I'm very happy to be here with you at Green Gulch this morning. It's always an honor to be asked and also a pleasure to be among many old friends and also quite a number of people that I don't know in this great arc of a Zendo. It's really, it's like chock full. We can think of ourselves as all the various. animals of the kingdom in Noah's great Zen arc. And as you're sitting, when I'm sitting here, there's this great sense of silence and also this mysterious creaking as if the timbers were being shaken in the storm of life. So I'm very... I'm pleased to be here. Also, it's a glorious spring day just now at the beginning of spring.

[01:06]

I was struck by that when leaving Berkeley this morning. It was just as glorious and then driving over completely still on the bay and then coming here and wondering if the fog was going to be in and then just seeing through the notch, way out into the ocean. Maybe there's a fog line very far out there, but I was thinking about this as I was driving down, and I was put in mind of a verse. I have Walt Whitman on the brain this morning, as you'll see. in a couple minutes, but thinking about the bittersweet quality of spring, of spring bursting out in life, holding promise of life, and within it, impermanence, also very close to the surface, impermanence and change.

[02:24]

So I was thinking about this... just the initial verse as best I could remember it from a poem by Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed. People remember that from high school? Which is actually, it's an elegy to Lincoln. But it's broader than that. And that was particularly put in mind just now offering, there's a plaque for our dear friend Marvin Mercer. Did some of you know him? He is a priest who practiced, he lived at City Center, and he was ordained by Darlene Cohen, and some of us, including Mjogan, have been involved in a priest training program, and Marvin was very

[03:27]

dear to us, a very quiet, getting-to-be-old man in his 80s who really found joy in the last years of his life in Zen practice and came alive in that practice. And he died about 10 days ago. We had a very sweet and, I think, in Darlene's style, somewhat funky cremation ceremony the other day at Pacific Interment in Berkeley. So the coffin was filled with flowers. The lilacs and all of the other blossoms were blooming. And at the same time, this flower of the world that people loved had fallen, which is what inevitably happens in spring as well.

[04:31]

So it put me in mind of that. The verse is, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed and the great star early drooped in the western sky, I mourned and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring. So we celebrate and mourn, and we have this sweet, bitter understanding of life that comes up as we sit together, as we sit with ourselves, as we consider all that is happening in the world, the loss that is happening right now, say, in Iraq, in Tibet, Darfur, Burma, Oakland, Marin City, in your very lives and families, and in this mysterious way of what Dogen called twining vines, that all this is...

[05:56]

this is not what it all boils down to. It also boils down to joy, celebration, life, renewal, and they're all mixed up together. And they seem to pull impossibly in both directions at once. And that's somewhat... that's what I want to talk about today. Where is the locus of that pole? You know, it's like right here, right in my belly, in my heart, in my head, you know, in my limbs and yours, not just mine. That pole is located within each of us. This is what we encounter. Uh, is actually with us all the time.

[06:59]

Sometimes one side is really strong, sometimes the other. Sometimes it's this interesting balance. But there are a multitude of forces. So what I wanted to talk today about is a way to think about that, a way to practice with that sort of practical Zen psychology. And maybe I should... The disclaimer that I would offer, and I'm looking around nervously at some of the people who I know have degrees in psychology in this room, and doubtless, I'm sure about 75% of you do. I'm not a psychologist, and... I don't play one on television. But I've been thinking about this.

[08:04]

And one of the, there's two touch points. To begin or to continue with Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass, there's this wonderful verse. He says, do I contradict myself? Very well. Then I contradict myself. And then in large it says, in parentheses it says, I am large, I contain multitudes. And then he says, I concentrate towards them that are nigh. I wait on the door slab. I really love that. That's like the bodhisattva mind. Coming of course, the natural vernacular American unique bodhisattva that he was. So let me read that again. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself.

[09:08]

I am large. I contain multitudes. I concentrate towards them that are nigh. I wait on the door slab. So that's one point of departure. The other point of departure, in a more conventional Zen mode, came to me as I was reading the Platform Sutra of the sixth Zen ancestor, Wineng, which was written about 1300 years ago. The sutra itself, I'm sure we can get into some interesting discussions slash arguments about what part of it is really the words of Wineng, what part of it is maybe a bit polemical or apocryphal. It's hard to know, but it's ascribed to him.

