This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I'm really happy to be here. My name is Greg. I'm the Tanto, or Head of Practice, at Tazahara. It's my great pleasure to be talking tonight. Kind of intimate group. It's very pleasant. So, I just want to start by... That's much better.

[01:02]

Perfect, yeah. My voice kind of already projects anyway. Probably do without it. I just want to begin by acknowledging and thanking my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi, the abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, my home temple, and to say that my talk is just to encourage you in your practice. What is your practice? Is what my talk is about. What is our practice? That's what I'd like to talk about this evening. So, I want to say I'm really happy to be back in Tassajara after my brief spring vacation. I'm really happy to be here in work period.

[02:05]

I love work period. I love the transitions, but we just finished cloistered monastic training period. It was very formal and now we have the spring work period and then we'll transition into guest season. It's great. It's great to see how the thread of practice continues through these transition times and through these different seasons at Tassajara which I can recommend I can recommend hanging around long enough to see how that feels coming back yesterday I was I just got happier and happier starting about when I the county line coming into Monterey County and it's just like whoop here we go back yeah it really feels good and then work period I love for a lot of reasons but you know work is our core practice in the Zen school in our tradition oh for close to a millennium and a half

[03:32]

of Zen work has actually been the core practice. Sometimes for survival, sometimes because it's an excellent way to actualize our understanding, to put our understanding, how we live in the world, put it into practice. embody that. Zen is completely body practice and work is body practice and work is Zen and Zen is work. Sometimes. This morning I was doing what we call the Jundo where officiating priest goes around and offers incense at various altars before they get to the zendo.

[04:40]

And then zendo, they walk around and do a morning greeting inside the zendo. And I was doing a jundo through various work sites. The kaisando over here is like a huge construction site right now. And it reminded me of a doing Dharma transmission, the ceremony of Dharma transmission three years ago with my wife Linda during spring work period and in the ceremony of Dharma transmission you do something similar but much more extensive actually you go all through Tassajara just about every altar in Tassajara and before the wake-up bell and it's pitch dark And because it was work period, we were stumbling through all these construction sites.

[05:43]

We did offerings at the bathhouse, and the bathhouse deck at one point was completely torn apart. It was just like saw horses and a big hole in the ground, you know. I'm like, well, where do we bow, you know? And so this morning was bringing back memories of that. It's really... really great you know see Tazara all torn up and then put back together again new and improved amazing amazing practice so on our vacation this is very typical for me and Linda our precious vacation time we went to a Zen ceremony in Texas a big ceremony called Mountain Seat Ceremony. This is the installation of an abbot.

[06:46]

In this case, the abbot is Kosho McCall, who practiced at Tazahara for many years, so he's very dear to a lot of us, and he was Tamto here at Tazahara for a number of years, as well as... a number of other practice positions. And then some years ago, I think starting in 2009, he became the resident teacher in Austin, Texas, the Austin Zen Center Kodosong Temple. And the ceremony was really beautiful. The Austin Sangha put a tremendous amount of effort into it. The dear friends of ours, Mako Volkal and Graham Ross, who are a couple, are now co-tantos at Austin Zen Center and they practiced here at Tazhara for 10 years.

[07:56]

And Mako told us that the Austin Sangha had met She was on a planning committee for the mountain seat ceremony that met once a week since January, this committee had met, just to take care of this one ceremony, which was huge. It involved everybody in the Sangha. I think possibly everybody in the Sangha had some active role in the ceremony, either support or... cooking, or set up, or transportation, or putting out chairs, or creating invitations. The whole sangha was involved. So this mountain seat refers to the avacy, and the mountain refers to the place of practice. And we say the

[08:59]

the new abbot ascends the mountain. So that's what these cool t-shirts Linda and I got for being in the ceremony. We were both attendants in the ceremony. And they had this commemorative t-shirts and on the back they say, ascending the mountain. That's what the new abbot does in the ceremony. He ascends, he or she ascends the mountain. And the mountain is the place of practice. And Tasahara is a mountain. Even though we're in this canyon, but we're in the mountains, and figuratively, any place where people come together as a Sangha, as a community, to practice Zen intensively is a mountain. And the Abassi is the mountain seat. But when Kosho ascended the mountain,

[10:00]

the whole sangha ascended the mountain with him. They all went up the mountain together in this beautiful ceremony. And it was like a big sort of unifying event for the entire sangha, expressing their intention. supporting kosho, but supporting each other. You know, so... Tassahara is like that. Tassahara is a place of practice. A mountain. You know? The... The big construction zone over here, that building, is called... Thank goodness, it's so wonderful, it's getting a new roof.

