So it is. Hello, Berkeley Zen Center Sangha. Wherever you are, whatever time it is, we have the opportunity to hear Mark Coppathorn, our speaker today, offer a way-seeking mind talk. I would like to request that people not multitask so we can give Mark our full attention. Mark's bio. Mark has practiced at Berkley's End Center since moving to Berkeley from New York City in 1994. He has been working with his wife, and they have raised a 23-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter. His current responsibilities at BCC including making the candles, leading the half-day sittings, serving as Wednesday afternoon doan and cheaton, serving on the finance recently completed leading the coming of age group with Marie Hopper.

[01:04]

Thank you, Mark, for speaking with us today. And let's hear it. Thank you, Ross. And I thank everyone for coming here. I appreciate and I feel supported by your presence. When I was dating my wife, Diana, She used to call up Ram Dass. He was listed in the Marin County phone book under Richard Alpert, and he would pick up the phone and talk to anyone who called. She told him her stories, and over the months, she told him my stories as well. In time, we came to have a personal relationship with Ram Dass, no more than hundreds of people, to be sure. We went to see him, and the love that we felt for him, which filled our hearts, was mirrored back and magnified tenfold.

[02:07]

For both of us, it was a powerful experience of being in the presence of a holy man. When our son was born, we wrote to him, asking to bless our child. He wrote back to me, Congratulations and thank you. I don't have any connection to blessing children. But I tell you what, you chant the name of Ram, and I guarantee you'll receive all the blessing for your son. Ask of me. At this time, I was going to graduate school full-time, seeking a professional skill that could support a family. I was working at Bank of America in Concord for 30 hours a week. And I was taking care of my son who worked full time. Looking at my schedule, you wouldn't say I consistently had an hour to myself to sit zazen.

[03:09]

But following Ram Dass's suggestion, I poked my head in the Krishna temple up the street. And I found every day at noon, 20-foot carved walnut doors, and they had darshan of their murtis. They venerated statues of God, which are God. My son, he could crawl around, he could toddle around, he could cry his head off. No stillness or silence for him to disrupt. Joining That service, I picked up that practice and fulfilled Ram Dass's suggestion. I chanted the Krishna mantra and pushed the carriage around the city of Berkeley. I chanted the mantra to Willard Park or Habitat or taking an embark to school or work. The word mantra means mind protection.

[04:12]

It's not that it's impossible to worry. or review resentment or grievances, but it provides protection from ignorance. And that mantra was about God stepping into that faith. I had emotions about it. And in my memory, this life, taking care of my baby and praying all day, like I'll never. That was a hardworking paradise. I have a great deal of respect for the faith and practice of that community, and they are a racially diverse religious community. And as an American, it feels wonderful to be a part of that. But I also believe to truly be inside that community, I'd be obliged to believe a number of things I can't believe. When my schedule shifted, I was glad to return to Berkeley Zen Center and the consistent practice of Zazen.

[05:16]

When Diana was pregnant with our daughter, well, I had this knowledge, this experience that a mantra practice was something that worked for me with the demands of raising a small child. I thought, well, we have a mantra. It's the great, bright mantra. It's the utmost mantra. It's the supreme mantra. It's true. And not false, it's transcendent. And honey, I tell you, it's able to relieve all. Why am I a tourist in another tradition when we have a mantra on the shelf? I go to Soja and I ask him if he knows anything about the Prajnaparamita mantra and if I could practice it and he doesn't quite know. practicing it and yes I can do it and my daughter is born and I do take it up and I push her carriage around the city and I go on road trips and I change her diaper I chant the mantra and my most vivid memory I'm cooking dinner chanting this mantra and of course my son and wife can hear me in the living room and

[06:47]

They aren't self-conscious that I can hear them. David says, why does daddy keep saying that? And Diana says, well, that's just who he is. You know, there are all kinds of decisions about this mantra to give it shape to a practice. Do you say om beforehand? Do you say it out loud or quietly? Do you use a mala? How many times do you chant it? These are small, but I felt I was just guessing. I'd feel more comfortable if there were some authority or tradition to follow. Funny how it works that way. I bring these questions to Sojan, and he doesn't have answers. And in fact, you know, he's not going to tell me not to do it. But in his body language, if not his language language, I get the sense he feels I'm playing with my food.

