Peter Overton, he was given the Darwin name, Unzan Kakudo, in 1978 when he was ordained by Richard Baker at the San Francisco Zen Center. Peter is one of the oldest members, as well as being one of the oldest members. Peter started walking to practice around 1967 or 8, or maybe 9. But you can't hear me very well. OK. So Peter's one of, Peter and a few other Zen students, including my present wife,

[01:05]

lived in a house up on near, anyway, about a mile from here. And they used to walk Zazen every day back in the late 60s. So Peter is one of the Berkeley Zen Center pioneers. And all those people would walk down and do Zazen in the morning, and then they'd go home and eat breakfast. But sometimes it would stay breakfast. Anyway, so Peter has that long history with the Berkeley Zen Center, and also with San Francisco Zen Center. He studied at San Francisco Zen Center for a long time. And at Tassajara, that's where he did his monastic practice. And then he had a long period of family practice, where he and his wife adopted two Korean children, who are now old enough to take care of themselves.

[02:07]

And he's been practicing all along. And let's hear what he has to say. Thank you, Sanjay. Thank you. I have to... Can everybody hear me? It needs to be louder. A little bit louder. Is that better? It's okay? Sounds okay here. A little bit? Okay. Maybe that's a little too loud. No, that's good. Alright. Very good. I have to remind myself that I shouldn't try to predict what you're going to say. This morning I wanted to talk about home leading, which is a significant arriving home, coming home, as opposed to home leaving, leaving home.

[03:23]

And also, going beyond leaving and arriving, we talk about no coming or going. All of these things are closely related, but I'm going to start talking about home leaving. Shakyamuni Buddha, the story goes, left home. And that was a pretty significant event when you think about it. He had an entire family, a wife and at least one child, and left home. And that has been a a theme because of that theme and also because in India, at least at that time, there was a tradition of itinerant spiritual seekers who left home and joined communities that were not connected with family life.

[04:31]

I think that in some quarters that ideal and lifestyle is still alive in Indiana. I know it's still alive in our American imagination. And as Buddhist practice developed, it became the domain of monks and nuns, who ideally lived only with the four requisites, food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. richer. And there are various traditional practices associated with it, such as never sleeping in the same place for two nights in a row. But there's also a question that comes up about what is home?

[05:38]

The last weekend, when Shohaka Okamura was here, he spoke about the life of a teacher in Japan known as Sawaki Kodoroshi, who had a nickname of Homeless Koga. And Shohaka-san brought up this question of what is home, and he said, where I come from, is where you were born, where you live, and where you die, going back three generations. So from that starting point, do any of us have a home? I'm not sure. Does anybody here fit that description of having a home? I don't see any hands popping up here. We all move around too much for that kind of thing to happen. So while we don't practice in that way here in America, in the sense of abandoning the family and clan to join a community which sets aside or rejects the karmic life, so to speak, many of us have chosen, for a time, to live outside that web of family connections.

[07:12]

But it's relatively rare for people to do it on a sustained basis. In America, the metaphor for leaving home is more or less just that. It's like when we're young, we leave home, like most people in the world do. And in here, because we're a wealthy country, parents can actually provide the background of support for their offspring, even after they leave home, to some extent. You know, there's a tremendous sense of not only wanting to make your own way to find your true calling, but also a kind of adventure, a kind of pioneering spirit. And that's kind of our mythology of home leaving here. And it's very powerful.

[08:14]

So we have a lot more about home-leaving, both from our Buddhist traditional sources and from our own culture. So while we don't practice in the traditional Buddhist way of home-leaving, that is, that our primary mode of practice does not include that as a kind of fundamental lifestyle choice, that we just do and that's what we're doing. We don't practice as monastics for the most part. There are some people who do, but at large body of us don't do that, regardless of whether we are ordained priests or so-called lay people, whatever the difference is between those two.

[09:25]

From the point of view of traditional forms of home-leaving, it's not so radically different. I still think that this metaphor is a very powerful one for us in our practice in a variety of ways. So here at Berkeley Defense Center, we kind of use the monastic model we know about that was brought to us from Japan by Suzuki Roshi and other teachers to create a space where that's uncluttered and we can just meet ourselves here in Zazen. We have to take care of the space both in terms of taking care of the zendo, making sure it's supported, cleaning the zendo, and also protect its place

[10:38]

That takes work, because we tend to think of more and more interesting things to do in and around the Zenda. Many meaningful activities in our Sangha garden. So, homemaking is a kind of, in this situation, is kind of, requires a kind of internal discipline, but don't claim as our own. It's kind of like we're letting the space go. We're not making it our home, so to speak. Also, because of the way we practice here, we don't look to the monastic model as an ideal choice and not seeing that as a... What I have written here is that we are, and I may be talking about my own thinking,

