I vow to taste the truth of the Tadāgata's words. Good morning. It really seemed like it took a long time for me to sit down today. I don't know. For some reason, as I was doing my vows, I was thinking of it. And I went to an interfaith breakfast the other day, and there was a rabbi from Alameda who was referring to himself as the Rodney Dangerfield of the rabbinate. As I was doing my vows, I was pondering, is that how I want to think about myself? And I didn't come to any conclusion. But then I was just sitting here, you know, getting up in the seat, and I said, Rodney Dangerfield didn't have all these robes.

[01:05]

It's like, can you even respect yourself, much less get respect from somebody else? Anyhow. be that as it may. Today we are having a one-day sitting which is the close of our month-long aspects of practice. So about 30 of us are sitting all day and I'm happy to see others of you who have come for Zazen and the lecture. For the month we've been studying the territory of the Bodhisattva precepts with the theme in mind of living the Bodhisattva precepts. The precepts, as you know, are moral teachings. They're also just natural ways to live. But their source

[02:08]

at least in the language of the precepts, their source seems to be as a tool for avoiding various kinds of hazards. Hazards in our relationships with people, hazards in our relationship to ourself, hazards in our practice. But that's only one side. And it's interesting that no matter what we do, no matter how we set out to talk about them, we have to reckon with this side of the precepts that seems to be a matter of rules or guidelines for conduct. And yet, that's really, that's not the point. The point is liberation.

[03:11]

The point is being free. The point is being awake. And so I'm going to try today to touch on that other side, the side of liberation, the side of joy, the side of happiness, and come at it from different angles as an expression of our natural life of precepts. In our reader, that we put together for this. There are a couple of talks by Suzuki Roshi. And he's always bringing that forth. That's at the heart of his teaching. And I realized, I was looking through, last year when we had Aspects of Practice, we studied essays of Suzuki Roshi from Not Always So.

[04:20]

And looking back, I had penciled in note. So exactly a year ago, on November 18th, in 2005, I talked about this essay of his in the book, Be Kind With Yourself. And it's interesting because that's kind of where I found myself going this week in preparation for this talk. And I thought, well, there's some continuity here. And I also reflected, why is that? And perhaps it's because I'm sending myself a message. I really think that's probably at the heart of it. Because even though I am given to be somewhat loud, somewhat boisterous, and have a predilection for bad jokes, I also can take things very seriously and have to reckon with the side of myself that is judging

[05:38]

first of all me and then of course once you judge yourself then lo and behold you find yourself judging others and judging other having opinions about people having opinions about things and you lose this notion of being kind to yourself so How do we want to live these precepts? There's an important principle right in the middle of one of the texts for Dogen that we had also in our reader where Dogen says, in this life, save this body which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were enlightened, They were the same as we.

[06:41]

Enlightened people today are exactly as those of old." And then he goes on a little later and says, you will be enlightened. If you follow, if you live this life of vow, you will be as the Buddhas of old. So this is a word of, these are words of great encouragement. But in this life, save the body, which is the fruit of many lives. So we have to take care of this body, the one that lives within the boundaries of this circle of skin, muscle and bones that I call myself. There's also the body of the Sangha that fills the room, and its skin is this frame of wood and plaster and glass.

[07:48]

And there's the body of the entire world, which is the fruit of many lives and many generations. We have what we call the pure precepts in our tradition. The way we chant them here is something like avoid all evil, do all good, save the many beings, save all sentient beings. It's interesting in the translation in Reb Anderson's book which is on precepts, which he takes from Soto liturgy. The language is embrace and sustain. So the first precept, instead of avoid all evil, is embrace and sustain forms and ceremonies.

[08:54]

which I had some trouble with when I first heard it. But I realized that that's the precepts, that's the refrain from side of the precepts, that's the avoid evil side. So it's embrace and sustain forms and ceremonies, embrace and sustain all good, embrace and sustain all beings. So we have these two sides. In virtually every talk that we've had here, I remember Lori talking about, I can't actually remember what she was referring to, but she was talking about, well, we have the two this. Sojin, in one of the Monday morning talks, Sojin Roshi was saying, well the precepts are our bookends. It's this and this. So we have this mind that wants to divide things in two.