[10:10]

And in the middle of that sutra, which is one of our early key texts in the Zen tradition, he has an ordination ceremony that really resembles a lot the kind of ordination ceremony when we have jukai or priest ordination. Except he has his own version of the four vows. We're going to chant the four vows at the end of this. Is that right? What version do you use? Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Okay. This is the conventional way that you find in most... more or less that version in most of the Zen temples. But Weneng's version is a little different, very interesting. So his version of the four vows are as follows. Sentient beings of our own minds are limitless, and we vow to save them.

[11:19]

The afflictions of our own minds... or the delusions of our own minds are limitless. We vow to eradicate them. The teachings of our own minds are inexhaustible. We vow to learn them all. The enlightenment of Buddhahood of our own minds is unsurpassable, and we vow to achieve it. This really struck me. I really love this. The sentient beings of our own minds are limitless. So this is, I am large, I contain multitudes, right? This is bringing the practice to me, making it very personal, taking personal responsibility for how I live, what is within me, and recognizing that there's a lot of stuff in there.

[12:28]

There are a lot of beings in there. There are a lot of lives that I have lived and potentialities for lives that I will live inside. So if we consider the teachings of Dogen as we often do, in Gensho Kahn he writes, 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. So psychology is, I think, literally a study of the self. It's another, and this is the psychological age, whether we like it or not.

[13:33]

The last hundred years since Freud and many other pioneers threw a light of awareness into hidden corners of consciousness. And it's interesting here in the Zendo, though I think perhaps Freud might metaphorically be spinning in his grave, to think that psychology and Buddhism have become very closely entwined. But that's not so unusual, because Buddhism, in a sense, has always been a psychological methodology. Not entirely, because it's also a matter of faith. It's a matter of religion. It's a matter of culture. But it's very, if you look from the earliest days, you see this is a methodology for looking at yourself, for examining yourself, for taking responsibility for yourself or those multiple selves, thereby taking responsibility for

[14:54]

the society or community that you live in and the world around us. So it's very difficult to find where the line of religious praxis and the line of psychological investigation diverge. They're very close. And I think as most people who teach Buddhism or teach sin, much of that teaching, particularly in a one-on-one form, is just listening to suffering. What the Buddha said was, I come to teach about suffering and the end of suffering. That's it. That's the whole deal. Everything else is kind of ornamentation. or a skillful means, actually, so that you actually can look at who you are, where you are.

[16:04]

And the suffering that we hear is rooted in old wounds, in habits, in patterns, and it's kind of perhaps our choice To some extent, whether we call that karma or we call it neurosis, and there are different venues to work on that. Sometimes one has to do really just rigorous spiritual work. And sometimes there's psychological work in a more conventional psychological work that has to happen if we're to be able to do spiritual work. So, one of the Buddha's discoveries is a kind of systemic way of looking at, you could say it's looking at the workings of mind, but it's actually looking at the workings of existence.

[17:13]

It's what he called Paticca Samuppada, dependent origination. And it's, in its simplest form, It's basically because this arises, that arises. Because this doesn't arise, that doesn't arise. But how this is usually depicted, some of you have doubtless seen sort of this, the wheel of life and death, or the wheel of birth and death, this wheel of becoming. So I'm not gonna go into that in great detail, but because of our grasping and attachment, because of our emotions, because of all that we experience, if you follow that wheel around, there's rebirth, and there's also passing away, and the wheel just keeps turning.

[18:21]

I'm very taken with how a major Thai Buddhist teacher, Buddhadasa, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, whose contemporary, he died in the 1990s, he writes about dependent origination as rebirth moment by moment. This is the way my teacher, Sojin Roshi, talks about rebirth. I think it's a common way that we talk about it in the Zen tradition. Rather than looking at rebirth as sort of life after life in a way that it's very hard for us to get our mind around, I'm not contradicting that as a potentiality. I don't know. I can't remember. Can you? I

[19:25]

And nobody's come back to tell me, although obviously there are some reports from time to time, but be that as it may, I'm very interested in this moment-to-moment rebirth, this rebirth of sentient beings of my mind. So in that moment, Well, see, Buddhadasa says, grasping an attachment will give rise to becoming and births. Another teacher puts it, another sort of Western interpreter puts it, looking at this, the cause of grasping an attachment, which is... in the second of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, the first, that life is marked by suffering, the second, that there's cause of that suffering.

