I vow to taste the truth of the Tartar Judge's words. Good morning. Well, today I want to talk about this afternoon where I'm going to ordain a young man as a priest in our order. So when someone is ordained, where you start your new life. Not following your old karma, but starting off as a child.

[01:07]

We say child of Buddha. You are now a child of Buddha. So Buddha is what you always keep in mind. You're always keeping Buddha in mind, whatever that means. Buddha means many different things. When we talk about dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya, Dharmakaya is your essential nature. Sambhogakaya is your Buddha-wisdom. And Nirmanakaya is Sangha. But actually, you are all three. These are the three natures of yourself.

[02:12]

So when we talk about Buddha, what do we mean? Sambhogakaya is, when we talk about ourself as Buddha, usually we mean Sambhogakaya, the body of Buddha's wisdom. So Sambhogakaya has two faces. One face is Dharmakaya and the other face is Nirmalakaya. and you face emptiness, you face your essential nature, and when you give yourself over to your essential nature, to Buddha of your essential nature, then you become one with the whole universe, and the whole universe

[03:21]

So, sambhogakaya is a little bit like a seed. And when you face your true nature, dharmakaya, the seed is nourished and warmed and watered and sprouts. And then your wisdom, your Buddha wisdom is nurtured. and then you offer that to everyone. You offer bonus wisdom to everyone. Sometimes we call it the Samadhi, Ji Ju Yu Samadhi. This is the Samadhi that you are fulfilled and joyful.

[04:35]

And then you offer this to all beings. Whoever you meet, whatever you meet, you offer the Dharma. So your whole life is Dharma. There is no other life. You may have So you don't take on other things. You just nurture the dharma and allow the dharma to flow through you. So you become a vehicle for dharma. That's what priest ordination is. You become a vehicle for dharma. You allow dharma to enter you and then you allow it to flow out of you. So you're simply a vehicle for Dharma, a receptacle, a vehicle.

[05:38]

Just, our ordinate is Matt. I don't know if you remember him, Matt Killam. When I gave him a lay ordination, one of the names I gave him was So he goes by the name Ki, which means vessel. Pure-hearted vessel for the Dharma. So I'm keeping that in mind all the time, knowing I am a vessel for the Dharma. How do I do that? When we were coming, I was coming with my Jisha to Zendo, she said, do you have a book? I said, no. She said, oh. And before, I thought, is there a book? I was, isn't there a book? When I was ordained, I've told you this story many times, by Suzuki Roshi, before he ordained me, I said, after he ordained me, I said, what do I do as a priest?

[07:15]

He says, I don't know. And then I cut a earring. I don't know doesn't mean that you know nothing. I don't know means your mind is always open. There's no dogma. You have to find out moment by moment. It's not like, now you're a priest, now this is what you do, and blah blah blah. There are things that you do. There's something called training, but it's The training of no training. There is training, but that's not what makes you a priest. When I was ordained, we didn't have any training, so I just followed my teacher.

[08:20]

That's training. Training is noticing There's learning how to do ceremonies and studying and stuff like that. And that's a bit of training, but that's not what makes a priest. And if I start explaining it, then that's not it. And it's not a secret. And it doesn't exist yet. And you don't invent it. Because you are centered on the Dharma.

[09:27]

with your true mind, just responding to circumstances. There is a way to follow the precepts. We have 16 precepts. Lay people and priests both take the same precepts. In the past, past times, for several thousand years, priests and nirvanaya were and nuns would practice 300 or something, more complex psyche, but they were reduced to 16 in Japan. Essential precepts, and then there are minor precepts. So we follow the 16 essential precepts.

[10:39]

The main 16 precepts are all subsumed in one precept. So there's one precept, one basic precept, which is divided into 16. So the one basic precept is act like Buddha. When you face circumstances, act like Buddha. Don't act like ordinary people. karmically driven person. Ordinary means karmically driven. We all collect karma and create karma. Even a priest creates karma. But not so much, hopefully. But even though a priest creates karma and is somewhat driven by karma, And when we're driven by karma, it's really hard to help being driven by it.

