And then to interrupt that momentum that you've created to meet a deadline, it's the same issue as being with your friends and then going to be quiet. You've hurled yourself toward a goal now, and you have to change modes to go sit with no goal, just empty time. So it's a big change to be goal-directed and then quiet and then get out, take up the goal again, and then be quiet. I'm not minimizing it. the effort that you must make to make these decisions. I know that it's difficult. Or you're emotionally upset in a crisis and being quiet seems to highlight the bad feeling. Moving around actually is helpful. Letting your mind run around from place to place minimizes your pain. So you're inclined to sit after you feel a little better. Now, Right now, you'd rather talk to a friend or have a drink or eat chocolate or go over the scenario that made you upset again and again and again.

[01:10]

You'd rather do that, trying to find some opening there. So it takes a very serious commitment to make the decision to sit in all those situations. And each time you make the decision to sit, the commitment deepens. As a result, it takes a while before you're carried by the commitment. You have to build this up in your body first. It takes a while. And when you make the decision to not sit, but to go to the movies or be with your friend or not interrupt the deadline thing or be upset, be sad or angry or anxious, when you make the decision to be with that, Instead of sitting, your commitment weakens a little. But you can always rededicate yourself. You can always recoup. There's no reason to worry. It's just every time you do this, it's so a little harder. You're kind of working upstream now.

[02:11]

Because statistically, you've tilted in favor of not sitting. But, as I said, you can recoup and rededicate. You've heard that a wood Buddha can't go through the fire and a clay Buddha can't go through the water, but a stone Buddha can go through the fire and be submerged in the water without damage. If you can't take your sitting practice through deadlines, friends visits, and emotional pain, you're not taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha yet, but you should keep trying. Because when you do manage to do this, Your sitting practice will repay the favor. It will take you through friends, emotional upset, deadlines, and so on. It will carry you. You've carried it. So I think a big reason to make a commitment like this for your lifetime, to live by vow, is to have in place an alternative to our own whims and impulses.

[03:24]

If we've made a vow, a commitment, we have some internal reference point to show all the passing fancies to. You know, should I do this, should I do that? It just occurred to me, I'm just asking, should I do this? So impulses are not by definition bad. So you can't just go to sleep and never follow an impulse or always follow an impulse. For instance, in my own life, I have various impulses. At their best, at their best, their message is sent from some unconscious parts of myself to communicate some deep yearning. That's at their best. Like next year in 2009, I'm taking a spontaneous year. It doesn't mean I won't work. I probably will be as busy as I am now, but I'm not scheduling anything ahead of time.

[04:24]

Just whatever. I've told everybody who's asked me to speak at their plays, I've said, if anybody cancels last minute, call me. But I'm not scheduling. So it's going to be a spontaneous year, just whatever. You know, I haven't been to a friend's birthday party for years, that kind of thing. I never can do anything. Last minute. So I really love the idea of a spontaneous year. I consider this a creative and inventive idea that arose from some pool of slowly accumulated resentment. That being constantly scheduled years in advance for things. Constantly, I've lived that way for at least 10 years. And so I think that's a very useful impulse. It just came up. And I listened.

[05:25]

But I also have impulses that are destructive and vindictive. And I have to hold them up, too, to the standard of vow. Sometimes if someone has hurt me, I want revenge. And I used to do this all the time, you know, plot and plan, just, you know, so I I push the first domino and just watch it all. But I actually haven't been able to do this for some years. I start rearranging the dominoes and then I just kind of lose interest. So I think, what I think has happened is that my vows, my vow particularly to do no harm, has permeated my body. so deeply that I can't follow through on this feeling of vindictiveness. When I picture my enemy squirming on a hook that I've created, where I used to feel deep satisfaction, I think that now I would feel only concern and shame.

[06:34]

And so I can't do that to anyone anymore. So that kind of impulse can't stand up to vow. no matter what is done to me. Can't stand up to thou. So, as I was saying, we have tremendous good fortune to have this ancient tradition, this centuries-old commitment to consciousness as a counterpoint to our whims and our destructive impulses, as a way of realizing our yearning to be upright And in the workshop for people in pain that I just did at Green Gulch Farm a few weeks ago, we got into a discussion of upright in relation to Zazen posture. So here we were lying down to sit. But as Dogen says in the Fukan Zazengi, upright is not a matter of sitting, standing, or lying down.

