Yes, sir. day four of our Sahin, closing our practice period. And I wanted to try to weave together some thoughts from yesterday and some things that just came to mind in the course of last night and this morning and also to

[01:18]

speak about some of the challenges that we're having in this particular session. But I thought I would start with perhaps an inspirational reading. So, Dharma name is Jumyo Pure Faith. Jumyo Session. Right, Junyo Seishin. I'm sorry, Junyo Seishin. Bright pearl, pure faith. Actually, Ju is pearl and Mio is bright. Pearl, bright. Yeah. And what struck my mind as I was looking around for something else, so there's a fascicle of Dogen's called One Bright Pearl. Ika no Myoju, Myoju, and, well, I think Soji knew.

[02:27]

No, I, yeah, who knew? Like, I didn't know that. Right, right, but he probably knew when he gave you that name. So I wanted to give you a small excerpt from that. because it challenges us and it speaks to some of the conundrum we experience in our lives. Once a monk asked Master Gensha. Gensha was a 9th century Zen master who was a student of Xuifeng, who was also the teacher of Yunmin, it's all connected. A monk asked Master Gensha, I've heard you teach that the entire universe is one bright pearl.

[03:33]

How should we understand that? Gensha replied, the entire universe is one bright pearl. What's there to interpret or understand? The following day, the master himself, Genshap, questioned the same monk. The entire universe is one bright pearl. What's your understanding of that? The monk replied, the entire universe is one bright pearl. What is there to understand? Not such a good answer. Never echo back to your teacher what she says to you. Anyway, Master Gensha said, I see you are struggling to get inside the demon's cave on Black Mountain.

[04:37]

...or thought has ever been caused by anything other than the bright pearl. Therefore, forward and backward steps in a demon's cave are just one bright pearl itself. I see you are struggling to get inside the demon's cave on Black Mountain. No action or thought has ever been caused by anything other than the bright pearl. Therefore, forward and backward steps in a demon's cave are just one bright pearl itself. So we always want to know if we think we are good or bad, okay, not okay,

[05:45]

What Gensha is saying is that all of the circumstances of our life, however we may see them, are part of the world. In other words, they're part of what Dogen spoke of elsewhere as the total dynamic working. It's all just the unfolding of the universe. So that's really encouraging. And it still doesn't answer our question, right? We still have this question, what do we do when we get angry or when somebody gets angry or when someone does something terrible? Not how do we interpret it as, oh, it's one bright pearl, but in a very deep way, how do we understand that as the unfolding of the universe?

[07:12]

So I want to contrast that or juxtapose, not contrast, I want to juxtapose that with what I brought up yesterday in the chapter of not always so respect for things. And I spoke about this expression in Japanese, mitsu no kafu. This is something... I think Sojin used to speak of it more frequently. Not so much lately, but as I said, I came across it in the kind of marginal notes in his, not always so. And that sort of put me on the trail of it. So to reiterate, because some of you, a lot of you weren't here yesterday, Menmitsu no Kafu,

[08:17]

is an expression. It gained circulation in our circles by way of Tatsugami Roshi, who got it from Dogen. And Tatsugami Roshi was a teacher who came over in 1970 to at the invitation of Suzuki Roshi to set up the monastic forms at Dasahara. And he was a big, gruff guy, kind of looked like a wrestler, and pretty fierce, I think. And he was Sojin Roshi's shuso teacher when Sojin was shuso. So when, and actually, he did something interesting which we're not going to do.

[09:21]

When Sojin was Shuso, he had him sit facing the altar in the zendo in Dasahara, so he couldn't see the questions. So he wanted the questions just And then questions were coming from every angle. And that was how Sojin did his shiso ceremony. And he thought that was quite wonderful, and he never got us . It was fine for him, but he didn't think that was good. That was something that was so workable for us. kind of going off on a side track. In Japan, the shuso ceremony is scripted. That the questions are kind of formulaic. And people ask these formulaic questions and the shuso gives formulaic answers.

[10:32]

And you'd think that would be kind of lifeless. But the challenge is... How do you bring those to life? There's something else beyond the words. There's something in the energy of the interaction that they're trying to bring forth in the shuso ceremony. So we'll talk more about this tomorrow to prepare for the shuso ceremony. By the way, someone's not muted. If you're not, please mute yourself. And also, I would say, gesundheit. so this menmitsu no kafu generally we think of this as the soto way or the family way of soto zen and what it means it's often translated careful considerate way of our family men means close or intimate or

[11:41]

densely woven. Laurie put me onto this last night when we were talking. Mitsu has an ambiguous meaning. The same character means cotton fabric, you know, sort of closely woven, very even. And it also means Considerate. It's the same character. I sort of dug around. Ka means family. Ku means wind or manner. So the wind of our family, the wind of our house is this careful considerate practice. It's the style of unstinking continuous detail, an attention that's soft and subtle and relational, and that's what characterizes our practice.

