Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. all of a sudden I feel completely full, full of memory, full of thoughts, full of things that were not in my mind as I was dragging myself out of bed and driving over the bridge this morning. I'm really honored to be here with you, to be with many old friends and teachers, and absent friends who are still present.

[01:07]

Sometimes when people from City Center come over to Berkeley, they talk about it. It's a kind of homecoming. And the opposite is somewhat true for me. when I began to sit in 1968 we sat in Berkeley and we came over to Sakoji and I never made a distinction between which was my home or which was the place where the practice was centered it's just wherever we were so this feels like a homecoming of sorts and then I was as I was sitting zazen up in the Tonto's office, I was thinking at the first time I was in this building, I was playing in Allen Ginsberg's band.

[02:13]

I don't know if any of you were here. This is feeding back a little bit. I don't know if any of you were here. It was like in 71 or 72. Michael might have been here. We played back in that corner and we were playing Alan's strange songs and chants, and that was the first time I had set foot in this building, and it was quite wonderful. So I have in mind, of course, Lou Hartman, and I spoke about Lou, and I spoke about Darlene Cohen last week at Berklee Zen Center, just remembering what inspirations and just what warm friends they were, encouraging my practice. And I was also recalling I think it was 1988 when Blanche and Lou came and lived at Berklee Zen Center in Sojin's office while he was

[03:27]

at Tassajara and just how wonderful that was to have them living with us. And I think of Darlene and I think of, I also remember Jerome roaming the halls here and also practicing with him at Tassajara. And then today, as soon as I leave here, we're doing a memorial for our friend Rebecca Maeno, who was a priest at Berkeley Zen Center, who died in very late November, and we're finally doing this memorial for her. And as I was remembering last week at Berkeley Zen Center, there's a Bernice Reagan Johnson song, Bernice of Sweet Honey in the Rock, called They are falling all around me.

[04:29]

The tallest trees in the forest, and yet they are with us. Their example is with us. Their teaching is with us. They neither come nor go. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. And also acknowledge that I've been kind of frazzled with coming and going myself for the last number of weeks. And I was thinking of what I would talk about. I have a new book that's come out recently. And I have some copies which will be available. I think they're in the bookstore. And I have some copies which are available over tea. But I didn't want to just read something. I wanted to offer something that might be useful and encouraging.

[05:35]

So this is a talk that came to me a couple of years ago, and it sort of got expanded into one of the essays in this book. and now recontract it into a talk. I hope it's going to be a talk, not a reading. And it comes from the inspiration of The Sixth Ancestor. But it begins with an epigraph by Walt Whitman from Song of Myself. And it says, Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Then in parentheses, I am large, I contain multitudes. I concentrate towards them that are nigh.

[06:37]

I wait on the door slab. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. I concentrate towards them that are nigh. I wait on the door slab. So, in the Platform Sutra, which some of you may have studied, the sixth Zen ancestor, Master Wineng, has his own framing of the Bodhisattva vows that we will take at the end of a talk. He has these verses of formless repentance, is what he calls it. And these are his version, which is interesting. Sentient beings of our own minds are limitless. We vow to save them all.

[07:41]

The afflictions of our own minds are limitless. We vow to eradicate them all. The teachings of our own minds are inexhaustible. We vow to learn them all. The enlightenment of Buddhahood of our minds is unsurpassable, and we vow to achieve it. So that what's injected, you know, we usually chant, beings are numberless, I vow to save them, or I vow to awaken them, but this constant repetition of our own minds, gives it an interesting turning. So the title of my book is called The Bodhisattvas Embrace, and then the subtitle is Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism's Front Lines. So the front line is in a lot of different places, but the first line is here, or here, or here.

[08:48]

first line is myself. The first line is what's in my own mind and heart. So I was really struck by this as the heart of practice, that the sentient beings of our own minds are limitless and we vow to save them all. This is each of our work. This is what Whitman is saying when he says, I am large, I contain multitudes. So What I'm offering you is a kind of beginnings of Zen psychology. And it's certainly related to what Dogen wrote in Genjo Kahn when he said, to study the Buddha way 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. This includes, of course, beginning and ending with all things of one's mind.

