I would like to introduce my friend Angie Boisivan, who is a long-time student of Covincino Sensei and former director of Jikoji for many years, Covincino's temple, and is presently a freelance teacher in the East Bay, in the South Bay. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, Mary. It's wonderful to be here. There's a lot of people here. I have been freelancing. It's kind of a funny way to think about it, but It's been a wonderful thing for me. I've only practiced with Kobin for about 22 years or so, and only in very limited places.

[01:11]

We started out in Haiku Zendo, where Zen Mind Beginner's Mind talks were given by Suzuki Roshi, and my teacher took over that little Zendo. And that's where I first began to practice. And then Jikoji, when we invented that. Turned a little alternative high school, Quaker high school, up in the mountains outside of Santa Cruz into a zendo. This last year I've been going to little living rooms. Garage, two-car garage, with a rug on the floor. and some insulation in the walls, very important. The Quaker Meeting House, there's a large group of people who go to sit there once a week, sit vipassana meditation.

[02:15]

And all kinds of dormitories and resident houses on Stanford campus, that's very interesting. A lot of kids, especially freshmen, are interested in learning how to sit. I think about this space. It's a very, very beautiful space. The barn at Green Gulch. The basement in the city. How it is that we create space, actual physical space for this practice. When we went to the youth hostel, we had to clear all the furniture out. It was full of junky old overstuffed furniture, and we would take everything out and turn that whole space into a sendo as big as this room, and then put it all back at the end.

[03:19]

I think in doing this kind of traveling around and meeting with people that I'm just beginning to learn how little I know. A friend was telling me the other day of his first meeting with Sasaki Roshi when he had been sitting in Sashin very hard. And he'd been studying for ten years before he dared to come to the Sesshin. And finally he thought he understood. And he went to see Sasaki, and Sasaki said, Zen training is not about understanding anything. It's to manifest Absolute. And I think my friend, that was fifteen years ago, I think he's been chewing on that ever since. At Stanford, a very interesting thing happened to me.

[04:58]

The last time I was there, I was invited to dinner at six o'clock and then to teach Zazen immediately afterward. I thought, that will never do. It doesn't work to sit with a full stomach. just go to sleep and get wigged out. So I did a lot more talking than usual. Usually it doesn't help to talk very much at all for people who, it's like if you haven't been swimming and don't know the water, it doesn't help very much to talk about swimming. You just have to get in and do it. And then maybe there's something to say afterward. But in this case, I really felt I needed to buy us some time. And so, as well as talking about comportment, how to be this body in some kind of stability and relative comfort on the floor, which is always a challenge, as you know.

[06:21]

And I started to talk about Zazen in daily life, big subject, one we're always thinking about and asking about. After we had had a chance to think about zazen, we did some zazen, and then after that there were some questions. There was one person in that group who had been sitting for a long time, and he said, if zazen is just one more thing to do, one more thing to fit into our day, if it's just like learning to play the violin, or taking a trip, even if it's like brushing our teeth every morning, what's the point?"

[07:29]

He said, Zazen, meditation sitting, is the center of life, it's the source of everything else. It isn't just one more thing to do. It's out of which everything else comes. Everything else that we are and that we do. I felt like maybe you have this experience too sometimes that Avalokiteshvara has simply appeared and said the right thing. There are those two sides. We talk about our practice, and our practice is one of the things that we do in our life, one of the ways that we carry our life forward.

[08:40]

But if it's only that, I think that kid was right, we might as well go out and join the soccer team. And if he's right, then what does it mean to make zazen, to recognize and acknowledge zazen as the source of our life? Not just in the zendo, but as we sit, stand, walk, lie down, talk, make decisions. get upset. There's no answer to this question. The question itself is how it is.

[09:47]

Moment by moment, just as we sit breath by breath, We talk sometimes about mindfulness practice, mindfulness as opposed to automatic, and it's helpful to think about it sometimes in those terms, that mindful means not conditioned, not automatic, present, It isn't special. Sometimes it feels special and looks special.

[10:49]

We all look a little unusual in the whole of the Bay Area. Not many people are appearing in this guise as we are right now. But it's actually a very natural and ordinary thing that we're doing. It's being awake. Buddha means awake. And it means awake beyond the ideas drive us. Sometimes we're described as Buddha was talking about how we got lost, how suffering

[12:05]

catches us over and over, how we get hooked by it. And there are sort of three ideas. The idea that everything is permanent, that we can tie things down, that things can be nailed and held and cast in bronze, whether it's our own life, or our ideas. Of course it doesn't work, but over and over we try to solidify and hold on to things. Another idea is the idea that we are a permanent kind of entity, that this self, this person is something that doesn't change. And the other one is the idea of separation, that somehow we're terribly alone, and that each thing is separate from each other thing.

