What on earth are we all doing here on this beautiful early fall day? That's actually a really good question. And you may have some answers to it. And I want to talk about that a little bit and what we're going to do what we're doing here today, what we're going to do for the next four weeks together. But one thing I realized is that actually I don't know who everybody is here and I suspect you don't know, all of you don't know who all the rest of you are. So I wonder if we could just sort of go around, say your name, leave a little bit of space so people can hear it, speak clearly and look around and Let's see who's here. Who'd like to start? Nancy. Is this the first name?

[01:04]

Last name is nice. OK. Nancy Benhouse. Dolly Gattosi. Leslie Bartholow. Patricia Marie. Hector Basquiat-Robles. Jim Miller. Elizabeth Laura. Jeff Winnicka. Marie Hubbard. Don Colon. Terry Goodwin. Charlie Ware. Mark Ray. Rebecca. Rebecca. Rebecca Mariano. Anne Kennedy. Jake Van Acker. Julie Summer. John Rubin. Greg Day. Sue Osher. Claire Rubin. Peter Parisi. Rondi Sassler. Richard Harriman. Jerry Oliva.

[02:07]

Jim Storey. Brian Presnick. Howard Margolis. Andrea Pratt. Peter Carpentieri. Jaron Storey. Gregory Mayfield. Julie Seleska. Nina Bradley. Marty Kovac. Mary Dre. David Weinberg. Alan Sinaki. Well, welcome. I wondered who some of those names were on the sign-up list. It's really nice to, it's nice to know and it's nice for us to see each other. I've put a roster up on the, with names and phone numbers and emails in case you want or need to get in touch with each other. Well, three weeks or so, almost three weeks have passed since the attacks on the East Coast.

[03:16]

And I'm wondering where we are. what I feel in myself and what I seem to see around me are two tracks of activity merging. It was a very strange moment when somehow the regular television network programming resumed. And what I find is that the suffering of this nation and the world, people of New York and Washington, is slowly merging with our

[04:25]

more habitual suffering that we are very familiar with and carry around. And still there is a very unresolved and unfinished raw quality for certainly for myself and I think for many of us. kind of fear about what's going to happen, certainly still grief and anger. There are often a couple of stages of mourning. You know, the first stage is this very, very raw feeling where the grief is just, and whatever the feeling is, the intensity of it is just, seems to have an unshakable hold on our minds and on our bodies.

[05:40]

And that's natural. And then the next stage, which has no particular, there's no particular schedule on which this unfolds is really doing a kind of integrative work where we feel the loss but the loss becomes has a character of memory and it doesn't necessarily eclipse each moment and that has its own discomforts. I think there's sometimes a feeling we should, one wants to hold to that loss because the loss is so strong and the feeling is so strong and intimate

[06:53]

that by all rights it seems like we should just stay right on that point. And yet it's actually natural that we don't. But integrating it is a challenge. I find myself reading something and my eyes filling with tears. I find myself doing something, my friend, Zen teacher in the city, Joe Bobrow, who's also a psychoanalyst, I think what he called it was empathic imagining. Imagining myself in the place of different people who were really caught in the events, people on the airplane, the perpetrators, people in the trade center, those who did the planning. And I noticed how hard it is to stay there.

[08:01]

And I realized that it's the same kind of difficulty with mind that I find in just staying on my breath, staying on point with my breath on each exhalation, whether counting, not counting. These seem like very different things, but I think that the mental mechanism is very similar. I often come back to this verse from Dogen Zenji's Genjo Koan, When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.

[09:03]

And I think that just this sense of lack is sort of at the core of the work that we have to do. It's the core of the work that we have to do in here, in our lives. Symbolically, I mean, and actually something is really lacking in New York, you know. These elements of the skyline are gone. This 6,000 people are gone. they will always be missing. But then we have this kind of conundrum of when Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.

[10:08]

How can we live and practice with what is always incomplete. How can we live with that and not dislike it and not let it hold us in a place where we can't move one way or the other? but turn it, turn that lack in some way that we can use it to help others and to help ourselves. So in this light I think this is a really good time to explore aspects of the practice and that's what everybody in this room

[11:14]

you all signed up for, literally. It really couldn't be a better time. But I think it's, there's some other things lacking that I just wanted to acknowledge, because it's really on my mind, and I suspect on some of yours. You know, in the past, really in the past 15 years or so, there have been, there were many stretches where the surgeon was away. He used to lead practice periods for like three months at a time at Tassajara. He'd go away for this event or this meeting or he'd go to North Carolina. And it didn't seem to, it certainly didn't phase me. And I'm not sure it phased a lot of people, just we sort of took this coming and going. for granted, and I never thought about it very much.