[07:49]

I understand in this lineage, the teaching is if you have devotion, don't spin words about Buddhism or Zen. Show it in how you open the door. Show it in how you hold the cup. And that's a great way of this lineage, no doubt. I had another problem with it, and I ended up feeling it was limited to do it as a practice by myself. There was a missing ingredient. It was a cake that didn't rise. It was an appliance that wasn't plugged in. When I looked at it, I thought, I don't really have the standing in this community to lead people in an alternative. I certainly didn't have the confidence to do so. For several years at that time, I owned the internet domain name omgategate.com.

[08:55]

I went to GoDaddy, and I leased the name. Year after year, thinking, maybe I'll build a website. A website, it could have message boards, to be sure. It could have links to articles, if I ever found them. The main thing it would have would be a count. Every day, go on and say, well, today, I chanted the Prajnaparamita mantra 108 times. Today, I chanted it 1,008 times. Today, I chanted it one time when I chanted the Heart Sutra with my community. In a schedule, a time and a place, and that schedule is how we share the practice. For the practice of the mantra, we wouldn't have a time and a place or a schedule, but we would have a count. And that count would be how we'd share the practice.

[09:58]

I never had really the sum of credentials and confidence and skills to bring this into the world. And in time, it just was a limitation that I was doing it by myself. And I set it down. Didn't really give it much thought. Until he asked me to join the coming of age group. We had seven 13-year-olds and we taught them Zazen and taught them the Eightfold Path. And, you know, our approach, we're not really... these 13-year-olds to pick up Zen practice, to have it stick. We're really trying to give them tools. And for me, you know, I'm seeing them like in the next decade, you may be in a dark corner. You may get really depressed or really lost or confused or frightened.

[11:02]

Remember, there is a way to come back to yourself. And knowing a 13-year-old, as I know my daughter, I felt like, well, this practice of the mantra might actually be more accessible to them than zazen. In fact, I taught them all malas, and I gave them a mala bag, and Diana wrote this calligraphy of the Prajnaparamita mantra. But I didn't really teach them the mantra, because I had no tradition to convey Beyond this is something I used to do. All this in March, it kind of began to add some pressure to look again. Are there any Soto Zen traditions of this Prajnaparamita mantra? No, I couldn't. I found an article by Gelak Rinpoche, who's the tutor tulku of the Dalai Lama.

[12:12]

And he said, saying Aum is very important. He knows the Paramita mantra. Like every Zen teacher is going to do a commentary in the Heart Sutra, and they're going to say the words Prajnaparamita mantra. But in many cases, they're talking about some other kind of abstraction. But Gelak Rinpoche, He said om is very important. I was just glad to get clarity and join the team. In a talk, Thich Nhat Hanh sounded like he knew people who did the Prajna Paramita Mantra. And he said, a Prajna Paramita Mantra is practiced in the heart. And to have Thich Nhat Hanh confirm it, It is a great blessing for me. And I found a couple of apps that create this function I had imagined of a public facing count of a mantra.

[13:18]

And I took their measure and downloaded one. I had to add the Heart Sutra mantra. But if I had an intuition a decade ago that that was a missing ingredient, That intuition was confirmed when I found it, because as soon as I found that function, how I wanted to go about the practice of the Prajnaparamita mantra in the heart. Every day since then, I have chanted or counted the Prajnaparamita mantra 16 malas or 1728. I can tell you because it's counted that that's been 140 days. And in those 140 days, I've chanted or counted the Prajnaparamita mantra over 276,000 times. And this has over the soil in my garden of Zen practice.