[11:54]

We're all driven by our past actions. And just because you take the vows to be a priest, doesn't mean that you're not driven by your past karma. I remember when I was ordained, Cardinal Yuri Roshi said, you feel different now? I should know that even though you may be driven by karma, you make an effort to work with that and not just let yourself go with being pulled around by your feelings and emotions.

[12:56]

I'm ruminating on this. Let me put down some things here. So, in the olden days, a priest gave up everything. When you were ordained, you carried no money, you had no clothes except three robes and a bowl, and maybe a sewing kit, and a water jar. That was it. And you were supported by your practice. If people thought that you were really practicing well, they would support you. If not, you wouldn't be supported.

[14:02]

Or maybe you would be supported anyway, but you should feel a little bit funny about it, being supported. So, we say in our meal chant, when we receive the meal, a formal meal, from the Sangha, We hope that our virtual practice deserves this offering, because it's really an offering. So, I remember there was a Thai Burmese priest who we used to, I mean used to send him, let him use the window for his group. He was a Green Gulch at one time, and people were standing in line, serving themselves in a kind of cafeteria-style meal.

[15:05]

And he was just standing up to the side. And I realized, he's not allowed to serve his own food. Benaiah doesn't allow him to serve his own food. And so I went over to him and I said, would you like to have lunch? And he said, yeah. So I stood in line and I got the meal for him. And he was very thankful. Thank you. But that was it. So it's not necessary to practice like that. That's a really good way to practice. Because you know that your life depends on your practice. Your sustenance depends on your practice. And in America, because our priest practice is so new, only in the last 50 years, people preach at their work or do other things in order to support themselves.

[16:11]

When Suzuki Roshi first came to America, he actually took his bowls out on the streets of San Francisco to do some Takahatsu thing, but it didn't work. He was supported by the temple. I've always been supported by the sangha, but I haven't asked them for any money. It's always worked. to celebrate if that's what they wanted to do. So basically, I don't ask for anything. People say, but we think you need something. Not that my practice is so good or virtuous. Actually, it's not. It seems like it, but it's not. I fool many people. So the priests

[17:19]

So why does someone become a priest? It's a good question. We have a lay community that practices in a way that lay communities never practice anywhere else in the world. It's a totally unique situation. Don't get ordained. But if you feel that you really need, you feel that affinity to be ordained, you should do it. It's OK. But don't feel that because so-and-so does it, that you should do it. Sometimes people think when a person becomes ordained as a priest, it's a promotion. It's not. It's a demotion. You're just letting go of everything that you have acquired and thanked, and becoming nobody.

[18:28]

Are you willing to do that? No, you're not going to do that. You need to support your family, you need to have your stuff. Do whatever you want, basically. But, not really. lay ordination, you think, oh, that's easy, you know, I just say I want to have lay ordination and I can have it. Yes. You can't do that with a priest's ordination. You have to be pretty insistent that you want to be ordained as a priest and evaluating. But lay ordination is an ordination. It's not just, you know, a bib. What's the point of wearing that bib? It's to collect my food.

[19:30]

In the Chinese coordination ceremony, they say, wrapped in Buddha's robe. When we have the robe chant, the literal meaning is wrapped in Buddha's robe. So, it's your wrapping, it's your encasement. So, wearing a robe means you're always taking care of the robe. So it reminds you of what you're doing. This troublesome thing reminds you that, yeah, that's right, I'm crazy, but I can take care of it in a very nice way. You know, I might just be sloppy, or keep it clean and patch it when necessary.

[20:50]

Japanese have a very wonderful... hand, and then when they get worn, because they're put together as rectangles, the sleeves are two rectangles, the body is a rectangle, and they put all these rectangles together, And then they take them all apart when the rope gets worn and reverse them. So the outer sleeve becomes the inner. The end of the sleeve becomes attached to the bottom. So you have a new, pretty much a new rope. That's a lot of work. In the olden days people used to do it. But now it's a lot of work. So, our priest craft is learned through... It's really important to study with a teacher.