[12:19]

But I really feel this week, I feel the lack of his presence, and it really surprises me that he and others from our close community are pretty far away. It's not for that long, but they're far away. But I noticed it in small ways, like I I come home and park in that slot. Actually, I don't have to worry about Ross getting his motorcycle out either. But there's something missing there. Or I look out my window, and I'm often noticing when I look out the window, are his blinds open or closed? Is he there or not there? So I really feel this. You know, it's not a bad feeling, and it's not even that hard a feeling, but I'm just sort of noting the absence. And I imagine maybe others of you are.

[13:25]

And I'm also, this week, really feeling the absence of Meili, and wondering what would she be doing at this present juncture and wishing that I could talk to her and sort of trying to talk to her in my head and say, well, what should I be doing? You know, just her passion for the world and for engaging with suffering was so strong and so clear to me. And I miss being able to sit down and talk with her and strategize. So I wanted to, those are lacks that I sense in myself. But what I wanted to acknowledge is here we are.

[14:30]

You know, here we are together. There's a lot of us in this room. We're committing to doing something together. We have a little group of practice leaders of Dolly and Rebecca and David and Raul when he returned. Raul had to go, by the way, to Chile because his father is probably dying. And he'll be back, I think, next week. So we have each other. This is a challenge for us to learn to see each other, know each other by name, support each other's practice and lives, and kind of model, not in an abstract way, in a real life way, how to be with each other's

[15:41]

experience in suffering and how to help each other. So I'm very grateful to you for doing that. When I think about aspects of practice, I realized three questions came to mind. That is, what are we practicing? And how are we practicing? And then, even though I told somebody we shouldn't ask this question, why are we practicing? Usually, we actually, Mel is very loath to address why questions, you may have noticed. The true answer is we practice just to practice.

[16:51]

We practice in the same way that we breathe, or if we're a musician, that the music just rises in our minds and flows out to our fingers or whatever. It's just a natural thing to do, or if we're a painter, we paint. And while we're doing it, we don't worry about it. You know, we don't necessarily think about it. It's funny, what just comes to mind is I had a writing teacher when I was in college, a wonderful poet, and I don't know what he said, I don't know if this is actually true or not, but what he said is the reason that you know the Quran is an authentic text is because there are no camels in it.

[18:00]

camels or the environment that you're in is so much a part of your life and mind that you don't necessarily, you wouldn't need to write about them. And I think that that is, that's ideally the way our practice is. So when we meet people in the street, we don't necessarily, Well, very rarely do we talk about our zazen, I think, unless you're really strange. And yet it conditions even the way we relate and talk to each other. So we practice just to practice. But I think there are other dimensions to explore. Why do we practice? Also is very much the same question, what do we do with our practice?

[19:10]

How do we bring it into the world? What is our Bodhisattva vow that we will chant at the end of this discussion, this talk? We chant it frequently. Our vow to awaken with all beings or to save all beings. This is very powerful and can be broadly or narrowly construed. You could take it as, well, we practice so that all beings may be liberated or have enlightenment. But I also, I really feel that for myself, part of that vow is to address the world in such a way that people are able, they have the requisites, food, clothing, housing, medicine, some space in their lives, so that they can in fact engage in

[20:26]

is being offered to them. And so part of the Bodhisattva vow, I think, is to address that. Sometimes that's in a material way, sometimes it's in the way of the teachings, sometimes it's in the form of just sitting, or just listening to someone, or just embracing them when they need that. And finally, most intimately, I think the reason why we practice is to become ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves, then we're really helpful to those around us. That's the natural unfolding of our lives, that the kind of defilements, greed, anger, delusion, these are just sort of encrustations, a shell that falls away.