[14:27]

The mantra practice is the sun practice. And zazen is the moon practice. The mantra practice is the sound practice. And zazen is the silent practice. And in this tradition, of course, we cherish questions over answers. But this habit has really created five answers for me, which I'm exploring. And I wish to discuss with you. One, you know, parallel to Buddhism, my interest in Buddhism, a sensibility of a human being as a sensing body, a feeling heart, and a thinking mind. In our society, we're powerfully tilted towards the thinking mind and our identity and energy go through that.

[15:27]

But an integrated person is balanced in these three dimensions. And that's a question I ask and bring. Where's the balance between body, heart, and mind? If I look at the practice of Zazen, I can see we have a posture of the body. We breathe into our belly and we sit upright. And we intend to maintain that posture moment by moment. Posture of the mind. We focus on our breath or we wake up from the dream of thought. And we intend to maintain that posture moment by moment. What in Zen or Zazen is the posture of the heart? That's a vocabulary meditation. In other traditions, you might phrase it, what are we devoted to?

[16:30]

I've come to understand religion as a path from the head to the heart. I do believe there's devotion in Zazen, but its expression is tacit and subtle. And by contrast, the practice of the Prajnaparamita mantra in the heart is a carriage road. It's a boulevard. For so long, I've looked at this question, what is the heart of Zen practice? And I knew, I knew the answer was in the Heart Sutra. I know they put the letter right on the package. And the word Hridaya in Sanskrit and the word heart in English share a threefold meaning.

[17:32]

They mean The organ that pumps blood. The seat of emotional. And the most important part. It's the heart sutra. Two. You know, I've found rest kind of challenging in my life. I get impatient. I feel something more useful. And so I'm restless in a way, and I've really had to kind of look at it. What is rest for me, and how do I do it and allow myself to do it? And the question comes up, what is Zen rest? Is there such a thing? You know, it starts with, I want to rest my chores or errands, and I need to sit down and refresh myself. I'm sure it would be a powerful habit to read a Dharma book while I do that, or Follow my breath while I do that.

[18:34]

Both of those seem like a type of work. I might need to rest after doing those things. In my real habits, you know, I'm on my phone looking at Twitter for engaging information or the television for something entertaining, something that will effortlessly absorb myself. It's my experience that the practice of the Pachna Paramita mantra in the heart is no labor at all. And it's a way of resting that restores me body, heart and mind. And that's like finding a bar of gold. Three. I'm sure a diligent Zen student should build their schedule around the schedule for Zazen. My schedule is still built around my children.

[19:36]

I work till 7 a.m. every morning and I can't say morning zazen. I take my daughter to fencing a couple afternoons a week. There's real limitations to how much I can conform to the schedule. And to find a way of practicing that scales it to what rather than what's just on the schedule and what I can meet, it feels good in my body. I feel I've found something that helps me express myself. Four. The practice of the Prajna Paramita mantra in the heart is the only activity which I understand not to involve denial of the ecological catastrophe which is beginning and which is caused by our greed and ignorance.

[20:48]

And five, great bright mantra is able to relieve all suffering. I'd always understood this as a type of religious rhetoric, some ecstatic praise. I didn't understand it's a prescription. If I'm feeling turmoil, like anger, and I bring that feeling into my heart and I join it, the paramita mantra, the mantra will metabolize the turmoil just as it will metabolize any concept or experience. And this is how an ordinary person like me or you can depend on Prajnaparamita. I have everything I need for my journey, though. You know, if I teach 13-year-olds again, I'd really value being able to say some people practice a mantra this way, some people do it that way.

[21:54]

And I would feel supported in spiritual friendship if anyone was moved with this yourself. I'd be glad to talk to you about the few things I've learned so far. Thank you. I think I just made it in time. You sure did, Mark. Thank you so much. Mark's email is in the chat box if people would like to . But we do have a few minutes now. If you raise your digital hand, Karen will spotlight you and share the screen and share the Dharma with Mark. So without any further ado, I see Hannah Mira. Mark, thank you. I love the talk. I love so much of what you said. I want to tell you a little quick story. Ed Brown tells the story that once at Tassajara, he was very, very upset.