[22:08]

This is the way we learn how to be a priest. It's through association with either your main teacher or other teachers. So I am Ki's main teacher, but he will go back to Tassajara. He's been studying at Tassajara for a long time. He'll go back to Tassajara and learn how to wear his robes and be a priest with other teachers. And I can look at it and say, yes, they're really important.

[23:13]

Or I can look at it and say, no, they're not. So that's my conundrum, in a way. When they're done well, you know, but when we depend on them, then it's a problem. When we depend on them too much. So formality is wonderful. It needs to be perfect, and then you lose the meaning. When you try to strive for it to be perfect, you lose the meaning. You lose the meaning in the striving for perfection, which is the same thing as practice.

[24:17]

In our practice, when we try to be perfect, we lose the meaning of practice. So practice, the meaning of practice, is in the difficulties. facing everything and taking on whatever is arising for us, in front of us. Knowing when to say yes and no, of course. But the difficulties are the practice. So, it's not easy to be able to respond with clarity and appropriately to every situation. That's what making a priesthood is. It's just the same as being an ordinary person. There's really no difference between an ordinary person and a priest. Just that this is what you're dedicated to doing.

[25:20]

So what is it that, how do I decide when a person should be a priest, should be ordained? Generally it's because the person is already practicing with that intention, with the same intensity, I call it intensity, the same focus as they would be as a priest. In other words, there are expectations. Dedicating yourself to the practice means that you're always showing up, you're always there, you're always... this is where you live your life. Not just zendo, but you're dedicated to keeping the practice alive for people. That's the main thing. that a person is practicing in that way, or that it may want to be ordained.

[26:40]

It's just a logical step. It's not like a big leap. Big leaps don't work. From, gee, I'd like to be a priest. There has to be some way of manifesting practice Well, chances are the person will come up to the abomination. It's already there. It's just a matter of doing it. So the person has the right attitude. And this becomes the central focus of your life. So, when I first started to ordain people, it was the Sangha, many people in the Sangha got upset because we had

[28:08]

And I didn't really want a lot of people to be ordained, because I wanted role models, people to be role models for lay practice. And if everybody felt they needed to be ordained as a priest, then that would lower the standard for lay people. I guess you could say that. As if the priest practice was the most, what would anybody say to that? Which is not so. And I still feel that way. So role models, people who are really, lay people, as my sangha is, mostly, lay people I've been practicing for years and years, very steadily, in the same way that you would expect of a priest.

[29:25]

and buoyancy and so many wonderful lay practitioners. Nevertheless, I can't deny people that really need to be, I say need, but are called to be priests. I don't know. So as I was saying, lay ordination is an ordination. Priest ordination is an ordination. And there's a third one, which I started doing some years ago, which was to acknowledge lay teachers. And that got a little out of hand for me. because the lay teachers wanted their own organization with other lay teachers.

[30:52]

And that was never my expectation, because I always wanted lay teachers not to organize themselves as a unit, but to blend with the Sangha as lay teachers. You know, ordinations, our practice, which comes from Japan, of course, there's lay ordination, priest ordination, dharma transmission. Dharma transmission comes later, after. a priest is ready to be a teacher. And so, because we have so many wonderful lay practitioners, to give them the opportunity or the lay teacher's authentic permission or authenticity to be

[32:11]

teaches and lay people. So the priests who have Dharma transmission do the ordinations. That's the way it's always been. And to have lay people do ordinations doesn't make sense. You may think it makes sense, but it doesn't. So, there's a little bit of controversy there. If you want to do these things, then become a priest. You can be a teacher. You don't have to be a priest to be a teacher. But you also don't have to do ordinations. You leave that to the priesthood. That's why we have a priesthood, is to keep the So, there's a little bit of controversy there, but we do have the lay ordination, priesthood ordination, dharma transmission, and lay recognition of teaching.

