I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning. Today our speaker is Raúl Moncayo, as most of you know. He's a psychologist and a long-time practitioner of Zen at the Berkley Zen Center. And please enjoy his lecture. I hope. Well, good morning. Today I want to talk about, there's kind of three themes that I want to talk about and intertwine in some way, perhaps. And you know the Buddha Dharma is not flat, but it's not one-dimensional. It's like life is rich with many layers and many dimensions. So this talk is kind of like that, you know, it has... I want to talk about Dogen's Vendova, as seen and taught by Uchiyama Roshi, who wrote this commentary on the Vendova, which is called The Wholehearted Way.

[01:21]

I want to thank my friend Ann there who pointed the book to me and I've enjoyed reading it thoroughly. And I think there are people in our sangha also who study with his student Okamura, Shogaku Okamura, who's been here and talked to us as well. And he's a wonderful teacher. I recommend this book. So that's one theme. The other theme is just my life as it is right now. And then the third theme is new beginnings. Today is Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year, which is a time for new beginnings. for those of you who this may be meaningful in some way, or independently from Judaism, you may be going through a cycle and starting with new beginnings, then Happy New Year to you.

[02:38]

We practice beginner's mind, so we're constantly going back to the beginning, So, moment to moment, not just day-to-day or week-to-week or month-to-month or year-to-year, but moment to moment, every moment returning to the beginning. But there are also different cycles that are meaningful for us. And this is also the beginning of the fall, when the trees begin to let go of their leaves and prepare to return to their to their source and then begin the process of renewal and so on. So it's kind of cyclical. So that's another meaning of beginnings. text of Dogen called Vendoa is one of the three main texts.

[03:49]

Dogen is the founder of the Soto school in Japan. There's a picture of him right there. And we have in our liturgy book that we chant every day We have the Genja Koan and the Fukan Sasenji, which together with the Bindoa are sort of the most accessible texts of Dogon. And the ones that are used mostly, we don't use the Bindoa so much, we use the other two, because the Fukan Sasenji is the first one he wrote when he came back from China, sort of how to, his instructions on how to do Zazen, which is our basic practice. And then again, the Koan, which is, you know, how to live the practice in everyday life. And the Bindoa is sort of his approach to Buddhism, his own understanding of Sazen and of Buddhism.

[04:50]

And he didn't write until, well, he wrote the Fugensang for Zen, he didn't write the Bindoa until he had his first student. That was like for five years. after his return from China and he spent five years sort of wandering as a selfless cloud practicing Sazen on his own. And then the Bendoa is a series of, is thought to be, a series of dialogues and questions and answers with Ejo, who was his first student. And actually the questions that are asked are quite relevant to nowadays. Some are kind of perhaps medieval but most of them are kind of eternal and universal, quite interesting. So this practice of practicing kind of as a selfless cloud is something that Uchiyama Roshi makes a big point of how to approach Zazen and how to approach the practice of Buddhism.

[06:08]

in that he always emphasized just sitting, like Suzuki Roshi. So it's interesting to see how similar the teaching and the understanding of Zen is in some teachers of the Soto school in Japan. And sort of discouraging trying to advertise Sazen and trying to, you know, become well known and kind of doing the networking, knowing influential people, you know, trying to build big temples, trying to wear fancy robes. trying to write bestseller books, you know, trying to go on TV and the media and to spread Buddhism that way. He kind of discourages that as kind of Dogen's way that precisely that's what Dogen was trying not to do when he came back from China. and that the Dharma has, since it's basically the universe itself, though it has a way of sprouting forth and springing forth according to when the conditions are ripe.

[07:18]

So we have to kind of have faith and trust in that rather than to try to kind of fabricate a promotion of Buddhism or Zazen that's kind of man-made, made up. So he makes a big distinction between something that's fabricated and it's man-made and kind of the stepladder zazen and what he calls the supreme way of awakening which is Dogen's understanding of Buddhism that corresponds with the natural way of the universe. Since the Buddha has the Do which is the way in it. So in a way that's very similar to Mel, you know, the way Mel practiced Zazen in the sense that, you know, he just wanted to practice with all of us and practice Zazen and he wasn't too interested in promoting himself.