[22:56]

Some of us have seen him very upset. And Katagiri Roshi told him, chant the Gata, Gata, Paragata, Parasanga. Chant it over and over again. That is the solution to your upset. And he tells the story because it worked for him. Thank you. I'm glad to get that kind of detail. I'd heard that Harada Roshi in their community, there's some tradition of chanting it, too, recently. Thanks, Hannah. Laurie. Oh, it's just such great to hear your talk. And it's been so fun to. While you raised your kids and everything, sort of a step after we, you know, just like a chunk after we raised ours. And that was just so meaningful. And we've had contact. I wanted to share that I when my kids were little, I invented a mantra because I was so angry.

[24:01]

I. The anxiety for me was really intense. And I would feel it, especially at night when everything else was quiet. And I just felt so vulnerable. I felt like, you know, if something happened to them, my life would end. You know, there was just no life after that. And I was very scared. And I myself, which was safe, healthy and thriving. And it was just I needed something more. I needed to replace. I needed something that replaces. what's happening rather than just, I mean, you know, like with Zazen, you can't just go to nothing. You have to replace what's happening, you know? I also have always wondered, why don't we, we say we're supposed to proclaim it, but then why don't we hardly ever proclaim the Prajnaparamita mantra? But I really appreciated your exploration. And yeah, I might circle up with you in a little while about talking about it more. Thank you. Mark, I got a question, which is, you said that you want to do something useful.

[25:08]

You want to be of some use. Do you feel you've been useful this morning in presenting your understanding of the Prashnaparamita mantra? It's helpful for me to be able to express it and get it out. But yes, it's well used for me this time to be heard. Good. I'm glad about that. And we heard you this morning as Kokyo in our zendo, chanting the Heart Sutra, leading us in our chant today. We have another minute or so. Hosan, I think you got the last word. Thank you, Mark. That was really, really excellent and stimulating talk. You know, we have a... we tiptoe around the devotional aspects of our practice, the devotional aspects of Soto Zen practice, often I think because it's not so culturally comfortable to us, but it's there.

[26:18]

In particular, like this, the mantra practices are there as a foundational layer Zen. And I think it's really good to support them. Any contradiction, they are, if we look at, you know, Japanese Buddhism, look at the Shingon tradition, but what we see there that's not always comfortable for everybody is that it's a mystical devotional practice. And it's like for some of us who are fleeing our birth traditions, that's not so comfortable. But just to say, it's there. And we should, you know, bring it forth to the extent that people want to. A lot of places when they chant the Heart Sutra, they chant it three times.

[27:21]

You know, so you get into the rhythm of actually proclaiming it. I would totally support you and anyone in doing practices like this. Thank you for your support. Yeah, as a tacit and subtle in Zazen, I think they're reaching for wholeheartedness. And a lot of vocabulary of devotion is one-sided. Well, the thing I think is to actually find the wholeheartedness. Yes. You know, that really is the essence. But we get lost in supplication, in prayers. But the wholeheartedness, the wholehearted giving is what that practice really is.

[28:26]

Yes. Thank you, Hosan. And thanks again, Mark, for bringing up the other side. Thank you. Take care. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to end. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Good morning, and here are today's announcements. This evening, we will continue with our Pali Suttas class at 7.15 in the online Zendo. This Saturday, Ryushin Andrea Thatch will deliver the lecture.

[29:30]

This Sunday, we will have a half day sitting in the Zendo beginning at 8 a.m. If you'd like to participate, please contact Mark Copethorn, and his email is in the chat. And next Monday morning, Daryan Rezazad will deliver a Wayseeking Mind talk. And with that, thank you so much, Mark and Ross. Feel free to unmute yourself and say hello. Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you, Mark. Have a good day. Good morning. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, all. Bye, everybody. Bye.

[30:19]

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