[09:58]

It's a kind of unavoidable habit of our intellect to divide in two. It's whether we want to or not. So we have the refrain from side and we have the do side. Or we have the relative and we have the absolute. We were talking The poet Ryokan came up last week and I found a poem of his. It's kind of a, it's sort of a list poem, which is very modern, modern poetry form that some of my poetry teachers taught me. This poem of Ryokan says, the I Ching states happiness lies in the proper blend of hot, cold, good, bad, black, white, beautiful, ugly,

[11:08]

large, small, wisdom, foolishness, long, short, brightness, darkness, high, low, partial, whole, relaxation, quickness, increase, decrease, purity, filth, slow, fast. very modern seeming poem to me, lies in the proper blend of these seeming dualities. So we have to reckon with this habit of mind. I remember a philosophy class that I had in college where the teacher was presenting us with a kind of philosophical koan, which is, there are two kinds of people in the world.

[12:24]

Those who divide things in two, and those who don't. So, you know, it's like, your mind gets stuck on that. I like that there's two kinds of people in the world, those who divide things in two and those who don't. But it's not enough. Dividing things in two is just a habit, it's a function of mind, but it's not a function of how we can live. You know, on the altar here, We have, who's where, I'm trying to see, on the right side is Manjusri. Is that right? Not carrying his customary sword.

[13:27]

So Manjusri usually carries a sort of discriminating wisdom. So he's separating what is useful from what it is not useful from what is what enables us to move towards liberation from what cutting through the fetters that hold us back. But this is not necessarily the active principle even though we see it a guy you know this kind of male archetype holding the sword that's not really that's not the active principle. The active principle is in Avalokiteshvara who moves towards all beings. So the active principle is in moving towards and there's some in some traditions that's actually seen as as a feminine attribute.

[14:35]

not sure about getting into the hazards of gendering these various qualities, but it's moving towards, it's like in the Mettā Sutta, just as a mother watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind does one suffuse love over the entire world. This is the active principle. this principle of my Dharma sisters, this kind of adage of my Dharma sister, Meili Scott. I've been thinking of this phrase of hers that it's not hers, she doesn't own it, but it seems to have become associated with her. And it's two words, devotedly do. And I'm not, do you know where that comes from, Andrea?

[15:38]

Do you, Soji? But it's associated with her and I dug around and tried to find her connection to it, but this is how she lived her life, devotedly do. She passed away about five years ago and was really a teacher for many of us here and I still have a connection with her. the group that she led in Arcata, California. But this thing, devotedly do, which is an expression of, I mean, devotion is just, means in the dictionary dedicate by vow. So, devotedly do means using your vow as the foundation or the stepping stone.

[16:43]

You constantly move forward in the world. And you move forward in, I think, with an attitude of joy. We don't talk about that a lot here. This is very serious. You're all looking so serious, you know. It's like joy and happiness of practice. If you read Suzuki Roshi, he's always talking about happiness. You know, liberation means happiness. When you see, some of us have met, I think, people that we would consider realized beings, whether they are, they're not necessarily, they're certainly not confined to the Buddhist world. You just meet them. You meet them, you might encounter them in a drugstore or in a church or in an auto repair shop, anywhere.

[17:44]

in a classroom and often what you find is that these beings have a quality of lightness and that quality of lightness is amazingly contagious. You catch it from them at least while you're in their presence and you don't even notice that they are necessarily doing something, they may not even notice that they're doing something because their lightness is a freedom from self-centeredness or self-concern. I've seen this, I've seen it in dharma teachers. My strong sense from reading Suzuki Roshi and from knowing his students is that he had a bad case of this and that when you were around him, you felt joyous, you felt free, you felt that that was a possible state for you to be in.

[19:08]

And in that state, there is no breaking of the presets. You could be, to go back to some of what, if you read these totally free Chinese and Japanese poets, I'm thinking about Ross's talk, they're always going out and getting drunk. They're just expressing their freedom. and sharing it in absolutely as widely as they can. Now that's not a way that I would recommend necessarily sharing it, but when you're around, some of you, who was in Japan recently? And did you get that feeling when you were around Hoitsu, Suzuki?