[08:29]

promoting Buddhism in that kind of way or, you know, writing bestseller books or something like that. There's plenty of those actually in the marketplace now. So, and that's also kind of the way I've practiced in my professional life as a psychologist and as a psychoanalyst in that I just wanted to do what I did and practice what I practiced. And if this was worthy and helpful to people, then that's all you need to worry about. And the rest follows. And I remember that in my youth, in my youth, I mean, I'm 51.

[09:37]

And I came to Perkins Center when I was 23. So it's been, I guess I've lived here the longest I've lived anywhere. So this is home in more than one way. And so during my youth, I have friends who were kind of very real, very idealistic. But a lot of them felt they had to kind of join the status quo, or what their profession was at that moment, in order to make a living and have a livelihood. And I was always kind of stubborn, you know, I didn't want to do that. And felt like I didn't have to worry about, you know, taking people out to lunch, you know, and going to professional gatherings and knowing influential people, you know, and that kind of thing.

[10:41]

But I never did have a lot of money either. I'm not doing so bad now, but I never was concerned with making money. And I felt I just needed to do what I needed to do, and the money is sort of a byproduct. It's not something you pursue. It's sort of you're paid for your effort. It's like the food that we receive may our practice be worthy and then we're fed. But it takes a long time. You just plant deep roots until they sprout. It takes a long time, and so you have to be willing to kind of see, stay, stay the course for the, or to use that term that Bush used so much, you know. I just realized that after I said it.

[11:43]

I take it back. So just, you know, be there for the long haul. and go through whatever you need to go through, you know, and often go through a lot of difficulty and pain and, you know, feeling confused and being confused and people not understanding you, you know, or having misunderstandings with people, you know, you say one thing and say another, they think you said one thing, you said another and that kind of thing, you know. But if you have genuine practice, so the most important thing is the genuine practice, eventually it turns over. You get turned at the seat, your own consciousness is turned and revolutionized and then the situations get turned and people get turned and the world turns and the earth turns.

[12:46]

It's just basic activity. We're all turning. So that's a kind of basic faith, basic faith in practice and in activity and in the universe. And I also never wanted to have a lot of ideological battles, although I've had a kind of, you know, this kind of, I have theoretical tendencies, you know, as many of you know. And, you know, the Soto school is kind of, well actually Zen in general, there's always this common, you know, between thinking and not thinking. And Rinzai school is more about yelling and shouting, you know. getting hit a lot, wake up.

[13:47]

Ours is more gentle, but also we use the intellect more. And Dogen thought that all this yelling and shouting was kind of silly. And also he didn't want to, even though the Supreme Way is really Zazen, and it's not like one of the practices, you know, because it was a way of determining Buddhism. Well, Buddhism has all these different practices. bowing and chanting and wearing robes and burning incense, you know, and part of Dogen's teaching was, well, those are different practices, actually, it's not the supreme way. The supreme way is zazen. And so, you know, like in classical Buddhism, there's three basic studies, right? Precepts, concentration and wisdom. But zazen is not one of these three, it is the supreme way.

[14:53]

So it contains the three of them. And that's part of Dogen's teaching. And he emphasized that over, you know, wearing fancy robes and, you know, doing all the ceremonies and rituals and burning incense and, you know, chanting Buddha's name and so on and so forth. So that's part of the meaning of bendo. His approach to the teaching of Zen is because ben, the ideogram ben, means either to practice wholeheartedly, put all your energy into one thing, This is the basic constant practice. And the other one is to distinguish true teaching from false teaching. It's a little tricky, you know, because we don't want to, you know, Dogon also has this kind of, has a little bit of a fundamentalist kind of medieval

[15:57]

strand to him, you know, and he starts different fascicles. These are the basic three fascicles that everybody studies that are all known, but there are a lot of fascicles. He wrote a lot. And in some of them, you know, he gets really kind of fundamentalistic, you know, about putting everybody else down, you know, and saying this is their way, you know, and so on and so forth. which is one aspect of Vendova which Uchiyama Roshi says, well, we should put that kind of in the background, the foreground is the wholehearted way. But he's a reformer, right? So he's trying to say, well, yes, there are all these Buddhist practices, but the transmission of the Buddha Dharma is through this one vehicle, which is Zazen. And then what does Zazen mean? So on the one hand it's true, there's a way in which, you know,

