him You know, I've heard this. This is not helpful. And when I thought about it, I realized the same stuff was coming up in my mind. And I don't think it's just because I'm conditioned by Mel. But thank you very much. But it's an interesting phenomenon that we have. think that what ordination means is and it kind of looks like authority and theoretically it's not supposed to be.

[11:33]

It's basically just taking on responsibility and that responsibility as a practice. And for people who have taken the precepts, the first precept that we take is the Bodhisattva vow to save all sentient beings. And so people give up certain aspects of their to take care of their own lives, to take care of their own practice, to be able to make decisions for themselves, to be able to structure their lives so that they can sit, encounter themselves, see what their understanding is and have as wide a view as possible.

[12:39]

So that's a lot what ordination means to me, to sort of set that as a priority in one's life. But again, I think that we have an interesting situation here. Last night, when I was thinking about this talk, I was reading through or in this new anthology of the writings of was translated by Kaz Tanahashi and then a group of other practitioners. It's called Enlightenment Unfolds. It's a wonderful book. I think we have it for sale outside on Saturdays when we're selling books. We should if we know. And in it there's a section called the Ehe-Chigi-Shinji, which is guidelines for the officers of Ehe Monastery, which was Dogen's monastery in the sort of middle 13th century.

[13:57]

And it's just, these guidelines are basically just one story after another. I was tempted to bring in and that would actually take a while and I'd rather have some time to talk. But it's one story after another about the actions or the conduct of the head cook or the work leader or the director in one of the other sections he congratulates someone on attaining the position of toilet cleaner, that all of these were actually monastic practice positions that were honored, and that in order to have a position like this, it reflected

[15:02]

one's understanding of the Way. And in the context that he's talking about, these are all monks and some nuns actually, but in our center it doesn't matter whether you're a priest or not, these positions are shared around and and usually they're shared, they're taken on by somebody who's pretty settled in practice, who has a sense of what they're doing and has a desire to be helpful and also has something to learn about being helpful. When Dogen was dying in 1253, This is the last section of this book.

[16:04]

There are notes from Tetsu Gikai who was, after Dogen, the abbot of Eheji was Kolan Ejo and then the next abbot was Tetsu Gikai. So Gikai had been a student of Dogen's and very close And as he's dying, Dogen says, well, I'd like you to stay here and practice some more and help take care of the temple. And his teacher is dying. And meanwhile, his teacher is saying, and by the way, you still really haven't developed your grandmotherly mind. So you need to work on that. And Gikai writes, you know, this, and then he repeated it again like the next day, you know, just to make sure that he got that even though he was very deeply respected in the monastery, there was still something that he had to learn about being with people, about working in harmony with each other.

[17:27]

And I feel like most of us, all of us, are working on that. Everyone who's sitting in here in Sashin, everyone who's sitting in here today, even Mel, and all of us are not, we don't have that together perfectly. We don't have our grandmotherly mind perfectly manifest, so we're working on that. But we work at it, some of us as lay people and some of us as priests, and sometimes it seems to me that the depth and the wonderful qualities of our practice in the busyness and sometimes the pointless we can lose our ability to see that in each other and even in ourselves.

[18:34]

And so it occurred to me as I was reading this Ciki Shinji just thinking, gee it would be great if some of us wrote down the stories of, it's like if I wrote stories about Karen or about Raul or Greg is the Tenzo today, it's like if we wrote the understandings and the shortcomings of our understandings, and we shared them around, that could be extremely helpful in mutually recognizing kind of quality of practice that we have, and it's a practice that monastery walls.

[19:45]

On the one hand, these were people who lived a hard life, but it was also a simplified life, and our lives are not always marked by the same conscious, intentional hardship that monks and nuns in 13th or 14th century Japan may have created for themselves, but our lives are also hard in different ways. And how do we recognize the kind of strictness that exists in our daily life and look at it really carefully. Look at it, look at our lives with compassion, but also allow in our practice, allow to arise for ourselves some sense of what's really important.

[21:04]

what are the true values that we have, what is the impact and the implication of the way we are living on other people in society, on other people around the world, and to figure this out ourselves and then to try to share that understanding with each other. Now we may not agree, we probably won't or don't, but the action of sharing it opens us up to new ways of seeing ourselves. Dogen writes in his he writes, learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate self.