[21:50]

This is not our true self, even though the habits are really deep. I don't want to minimize that. But we practice in such a way that we create the conditions for that to fall away. And then, as Suzuki Roshi said, when you are you, Zazen is Zazen. Or is it back? Yeah, is that right? Is it the other way around? No. OK. When you are you, Zazen is Zazen. So Zazen takes care of itself, takes care of you, you take care of yourself, you take care of Zazen. And the harmonizing effect of that takes care of people in ways that we can't quite understand, but it takes an effort.

[22:57]

So that comes to, how are we practicing? With what mind? With what spirit? With what energy? Dogen Zenji says, throw yourself into the house of Buddha. And this is not always so easy. There are a lot of distractions, a lot of things that pull us off that. Our own suffering or our cravings do that. But if you keep this question of how, this is a question, how is a question that Mel really likes. How are you doing this? Or as sometimes he says, how's doing? that how itself is the motor, the energy in our practice.

[24:07]

That reminds me of the words, I think from the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, the meaning is not in the words, but it responds to the inquiring impulse. How can I do this? As I've spoken of a couple months ago, when I was in the hospital and in a lot of pain, you know, Laurie said, you just have to do this breath by breath. And my question was, how can I do this? You know, it didn't seem possible. And yet the energy of how helped keep me on track. It's important to realize, and this is where the how question starts to overlap with the what question.

[25:21]

What are you doing? but it's important to realize that if the meaning is not in the words but it responds to the inquiring impulse, what is responding? And so we have this wonderful interplay of our own intentionality, our energy, our will, if you want to call it that, and something that is being given us in this practice. In Japanese, in Japanese Buddhism, they distinguish between the self-power schools, and the other power schools.

[26:23]

Self-power, I think the word is jiriki, and other power is tariki. So the Zen school is always seen as a self-power school. You know, it's like you're supposed to really apply yourself and really dig in and really work hard and become enlightened under your own steam. And the Pure Land schools and some of the Tantric schools are seen as other power schools where the vow, a vow of faith, a vow of surrender is all you need to do. And so the practice is just taking refuge and vowing over and over and over again.

[27:30]

And sometimes you'll meet longtime participants or practitioners in one of the Pure Land schools and they seem incredibly open and sweet. They don't have that zen oomph in the same way, that edge, but there's just a sweetness and openness about them and they get about their lives in a very straightforward and unassuming way. But this distinction I think in our tradition, the distinction is actually pretty false. And you might consider, how on earth did you get here?

[28:36]

What brought a bunch of people, and I'm just looking around, mostly, if not entirely, born and raised in the West, what brought us to this non-Western practice? What's the affinity? There's some affinity here. There's something that speaks to us and we don't know what it is. It's not something that comes up with our Christian culture or Jewish culture or whatever culture we were raised up in, you know, but yet we walk in this room and we stay a while and there's something that responds. So the self-power, and how could you stay here? You don't, I don't feel like I stay just under my own power.

[29:41]

So the working together of these and the exploration of it is what we're doing. And we have a container for that, a container of forms. That zazen itself is a wonderful expression of this tension. That on the one hand, it's a practice that we do with our bodies. It's a kind of yoga. It's not easy to sit here, cross-legged and upright, hour after hour, day after day. we have to really apply ourselves and sometimes dig in. On the other hand, it's a ritual form. It's a ritual that we all do by coming to the Zendo daily, sitting down facing the wall, sitting in a certain way. Someone comes around and adjusts your posture so that you're maintaining the ritual form and the physical form at the same time.

[30:47]

we do our vows, which is a physical act and it's also a ritual act. So what we're doing is constantly expressing the interpenetration of our own intentionality and will in the world with something that is beyond us, something about which our understanding is always a bit lacking. When Dharma fills your body and mind, sometimes what you see is missing is your understanding. It's not complete, and yet, just go ahead and do it. So I wanted to talk a little just about the expectations of this aspects of practice session, or course, or period.

[32:07]

We had a lot of trouble figuring out what noun was appropriate to call this. But whatever it is, it's four weeks of practicing together. And we've begun with this day. And there are some expectations. I just wanted to say something about them and also to recognize that the The expectations are not complete. One wishes you could do this like a course, and after four weeks, you'd get your certificate of realization. And then you would be at the next level. Everything would be great. Well, maybe we should do that sometime, actually. Let's make up a diploma. Laser printers exist. Right. Well, we'll see. What? Right. I survived. In the back it would say, it wasn't that hard. It was nothing.