[09:56]

So... I don't... really pretend to be a psychologist. I've never studied it formally. I'm sure there are probably two-thirds of the room here is. But psychology has become a sort of pillar of a kind of secular religion in the West, and Western Buddhism has been really influenced by it. So it's not always easy to see where psychology begins and practice begins. Where's the boundary between the two of them? So as Zen teachers tend to hear a lot about suffering, we listen to that.

[11:02]

We have our own. We listen to suffering that's rooted in old wounds and patterns and depending on what lens you're looking through, you can call that karma, or you can call that neurosis. And sometimes there's not anything to do, but what Darlene Cohen said to me, or she said, I think it was in one of our spot trainings, she said, sometimes the only thing you can do is hold a person's hand and go to hell with them. And that's That's true. So Buddhism, you could see it as a collection of psychological systems and its wisdom evolves through the ages and cultures across nations. One of these systems is the Buddha's teaching or his discovery of dependent origination, Paticca Samuppara, which is about the workings of the mind, the workings of birth and death.

[12:12]

The late Thai teacher, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, writes about dependent origination and rebirth. He writes about rebirth moment by moment, and this is always often a sticking point for Buddhists. Are we talking about rebirth from life to life? But my teacher, and most of the people that I hear in our school, they talk about rebirth from moment to moment. And that's kind of what's at the heart of what I'll talk about. So Buddhadasa writes, and he also had the same understanding in his own Theravada tradition, grasping an attachment will give rise to becoming and birth. In that moment of becoming and birth, which takes place in our mind, what is born is a sentient being of our mind. This is someone very close to us that we must take care of.

[13:15]

So how do we save suffering beings of our mind? How can I be of use to myself? And also, how do I study myself so that when I meet others and when I meet myself, my own delusions, my own traumas, do not get in the way. So here's an example. A man of about 50 who practices regularly at Berkeley Zen Center sits down across from me. We sit upright, almost knee to knee. So after numerous attempts at reconciliation and accommodation, he's left his marriage and he's left the home that he and his wife have shared for 20 years. As he talks, he weeps.

[14:17]

There are two young children in the picture. And for the last several weeks, he's not been able to see them. He's not been permitted to see them. So they're in conflict about, he and his wife are in conflict about money. They're in conflict about child visitation, the ownership of the house, and about how to proceed towards divorce. And he says, I didn't think it could ever come to this. He says, I'm angry all the time. How can she keep me from seeing my own kids? What is she telling my kids about me? So the tears are streaming down his face. I will say... I'm making this up, but it's pretty close to things that we experience. So it's not a particular person.

[15:22]

The tears are streaming down his face, falling freely on his cushion. He says, every conversation or note that I get leaves me furious. I never knew I had such anger in me. So what's going on here in terms of Buddhist analysis? In terms of dependent origination, when you look at the wheel, there's this map, this Buddhist cosmology of the realms that beings are born into. There are six realms. Really, they're limitless realms, but sort of archetypally. talking about six realms. There's three lower realms. One is inhabited by hungry ghosts or pretas who are seen as insatiably hungry and greedy. They're often depicted with swollen bellies and impossibly long, narrow necks that they can't get enough sustenance down.

[16:30]

Another lower realm is animals, which you should forgive me because I don't think that this is truly what animals are. But in this map, animals are characterized by stupidity and prejudice. So let's just hold that in abeyance. But it's description. We know people who are stupid and prejudiced. I'm not sure I know any dogs who are stupid and prejudiced. And the third lower realm is the hell realm. which is marked by hatred and aggression. It's a place of ceaseless conflict. And then there are three higher realms. The realm of the Ashuras, or demigods, which are sometimes known as fighting demons, and they're envious and really competitive, and they like war and chaos. I'm not exactly sure why this is a higher realm, but we can recognize this.

[17:35]

There's the Deva realm, which is the realm of living in this heavenly place. It's home to very powerful beings who enjoy great but transient pleasures. And the inhabitants are usually very complacent and self-centered and addicted to their pleasures. And then there's the human realm, which is where we are. in this room right now, which is marked by desire, passion, doubt, creativity, joy. It's also the realm from which one can fully awaken to become a Buddha. This is the realm from which we have this opportunity to be free. So as I said, this is the... These are the realms in the so-called Saha world, in Buddhist terminology. Saha means, this is the world we live in.