[22:12]

You could see that as a kind of urging being self-absorbed, taking your attention away from whatever is outside and stepping back. But I think that the larger context is that when you illuminate self, you find that your self is created by all of the other selves. and by non-self elements, so in a sense that the self that we live is something that we are co-creating with countless other beings and people, and if we just take this backward step, which is what we do

[23:26]

The implication of that to me is that we will have a very very wide view, a view that encompasses things that we might otherwise consider difference, that encompasses friends and enemies, and that sees into the nature of suffering, that sees where again and again we make this painful effort to create self by grabbing onto something, holding onto something, thinking that if I can pin this down, I'll be comfortable. And I think part of the practice of daily Zazen and the practice of Sashin is, bit by bit, to discover that that doesn't work.

[24:45]

And so we sort of keep at it. A few weeks ago, on a Monday, my wife Lori gave a Monday morning talk. Some of you were probably there, right? She told me in advance that she was going to talk about bluegrass music, which is the kind of music that I play. She did actually start talking about bluegrass music, and then it kind of lapsed into talking about raising children and practice. I jokingly said to her, you started off really well. You should have talked more about bluegrass. But I was thinking about that talk and thinking about that kind of music and many kinds of music, particularly in folk-based musics.

[25:54]

But it also goes broader than that. Each person, if you're playing music together, each person is responsible for carrying their share. In that kind of music, bluegrass music, where there's a very strong rhythmic pulse, each person individually has to carry the time. So if everybody else, if there are five of us playing, and everybody walks away but one person, that one person, whichever person it is, is carrying the rhythm. And then each person individually is carrying the rhythm, but collectively they're listening to each other, they are finding some common ground, and they are co-creating a whole music. She also described the way at various times in an ensemble each person will step up to either to say something musically or will step behind the singer or singers or somebody who's soloing and support that person.

[27:20]

So there's a constantly shifting and also a complete commitment to the music, a complete commitment to the song for that moment. And the final quality that I think she didn't mention that is really important to me is that in the music as I learned it, as I saw it from people who were my teachers, older musicians, that there was a deep, passionate entry into the song as they were doing it. But when the song was over, they were just themselves. There was no drama. There was no very little construction of self between songs.

[28:27]

Between songs, they would just talk to the audience or talk amongst themselves as normal people. There was no show as such, or very little. And then when the song was begun, they would be living that song. The singer would be living that song. And I think that that has some reflection how I see our Zen practice, that when we're sitting we're doing it completely, and that we're supporting each other, and that each individual sitting in a row is carrying the complete practice, and yet we're doing it. It's something in our style we do you know, we don't do it sort of off in a cave one person at a time, we do it together.

[29:29]

And yet each person is co-creating the practice, each person is being Buddha. And we have this, you know, when we sit burning intensity, but not always, it's not the same for everybody, but there is a collective intensity. I remember coming into the zendo very early on when I practiced, and I'd been practicing not so long, a couple weeks, and then it was a long rohatsu seshin, seven-day seshin, and I came to zazen not exactly knowing that seshin was going on, and I something different is going on in this room. There's really something, there's a very different energy and I could feel that intensity, although I couldn't name it and I still can't name what it is, but then if you happened by, if we end at 530, if you happened by here at 545,

[30:42]

after Sashin, you would just see a bunch of mostly happy people with sore legs being themselves without any drama around the particular intensity that they might have felt during the day. So I see that as a kind of parallel quality. And I'd like to say one more thing and then open it up, because one of the other things that I've been thinking about and it comes off of, I've been thinking about it reading, I don't know if some of you have read the new biography of Suzuki Roshi, Crooked Cucumber, which is a really wonderful book. very interesting and it's not a, there's a word for what it isn't, what?

[32:07]

Exactly, it's not a hagiography, although it certainly looks very lovingly and appreciatively at Tsukiroshi, but it doesn't gloss over shortcomings and faults, and it doesn't gloss over questions. And one of the questions that I came away from that book with was, well, he brought a model, a Japanese model of and it seemed like it was kind of passed to people at San Francisco Zen Center and something went terribly wrong and that's not the only place where things have gone wrong around those kinds of issues his successor picked up was, well, he saw somebody holding all the power, all the authority, that the spiritual teaching and the community itself was all embodied in one person.

[33:37]

And I don't think that model works, period. And I don't think that model, I don't think it's quite the model that we have here. And I don't think it's the model that we're going to evolve into in healthy communities, Buddhist communities in the West. I think that the teacher has a responsibility and that responsibility the teacher stands sort of in the place of Buddha and the job of Buddha is not actually to sit on an altar and be holy and be venerated but the job of Buddha is to point you back towards yourself and to practice so that you discover Buddha

[34:43]

nature intimately in yourself. So that's not about authority. We often, I think in our cultures, in Western society and probably in others too, we're often looking for somebody to give the authority to, because life is complicated and but that's not the job. So it seems to me that the teacher has a job to point people towards practice and then I think the teacher has a job to step back in the wider circle of community and just be in that and let the community decide how it wants things to look, how it wants to do things.