[07:37]

It means true. It means ethical to the bone. All the way down. through so you can be straight and tall even when you're sitting or lying down. It means character, uprightness as in a person you can count on or a person you might want to emulate. It's one of the shins in Shin Shin Ming, the poem that describes the way such an upright person experiences reality. My favorite poem, Faith in Mind or Trust in Mind. Shin Shin Mi, upright. This is the way an upright person sees reality. So this afternoon, Blanche and Mark and I will ordain two women who have been able to make a commitment to practice and who eventually, after years of practice, have asked to be held accountable to the rest of us.

[08:39]

By that I mean that they wish to be recognized as woven into the fabric of other people's lives. They wish to be seen as within reach. By donning priest ropes, it's like sticking a great big post-it on their foreheads that says, I'm available. Whatever you've got, bring it here. That's what priest ropes mean. So today I wanted to describe what is the commitment, the particular commitment of a Soto Zen priest. Now I put my watch here, but I actually don't know what I'm watching. When do you end? Eleven? Eleven. Thank you for being so kind. That puts the ball in my court as far as restraint. Laughter Don't worry, I saw some people roll their eyes.

[09:48]

I intend to be short. So what is the commitment of a Soto Zen priest? Well, for one, a priest vows to be steady and faithful. You're there for people. You show up in the Zendo, your particular Zendo, wherever it is that you sit and take responsibility for other people's practice. You show up in that Zendo year after year after year to support other people's practice, to support other people, to be an inspiration for other people. This is your vow. You don't think, well, that lecture is not my favorite or I don't like the kind of incense they used last week or I deserve a day off. You just go. That's all. No decision to be made even. You just go. I think also, secondly, a priest vows to be open and tolerant to all sorts of points of view, all sorts of people.

[10:58]

Not to hold on to your own truth as superior, but to always be ready to listen and to learn. For example, I was visiting a priest candidate in New York City for a retreat I was giving there, and she and I were watching late-night TV. She had this huge screen, and I would just... Anything, any retinal image was fine with me. But she was clicking across the channels, and she happened to click across a hip-hop station. And she said, I hate hip-hop. hip-hop. I was genuinely shocked. I said, you're about to be ordained as a Zen priest. You can never hate anything again. Now you can prefer some music to others. That's okay. Not the best, but you can.

[12:01]

You can also prefer some opinions to others. Again, not the best, but it's a way to go. You can prefer some people's companionship to others. This I totally understand. So you can have these preferences, but as a Zen priest, you can never not include anything ever again. You're invited to include your own revulsion, of course. that you can't ever turn away, ever again. And thirdly, you take care of others, not in a sticky, attached way. But a then priest supports others' way-seeking mind, other people's true nature. And these decisions are actually hard to make.

[13:01]

I feel like this particular thing. supporting people's way-seeking minds is part of the art of practice that's learned over years. Because these are hard decisions. Are you a priest or a friend or a mate? Do you support a student's way-seeking mind without fail, but not support your friend's way-seeking mind because now you're off? You know, it's your downtime now. or a mate's way-seeking mind? Again, it's your downtime. So do you support their way-seeking minds too? With what part of what person do you align yourself in any situation? With what part of them do you align yourself? If you align yourself with any part of them at all. This is not so easy. It's fascinating, really. I love this about practice.

[14:03]

It's one of my favorite things. Here's a person in front of you. What? Where is your allegiance? And then I think a Soto then priest develops some inner sense of renunciation and being held accountable. So some people might see this as burdensome. has the severe severity or the austerity side of taking priest vows. So the opposite may be of the spontaneity and joy that we associate with Zen practice. Do we associate Zen practice? Spontaneity and joy. Well, it does sound a little grim, you know, to say being held accountable. sense of renunciation. But in actuality, it's light. It's buoyant.

[15:04]

It means you just let go of extra stuff. That's all. For instance, I resisted being ordained for years. And I think it's because I had this idea that I had a life. And I protected that life from being usurped by the religious establishment. And this didn't actually translate into anything about my behavior. You know, there was nothing different about that at all. It's just that the idea was very important to me that my precious life belonged to me. It was not up to anybody else what I did. Well, I finally was ordained against my better judgment. And... And I was in a very bad mood the day of ordination. I had a ridiculous haircut and I looked fat in my robes. But the day after I was ordained, I woke up to clear blue sky.