[20:10]

Yeah, it's an amazing thing. And I have to say, I remember being, I think it was in 1988, when Sojin, and Reb, and Joshua Kwong, and Les K were doing Zuisei at Sojiji. And Lori and I, we were on our honeymoon. This was our idea of our honeymoon event. We're going to go watch them do Zuisei. But actually, it was really fun. But it was the first time I had seen Sojin in Hoichi's presence and subsequently, that's happened quite a bit, but I felt, oh, this is a different personality when you were around him. You know, you were much freer. At least that's the way it seemed to me. So these beings have this joy.

[21:17]

And so they move in the world in this sense of devotedly do. In this fascicle of Dogen's Shoji, Birth and Death, he says, just throw yourself into the house of Buddha. Just throw yourself into the house of Buddha. It's actually It's nice to be in that house. It's nice to be in this house when we're sitting together every morning or every afternoon. We sit together for Sesshin. Sometimes it's hard. Our knees hurt. Our body hurts. We bring the residue of our days with us. But if we just sit and continue, we realize and we really

[22:21]

After a while it sinks in, oh, we're in the house of Buddha and we can relax. And then we have to move out into the world. We carry that with us, we carry that sense of relaxation we carry, even if we don't carry that sense of relaxation, we carry the sense that it is available. We carry this sense of composure and balance. Suzuki Roshi writes, when we find the joy of our life in our composure. We don't know what it is. We don't understand anything.

[23:25]

Then our mind is very great, very wide. Our mind is open to everything, so it is big enough to know before we know something. We are grateful even before we have something. Even before we attain enlightenment, we are happy to practice our way. So this is living in accord with the precepts. I was thinking about, there are a number of people, there's a little grouping of them over here who were out in Stockton working for a candidate, Jerry McNerney, in the 11th Congressional District. And they created a kind of election session and disclaimer, without any connection to Berkley Zen Center Ubu's Peace Fellowship.

[24:30]

I think Lori had to do that last week also. We don't want the IRS on our case. I was out there for a day and a half and they created a zendo and sat in the morning and sat in the evening and ate good food and created this wonderful sense of fellowship. And then for a chunk of the day, went out in the streets and walked these precincts in Stockton, knocking on doors. For some of these folks, I feel like for Melody and Stan and maybe Ko and Ed Hertzog, that was not necessarily a very hard thing to do. For some people like myself, it was not an easy thing to do. And I noticed that I had to keep finding my composure.

[25:36]

uh, before knocking on a- knocking on a door is not something I do every day, uh, especially not knowing who's on the other side of that door. Uh, but I noticed that in the course of even just the two days, it got increasingly easier. Uh, and what I found myself doing, uh, I wanted to, engage with people who were at the door in a warm and friendly way. And to the extent that there was a discussion to be had about our political beliefs, to be able to do that without getting entangled in some kind of challenging exchange, but also to have it be somewhat free and interesting. So I had to collect my, I would collect myself from door to door. You know, and it was, it actually, the weather was really nice out there and you're just walking through, I was walking through this kind of working class residential neighborhood.

[26:43]

And the feeling became very sweet. And that conditioned, I think, the contacts that I had with people. I had some really good teachers. To go walk these precincts with Melody and Ed was really instructive. Because they just met everybody, it felt like they were really meeting each person as Buddha. When you meet each person as Buddha, you know, you can have an enlightenment experience. and in some cases you can help them have an enlightenment experience. So you lose track of who's the Bodhisattva. Are you the Bodhisattva or is this the Bodhisattva answering the door or is this a dialogue between two Bodhisattvas who have concern about the state of the world. So how do we keep

[27:52]

this sense of joy and composure and freedom. I come back to the teaching of Maile Scott. She did her own version of or revision of the Metta Sutta or a version of a Metta prayer and we chanted here on Wednesday afternoon. Is that right? and I've been using it, I work out, there's a meditation group that I help with at the Federal Women's Prison in Dublin, California, and I go out there once or twice a month, and Bob Rosenbaum also goes out there, and a couple of other women from the Vipassana tradition, but we do a little service when I'm there, and we chant this Metta prayer of Meles, And I came on these lines as I was thinking about this talk.