[33:08]

That's good. So this will not be a complete experience, but it will be a complete experience. And some of you will be missing from some of the activities. Some people already are missing here. Not you in the room, but... Well, I can't speak for you. But what some of the expectations are, are to come to the Zendo at least three times a week. And it can be morning, afternoon, and one of those can be Saturday. You're really encouraged to come Saturday, particularly, well, for the whole thing if you can, but particularly for work period and on so that you can be there for the lectures and discussion.

[34:16]

I really want to encourage everyone to meet with a practice leader. Mostly you have, we did something radical here, which is we assigned practice leaders. It's sort of an experiment. And if it works, great. If you want to see somebody else, that's also okay. But I encourage you to meet sort of towards the beginning of the practice period so that you can clarify what your intention is for these four weeks and just share that even briefly. and hear yourself saying it, and then meet again towards the end. So I encourage you to sign up. I think that the sign up for David and Dolly is on the Zendo bulletin board, and the sign up for Rebecca and myself is, it's on the bulletin board out there, and ours is in the usual practice discussion area, right outside the door here.

[35:22]

So practice discussion is important. Please come to the class where we're going to cover sort of four incomplete expressions of the practice here. We'll talk about Suzuki Roshi's teaching and how you do that in one class. Good luck, Dolly. And all of these actually, a Buddhist and Zen background, student-teacher relationships in the Zen lineage, how we meet each other in the vertical dimension and in the horizontal dimension, and then talking a bit about the Heart Sutra, which is sort of our core core text of our practice. So that's the class. Encourage people to meet each other informally for the teas, and there's also a sign up out there with each of the practice leaders.

[36:33]

And then we have yet to figure out, we'd like to have a sort of a Zazen instruction refresher for people to kind of be reminded about the particular points of Zazen. maybe also some space where we can talk about what it is we chant, you know, what chants we do during service, meal chants, something like that. So that's kind of what it looks like for these four weeks. I've tried not to cram it with events, but there's still lots to do. So I think With that, again, I want to thank you for being here, that we can do this together. It's very sweet. And open up for questions or comments. Peter? Practical question. You said that we were assigned practice leaders, but if we wanted to see someone else, that was OK. Did you need an addition? Either is okay.

[37:38]

If it's going to be instead of, it would be nice if you had already had a discussion with someone, because I think we called everybody, almost everybody. There are some of you who signed up late, and if you did, if you're one of those, just pick one of us. It's fine. But if someone had given you a call, you know, it's nice to inform them. That's already happened with a couple people. Julia. Yeah, I'm wondering about prayer. Can you hear me? Yes. Because we never talk about praying or prayer. And lately I've been feeling that zazen can be a prayer. And I also secretly, well now it's no longer secret, when I put my robe, my sometimes instead of doing the rope chant, I'll make a prayer, and I'll kind of dedicate that period of Sazen to that prayer.

[38:43]

And when I heard the news of the attacks, I was in Venice, Italy, and there's no Buddhist community there, and so I started, I was visiting churches anyway, and so I would light candles in these churches, Catholic churches, and make a prayer. And so you never hear the word pray or prayer in our practice. So I'm wondering if I'm really going off in a dangerous tangent. This is really, you know, is it just what semantics? Well, I think that we have a some of us have an ambivalent or ambiguous relationship to prayer. I mean, I was not raised as a Christian. I was not raised as a... Yeah, but it's in you. I mean, I think that it's in our culture in a way that does not, to me, make sense to deny.

[39:48]

And some people come here with great amount of discomfort in the notion of prayer. And I think that's because, and I'm happy to be corrected about this, I think that to us, and I'm not sure if it's built into the meaning of the word, prayer usually involves the invocation of an object of prayer. you know, whether it's a deity or something of that sort, which of course in the Zen tradition we don't talk about. But when we take refuge, to me, that's a prayer. Right, I agree, I agree. And in lots of the more openly devotional Buddhist practices, there is something that we would be much more familiar with as prayer. At the same time, as there isn't a deity, that these are aspects of our own being, that each one, each person in this room, each person you encounter is Buddha.