[16:59]

Uchiyama Roshi also criticizes people as priests in Japan who are monks with, what he calls, monks with lay mind. They're monks, but they're just an appearance. But they're really not fundamentally interested in the Buddha Dharma. But they do all the ceremonies and the bowings and all the rituals and all that, but they don't satsang it. and he kind of says, pooh-poohs that, and says he prefers lay people with monk's mind over monks with lay mind. So this is kind of the same teaching of Dogen, in that Dogen Instead of thinking of practice as going from delusion to enlightenment, he says practice is going beyond delusion and enlightenment. Not getting stuck with going from delusion to enlightenment or having some fixed idea of attainment.

[18:15]

So that includes also going beyond sages and ordinary people. So therefore, Chidambara Roshi could say, you know, he would prefer a lay person with a monk's mind over a monk with a lay mind. And then he says there's lay people who have a lay mind, who have no interest in Buddha Dharma, and there are monks who have a monk mind, and they are the sort of the locomotives for the Dharma, meaning that there's some people who need to kind of maintain the schedule and maintain the formal practice of Zazen, which is basically part of Dogen's teaching. So, you know, I'm kind of in a time of transition now and new beginnings, and we're kind of in a time of transition and new beginnings here at BCC.

[19:20]

And we're going to have a transition in leadership, and Alan will be the new abbot and we have many practice mature practice leaders to support the practice so it seems like the teaching of Suzuki Roshi and of Mel is sort of solidly planted. And I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do at this point. I have Mel's full support, and so my relation with Mel will continue for a long time, and with everybody else, and with Alan. all our practice leaders.

[20:26]

I may stay or I may leave. The situation in my life also has kind of changed. And my kids are growing and leaving home in various ways with more or less difficulty on their own or having to push them away, you know. And my younger, my older son was living with me full time and he finished, got him through high school and through the worst period of adolescence. And now he's, he moved out of my house and is living with his mother and trying to decide what his next step is going to be. And my younger boy is living in, he has to live back and forth between, you know, we have joint custody and he's going to school in San Francisco now.

[21:28]

And so I don't feel so, you know, attached to Berkeley necessarily. I feel like I live in different parts of the Bay Area. and including San Francisco or maybe go to other practice places or start a new practice place. I don't know. So these are all different possibilities. And then, you know, I also have to decide. I sort of have these two teachings. You know, there's the secular professional teaching where I train future psychologists and analysts, and then the practice of Zen and Buddhism, which I also internalize deep within my heart and is part of me in a very deep way and will always continue to be that way.

[22:41]

So, and maybe I should try to combine them in some way, you know, at this point after 20 years of keeping them separate. The only support in our lineage that I have for that is in Nagarjuna, because Nagarjuna had both students in the Buddha Dharma, but he also had students in secular forms of knowledge. And you can see the record of that in the Transmission of Light, those transmission stories about Nagarjuna. But it's something to be careful, you know, because both teachings have their own realm and their own standards, which have to be kept in some way and not be diluted.

[23:48]

So, as they say, you know, proceed as the way opens. That's kind of my mantra right now. And that's all we have anyways, right? It's just this moment. And see what unfolds. How much time do I have? Okay, so that includes questions? No, that's until. Until questions, okay. Okay, so let me go on a little bit with the Bendoa. So Bendoa, as I said before, means how to practice the Wei wholeheartedly. And Wei, or the Dao in in Chinese, means both face, means walk and face.

[25:05]

So you're walking in a certain direction that you're facing. And of course the face has various meanings in Buddhism. and has to do with the transmission of the teaching, has to be embodied, and usually the face represents the embodiment of the way or of the teaching, and the transfiguration of the face back and forth between your parents and your Dharma parents. our genes determine our face, but through practice and through the great mirror of awareness, we start looking like our teachers. That's kind of something magical. Sometimes, you know, the students start looking like the teacher, you know, or like sometimes people say, well, the pets look like the owners, so the owners look like the pets, you know.