[28:59]

I was out there on Thursday. And it's an amazing thing, right there, to find composure in the midst of a prison. There are very few places where it's quiet. There are very few places where it's safe. There are very few places where you can sit down in a circle and just be silent And then you can emerge from that silence and speak about your experience, not just the experience of your meditation, but speak about the experience of your week or what's going on in your room or dormitory or in the prison environment. These are not kinds of reflective activities that are very available. So we chant this metta prayer and in the middle of this metta prayer are these lines.

[30:05]

May I be attentive and gentle towards my own discomfort and suffering. May I be attentive and grateful for my own joy and well-being. May I move towards others freely and with openness May I receive others with sympathy and understanding. May I move towards the suffering of others with peaceful and attentive confidence. May I recall the Bodhisattva of compassion, her 1,000 hands, her instant readiness for action, each hand with an eye in it, the instinctive knowing what to do. This is just what we do naturally. I think a month ago, Ron, you talked about that koan, right? The koan of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

[31:08]

The question, what does the Bodhisattva of Compassion do with her thousand hands and eyes? the response the student gives, the teacher asks the student, the student responds, it's like reaching around for a pillow in the middle of the night. And then there's a further dialogue which Ron talked about, but I often think about that verse. When you reach around for a pillow in the middle of the night, your critical mind is never engaged. This is not a matter of right or wrong. Does anyone ever think when they're adjusting their pillow in the middle of the night, do I deserve my neck to be comfortable? I don't think so. This is just naturally doing. This is just naturally setting ourselves at ease.

[32:13]

At that point, even the vow has disappeared. There is no self. There's just creating ease. Now, if we can do that, that's really good. If we're even an inch short of that, then we need this vow. We need the Bodhisattva vow. The Bodhisattva vowed to save all beings, beginning, as the Sixth Ancestor said, saving all the sentient beings of our own minds, but not stopping there because we don't even know what our mind is. Our mind is not limited by this crown of bone. So this is our vow to save all sentient beings.

[33:17]

And we're willing to fail. That's the other part. Because we don't know what's gonna work. So devotedly do does not mean necessarily succeed. It just means do what you think is the best and most important thing to do. Use your best judgment and do that. We do this irrespective of result. That's a whole long discussion. I'm going to sort of close leaving Leaving this point, I remembered a dialogue that I had been part of with a wonderful man, Kenneth Fernando, who was the Episcopal Bishop of Sri Lanka for a time.

[34:20]

And we had this dialogue, some of which got printed, and he wrote, it's not possible to participate in an activity so difficult and dangerous as peacemaking unless one is convinced that one is on the side that will win ultimately. Peace will come in every situation." And when I heard that my ears perked up and that's not our understanding We don't know. Our teachers encourage us to have no gaining idea, to practice good, to devotedly do without an attachment to an outcome. Our teachers propose a kind of, in this devotedly do, I would say a kind of radical hopelessness, which is not to say that you don't give a shit, or you don't care,

[35:24]

or it's okay with you if things, if people suffer. It's just you're moving in the direction of liberation from suffering and you don't ever, there is no instruction book, there's no map, there's no way to know if what you're doing actually is going to lead to unquestionably to a increase or decrease in suffering. And yet you know what can put people at ease. If someone is hungry, you feed them. If someone is ill, you heal them. If someone is homeless, you offer them shelter. If someone wants a word of encouragement, you give them that. If a baby is crying, you give them what they need. When we're crying, you give the person you're with what they need.

[36:27]

So I think I'm going to stop there and leave little time for conversation. So thank you. Elizabeth? Thank you. I thank you very much for coming at this angle of joy. It's good. I'm in a time of intense grief. And any time that I can get a little bit of a different feeling of it in the intense grief, I'm very appreciative of it. I've been thinking about Maile Scott. I was thinking about her a lot this morning. And I have a question about her and about her legacy and about the next reach of Pillow.

[37:35]

And so she came here and she practiced and she became this incredibly powerful figure. People really appreciated her. That's what I hear all the time. She's been gone for five years, and she's been gone even longer than that because she left here and went up to Arcata. And I have to say, I wish that I feel a gap somehow of this very powerful woman's voice. Because I've been here five years, and it wasn't really I'm just feeling something that way. So my question is, oh, and I think that a lot of the voices here are bringing the next Reach Around the Pillow, and I'm excited about the Women's Council for that. And I really am glad to at least have had some kind of exposure to Grace Shearson, who was a Manly student.