[12:56]

So, I suppose these two, this medmitsu no kafu, this careful, considerate way, perhaps What we're being asked is, how do we hold the bright pearl? I've always thought that our mudra, when I visualize our mudra, it's forming a cup with our hands and Sometimes. Very occasionally. Very occasionally I can feel the pearl that I'm holding in the palm of my hands.

[13:58]

Perhaps you can feel that. So in that chapter that we read yesterday, What Suki Roshi says is, this is the bodhisattva way. Our practice is to help people and to help people find out how to practice our way in each moment. Now, I think I'm reading something into this, but I'll break this that sentence into those two clauses. That our larger purpose is to help people without any or any instructions as to how to help them.

[15:07]

And the second clause is To help people, and to help people, we finally practice our way on each moment. I'm sorry, I misread that. Yes, so this is our preparation for how to help people. We have to be preparing ourselves. We have to come to... We have to recognize the bright pearl that we are. And sometimes it's hard because it's encrusted with all kinds of layers of our personal history, things we've endured, things we are enduring, and yet

[16:12]

The pearl is there to be discovered. If we're going to help people, we have to discover that in ourselves. And it might be if we discover it in ourselves and we look at the people that we're in relationship to, One way of helping them is actually to share this practice with them. And it's not the only way. But if we can do that, that's quite wonderful. So I was thinking, you know, it's very deep and quiet in here today as the fourth day. And I really appreciate that.

[17:15]

I appreciate everybody who's... ...that happened. People who are responsible in various positions and all of you. And those of you who are outside in Zoom land who are sitting with us. And I was... that we're in a territory where every seishin is different. And it's hard. You know, because when I came here, it feels like we were still kind of fine-tuning our seishin process. This is more than 35 years ago. And there were variations in the schedule, there were various things that we did.

[18:19]

I was remembering last night, what we used to do at the end of the day of Seshayin was we would really, really slowly chant the Heart Sutra. And it's like... It's like all of the energy that I had gathered in the course of the day just like fell through the floor. It was really painful for me anyway. Maybe some people loved it. But that got eliminated from the schedule, which As far as I'm concerned, it's a great relief. I love the Heart Sutra, but I don't love it at a funereal pace. And there were other things, other fine-tunings of the schedule that we did.

[19:25]

And then we kind of arrived at something. And really, that's what we did for like 25 years. And we knew how to serve the meals. We knew how to cook the food. We know how to arrange the work. Everything kind of went like clockwork. And now it doesn't. And it's an interesting challenge that we face because we're trying to regularize and we're trying to really lean into the elements of the schedule that we are familiar with and certain things of necessity have changed. You know, we have, right now, we still have these shorter days because we haven't moved to have full oryoki for three meals in the zendo.

[20:36]

And So people to have breakfast before they come and eat dinner on their own. And we're offering lunch. So we have shorter days, we have fewer spaces in the Zendo. As some of you remember, there was kind of a bell curve of session in attendance, but there was a period of a few years when we had like 56 people sitting in here. And we had like six servers inside the Zendo and a headset inside. I mean it was complicated and crowded and some people really thrived on that and some people just thought this is really too crowded. But you know it was kind of like a boom period and then

[21:37]

and then it tapered off and now we're at a place where we're keeping to for the moment we're still keeping to a maximum of 33 people in the Zendo which actually makes it hard to do all the jobs and you know we've trimmed it somewhat but and we've been experimenting with with the meals you know so I apologize for changes in the, we were planning to do Oreoki all five days, but because everything is slightly different, inevitably in the schedule there are unforeseen circumstances when you change one thing or another. So, we changed the length of the work period. which makes it really hard to rehearse this Shuso ceremony.

[22:42]

And so I think I'm sharing this because I want us to hold this idea of menmitsu no kafu in our consideration as we meet these changes. You know, it's different, there's... Also, we have a lot of newer people sitting in Saishin, which is great. So, the newer people have beginners. They... You don't have any particular idea of how this is supposed to work. But some of us who are habituated to the ways of the past, the change is hard. It's hard for me. It's hard for me. And so the question is, how can we be kind and considerate to each other in the face of these changes?