[12:08]

but there may be a tendency to be a little bit dismissive of the validity of a monastic life whereas here we kind of idealize the bodhisattva way which we try to realize through a vows to awaken with everyone in the midst of the world. So I wanted to say a little bit about my own experience of home leaving. Sojin referred to my experience some years at San Francisco Zen Center, where I practiced at Tussar from time to time during that period in my life. And then when my wife and I decided to have a family, we moved to Berkeley. And this was after being intensely involved in Zen Center for seven or eight years. And this was a kind of home leaving for me. coming from a place where I could function fairly well.

[13:16]

Not everybody could. Some people found Zen Center in those days rather dysfunctional, including my spouse. But I could function fairly well there. And it was somewhat comfortable. And then I came to Berkeley and had a job and we kind of got a house and we started We had two children we adopted, and that is a step which for me was going out of my comfort zone. There's something about having children which is biological. People sometimes complain about how their kid's driving them crazy. This is the kid's job. I'm serious. where they want to meet you, that's particularly where you're not available.

[14:20]

They want to meet you where you've chosen to hide out, so they come and find you. And so this happens. I haven't met any parents yet who have said, you know, I've really understood how to do this. in my life. And this is true, it is for me too, but this is in a way in which I was challenged and delighted, and it was completely unpredictable what would happen. So I'm talking about the experience of leaving home, leaving what's familiar, going to some place you don't know about, which could be right here. I was noticing another thing that I do sometimes when I'm trying to be at home in my constructed world.

[15:32]

I was in the kitchen doing some things, cooking, and my wife said, you know, it seems like you're kind of grazing with your eyes. And I said, yes, that's right. I'm moving about and I'm not necessarily landing or taking in what's in the visual field. I'm sort of skimming it. The artist Ben Sean wrote a book some years ago, and I can't remember the name of it, but my sister recommended it to me, and the only thing I aspiring young artists. And he says, get a job. Do some ordinary activity. Take in the stimulus of the visual field. Take it in. See it. Just see it.

[16:34]

Do that for a few years. Then if you still want to be an artist, maybe you can do it. This is a little bit how we approach vision in Zazen. We see. We commit to seeing. We don't try to look, but we commit to engagement in seeing. So, there are many ways in which we, in the context of our busy lives, Homecoming can be a powerful way in which, or home-leaving can be a powerful way in which we leave off clean to our comfortable selves, to our comfort zone. Not so much in the sense of abandonment, but more of relinquishment. which is driving the car, which is sitting in the car, everything's prepared, you're ready, the engine's running, you're parked at the curb, the car in neutral, but the engine's running.

[17:59]

And the way he explained it, it was a little bit like, the stuff that goes on in your head all the time is going on in your head all the time, but I'm not engaging with that, I'm just going to Let it happen. Sometimes we talk about letting go of the constant chatter and the impulses that arise and so on and so forth. And sometimes it seems as though that thought about letting go is associated with the thought or the wish that whatever it is that we're letting go is going to go away. But it doesn't necessarily go away. Yeah, it's going to go away sometime. it will be there oftentimes, much longer than you expect. And so the letting go is really like, there's another, and I don't know the source of this phrase, the exact source of this phrase, but it's either Okumura Roshi or Uchiyama Roshi, opening the hand of thought. In other words, instead of

[19:00]

So I'm going to propose that home leading as a practice of just plunging directly into the center of your life at this moment. to open the hand of thought as we study, as we practice. So again, what is this practice of letting go, of leaving the thing we construct around ourselves, our kind of home space?

[20:22]

Often that is a kind of we kind of rely on, we go to, or a kind of habitual reactivity to certain kinds of stimuli, to certain kinds of words and phrases we might hear on TV or the radio, or what people say casually to get us all riled up. So, I'm thinking that to let go involves of this really intimate appreciation of what it is, the thing we're letting go of, and what it is, what that means to us, how that functions for us, a kind of savoring of its texture and taste.

[21:25]

that we know what we're setting down. If we try to skip over something about the stuff that we are dealing with, it will come back until we have learned how not to skip over it. So, sometimes there might be some sadness or mourning involved in our intimate regret, you know, how we've let ourselves fall for the same old story again. But it's important we don't skip over these experiences of getting to know ourselves. And I want to say something a little bit more about mourning. Often it comes up when we're disappointed in the results of our choices, interactions, what we've said to people.