[11:02]

It's called the Kaisando. And Kaisan means opening the mountain. Do means hall. This is the Zen Do, the meditation hall. And the Kaisando means founder's hall. Founder, Kaisan, means the person who opened the mountain, the founder of the mountain. So the founder of this mountain was, of course, So Zen practice, Zen training, what we do here on the mountain. you could say is a sort of actualization of our understanding with our bodies, supporting each other to do that.

[12:10]

To the founder of our school of Zen, Soto Zen, the person who brought Soto Zen school from China to Japan, A.A. Dogen, For him, practice and enlightenment were the same thing, are the same thing. Practice and enlightenment are the same thing. He said famously, although this abundant Dharma, excuse me, although this inconceivable Dharma is abundant in each person, it's not actualized without practice. So... That's what we do. And what does that look like? What does that mean? It's a word you're going to hear like thousands of times if you hang out with Zenies. If you go where Zen is going on, you hear that word over and over and over again.

[13:19]

Practice, practice, practice. What does that mean? It's not actualized without practice. How does... the rubber meet the road? Actually, that's a good question for all of us, really. I don't exactly... I'm not going to give you an answer to that, but I do want to talk about it a little bit in terms of some kind of old-fashioned, like really old-fashioned understanding of that. In Buddhism, Pan-Buddhism, every school of Buddhism, we talk about the three trainings. The three trainings are in Sanskrit, Śrīla, Samadhi, Prajna.

[14:21]

Śrīla means conduct or morality, behavior. Samadhi means concentration or meditation or integration, integration of body and mind. And prajna is usually translated as wisdom. So the practice of Buddhism can be understood as cultivation of these three factors. Buddhism is full of lists. The more you learn about Buddhism, the more you find lists, lists, lists. So this is a very short list, a list of three. It actually subsumes a somewhat longer list called the Noble Eightfold Path, which was the very first Dharma talk that the Chakyamuni Buddha gave. He talked about the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

[15:27]

In the Noble Eightfold Path, Right view and right intention are included in prajna. Right speech, right action, and right livelihood, Shiva. And right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration or meditation, right samadhi actually, those three are included in samadhi. So, shila, samadhi, and prajna. In that order, shila comes first because it's the basis. It's the basis for most schools of Buddhism. What comes first is how we conduct ourselves, how we comport body, speech, relating to each other,

[16:30]

with attentiveness and kindness. This is really critical because it's hard to practice the other two, samaya and prajna, if you're upset or jangly or angry or confused. raised with lust, you know, you name it. So, you know, we have to, you know, calm and regulate, regulate a body and mind to practice effectively, wholesomely. And this means, you know, morality, actually. This means good conduct. And this is why we have our guidelines, the Shingi,

[17:34]

every school of Zen, going way before Eihei Dogen had his, the Eihei Shingi, but it goes way, way, way further back than that. Every monastery, every mountain has its pure standards, its rules, rules of conduct. So the monks know, you know, what are the expectations? You don't have to think about it. You don't have to wake up every morning and think, okay, do I go to Sausen or not? Let me see, should I walk over there? Should I... It really simplifies things. It really helps. You just do. Just do. And then see what happens. That's the advantage. And it's unusual. It's not like usual life. So my advice is take advantage of it. Now, I said to a few people that I would talk about my big gripe with Zen tonight.