[13:19]

So there's no real connection, or we're always having to labor to make connection, because we're lost and lonely and alone. Those are really just ideas. But they're ideas that are so deeply grooved in us that we live them. It's how we live on automatic. Because life itself keeps showing us over and over again how untrue each one of those is. having just gone through the election, we know about impermanence in spades. I just went to my 40th high school reunion and I've been thinking about this subject a lot in the last few weeks.

[14:25]

Impermanence and no self. Here are all these little old ladies little old grandfathers, paunchy bellies and gray hair. The handsomest and most promising man in the class is now a huge, fat man with gray hair and a ponytail with tattoos on all of his arms and a leather jacket with NRA on it who works for Philip Morris. Where did Bill Redmond go? We would look at the name tags and look at the face and look back at the name tag and look at the face again

[15:28]

So strange, so strange. We do suffer. everything suffers. That's the truth. And the part I like best about just Buddhism itself is that the promise isn't that there's some kind of magic button or some kind of special thought that we can think or experience that we can have and then everything is going to be just wonderful from then on.

[16:36]

Buddha didn't talk about suffering in that way at all. He talked about how we live, what kind of life we live. He talked about the Eightfold Path. That's a lot. And he talked about it in terms of a lifetime. Buddha himself sat under the Bodhi tree, saw the star, said, all beings are enlightened with me. He didn't say, I'm enlightened. He said, all beings are enlightened. That's what enlightenment is. And then he practiced for 39 years after that, until his death. On his deathbed, he was still practicing.

[17:41]

to practice on that path is what we can do, what we can choose as human beings and what we here have chosen. They say it's incredible good fortune to be born as a human being to have this amazing incredible body to me, to be this body, to be this mind. And to be a human being and to have discovered sitting is even more wonderful occasion. Also a responsibility. Big responsibility.

[19:09]

But also a very happy occasion. Somebody said to me recently, how come Buddhism is so serious all the time? Why is everybody so serious? I thought, well, that's true. And it's serious. Of course it's serious. It's life and death serious. We're sitting not with death over our shoulder, as some people say, we're sitting face to face with death, knee to knee, belly to belly. But it's also the source of all joy, the source of our happiness. And not just our suffering and our joy, but all beings. When we sit, we don't really consider ourself or anybody else.

[20:17]

But it's well to remember all beings are sitting with us. And that the cries in Bosnia and the birds of Tasmania and the grasses of Timbuktu are all a part of our city as well. Dogen said one of the most difficult things that we need to learn in our practice is how to act.

[21:19]

One of the eight of the path is action, right action. And it's not just do in a large sense, but in the smallest sense of how we pick up a cup, what our connection is with the car as we turn the key in the ignition, what it is to pick up a knife and slice a carrot, answer the telephone, die for a child, It's not so fancy. In the Genjo Koan, there's that famous kind of formula.

[22:20]

To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. It's one translation. There's another translation that says to be, to let, instead of to say enlightened by all things or all beings, it says to let the objective world live that only works if that boy at Stanford is right and that me is the practice itself, the source, the center.

[23:30]

And our practice is to let it come and let it go. And that's all I prepared to say. I wanted to leave a lot of time to hear from you. There's much wisdom in this room. Be nice to hear your questions and your comments. What is the eye that sees? Excuse me, I didn't... What is the eye that sees? There is no self. The eye sees. I see, I see.

[24:46]

Ellen Watts says that we are the universe looking at itself out of our eyes. or an old Chinaman said. No, actually he was Japanese. Muso Kokushi, I was going to quote you this and I forgot. If people distinguish the work on the fundamental from ordinary activities, even as they do them together, they will naturally be concerned about being distracted by activities and forgetting the meditation work. This is because of viewing things as outside the mind. You say that you ended by talking about right action

[26:05]

But then there are times when we have to act, and maybe we have to act against the current of the way things are coming. And so, how do we mobilize, how do we mobilize ourselves to act? How do we know when to act out, or act for change, or go against the stream? If we don't know, we shouldn't. And wait to know. And when it's really right, there's no question. And if there's a question, it's better to wait, even if it's really embarrassing. The Quakers do that a lot. No, there's a big question in their group, and people can't agree. They'll go on sometimes for years until they come to some kind of agreement.