[35:55]

So there's a distinction between community empowerment and wisdom or depth of practice, something that you can learn from that points you that some person or persons who will point you back towards your own practice. And I think that this is a very hard lesson. I spoke to someone yesterday who was talking about a situation I hadn't heard about in another Buddhist community where that same thing had been replicated, where holding everything and that is too much of a burden for any human being to hold. I don't think anybody can do it successfully and I don't think that's what we're pointed towards.

[37:00]

So I think I've been meaning to encourage you here today I'm not sure whether it's been encouraging or not, but I feel very encouraged because in December when Mel was ill and we went ahead and had Rohatsu Sashin, it was an intensely moving experience for me together knew what we were doing and we made things run in as harmonious a way as we could and we were all collectively taking responsibility for our own practice and for helping each other practice and that I think is the gift of a good teacher has been to

[38:07]

the teacher is not there, we miss him or her, but the bottom doesn't fall out of things because we know how to take responsibility for ourselves and for each other. And I found that deeply moving and I think that we create that day by day here, every day in Zazen. And it's the thing that I most value about this place. So we have a few minutes to ask for comments, questions. Sue? Thank you for your talk. It was most provocative. And I appreciate being reminded of that dance and that music that we all participate in in our lives, inside and outside the stendo.

[39:30]

It's a powerful, I never know if it's a metaphor or analogy, I forget, but for the things that I do outside the stendo, it's very helpful, very encouraging to look at it as a balance. And the other thing is the idea of Dogen creating this practice in Japan and looking at where of Americans and failure in Japan, and that we rub up against each other. It's so interesting that Americans and Japanese work together in this practice because it just creates a lot of looking at the impact we have on each other, and that's important.

[40:42]

So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Karen? A long time ago, I asked a priest response was someone who needs more help. And I always liked that because I felt it was, and he meant it sincerely in a humble way, like I want to improve my practice or I want to rededicate myself. I've always kept that as sort of an inspiration because I feel like it looks to me like becoming a priest is very public and very vulnerable. You show up here in your underwear and no hair and take the precept. My question is, even though I take responsibility and we each take responsibility for our own practice and each other's, seeing that this lineage still in the West is passed through people with robes.

[41:53]

The lineage has passed through me because I receive it and I practice and I transmit it, but the technicalities are still through the robes. And what do you see happening with that and what is your opinion of that? Other than the few lay teachers that are around, like Inka and Roshia. I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it. And we have arguments slash discussions about it over the kitchen table. But it's not, to me, it's not a done deal. And I don't want to say more, I'm more curious what, I mean, I saw Kelly had her hand up almost immediately. I'd sort of like to see what other people think, because, yeah. Well, what I was going to say is, I don't know if you've read this book, Karen, And in this book, I think it's John Dido Laurie who's complaining because he says there are thousands of teachers of Buddhism in America and only a few of them have really gotten around to transmission.

[43:19]

So I thought it was very interesting that you were saying that. I'm not clear, say it again. He thinks, who's not getting from ... Okay, and he's saying that's not so good. Yeah, I thought you were about to make another point. which was there are thousands of teachers in Buddhism in this country and only a few of them have gotten Dharma transmission. That's the other side that I think is maybe Karen was getting at and I feel like I got to be really careful here, but the other side is that there are many people in who haven't received the proper papers or imprimatur that make them official.

[44:28]

And I think that's a really complicated question, that there's some real harm that has been done by people who don't have proper so-called authorization, but if we look around this Sangha, say, just because this is what I know. I've just read, actually, there was an article about Dharma transmission that was kind of abstract in Turning Wheel, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Mel sort of took issue with it and so he has an answer response and Nelson Foster also took issue with it and he has a response and they don't say exactly the same thing but they're sort of in the same similar track and what Mel said was the Dharma transmission is recognition.

[45:34]

It's recognition of a long relationship, a 15 or 20 year student and teacher, between student and community, and that seems to me, in that sense, he doesn't call it transmission, he calls it entrustment and it's recognition of something that already exists. So in that sense, I think there are thousands of people, thousands of teachers of Buddhism out there who have built this meaningless. If you're in Japan, say, and this is not necessarily a criticism, you get these young guys, they go to the monastery, they go to the training temple, and they're given their papers, and in some case they have a long training relationship with somebody, in some cases they don't. So it's this kind of testing, how we grow up in community that's essential, in community and in relation, that's essential to me.

[46:42]

Maybe so. I mean it might be misleading and I invite you to question it.

[47:16]

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