[18:44]

So I don't want to disappoint them because I wouldn't say at the time, what was my big gripe with Zen? And you might be surprised, some of you might be surprised to hear that I have a big gripe with Zen because I'm pretty enthusiastic about Zen. I'm pretty... Yeah. I like Zen. I don't think I would be tanto at Tazahara for five years if I wasn't, if I was kind of like iffy about Zen. So that might come as a surprise to you. But here it is. My big gripe with Zen is that for a lot of people, including some pretty famous Zen masters, contemporary and going back in history, seems to me like they wanted to scooch right past the shila to get to the good stuff, the samadhi and prajna, and start practicing concentration and wisdom without the basis, without the foundation.

[19:54]

The three trainings are understood as like the three legs of a stool or a tripod. You know, you take away one and The other two just won't do it on their own. It takes all three. But in the list, shila comes first. Conduct comes first. Comportment, how we behave, comes first. And the result, in my opinion, has been some, well, some fairly not... wholesome activities by some otherwise pretty great teachers. At worst, and at best, a kind of, I don't know, a sort of cheapening of the tradition.

[21:01]

I had this wonderful quote I was going to share with you from a contemporary teacher, actually. I consider him a friend. We're not exactly palsy-wowsy, but I know him. His name is James Ford, and he wrote this on a post for the Soto Zen Buddhist Association listserv, and I asked him if I could quote it. said yes. James says, as an observer of the Zen scene in the West for the past four decades, I'm concerned about public perceptions of our project. It is largely informed by a romantic view ginned up from our beginnings by Alan Watts and others who were creating an anarchic spirituality. deeply individualistic and anti-authoritarian, flavored with bits and pieces of koan literature highlighting spontaneity and erratic behaviors and calling it Zen.

[22:13]

As we all know, there are truths in that view, but we are in fact about something much bigger. It has been important to me to help make Zen vastly more ordinary in people's eyes. And I want to chime in with my friend James and say, it's important to me too. I would like to see Zen become something more ordinary in people's eyes. And I think that Suzuki Roshi felt that way as well. There's a chapter in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind called Zen and Excitement. And Suzuki Roshi said, Zen is not something to get excited about. And there's another chapter called Limiting Our Activity. To practice means, as my teacher, Sojan Roshi, always says, just take very good care of whatever's in front of you.

[23:17]

Just pay attention to what's happening right here, right now. Stay present for what arises. And, of course, zazen is... training of zazen is very critical for that. And when you have grounding in wholesome life, which I think Tassahara is a pretty wholesome life, pretty wholesome community, then it's very conducive to practicing zazen, to practicing concentration and wisdom. Zazen helps us to do that. And... It also happens to be very easy to uphold all the precepts when you're sitting silently, without moving. Pretty easy to uphold the precepts that way. So, zazen is also training in sila.

[24:20]

This is how the three trainings support each other. So, that's why zazen is our core practice. Now, if you were listening carefully, you might recall that earlier in my talk, I said that work is our core practice. So, you might think, oh, Tantosan is contradicting himself. But I don't think so. I say, Zazen is our core practice, and work is our core practice. And there is no contradiction there, to my view. Speaking of the precepts, I was thinking about, I have been thinking about, in the three pure precepts, usual or typical translation of the third pure precept is, I vow to live and be lived

[26:04]

for the benefit of all beings, which is very noble and very, seems kind of, the sound of it is very lofty. But you know, I think it's also quite down to earth For me, it means my intention is to share practice. And I think practicing together as a community, our intention could be, maybe should be, to share practice and to support each other. So my intention is to encourage you in your practice. And I think that we can all encourage each other in our practice. And coming to Tassajara, It's your big opportunity.

[27:06]

The minute you get here, you're already contributing. The minute you get here, you're already supporting other people in their practice. We're all supporting each other. And the upshot is, well, the person who drove Me and Linda. Oh, I was going to mention, the day before the ceremony, we spent the entire day in rehearsals from about 10 until 4, something like that, with a break for lunch, rehearsing for this massive, complicated ceremony. That's what we did on our 10th wedding anniversary. That's how we celebrated our 10th anniversary. Send nerds that we are.

[28:08]

And the guy who drove us back to the airport the day before yesterday, it was just the three of us in the car, and his name's Eric, and he comes to Tassajara sometimes. He'll come this summer. And... he started talking about Tassajara in a way that I'm familiar with. I've heard other people talk about Tassajara. And he was moved. He was quite moved talking about Tassajara. And he said, even if he didn't come, even if he didn't come to Tassajara, knowing that this place, this mountain, was here, just knowing it supported him in his practice. Just knowing that Tazahara was here and that we were doing this was the support for him.