[16:10]

I just felt so light when I looked at the sky. I just felt like the sky and I were joined. I could just fly across it. So no more life to protect. That idea was gone. No more life to protect and to hold off from others and to make adjustments to. I was free. So I think of this, really, as the spirit of renunciation. The freedom to let go of extra stuff that you're carrying around. And then a priest, of course, the vows to practice zazen, and so do forms. And this is technically what a priest does. Uphold zazen is our basic form. And I personally don't see people for practice discussion who aren't doing zazen at that time.

[17:13]

Maybe they did it some time ago, but if they're not actively sitting zazen now, I don't see people for private discussions. And that's because I don't have a degree in counseling or in human psychology. I have a master's in experimental psychology or rat psychology, as it was known at the time. But I don't have any counseling skills or training at all. All my ability to guide and inform students is based in my own experience of zazen and their experience of zazen. I don't have any other information available to help people. When people ask me to perform a ceremony to mark some important transition in their lives, I offer that ceremony informed by Zaza. That's all I have to offer.

[18:14]

I feel like people who come... for private interviews because of their own zazen practice already bring the resources that I'm going to point at, point out the specific aspect. That's, I think, what a practice instructor does, is point out what's already there in the person's commitment to zazen, in the person's practice of zazen, that helps in difficult situations. So, the last thing I want to mention is that I think that a priest, a Soto Zen priest, vows to cultivate a willingness to be exposed. This was so important to me. I felt for the next several days after my ordination, I felt...

[19:16]

like I was hanging in the golden wind. You know that koan. Now, I'm not sure that it refers to exposure, but I just felt like I was just hanging like a newborn babe in the wind, having the wind sway my rope. It was hanging from the bow. This is very important to me, that a priest is willing to reveal him or herself in entirety to show what he or she is as a person, complete with flaws and emotions and ill will and anxiety. And the reason I think this is so important is because many people look to priests as role models for practice. And if you can't see the person, then it's very hard to know what to take away. You know, one great thing about Zen Center that has so many teachers, so you can't get the idea from looking at one person.

[20:23]

That's Zen. And then you have a completely different person over here. That's Zen also. Completely different over here. That's Zen also. So you get the idea that Zen is not about a particular way. It's about a true way. a true way relative to the person, relative to the priest. So I think it's important for a priest to model authenticity. It's also a great opportunity to demonstrate how a long-term practitioner handles the difficult situations that come up, how... They handle various emotional situations. They're upsetting circumstances. We all want to know that. We all want to know what people who have been sitting Zazen for 30 years, how is it different that they do things? When I walked in the door, that's all I wanted to know. I just wanted to see somebody who'd been sitting for decades.

[21:29]

How did they do things? How did they touch things? How did they walk? How did they look when they were upset in the kitchen? You know, how? This is so important for priests to do. Because if left to your own, people tend to think that we should eliminate our feelings in order to be a quantumist. This is a huge misunderstanding. in spiritual practice. This is very widespread, this misunderstanding that you push your feelings away or to say, oh, that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. So that you can be a quantumist. But actually, what a priest should demonstrate, I feel, is what real equanimity is. The willingness to have any state of mind. To let any state of mind appear. Any feeling appear.

[22:29]

No exclusion. That takes a lot of stability to allow any state of mind to arise and pass away of its own accord. That is equanimity. So, Suzuki Roshi said that we must have a strong spirit so that we don't get lost in Buddhism. He said, becoming a priest does not have the propagation of Buddhism as its goal. Rather, now I'm quoting it here. Rather, it symbolizes a person who's willing to be themselves. Not the propagation of Buddhism. A person who's willing to be themselves. We say, he said, we say Buddhism for convenience. We use that term for convenience. But we shouldn't be lost in a particular practice or a particular way that is anything but our own way.

[23:39]

And this is why practice is so unending and takes so long. It's so difficult to find your own way, to find it among all the whims and impulses and identities and ideas and opinions You have to clear the space and find your way. Sometimes people do that their first sashim. They know their way. But the minute they get up, it's gone. So, no matter how many satori's you have in sashim, how many enlightenment experiences, you have to hold that authenticity, to find it again and again and again through your daily life, through your anger, through your pain, through your betrayal, through the injury that others do you, to find your way again and again.

[24:44]

People give up and go away. But today we celebrate the ordination of two people who didn't give up. They didn't go away. They found their way. So this is indeed a wonderful occasion that brings me back to this seat. Thank you so much.

[25:09]

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