[27:14]

And I think that's how it works inside us as well, in our mind. And if it's really the right thing, then it doesn't feel like it's going against. We're part of the flow as well. If what has to be done has to be done, then you just do it. It's a big question for me, and I think I fundamentally agree with you. But I think also our practice is about making mistakes. And sometimes not waiting and sometimes just plunging in and dealing with the fallout.

[28:15]

Sure. And I guess in my experience sometimes that just happens to me. I try to make the best of it with my practice. Some of it's style. Thank goodness we're not all the same. You know, somebody told me yesterday there's a new book called Christian Zen that was written by somebody from Mercy Center, probably one of the nuns at Mercy Center in Burlingame, and I haven't had a chance to look at it, but I'm curious about it, because I know a lot of Christians are very interested in Zazen and are practicing it, and that the Quakers feel, and Zen

[29:58]

people especially feel a real connection. I've never been a Quaker. I've practiced, I've sat with the Quakers off and on. And my group, my teacher had some to do with the Quakers when we were trying to buy some property some years ago. So we spent a year kind of sitting with each other. So I know them from that aspect and how they how they work together in groups, their social conscience, and that sort of thing, but I don't know enough about their sitting practice to really be able to say. They sit in silence until someone is moved to speak, and then out of the silence someone will stand up and say,

[31:00]

Sometimes something very wise and wonderful and sometimes rather trivial, it seems like. It's whatever, they say they are moved to speak, moved by the light. So a lot of the words are the same, but it's hard to tell. You might know better than I do. There's sometimes when nobody speaks, isn't that right?

[32:52]

Call a long meeting and nobody speaks up. That's a wonderful question. I think the most valuable thing was his taking completely literally, and not just in the Zen Do, but everywhere. Dogen's take on the old song, all beings have Buddha nature, Dogen turned and changed to say all beings are of Buddha nature.

[34:01]

In every way, Kobin practices that. The most telling experience with him was when we bought a piece of property up on Skyline, the little retreat center in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and a few months before we made that big step for us, A hippie commune down the road had been disassembled, you could say, by the sheriff's department. They brought in the bulldozers and bulldozed down people's homes that they had built by themselves. And they had thought they had permission to use that property, and then some new owner came up and said that they had to leave. So there were some extremely unhappy angry people.

[35:10]

They were often, not all of them, but some of them were very much into drugs and some of them were really quite crazy. It was an amazing, when we bought that place there were 60 people living on 30 acres. and Quonset huts, and it was amazing. And Cohen said, we're not going to call the sheriff and the bulldozers. We're going to practice with everyone. And we did. We cleaned up the library and made a zendo out of it and invited everybody in. And some people came. Some people wouldn't come. It was very chaotic. Anarchic they call themselves an anarchic commune Which is a contradiction in terms?

[36:13]

And it was like that they would Rob each other blind and then confront each other and scream about you took my ladder and you took mine and we We practiced with that We practiced with the neighbors. We practiced with the county, getting all the permits. Everything that we did, every bureaucrat that came up in front of us became Buddha. It looked a little foolish, actually. A lot of it was kind of dumb, because it didn't work very well. It was messy. A lot of people laughed at us, and I learned from that also, that that's okay. That it's alright just to do what you have to do, and recognize what you recognize over and over again, whatever the consequences.

[37:23]

It was a wonderful teaching. Yes. Yes, and he was on the forefront of it. He was sitting down with the ex-con from San Quentin and helping the kid who was so wigged out that he couldn't focus his eyes sometimes. He was really right there for people and as a result was very helpful. And you could feel the grounding, how he could ground the situation by that kind of recognition. You're keenly interested in the how, it's just how to do it, more than anything.

[39:12]

There's this little sitting group there that Gil has on Tuesday afternoons, and those people have been sitting for quite a while, and so their questions are coming up out of their lives now, and they're sitting retreats. He does two or three day retreats, and some of those kids are joining them. one of the halls at Wilbur had a panel discussion with, let's see, there was a Mormon, a man from Islam, a born-again Christian, a rabbi, really far out rabbi, a Catholic, and me. And we all sat around and presented our our point of view, you could say, and then answered questions, very cutting, very pointed questions all of us got. And they especially were interested in Sossan and wanted, again, to know how and what it meant, you know, where they were keenly interested in women's position in all of those religions and asked about abortion and those sorts of things.