[29:11]

And I think that's thousands of people, actually. I've heard many different versions of that, but it was really sweet to hear Eric say that. And he said I could quote him in this talk. And, you know, that's something that... you're already a part of. Whether you're here for a day or a month or all summer or the next few years of your life, you're already a part of that. And that's how it works. That's how this place works. That's how our practice works on this mountain. Every morning, every day, we ascend the mountain together, all of us. we ascend the mountain together. And that's a beautiful thing. So, Chico, Juliana, said she was all in favor of keeping things short and sweet.

[30:21]

I guess it could have been shorter. I think that's all I've got to say tonight. And thank you for your attention. There's time for a question or two. Anybody has a question about this Zen business? How can we make it more ordinary? How can we... My mission is to make Zen boring. Boring. Big enough. Actually, maybe my mission is to... for all of us to enjoy our practice together, actually. To share our practice with joy. Question? Okay. Oh, yes, Melinda. I have a question. I'm sort of hesitating to bring it up, but back to your big, reckless end. Yes. Can you talk about... I have a hard time reconciling the...

[31:26]

unwholesome behavior and the otherwise great teacher. Yeah. But that's the problem. I have the same problem. Yeah, and it creates confusion. That's my gripe. It creates confusion. I think that people can practice for years and years and have really amazing insight, really amazing powers of concentration, and be quite... What's the word I want? You know, that thing that I'm not. Charismatic. Charismatic. Yeah. And yet, and yet, and yet. Well, I feel suspicious of the great insight when it's within the same... charismatic leader who makes unwholesome behavior.

[32:33]

Me too. I beg your pardon? You can't help me out there. Help you out? Well, I think if you feel suspicious, run, don't walk. Yeah. And it's something that we should... be on guard for in ourselves and others. And that's why I think that, yeah, maybe some people are just naturally good at it, but some of us, it requires a lot of work. It's really critical To my view, it's really my understanding. I think it's quite critical that we do this important work together.

[33:36]

Together. And keep each other honest. Keep each other honest. Maybe that's a request from me for your feedback. Yes, Marvin. Just to follow up on that, does that mean there is a fragmentation, some kind of fragmentation in the tradition that you can actually become enlightened without necessarily following moral laws? I don't know. I don't know. Enlightened? I don't know. See, from... From Master Dogen's point of view, there's no difference between enlightenment and practice. And I think if your practice, especially if you're doing harm, if that's all over the map, well, I wouldn't call that enlightenment.

[34:50]

And you might be reborn 500 lifetimes as a fox. You know that story? Yeah. So this great insight that someone might be, shall we say, slightly defective. It might be. It might be. And there's a lot of contemporary teachers, including James Ford and Grace Shearson and Norman Fisher and many others who put a lot of emphasis on, you know, examining the shadow side. I mean, you sit in a zazen, it's all going to come up. But we can just get more skilled at having it come up and shunting it to one side instead of actually meeting it head on.

[35:57]

We've all got it. We've all got that shadow side. Might as well acknowledge it. Learn to practice with it. That's samadhi too. That's integration. Not turning away. Not denying it. Talking to your peers and talking to your teachers and practice leaders. Tremendous support. what comes to my mind is I once went to therapy and we were talking about some things that were bothering me about my shadow side and this therapist took his hand from behind his head and said well therapy will be like taking this hand of what you're seeing about yourself and just putting it in clear view and maybe and in hindsight I feel like I don't know if that if I like

[37:00]

able to go in like work period and fix myself but i did get to know i get i got to see this more as i was practicing like become more gentle and soft around it and i think that really makes a huge difference like just yeah like practicing for a long time yeah well maybe it's not fixing yourself but like work period and turning the compost turning the compost and and uh you know, that's where the lotus blooms in the mucky muck. So, no worries. So now it's becoming perhaps more sweet but less short. So I think we should wrap it up and call it a night. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Good night. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[38:02]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[38:12]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_91.05