[22:43]

And to experience, just experience, if there's some sadness, just some sadness. And to really allow that to be there. And again, not to construct anything out of it. do this a lot, and I fall into the same old thing. I'm sad about something, and then I start to construct a narrative about it. That piece doesn't allow you to really know what it is, how that particular thing matters to you. You don't have to tell yourself a story about it. It's there for you. So I don't know if that was intelligible, but I wanted to kind of touch on that. So home-leaving does happen when you wake up in the morning. And in Suzuki Roshi, we hear... Someone wants to tell a story about sashin at Zen Center one time.

[23:50]

The bell was rung. I remember the sashin, actually. The bell was rung. And it was rung at a time which was earlier than everybody expected. Substantially enough that when people discovered that it was that early, they all went back to bed. Except for our teacher, and his jisha. And then I can't remember whether or not when we actually got there, whether there was a liberal use of the kiyosaka or strong words. But in any case, the message was, when the bell rings, you get up. And I've heard it said that when the bell rings, you should be able to just stand up, or get up out of bed like that, and keep moving. So it's not hard to see where that edge is for us every morning, whether we're coming here or not.

[24:59]

But it's not the same. There is also that appreciation of the deliciousness of awaking in your own bed in that moment before the next move occurs. But that's not the same as clinging to that deliciousness. So where is that edge? How do we It's so easy to overdo it. So I've gotten fairly good at getting out of bed in the morning, turning off the alarm, getting up. And then sometimes I find myself just standing there, not knowing what to do next. Then I end up someplace. So this metaphor of home leaving, I think also, as I've been trying to say, I guess I'll just say something else.

[26:19]

I think to thoroughly leave home, there has to be a certain capacity or willingness to accept each of the little steps involved. with gratitude for everything that came before. To know it, to accept it, it's great. Whether it's unpleasant or joyous or both, the home leaving is not a detour around your resistance to discomfort. It's an opportunity for gratitude that you're alive. for having the capacity to see one thing right through to the end. So there's also arriving home.

[27:28]

If we, I'm going to skip forward here, but if we reimagine Shakyamuni that is only thinking about the intimacy and thoroughness of that departure. What must that have been like? To leave everything you knew, everybody who loved you, people who had gone to the ends of the earth to make it impossible for you to leave because they love you. How much gratitude must you find in yourself to accept that choice in your own self?

[28:33]

Last summer, sometime, last time I spoke here, I read a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh called, Please Call Me By My True Names, which to me the theme there is about arrival. Arrival as your true self, with your true name. A true home where nothing is excluded. Sometimes we think of home, Home can be a thought of, this is my world and self, and then there's something outside of it. But our true home, there's nothing outside. And so, when we start thinking about this, it gets a little bit harder to figure out where home leaving ends and home arrival begins. How are we doing on time, by the way?

[29:39]

It's a little before 11. Okay. Questions, you know, normally supposed to be started right after. Okay, okay. Well, we're getting there. So, on leading is, you know, in some way you can say, I'm saying no to this and I'm saying yes to something else. I'm saying So those two go like this. They're so close. And can we really find any separation? And yet, we experience them in different ways. In fact, We learn the most in our lives often by the part which we call the home meeting and the part which we call arrival, or vice versa.

[30:51]

That's times in our lives when we actually are noticing what's happening. Recently I stepped could take that up. And I felt a number of things when I left, when I stepped aside from that eventually. There was relief and happiness that everybody else was carrying on, and some sadness that I was no longer a part of the little community that was practicing to me. And then sort of bafflement at how quickly I forgot everything. but also a sense of, oh, this is what this opportunity really held. I can see that now, having sort of tried to engage with it over a year or so. I didn't really get that when I took it up.

[31:52]

I was mostly excited about spending more time with Sojan and getting to know people in different ways, kind of exciting a little bit, a little bit awe-inspiring, there was some anxiety, could I really do this? So I was really, you know, awake to what was going on and then as things settled into the kind of routine that that position is, so to speak, was interesting and held some learning, but at the beginning and the end of a job, of a relationship, of any variety of beginnings and ends, is where we find out something. It tells us something. But then there's also, getting back to that

[32:56]

lack of separation between these things. There's also going beyond home leaving and arrival. And it's important to remember this because we can't really find out the beginning or the end. They're so intimately connected, we can't tell where the beginning and the end of it. And logically, we kind of know that they're on different sides of the same coin, or at least we think that way. But then we go beyond that. We go beyond home leaving, arriving at home. We just are here. That's where it's all happening. It's a little like breath. Or it rhymes with death. Birth and death. Or breath. Do you know when Exhalation ends and inspiration begins.