[23:52]

So in particular, because this... So yesterday we made a change in the changing room situation, which I think was not fully thought out. And I take some responsibility for that. And so I think today we're changing back, is that correct? So, you know, for all these years, we always had... everybody was changing in the community room. The priests changed in there. They needed space to hang their robes. Everybody who was coming to Segin, who were putting on robes or were changing their clothes from work to their sitting clothes, we used that space. So I'd like to see, can we continue to use that space, but with the space of being careful and considerate and modest.

[25:05]

You know, in other words, be careful about how you want dress. You know, maybe one thing we can do, you know, we could put up a couple of... I think I've got another screen upstairs. But let's see if we can find a way to use that space together in a careful and considerate way. we've asked people morning not to use the community room bathroom but we recognize we've got 33 people and if we take that out because particularly newer people don't even know where the other bathrooms are that so it's fine to use the bathroom the community room bathroom as a bathroom

[26:06]

after lunch that's open. But the reason that we not use it in the morning is out of consideration for the cooks and out of consideration and care about COVID precautions as it's still here among us. And so please bear with that. And I think Now, Ross is now sitting with us today, is that correct? Yes. That's you there, right? Yep. Did anyone ask about using your bathroom? No, I just assumed that people would. I brought the key down this morning as I was in, so please avail my apartment for... Do you want to change the road in touch? and then the bathroom and the rest area.

[27:08]

Thank you. So Ross's apartment is on the ground floor in the back right next to the Tokusan hut and please feel free to use it and say that's Ross's generosity, that's an expression of menmitsu no kafu. And of course you're welcome to use Certainly welcome to use our bathroom, which is upstairs, up the back stairs and diagonally across. But anyway, we're not confined to one bathroom. So we're trying to find a way to take care of ourselves in the midst of changing circumstances and ones that are continuously Suzuki Roshi says, this is what we call the bodhisattva way.

[28:16]

Our practice is to help people. And to help people, we find out how to practice our way on each moment. So, I'm hesitant here because I don't want to start another talk. But I want to give you three lines. that apply, not just here, but apply more broadly. Maybe in an upcoming talk I will go into this in depth, but for me, I've been drawn for many, many years to a fascicle of Dogen's called Bodhisatta Shishoko, which is the Bodhisattvas Four, Embracing Dharmas. And actually I wrote a book just called The Bodhisattvas Embrace, which has a translation and sort of the introductory essay in this book is on the practice of these four embracing dharmas.

[29:36]

So just without going into a lot of detail, The four embracing dharmas are generosity, or dhana, kind speech, beneficial action, and what translates as identity action, which is kind of a bit obscure. But what it really means is cooperation, is acting together, is being side by side in an activity. But I wanted to read you something from my commentary. This is on Dana, but it's also on beneficial action.

[30:39]

So one thing Dogen says is that these four these four dharmas giving beneficial speech, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action, each one of them includes all the others. So there's a book that's been very important to me over the years. I know that my dharma sister, Maile Scott, was also really fond of this book. It's a book called The Gift by Lewis Hyde. Anyone familiar with that? Really, it's a spiritual, psychoanalytic, anthropological meditation on giving, on gifts. So Lewis Hyde writes, he describes dinner. cheap restaurant, a local restaurant in the south of France.

[31:44]

The patrons sit at a communal table and each finds before his plate a modest bottle of wine. Before the meal begins, pour wine not into his own glass but into his neighbors and his neighbor will return the gesture. filling the first person's empty glass. In an economic sense, nothing has happened. No one has any more than they did to begin with. But society has appeared where there was none before. This is very familiar if you have some experience of Japanese culture. One person always pours the tea or the sake for another and then they pass the pot or the bottle and that action is reciprocal.

[32:52]

And that is about the creation of relationships. Careful and considerate knitting together of our activities to create or maybe to express the one bright pearl. So when you think about how to help people, I encourage you to go to read this classical. You can find it in, it's in Moon and a Dew Drop. You'll find this translation, that I worked on with Shoaku Okamura, it's easy to find online. The translations are all good, but it really, these are instructions for how to live. What are our guiding principles?

[33:57]

What values do we proceed in our relationship with? Generosity, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action or cooperation. This is how we bring forth and we do it carefully and considerately. And let's take care of ourselves today, tomorrow, but it doesn't end with Sashin. constantly wondering at the pearl of our life and helping each other to bring it forth. So I'm going to end there. We have some time for questions.