[41:04]

And I think that that, I've been talking about that with my friend, Yasir Chadli, who's an imam, a Sufi imam at a mosque real near here, and his understanding includes that, that recognition that each is Allah, but it's, we don't have a personalization of it. But sometimes now I pray in the evening. hearing me, and I want some advice. It's not that I can't do it fine, mainly. It's just that, as you might think sometimes, well, what would Mel say, you know? So the praying can also be to living people, people who've passed away, don't you think? Well, yeah, it makes me think of that koan in the Blue Cliff Record where a student

[42:11]

knocks on the coffin and says, wants the answer, dead or alive. And the teacher says, I won't say. And in the end, the conclusion of that Koan story, which takes place, I think, some years later, that student, who then became one of the great Zen masters, had an awakening in the courtyard when he looked up at the clouds and saw his master's relics everywhere. So, Meili is not gone. Why should that be inappropriate? Well, in here, you know, it says what we pray is that... Right. I've been doing it for a while, so I just figured you'd been praying all along.

[43:15]

I'm worried about it. I think it's harmless. Well, I think we can do better than that. The question is, can it be beneficial? Yes. Yeah. Sue? I have a question about the schedule. Yeah. whatever we're calling those aspects of practice, ends October 26th? Yes. And what does the ending look like? OK, I'm thinking about that, and we have to talk about it. But I think that when I talked to Mel, we thought that originally we had thought that the ending would be the one day sitting. You know, this is something that we've been doing. We're going to do this sort of... He's not leading this. And I want to turn it back.

[44:16]

to him so we decided okay we're going to end this with some kind of what I was thinking this morning was maybe we have some kind of closing ritual after Friday afternoon Zazen and just a circle no big deal you know and then everybody is of course very encouraged to sit the one day sitting but we wanted to to make some transition there because I think that this will that will also be his first the first time he'll get to talk, I think, in lecture about the trip to China, because all the other lectures are sort of covered until then. So I really wanted to give it back to him as directly as possible. No. It'll just be Zazen in the Friday afternoon Zazen. Usual regular day, and then we'll just do some informal ritual.

[45:18]

And I'll contact everybody, because it'd be great if people could come in the late afternoon. But it's not going to be any big deal. Charlie. Well, what's the news from China? I haven't heard anything. Has anybody heard anything? I was going to contact. I'll contact Melody later. I think if anyone is likely to have news, it's probably her. She's probably heard from Stan, who's there. So when I find out something, I'll write it and put it on the board. Ellen, I wanted to ask you something on your path now. on the harmonizing of the Bodhisattva vow and the form of your path that you see that it might take in the next few months in terms of career.

[46:24]

I don't know. I don't think I'm ready to talk about that. I mean, what I can say is that my intention, and this is again something we talked about, Mel, is to be here more. I'm stepping down as director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and I still need to make a living, but part of the reason for that is just so that I can actually be here more. That's about as far as I've gotten with it. Panic has not set in yet. Wait till late November, early December. Ask me again. Anything? Yes? I'm curious in the class, will we also talk about some of the things that perhaps a lot of people already know but those of us who are just starting don't like? why, and I don't know what the words are, I don't know what things are called, when we kneel down, why we do that, I think, ten times, or why, when we start Zazen, do you do the... Ring the bell.

[47:36]

Three times, and then the big one once. Yeah. I mean, some of the basic things, well, that, because I'm, you know, that's, I notice that when I... Right. I can tell you, let me give a quick answer. Two quick answers. One is we will try to talk about some of those forms. Some of them are just forms. Some place they ring the bell one time, some place they ring the bell two times. When I would sit with the Diamond Sangha, they rang the bell four times, and I just said, four times? What is four? Three I can understand, you know. These are just forms, they're just a container. As to the bow, usual bowing in Zen tradition, San Pai, three bows. And I think my understanding of what happens at a certain point, people were kind of complaining about the bowing to Suzuki Roshi, and he said, oh, okay, from now on we do nine bows.

[48:42]

And so that's our tradition. You actually don't find it almost any place outside the Suzuki Roshi tradition. It's usually just Sampai, but it's three times three. And usually we do that for service. Not all, like we'll do service here for lunch. We'll just do at the noon service for Sesshi, just three. But more issues like this. We'll try to have some, have to figure out some way to address them. And also they can be brought up at tea and in discussions and things like that. Well, I think our time has gone, so thank you very much. Beings are numberless.

[49:30]

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