[18:36]

Saha means the world that we have to endure, that we have to put up with, because this is where we are. But really, as I said, they're limitless worlds. And the sentient beings of my mind live in one or another of these worlds at different points in time, and they affect others. The ripples of my thoughts and my actions and my feelings reinforce the thoughts and feelings and actions and words of other people. And that creates society, that creates family, community, and it creates heavens and hells. So going back to this story, when an emotion comes up, say anger or resentment, in terms of sentient beings of one's mind and dependent origination, in that moment, a sentient being of one's mind is reborn or born in a realm of suffering.

[20:00]

in the anger that this person feels about a crumbling marriage and separation from his children, he might be reborn in a hell realm. And if he gives free reign to this being, it's going to make a mess of a lot of people's lives, including his own. A friend of mine is a Buddhist teacher in a Tibetan tradition, Ken MacLeod. He talks about suffering. He talks about the cause of suffering, the second noble truth. He redefines it as the cause of suffering. Usually we talk about it as desire or clinging, all of which is true. In a modern kind of psychological reinterpretation, he describes the

[21:03]

second, the cause of suffering, the second noble truth as emotional reactivity. Not the emotion itself. Not the hurt that exists within a relationship or the two people that you carry from some interaction that you have. But, because that will always arise. The objective of practice is not to get rid of emotions. And if you try to suppress them, then you will likely experience what Freud described as the return of the repressed. It's almost inevitable, and it means it's going to come back in some other form, in an indirect form. So repression itself is a kind of emotional reactivity. But the reactivity is what happens after an emotion arises.

[22:06]

We want to reject it or push it away. We blame others for causing what we feel. Or we cling to it thinking it's real. What I'm feeling right now is real. That is my truth. So we say this is my truth as if this is the rock on which Moses is standing, rather than actually a very flimsy raft in a stormy sea. So if I can accept the emotion as it comes up and shine a light of awareness on it, then the emotions, thoughts, and sensations are free to fall away. If I can do that as this is arising, then there's not a rebirth. But sometimes we're not so quick or so adept.

[23:10]

Sometimes we have the reaction, and then a sentient being of my mind is born. And once that sentient being is born, I have to take care of it. I have to turn towards it. So sentient beings of my mind are limitless. I have to take them. I vow to save them all. What do you do? If it's kind of reached this point where this being is born, then saving this being like any other suffering being in this world may involve, like what Darlene said, holding hands and going to hell with him. It may involve what one of our teachers, Kobanchino Roshi said, being a bodhisattva means walking side by side at the same pace as another.

[24:20]

It may involve something that Dogen wrote in Tenzo Kyokun, very beautiful, talks about one of the minds of practice, Roshin, parental mind. So Roshin is the mind or attitude of a parent. A parent, irrespective of poverty or difficult circumstances, loves and raises a child with care. How deep is a love like this? Only a parent can understand it. A parent protects the children from the cold and shades them from the hot sun with no concern for his or her own personal welfare. Only a person in whom this mind has arisen can understand it. And only one in whom this attitude has become second nature can fully realize it. Those are Dogen's words. In practical sense,

[25:28]

we can understand this. We know what it's like, those of us who are parents, to have unconditional love for our children or those of us who are children, which includes everyone in this room. Everyone in this room has at some moment experienced unconditional love at the same time as it's a parent's responsibility to set boundaries. and limits for the safety of the child, for the safety of others. And sometimes what we're talking about here, to save the sentient beings of one's own mind, in perhaps it's jargon, it means reparenting oneself, taking care of oneself. When a sentient being arises in my mind, I actually have to take care of it for its entire life.

[26:34]

Now, sometimes that life may be just a few minutes. Sometimes it's a matter of hours or days. Sometimes if there's real wounding and trauma involved, it could always have the potentiality for arising. You have to take care of it for your entire life. We all have beings like that among us in the multitude of our beings. But the vow, I think, the bodhisattva vow means however long a sentient being dwells in my mind, I will not abandon it. I will not reject it. I will not turn away from it. I will try to figure out what love means in that circumstance, which, boy, that's not easy. So as I say, there are countless ways to save suffering beings wherever they make their home.