[20:33]

And this friend of mine, Ken MacLeod, says, well, the cause of suffering, little more precise than just attachment and grasping, is emotional reactivity. I don't know that that covers 100% of it, but maybe it covers 90% of it. Emotional reactivity. So, Buddhadasa says, grasping an attachment will give rise to becoming and birth, or emotional reactivity will give rise to becoming and birth. So in that moment of becoming and birth, which takes place in our mind and body, what I feel gets born is one of those sentient beings of our mind. This is someone very close to us, so close that we can't even see the distinction sometimes.

[21:38]

And we have to take care of him, we have to take care of her. This is This is part of the work of practice. It's much of it. So I think about looking at this in a more, maybe a little story. So there's a man of about, this is fiction, by the way. but I think it's probably fairly familiar. A man of about 50 who practices regularly in our sangha sits down across from me. We're sitting, both sitting upright, knee to knee.

[22:38]

And what he says is that after numerous attempts at reconciliation and accommodation, he's left his marriage, and the home that he and his wife have shared for 20 years. And as we talk, he weeps. There are two young children in the picture. And for the last several weeks, his wife has been so angry that she hasn't allowed him to see them. So, They're in conflict about everything, about money, about child visitation, about ownership of the house, about how to proceed towards a divorce. And he says, I had no idea it could ever come to this.

[23:42]

I'm angry all the time. I'm just walking around angry all the time. And he wonders, how can he be kept from his children? And what is his wife telling children about him? And also, what would he tell the children about her when he saw them? So the tears are streaming down his face. He says, every conversation and note leaves me furious. I never knew, I had no idea I had such anger in me. So according to Buddhist cosmology, and this is also on the wheel of birth and death, there are six realms.

[24:51]

Here, I'll just sketch this out, three lower realms inhabited by hungry ghosts or pretas, who are insatiably hungry, often depicted with swollen bellies and really impossibly long, narrow necks. Animals whose characteristic is stupidity and prejudice, which I would really apologize to. animal lovers who know a lot better about what animals are. It ain't like that. But this is, I'm just, you know, I'm just reporting here. Hell realm, marked by hatred and aggression, a place of ceaseless conflict. And then there are higher realms, the demigods, who are also sometimes known as fighting demons. They're fiercely competitive and they like war and chaos. We know there are people like that, right? And it's higher realm because in other lives as humans, these beings had good intentions, but nonetheless harmed others.

[26:01]

There's the Deva realm, which is a really pretty comfortable place, home to powerful beings who enjoy great and transient pleasures. It's full of people who are... very complacent, self-satisfied, and addicted to their pleasures, and we don't know anybody like that. And then there's the human realm, here we are, in which we are sitting together right now. This is our temporary home, and it's marked by, it has its pleasures, we know, but it also has desires, passions, doubts, And it has the opportunity of being the realm in which one can wake up and become a Buddha. This is really our great opportunity. So this world that we live in is called the Saha world.

[27:05]

The world, which translates as the world to be endured. And it exists all around us. And it exists within us. the limits of our mind. This Saha world is not outside. It is simultaneously or indistinguishably outside and inside. There actually are limitless worlds. There are numberless worlds. This is just a kind of very rough map. So, for this man, The conflicts that have arisen in his marriage bring forth a kind of emotional reactivity. And in that emotional reactivity, he's reborn. He's reborn in a hell realm.

[28:09]

So... This is not a permanent experience, but it's one that we really have to pay attention to. We have some choices what we do. We can suppress it and that it will invariably return. I think Freud called the return of the repressed, which may be an inevitable, almost inevitable and unpredictable experience of suffering in some future time, whether that's near or far. And that repression itself is a kind of emotional reactivity. It's like, let's get rid of this. So I'm just saying reactivity is not the emotion itself.

[29:21]

You got that, right? It's not. Emotions are part of the world. The human world, their desires, passions, emotions, this is what comes up. It's what we do with them. So if our response is to reject and push it away violently, or to blame others for what we feel, which is a common experience, another expression of that, or if we cling to it, we cling. This is a mysterious thing. We cling desperately to the very thing that's driving us nuts. We hold on to it, sort of in the thrall of this emotional reactivity, and in some mysterious way, the clinging, sometimes it manifests with this, to me,

[30:25]

It's an expression that always raises, it always gets my attention when somebody says, well, this is my truth. As soon as they're standing, it's my truth as if this were the rock upon which Moses stood, rather than actually a really, really flimsy raft on a very stormy sea. But this is what we do. We all do this, right? We all feel this is really true. This is really happening. This is really the way I'm experiencing it. So when we do that, this is when a being is born. If we see our reaction as this hardened truth, and seen through the lens of dependent origination, this is one turning of the wheel of birth and death.