[35:01]

And Joe, are you going to pass the microphone? And you can raise your hands out there in Zoom land if you have something to share. Use a bunch of hands. Just a quick question. I was wondering if you could post these titles for us. Sure. I'll send them out on the community list. Good morning. Good morning. You know, sitting these days in this compressed schedule, and it's compressed because we don't have many rest breaks.

[36:07]

We have like one rest break. Yeah. The flip side of the struggle is I kind of see it as the whole sashim is kind of zazen sitting, where we're making small adjustments to the lunch. And to me, it hasn't really been disrupted. I think it's been beautiful how we've adapted. over the floor. I just wanted to say that. I'm grateful for that. Thank you. Well, I appreciate everyone's effort. And I think one thing that I do really like about this schedule is that we have a longer block of sitting in the morning and a longer block of sitting in the afternoon of zazen. And so that's conducive to kind of a deep feeling. Yeah.

[37:07]

Thank you. Cooperation seems like shared intention or shared practice. And stepping outside the gate, there's even, you know, the term for it of non-cooperation with what might be considered harm or . And you have a long activist background with that. So since we've been exploring the nuances of language as, if you will, beyond language, how do you include non-cooperation in that context as cooperation with all beings?

[38:28]

Well, first of all, in order to practice cooperation, as far as I'm concerned, it's much better not to do it alone. So there has to be some cooperation in the non-cooperation. Otherwise, it's kind of lone ranger, right? And I'm not much interested in that. What am I hearing? You know? Oh, it's out there. Okay. It sounded like the room was... um... asthmatically. We have to decide. We have to make decisions. That's why I juxtaposed.

[39:39]

these things, Menmitsu no Kafu and One Bright Pearl, and you can juxtapose the four methods of, the four methods of guidance. These are not direct inspiration. They're just guidelines and suggestions, and you still have to decide Even though there is nothing other than one bright pearl, there are forward and backward in the demon's cave. And when you enter the demon's cave, you are placing yourself in a certain peril. Peril and pearl. The pearl is in peril. But it's not, because it's there all the time. It just occurred to me that was a very Sojin-ish expression.

[40:49]

Bravo. So you're still... You still have to be... You still have to decide what is going to help people. But we don't act on alone. And also, we need our friends. We need our friends, our teachers. We need the voices of those who are younger than us to help us see what is in fact a beneficial direction. We don't decide that just for ourselves. But each of us, I've been saying many times lately, each of us has to take complete responsibility for the whole world, but we don't do it alone.

[41:53]

Hannah has her hand here. Bozan, can you hear me yet? I'm so touched by your talk. And I'm thinking the instruction I take is to see everyone as one bright pearl. It's so much more than the instruction to see everybody as Buddha, you know, which is kind of good. But I like the one bright pearl. I'm still carrying in my heart that man who fell. was very sick or had died, you know, to to see him as one bright pearl. I had a serious tooth difficulty yesterday and was on the heart and saw I seemed a little dangerous, possibly a little not controlled in his behavior toward others.

[43:08]

And found a place to sit that wouldn't maybe provoke him, that I was moving too far away or whatever. But what would that be if I felt that toward him, one bright pearl? Just questioning. I'll check it out, of course, in future trips. But not that you put yourself in danger, but that you have an attitude, a feeling toward others in the world. Well, Master Gensha says, forward and backward steps in Devon's cave are just one bright pearl itself. So, you know, you could move forward and you could move backward, but all of that is just the manifestation

[44:15]

you could say one bright pearl, or you could say a total dynamic working. And we also have to be careful. We have to find just the right distance and relationship to the demon. You know, and maybe this person was a demon, maybe I don't have any idea, but if clearly He was a demon in your mind, right? For that, in that moment. And where there were demonists, demonistic qualities that he was expressing. And you kept, you kept a safe distance, but not a provocative distance. So we're always trying to find this, the right distance. And we don't know. But to think of it all, not just this person, reality as one bright pearl, I think that's what's being taught here.

[45:28]

Thank you. How are you? How's your tooth? It's a big space. Bye-bye. Uh-huh. Trying to figure out how to do soft food. Uh-huh. It's a drag. I've had this happen. Blender. Blender helps. Yeah, yeah. Good. Hands here. Joel. Hi, thank you. Beautiful. I have something with the words... Hold the microphone a little closer in your mouth. Yeah, I'm struggling with the words like one bright pearl. I love it. And it's perfect for Sue. But it's very positive.