[27:53]

One thing that I've taken up as a practice, as I've been working with this now for a few years, I was really struck when I read this piece in the Platform Sutra, this line, sentient beings of my own mind are numberless. So I've been trying to figure out how to do that. So what I've come to, and I can recommend that you try this, when some pain comes up, some reactivity, and sometimes it's a physical pain. Sometimes it's an emotional pain. Sometimes it's a pain that comes, a suffering that comes with an interaction. When that happens, if I'm not caught by it, and increasingly I can find some little space, that's what practice and mindfulness allow, some little space where you can just have an instant even of reflection before you're off the deep end.

[28:55]

If I could find that little space, I'll ask myself, I wonder how this is going to feel in and out. And I wonder how it's going to feel tonight. And I wonder how it's going to feel tomorrow. Without the presumption that the feeling is necessarily going to go away, I don't know. Going to go away in a certain time frame. But with the presumption, it is not going to stay the same. It is going to change. Because that is the cardinal rule of Buddhism, that things change. That, as Suzuki Roshi said, not always so. This is the problem that I have, is when I harden around something and say... oh, this is always going to be true for me, or usually, often what happens is like, that person's always going to do that kind of shit.

[30:03]

Why don't they get hip to themselves and stop? But as long as I have that attitude, I am not allowing them the space to change. I'm not creating the space in my own mind for them to change. And I will say, The reason I continue to do this practice is because I see that people change. And because I know what I was like 20 years ago. I've got a lot of work to do. I have lots of rough edges. and that's kind of the way it is, but the work continues, and I know, I can see that things have internally changed, and sometimes people will give you a little feedback.

[31:14]

People will often give you feedback about what needs changing, and when that happens, you really need to listen to that, because however long unpalatable that might be, there's some truth in it to learn about oneself. But sometimes, in the good moments, people will just give you a sense of how they may have seen that you're different from how they knew you X number of years ago. So, the root of this The way we work with this is zazen. This is the way we work with our suffering. And zazen has this really interesting alchemical quality. And this alchemy, which is really the study of transformation, you find it in almost every culture. And it's interesting, the goal of alchemy in all these cultures, you know,

[32:21]

was actually, we hear about transforming base materials into gold. But it's really about an internal transformation, and it's really about how to live free from suffering, free from illness, even in the middle of illness. I mean, this is what I saw with, frankly, what I saw with Darlene, because she was ill for quite a long time. And right in the middle of her illness, she was unbelievably healthy. And I'm just, I was really struck. I went up to sit with her body. And there was, some of you probably did that, you know, up in Russian Represendo. There was this mysterious little smile on her face. You know? which was incredibly encouraging.

[33:22]

You expected her to wink her eye. She didn't do that. I think I'm happy that she didn't do that. It really would have freaked me out. But this is what zazen in the largest sense allows us to do is really transform as alchemy transform our base emotions, our base feelings, our base thoughts into gold, into what is precious. So in this vast circle of zazen, one meets ourselves and meets each being just as that being is, accept it and let it go freely. This is the kind of attention that is just enough, just enough in the moment.

[34:29]

That's what is enough to save the sentient beings of one's mind. It means to keep turning towards and not turning away. You could say it's miraculous. You can say it's mysterious. But it's fundamentally human. So there's transformation. In this transformation, the demons become protectors. The hungry ghosts then become the hosts who feed the hungry. The gods come down to earth and walk among us and decide, oh, this might be actually a better place to live. So, we live with this. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.

[35:37]

In this Saha world, this world to be endured, everything is turning. Sometimes everything is burning, but it's always turning. Can I turn? Can I do, as Whitman said, this lovely line, I concentrate towards them that are nigh. I wait on the door slab. I wait on the threshold. For the... instruction for the inquiring impulse that tells me which way to step, because you will always take another step. You don't stand there on that threshold. I wait at the threshold, on the door slab. And if I'm able to do this, if you're able to do this, you can get a glimpse of how to save the sentient beings of your own mind

[36:50]

and understand that your own mind is not limited to what's within this circle of bone. Your own mind includes everyone in this room, everyone in the city, everyone in the world. And that's what it means to contain multitudes. It's both liberation and responsibility. So I think I'll end there. Thank you very much. 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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving.

[37:56]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:59]

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