[26:15]

So it's this part of this face-to-face transmission is you're hanging out together, you're practicing together, you start looking like one another. And this is the great mirror, the transmission of the great mirror and of Buddha's face and the transfiguration back and forth between your ordinary face given by your parents and Buddha's face. And often in Sashin, we see that back and forth. You know, sit for a long time, person's face transfigures back and forth between their ordinary face and the face that they had before their parents were born, which is Buddha's face. So this is part of the meaning of the way. So, but it also means, people think that it's, the way means like going somewhere, but we're really not going anywhere.

[27:28]

So, it's part of, you know, how to leave home without leaving home. Are you on the way, you know, or are you at home? That's kind of a colon. Where are you? I remember there was this rabbi, you know, Shlomo Carlebach, he's a singing rabbi of Ashbury, you know, and he used to say, well, you know, everybody talks about the way, [...] you know. He says, we Jews, you know, we stay home. During the Sabbath, you know, we just stay home. We don't go anywhere. What's this thing about the way, the way, the way? So it's a misunderstanding of the way. It's like you're going somewhere, but really not. There's no coming and no going. Or staying home, So the important thing is where's the genuine practice? Beyond the monotheism, non-theism, Buddhism, Judaism, you have all these differences which are not so important because these discriminations can lead to all kinds of wars and problems as we're seeing nowadays.

[28:48]

So the important thing is to have genuine practice. So for Jews, the Sabbath is their genuine practice. They stay home. That's their Samadhi practice. Actually, Sabbath in French is Samedi. So I like to always make that homophony, you know, Sabbath and Samadhi. And so they stay home. But that is staying home is the way. So when we're on the way, we're staying home. Always at home with oneself, our true home. Not the sense of home leavers, of monks leaving their ordinary life for their life of attachment. But it's very difficult to have that, even though ordinary life is the way.

[29:52]

as it says in Zen, is very difficult to have your ordinary home be also your home of practice. That's quite a challenge, although it's kind of part of the Bodhisattva ideal. And that's what Uchiyama, if he has some hope for the world and for the future, he says there's more people that have, lay people who have a monk's mind. who can transform their ordinary home into a Dharma home. So, although it's not easy to do that. In some ways, you know, to leave home is easier. It's harder in other ways, but it's easier in some ways. In other ways, staying home and making your ordinary home into your true Dharma home is harder, although it's easier also in some ways.

[30:54]

So whether easy or hard, the question is right before us, you know. The other point that he mentions that I found interesting, Uchiyama Roshi, is about the way, so he says, you know, that Zen has a bit of Confucianism, a bit more Daoism, and then Buddhism. Then it kind of has the three of them. pretty accepted understanding of the origins of Zen through Chinese culture. So for Confucius, the way was sort of the social norms, the enlightened society. What are the kinds of norms that are necessary to have an enlightened society?

[31:56]

So that's kind of like social rules or social norms, precepts in some way. But he says the Buddhist and Taoist way is not man-made. It's not fabricated. So here's this unconstructed, unfabricated way, which is Zazen. So it's not something that we just make up through the ages, different generations of people make up, and they make up the tradition. because the tradition is not a man-made interpretation of the Dharma. Tradition in Japanese means the gate to emptiness or the gate to the essence. And so how we receive through the lineage of transmission and through the practice this Taoist and Buddhist way which is not human-made, that's not a fabrication.

[32:57]

And this is very interesting because this is kind of like, you know, the other power. It's not based on self-power, meaning self, the human will, so to speak. The small self. But it's part of the naturalness of the whole universe. the naturalness of the whole universe. So that's the sense of, so it's the wondrous dharma, it's this thing that we don't fully understand that it's bigger than us, that owns us in some way, and therefore we cannot fully understand. And the function of the intellect is similar to that. The life of the universe owns the intellect, not the other way around.

[34:06]

So when the intellect wants to own life in the universe, it's always falling short. That's discriminating mind. Always falling short. But the intellect can also express life in this wondrous dharma that we don't fully understand. So this dharma that we don't fully understand is the Buddha mind that is transmitted in the lineage. And it doesn't matter whether the original historical Shakyamuni existed or not, because we have this wondrous dharma always there. So, and that's not something that we can, that we're not training to attain. We can never attain that wondrous dharma.