[46:34]

And great dynamic working. For me, I'm more comfortable with because not everything that manifests is wholesome, that comes out of this universe of great dynamic working. And what Hannah said actually really helped. I was thinking, what Bright Pearl is pointing to is what we had this little discussion on the Lister and the expression assume good intentions, assume good intentions arose. And I thought that was wonderful. Maybe that's the one bright pearl in some way. But I have that struggle. Well, I think the challenging thing is, yes, you have that struggle. The challenging thing is that struggle is also one bright pearl.

[47:41]

Yeah. And it's something that is... He's pointing to something, a way of looking that is beyond wholesome and unwholesome. Right, and it's the thing itself, which is indeed what... But the thing itself manifests as... Well, the great dynamic working of... It's like the Big Bang, it is tremendously violent and it's certainly the great dynamic working and one bright pearl. And so I struggle with it. Yeah, well the struggle is even if everything and everyone is one bright pearl, you, Joel, still have to figure out your relationship to it. to each activity, to each being, to each moment.

[48:45]

That doesn't take away from its pearlness, but it's all about how we act in relation to what's happening around us. But what it is saying, I think, is can we find a quantum of respect and appreciation for whatever circumstance whatever is manifest by ourselves or others that's that's hard that's not going to be easy exactly what was not going on thank you so much yeah uh sister In Hannah's question and your response, what came up for me was, you know, I think of our practice as one in which we learn to respond from the inside out, or, you know, that changes or shifts is our response comes from that place inside.

[50:05]

So, like, even when there's danger, or we need someone who may be off, you know I had an uncle who was and when he was manic people were terrified of him but actually we knew him as a really loving kind gentle person and so it seems like it's important and anybody out there who's dangerous or off is somebody's So it seems like it's important to keep that in mind. I think that's right. To take that space that we take in Zazen on the inside and see what the response may be. Yeah, I think that's right. Not to reduce a person to

[51:08]

a set of behaviors that you have a fixed idea about, but to actually see it's hard. This is a whole person, and if I respond to this person in an honest and kind way, maybe there's something else that can transpire between us. Talked about in the classes, it's like just not adding something extra to what is there. It just seems like that's what we keep coming back to in our practice. Just this. Right. So, I mean, what that amounts to, I think, for me, one way of expressing it is just, like, a person in a box. Don't reduce a person to a diagnosis. You know, to actually... Particularly if it's someone that we care about.

[52:16]

And, you know, you knew your uncle, you knew who he was in some essential way. And at the same time, taking care of ourselves. Right, yes. If we're in danger, if we're meeting danger, we have to be naive. Right, right. But I think, yeah, it's to see, can we see the fundamental humanness in everyone, even people who do terrible things? I had a dream once, and this dream I was having a conversation with Ronald Reagan, who was already kind of pretty deeply into his dementia.

[53:23]

And in this dream, I just felt a lot of compassion. We were sitting very close to each other. A living person. You know, not a political ogre at that moment. You know, which doesn't mean I would support his policies, but it was just, oh, this is a suffering person who is a full life. I've had a very encouraging dream. Thank you. Maybe there's time for one more, if there is. Karen got the last question.

[54:25]

Thank you, Khozan, everyone. The image that has been coming to me during this talk is one maybe most of us are familiar with. I heard it from Sojin, but it comes from somewhere that the between heaven and hell that in hell we're sitting at a banquet table full of wonderful foods but our chopsticks are too long to get the food into our mouth that's hell and heaven is the same scenario but we're feeding each other so i like this very much and that my my question is about um but you've already sort of addressed it, I just wanted to get the image in the room, is the balance between identity action and self-independence, standing up and being responsible. I'm not sure I understand what the distinction is or what the question is in that.

[55:26]

Just that if we are committed to cooperation and beneficial action, Where's the responsibility? Where's the independence? Where's the standing on? In order to cooperate, you have to be able to stand on your own feet. You have to be able to walk over to someone and walk with them or act with them side by side. You have to be able to do that as an individual. And then there's something that happens between you that is certainly greater than the sum of two individual actions. There's something new and creative that is a cooperation or a collaboration which is more than two individuals.

[56:31]

close as I can get. That's good. Okay. Thank you all very much. Let's continue to sit for today. And we've got more session to do. Thank you out there. Please take care.

[56:54]

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