[38:48]

Not really. They had a relationship at least. They were friends. So she's doing a reach around that speaks to me of what this knurling is. My question about Marilyn was, was she the one who was also responsible for getting a more feminine figure on the altar? No. Who was that? It was the community. Everybody just one day said we needed No, we talked about it for two years. Somebody else can answer this. I don't think there was a person who led it. I really think it was the community and it got worked through in various ways and various different things were tried or considered. I don't know, does someone remember better than me?

[39:50]

I really don't, I can't remember. I do remember these things. I can't remember that there was one person who led it. So it sounds very miraculous. Having the, no it wasn't miraculous. Getting the Prajnaparamita. It was Rebecca Baker. Rebecca Baker? Yeah, she made it. But this was in the context of a long discussion in the Sangha about the fact that there was little feminine representation of our Buddhist ancestry. Right, so like the joy of intimacy. Because I think this joy comes from intimacy. And I think the people like Huitzu and Sojin and Suzuki Roshi have gotten this joy of intimacy that they put up with Mother Nature.

[41:03]

And I'm thinking it's maybe something more feminine is what I need. really don't consider the joy of intimacy as having gender. I mean you may be wishing for that and that may be exactly what you need to put you at ease, but even Guan Yin is a highly ambiguously gendered figure. So each of us needs what we need to wake up. We need to meet who we need to wake us up. But I think it's really important not to have, not to decide what it is I think I need that's going to wake me up.

[42:08]

Because I don't know what form that's going to be in. Yeah, sure. Maybe one more. Andrea? I have a couple of comments. One is Elizabeth's comments about Meili's accents brought up to me, which is, just sitting in this room, I feel the practice of so many people who were influenced by her and manifest their own expression of her practice and their practice. Dan and Melody, and making the election decision happen. I felt her very alive in that action. There are several people in this room who are leaders in this saga who felt very close to me, and we all saw, and I feel her presence in that practice, and I'm really grateful for that. I continue to feel her alive in her years of practice with us. The other comment I wanted to make is, as you're talking, Alan, I was reflecting on the first time I heard her use

[43:12]

phrase devotedly do, it was in a talk that she gave to a base group, a socially engaged Dharma group on the precepts. And it was her translation of the third precept, to live and be lived for the good of all beings. And that had enormous resonance for me, who was looking for some translation of Buddhist teaching into the socially engaged world. For me it encapsulates it. Right, and that's, well, it's a confirmation for me that that was the context for that. And I just think about her work in the prisons, her work sitting out at the Concord Naval Weapon Station, various, so many different things that are, that continue to push me.

[44:26]

And this is how we should push each other. And it's interesting, I think Elizabeth used the word incredibly powerful, and I thought, well, also credibly powerful. Each of us needs to be credibly powerful. We need to be able to see ourselves as Buddha, to be awake, and practice as devotedly and strongly as we can. So maybe that's a good, oh, melody? That last word. And so I just wanted to say that I actually came here because I heard of Mali. Originally, I had been a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, and in the First Gulf War, I heard of a priest who was league-leading at bar stations. And as soon as I came here, I realized that this is a place that fosters women's leadership, not only here but also at Green Gulch and at the city center, and that Mel is a teacher who will ordain women.

[45:51]

And sadly, both of them have died. But I feel that having the women's sittings make me glad, having Grace and all of the members here, so many women leading, is a blessing. function of our Abbots leadership. I don't pick Nellie out from the Abbots group here that is welcoming to all types of people. And that's why Nell is my teacher. And I agree so much with Nell passing on to you in the future. and welcoming to women. And at the same time, I'm dedicated to fostering women's leadership, you know, and having onion on our altar, and remembering Rebecca, talking always about, a lot about women, and studying women's art and Judaism.

[46:55]

It's all one fabric, you know, to me. Not as though Mandy was here sort of battling for this. She fostered it and was fostered here. Yeah, she emerged from what was here and hopefully that needs to continue in all of its manifestations. So I hope we'll have an opportunity to do that and to remember all the marvelous seen and unseen beings who bring us to our practice. Thank you.

[47:34]

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