[33:36]

Ross was saying, when we have a practice period, we have a head student called the shuso. And the shuso, after they have that ceremony, shuso ceremony, during the practice period, then they can rise, they can have permission to as a kind of teacher. So that's also true. So we try to balance everything, you know. And some part works. Yes? Getting back to, I've heard you tell the story about what Suzuki Roshi Kenyoshi said when you asked what to do. I hear it a different way.

[35:04]

It sounds different to me at different times. And I guess today I was wondering, Do you think any part of their I don't know was, I don't know what you Americans or what we in America are going to do? Or would they have answered the same way to a Japanese student? Yes, I think so. They would have answered the same way. Yes. I think it's both. I think, yeah, you know, like we have so few priests in America that you have to find your way. I think that, on one side, it's like, yeah, you have to find your way, you know. I can't exactly tell you what to do, because nobody knows. And so I had to find my own way. But he trusted that I knew what my way was, my direction was. At the same time, he would say that to a Japanese priest in Japan. Because it's actually, even though they have all this hierarchy. They might not ask, I mean, as much. They might not ask, yeah.

[36:06]

They might not ask. That's right. What Suzuki Roshi did, of course. It's not something new to them. Because everyone has to find their own way. Within the parameters, it's not like you can just do whatever you want. It's like given the background and the precepts and understanding to find your way with some You're always with the teacher, but your bodies are separate. You know, Nyogen Senzaki and Soen Roshi. Nyogen Senzaki was in America, Soen Roshi was in Japan, and on New Year's Eve, every year, they would bow to each other across the ocean.

[37:08]

We were always practicing together, even though I was here and he was there. Sounds like secure attachment. Well, yeah, good attachment. Good attachment is correct. I would say, don't be attached to anything. You know, whatever you say, the other side is also true. So, we have no attachments. your teacher is non-attachment. Do you not still have that same connection with Siddhartha Rishi? Well, you can't have that connection with a dead man. But yes. Yes. Even so, yes. Somebody's hand is up there. It's me, Sue.

[38:19]

Sue? Don't worry, I'm not going to fight with you about lay entrustment. I just wanted to respond to one thing you said about how lay entrusted teachers form an organization, which is true. But from my own point of view, I see that very much as a way to just encourage each other to be to offer what we can as lay people. It's not like a labor union where we're working together to get something for ourselves, but rather to support each other in what we are doing in various sanghas. Yeah, that's good. So I think it's a good organization, but I also wanted to say that I am so grateful to priests and priest ordination, and I think it's really, I completely am glad that there are people doing priestcraft, and carrying out the traditions, and doing the rituals that only priests do.

[39:24]

And I think many lay and trusted people share my feelings. So I wanted to let you know of that. I had a question about something you said towards the beginning. I know this setting is a little, let's say, seems to be confusing. Like I call it a commuter setting, because it's not monastic. You said at the beginning that priests don't take other things up. or that's kind of part of it. And I just wonder how that feels or manifests in a place like this. Right. You know, like, someone, say, is a doctor, and they practice it, but they feel also the calling to be a priest, right? Well, you can't say, well, don't be a doctor. It's just like, Don't go back to college and learn to be a lawyer. If you want to go to college, you'll have to do that. But once you become a priest, you can still be a doctor and do all those things.

[40:30]

But you don't take up something, a new career, on the side. And is it about more than a career? I'm assuming it's also just about lots of other outwards Well, you don't take up something for yourself. You don't take up something new for yourself. Once you mature, you can enter into any venue, but you're not attached. There's no attachment. There's no gaining of anything. So when you become ordained, there's nothing to gain. There's nothing to get for yourself. That's over. So, you can, you know, given America and our circumstances, there's nothing, whatever you say, there's always

[41:44]

You have to realize that there's always an exception, too, because of our circumstances. So someone may have to continue doing something that they were doing before. But whatever you do, it's with the attitude of not taking... I was wondering if that extends to your art, like for an artist. I would imagine you could continue to write, not as a painting identity, but just as a way of your practice. Yes, there are practices that one can continue. When you go to Tassajara, if you're an artist, you don't You leave your art behind.