[40:34]

social questions, big social questions. But also, there's this kind of deep longing for some way of expressing what doesn't get expressed. This last one, they talked about how hard it is when you're studying and thinking all the time, and that they feel a need for something to balance that. Not to get out of the thinking, but just to balance it so that there's something else, some better feeling of connection with the world. Yeah, I can imagine that. to find something on the inside instead of all this illogical commotion that's going on all the time.

[41:48]

Exactly. But they seem to be interested in doing that. They teach Zen in the religion department there. I don't know that they did when you went. Was Carl Bielefeldt there when you were there? There was a woman there. It was an Asian woman, I think, that she went. So perhaps some of the Well, one of the kids who was in that circle, and there were 15 I think in that house who came to sit that evening, just this last week. So there was a lot of, we thought maybe two or three would come, so it was a surprise to see so many. And one of them had taken the Zen course, and that's why he was there, because he felt so frustrated. He said he learned everything about the history of Buddhism, from A to Z, but they never did sit. They were never given that experience. So it seems like it really needs to be happening there in more than one way.

[42:55]

At the University of Santa Clara, they have a Jesuit priest there who is a friend of my teacher's, and he teaches a religion course, and one of the requirements is that before the class at eight, the kids have to come at 7.30 to the mission, and on the altar of the mission are black Zafus all lined up, and they sit for half an hour. And that's a very popular class. People love to go to that class. So I think things are changing a bit, and I hope so, because you're right. If it stops with us, no, it's not, what's the point? It has to travel and travel through the generations. So it's the younger, the better. And it's very popular and they have it sitting in every classroom period.

[44:02]

And who teaches it? This was Loyola in New Orleans. His father, Ben Wren, is his name. He's a Jesuit priest. Did he train in Japan? I'm not sure. I know he teaches Tai Chi and he has a cross in his end up. Interesting. Well, it's a class at Berkeley too. It's a piece of conflict that Michael Nagler teaches. See, there are lots of hands here all of a sudden. How about you? Well, I think you skipped over something that I think is very crucial, and that is, around that table, those of you who were sitting there were addressing the question a Catholic or a Jew or an Islamic person would address it as Dharma, there was something happening.

[45:19]

Yes. And there have been so much strife around religious beliefs and dogma. There wasn't much dialogue and that was a problem. The dialogue that began to be really interesting was between the rabbi and the Islamic representative, the Muslim, and they started this really fiery, wonderful together challenging each other and then the facilitator said, no, no, we have to calm this down and just ended the whole thing. So they focused on letting the kids ask the questions and not with the presenters having very much to do with each other at all.

[46:23]

And they asked for feedback later and that was the thing that I complained about Yeah, and of course there is a common truth and it was right there with us in the room. That speaks to the psychology. Yes, exactly. Yes? I'm quite new to this practice. Like we are not one, but we are not two either. There is no good, there is no bad. Constantly you find contradictions. What will come out of all this? We are not supposed to expect anything from this practice, but yet it's very important.

[47:30]

Congratulations. You know, we're so used to linear thinking. We're used to this kind of thinking up here. And we're trained that way. We're all very, very well trained that way. I think that's why at Stanford, Zen is becoming attractive, because Zen drops all the energy down to this part. And actually, this is the seed of wisdom. It's not linear at all. You could say it's spiral if you want to give it a line or a shape, but even that's saying too much. You know, our mind works in more than one way. And to accept that, accept the contradictions and the paradox, is really what our life is from the moment we're born.

[48:37]

It's difficult, but it's also very refreshing. It's like cool water and a fresh breeze in the face. It's to be here. I don't know what you are saying right now. It's here. What do you mean that it's here? What is there? A center of what? A nervous center? An autonomic nervous system center is there? I can tell. I can tell. The main thing to do is not to read very much and not to worry about it. Just to practice. Just sit with your scientific mind and see. Just see what happens.

[49:52]

That's what Zazen is. It's just to sit, not turning your brain off, not trying not to think, but just being very, very present with yourself and seeing what that really is. Not the idea of it, but the reality of it. Just sit. This is your center of gravity when you sit. and you rest your hands against it and actually close your hands. This is a very powerful mudra, so that this is centering everything into your center of gravity. And just to be absolutely present with yourself is all that's really required. You don't have to figure it out. Thank you, Angie. I'm going to suggest that we end. And we will have discussion time later, so people with more questions, ask them.

[50:56]

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