[34:01]

Do we know when that is? Let's look at this. Let's just continue to look at this deeply. Because there's just no end to the practice of studying the self. So I'm going to stop. There's probably more here that I didn't cover, but that's probably good. And if anyone likes to ask a question or say anything, this is a good time. Yes? There's a book by Norman Fisher that I recommend. I believe it's called Coming Home. And it's about the Odyssey, using the Odyssey chapters as So I just thought I would mention it.

[35:12]

Those of you who are intrigued by this leaving home and coming home, there's this whole book about it that may give some different slides. Thank you. I think it's in the library. Ross? Thank you, Peter. I enjoyed hearing your story about raising children and how they come and find your hiding place. And I'm wondering, now that your kids have launched, and the children here in this endo, if we find your hiding place, or because it's a different kind of relationship, do you come forward and try to reveal yourself more, so we all grow together? What's happening there? You're wondering, how are we supporting each other? Yes, that's a very good question. I'm glad you asked. I don't know. We do have opportunities because we, and myself included, we fall on our faces.

[36:20]

And everybody says, oh, can I help you out? So in some sense, we can't help but reveal ourselves. And it's always been my wish that we would continue to try and meet each other at that place. Yes. Thank you, Peter. I was wondering if you you're in a male body, but I'm wondering if that's different, in the sense that in other cultures the initiation process is very important, especially for the male gender.

[37:28]

So I'm wondering if you've thought about that. Well, you're right that in traditional cultures they're fairly well defined. processes by which people transition from child to adult, both for men and women, you know, girls, boys, men, women. Well, we don't have one that we acknowledge and celebrate and hold. We do as But there is, in our culture, a period of, and I've witnessed it in my own children, a period of kind of radical risk-taking and testing and hopefully survival.

[38:34]

Dean. Thanks, Peter. What's the difference between studying the Self and either being the Self or living the Self, and what are the potential or obvious distractions that we get caught in in each of those? Oh, so studying the Self. So what is it that happens when we focus on or pay attention to what we're doing? That's what I would call studying. So pay attention to what is, basically. What's alive in us? What's in our environment? Just sort of being able to engage with it just as experience. Let's just start there.

[39:36]

So there's some ways in which we can kind of go one side or the other and get distracted, and I'm going to kind of characterize those as over-focus and under-focus. Sometimes when we try to quote-unquote study the self, we're so intent on what's happening that we're actually fixating, and where our attention is not flexible or our awareness is very narrow. And then sometimes we think of practice as letting go of distractions, but it may veer towards something I would call under-focus, which is you're not really engaged with what's before you. Thank you. Yes? Thank you very much for your talk.

[40:48]

The concept of home and its possible permutations is so interesting. And I couldn't help thinking of the old folk line, home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to let you in. And I would really like to hear what your thoughts are on how to apply that idea to what you've been talking about? Well, they have to let you in. But you don't necessarily have to go there. Well, except the saying says it's the place where, when you have to go there. Oh, when you have to go there, they have to let you in. Well, unfortunately that's true. If you have to go there, that's another interesting question right there. Yes, one more. I live a ways out from this particular temple, and I'm new to this practice place.

[41:51]

And I'm curious about someone like yourself and your home practice, and what specific rituals you find helpful at home, if there are any. I imagine that people who come to this place temple to practice lives pretty close, I'm guessing. So maybe some people have the opportunity to come to a zen do in the morning. And certainly, zazen would be an ideal ritual to have at home. But I'm curious if there are other forms or ceremonies that you practice at home, or if there's anything else I'll say something briefly about that. My practice at home is very eclectic because my wife practices in a completely different tradition, a Sufi tradition. And so while we do have this common denominator of sitting every day, our practice at home is really about sharing the space together.

[42:59]

staying in a vital relationship, both in the way we're using space and the way we meet each other, the way we talk about our activities. And so that's... I can't really point to... I mean, I think if I thought about it for a little while, I could tell you something about that, but it's very particular and eclectic. I just want to ask Sojin, is there anything you want to say? Oh, well, I like that. of the monastery in your home, in your living home. because the clock stopped.

[44:05]

So there was a lot of something like that. And so everybody was out there in the hallway and wandering around and saying, it's kind of early in. And Suzuki Roshi came over and he said, when the bell rings, you go to the other end. That's all. It has nothing to do with this is the right time or this is the wrong time. When the bell rings, you go. It had nothing to do with the time. And so everybody went down to the Zendura, and then he went into the Zendura.

[44:35]

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