[42:46]

You leave everything, no music, no art, no poetry, just leave it all behind. And then when you are mature, then okay, now you can do it again. I'm not sure I have the words very well yet to articulate this. It has something to do with self-claim. Am I doing what I'm doing to create someone, to protect someone, to be someone, or am I just doing it as a manifestation of what's authentic, what's happening here in front of me, what's needed, what is whole? That's the difference. Well, I think that's right. So, we don't take up stuff to enhance our ego, basically, to create an ego, because Practice is basically to let go of your ego.

[43:47]

Do you have... you had your hand up at one time. No. Oh, no. I just did this. Oh, yeah. I am... I'm sorry. Way in the back there, yeah. Three words have been coming to me, and I don't know how useful they would be, but they're kind of alternatives to the whole question of attachment and non-attachment. And the first is the role of renunciation in making a commitment. And the second is the concept of absorption. And the third word that came was wholeheartedness. And when I think of priest ordination and of what gets renounced, or just let go of, it frees you to do something wholeheartedly.

[44:49]

And the role of the priest in the sangha, or in the practice for other people, that supportive role, feels that it would be absorbing. And that if you're doing it wholeheartedly, and if you have a job that you're also doing wholeheartedly, you just have to be free to do things that way. And you become an example. You put on these clothes, and people look at you, and they say, well, that's the example. And so you have to be very careful, very careful, because that's an example. You're studying an example, people. And then you're open for all kinds of projections and criticisms. Well, along with renunciation, if I think back to my motivation for ordaining, which is a long time now, 26 years, I wanted to embrace this family.

[46:14]

And that was the fundamental feeling that I had when I was at Dasahara. And it wasn't a rejecting of my birth family or my friends, but it was really, I really wanted to be in this Buddha family, in the large family of lineage and in the very particular family of Suzuki Roshi's lineage, and even more particularly, here. And so how you find your family life, all of us know, it's multifarious. It has a particularity, but also we live, we carry our family with us wherever we go. So the more you kind of throw yourself into the family of Buddha, then the more settled you are, the more you may take on.

[47:26]

But you also may not. You may have a very narrow field and just live within that tiny space of freedom. That's right. There's a narrow field and a wide field. And renunciation It's a tricky word. It's kind of like humility. Humility means not exaggerating who you are and not minimizing who you are. It means just knowing exactly who you are moment by moment, which is not easy. But that's true renunciation because who you are is no-self. So it's not a matter of objects, you know, throwing your objects into the river or into the ocean or something.

[48:33]

You can be a millionaire and still have renunciation. It's not about things so much as it is about reading. Giving up greed, ill will, and delusion. That's renunciation. Judy? I remember something about Dogen saying of how moved he was when he first saw people putting on the robe on top of their heads. And I was wondering if you might say a word about the role of devotion Yeah, our practice is a devotional practice. You know, Zen is kind of austere, and no God, and all this, right? But it's a totally devotional practice. It's a practice of faith.

[49:36]

Without faith you can't practice. It's not faith in something, it's just faith. and to the Dharma. And people say, well, is Zen a religion, or just a practice, or whatever? Well, Soto Zen is a religion, because it's open to everyone, and you don't have to be an expert to practice. Rinzai style, some Rinzai style practice, is not religious. It's more like becoming an expert. to practice, and you don't have to know anything.

[50:58]

As a matter of fact, the biggest hindrance is knowing something. When Suzuki and Shoboji said, I don't know, when I asked him about being a priest, he said, what about it? He said, I don't know. That's the most profound thing you can say, because not knowing is the highest That means your mind is wide open. You don't have any hindrances of knowing. So yes, it's just devotion. When you stand in Zazen, it's total devotion. That's all it is. of total dynamic activity. The whole body, mind and breath is totally devoted and open.

[52:01]

And that's all. Just openness to the universe. Vulnerability. So, it's taking away all fear. and all motivations, and all greed, ill will, you don't understand. You're not there. So it's a total pure existence.

[52:36]

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