[35:18]

So that's why Dogen emphasizes, and Soto School emphasizes, just sitting in the midst of this wondrous dharma and realizing it. but not thinking that's something that you can attain through stages and you make it into a fabrication that you can package and sell and write books about and so on. So, I think that's about the time. Well, I'll stop there. I've said plenty. So, do you have any comments or questions or anything you would like to say? medieval sentiments.

[36:26]

Are you troubled by anything in there? I think the fundamentalism is sort of being stuck in that medieval sentiment. And it's part of the discriminating mind. That's always very tricky, you know. You say, this is true, this is false, this is right, this is wrong. Everybody has a different idea. That's part of the man-made fabrication. And then you get into all kinds of battles over that, which turns out then to be contrary to the true sentiment of the teaching. So it's not good to get into doctrinal disputes, even though we have a basic understanding of the teaching and the practice. It's better to see if, you know, and we all do this.

[37:32]

I mean, I'm in this moment maybe with some degree of freedom from it, but there are moments when I get into this fundamentalist small mind, myself too, so I have to kind of watch it and start comparing teachings, you know, and it's not very helpful. So the important thing is to see whether, you know, whatever people are doing, what's the genuine practice in that? How is that helping them and others? Rather than to try to convert the whole world to Buddhism or to Soto Zen or and think that the nation and the world would prosper if only everybody would submit to me, you know, or to Buddhism. That's, well, that's the wrong way. Alan, yes. Maybe I said too much already.

[39:02]

Well, you know, there's a way that we can talk about other power as this without turning it into a deity or turning the buddha mind into a deity although buddhism has done that as well we have the prajnaparamita as a deity which is kind of like that but so we may talk about something that's not fabricated it's not human made or man-made you know there's that kind of manly pride right of you know, of being proud of one's own creations, which is actually a definition of idolatry in Judaism.

[40:17]

But then we can turn the other power into some deity that than we identify with and pit against other deities. And then we have the battles between the gods that we see in all the Greek myths, which is also not very helpful. Well, just going on with that, it seems like you're saying something very ecumenical about the core of religion being, you know, this similar or the same or something. But I'm wondering whether, you know, I'm having a hard time latching onto that, you know, that monotheism seems to be fundamentally

[41:21]

Well, we can say, you know, well, like if you if you stay away from all the doctrinal disputes, you know, and you look at those always saying about genuine practice. So you look at the Sabbath practice as being a similar vehicle for this forgotten nature, for that which is not fabricated. for that which we don't create, and yet it creates us. So regeka is a narrow passage, you know, to cut through all the discriminations. And yes, I mean, we could also take some stance in terms as a Buddhist saying, well, this is what we believe in and this is what we don't believe in and so on and so forth.

[42:40]

But that also gets you into the fabrications and it may prove to be less, more harmful than helpful in terms of promoting human understanding. just to say that I really appreciate your transparency, sort of in this talk about, you know, you're not knowing about what's going to happen in your near future, transitions in BBC and transitions in your life, and just letting us know about that, I appreciate it. I had, that was the comment, the question, the other part was about self-power, I want you to break me out of my I understand, I agree with you as well.

[44:33]

I think it's just, I mean that's something that was debated in Japan, so I think it's part of a kind of a Japanese legacy, you know, between different sects of Buddhism in Japan and different religions within Japan and so on. And of course we have colons, you know, there's a colon called there is no other. Because it depends if we mean big other, small other, big self, small self. If we talk other power, we mean big other includes self, we say big self includes the other. So when we say other power, we mean a non-dual other, not a dual other. So if you say self and other, I think what you're saying is dualistic. So we can use either term to express non-duality. You can say other power that includes self and that's no different than big self.

[45:36]

That's where we find our complete self. But there's also some truth in this. Well, there's something about the awakening that we don't fabricate. And that's why it's wondrous. And we experience a certain awe, you know, in its presence. Even though it's also our true self. Let me just finish, let me read you a paragraph from the first paragraph of Vendowa, sort of to wrap up everything I've said up to now and bring it back to the beginning where it started.

[46:51]

All Buddha Tathagatas together have been simply transmitting wondrous Dharma and actualizing Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi for which there is an unsurpassable, unfabricated, wondrous method. This wondrous Dharma which has been transmitted only from Buddha to Buddha without deviation has as its criterion Jiju Samadhi. Jiju Samadhi. Okay. Beings are numberless.

[47:35]

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