[31:38]

So Acham Buddhadasa writes that dependent origination is a momentary and sudden matter, not an eternal matter. Therefore, the word jati, to be born, must refer to birth, in the moment of one revolution of dependent origination in the daily life of ordinary people, which is to say, when mindfulness is absent. It's easy to know when greed, anger, or delusion arise, then the self is born in one life already. So what I'm... trying to do is to sketch out who are these sentient beings of our mind. And really, the question is, how are we with them? If we have this vow, sentient beings of my own mind are limitless.

[32:45]

I vow to save them all. So once this being is born, then what? What do I do? Sometimes, if you can just see your emotion as an emotion and accept it, then a being is not born. Sometimes we experience this in zazen. We sit. In zazen, a million things come up. There's a complete flow of experience, perceptions, and we just let them flow through. We try not to judge or to hold on to any of them or push any of them away. and we let them rest easily on our breath. Sometimes they're really powerful, and they want to be born. They want to hold on. They have a very sticky quality. I think that's the word Suzuki Roshi used to use. So once it's come to this point, then saving a sentient being of this mind is

[33:54]

is like saving any suffering being who's walking to and fro in this world. It means turning towards this being with what Dogen Zenji called parental mind. Roshin is what he called it. So he writes, 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 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.

[35:01]

This is pretty sweet for Dogen, frankly. But this is actually, I think, his true heart. So it's not like when he says, only a person in whom this mind has arisen... This mind can arise in all of us. It's not dependent upon us being parents. We know we all had parents. Some of us are. We also all know in a really deep, intuitive way how we would like to be taken care of. So the place that we begin is actually in the sense of re-parenting ourselves. We begin with ourselves. If we can't do that, we can't help anybody. So we have to be able to do that. Sometimes we learn it by trying to help others, succeeding, failing, however it is.

[36:11]

So when a sentient being arises in my mind, I have to take care of it for its whole life. Sometimes that life may be very brief. Sometimes it is a span of hours or days. If we're talking about a wound that is very deep, a trauma, some of the things that young men and women carry back from war or from other terrible circumstances that arise in our lives, in our world, then that traumatized being may actually stay around for years. And it may lurk in the corners of our mind, kind of leaping painfully to visibility in life when

[37:23]

certain set of circumstances come into place. But however long a sentient being dwells in my mind, I'll keep turning to it. I'll try, anyway. This is, you know, at Berkeley Zen Center, I live at Berkeley Zen Center with my wife Lori and my kids, and invariably they're there are sometimes some difficult or troubled people around who are in our sangha. It's not like, you know, it's in a sense, it's not like they're a problem. They're just, they're people. And sometimes they're there for years. And, you know, you wonder, you know, you wonder, how do they survive? They're... Lives are very, very painful.

[38:26]

And they don't always make it easy for you to love them. And sometimes they're really demanding. And yet, I'm also astonished by the quality. This is one of the mysterious qualities of of life that I see that it's incredibly fragile. It can be taken from us in a moment, in a moment of inattention, in a moment that we have no control over. And sometimes it's remarkably tough and enduring and kind of, you know, I don't know what the quality is. For some reason, the word that's coming up in my mind is sort of grisly, but as in gristle.

[39:31]

Something tough, you keep chewing on it, and it's not going to break down. And people persist. They survive, even in difficult circumstances. You see this if some of you have been to very poor places or places where there are... where there's been war, great suffering, you see normal life arising and flowering right up, coming right up through the cracks. This is a remarkable, wonderful human quality. So I'm just thinking, at one point, Laurie and I were talking, and she said, well, what I've come to is just... this attitude, I tell the person, I'm not going to abandon you. Now, this may not necessarily mean, if you come to me and you need $100, I may not give it to you, but I'm not going to abandon you.

[40:43]

I'm not going to stop turning towards you. This is how we can take care of how we have to take care of the sentient beings of our mind. Parents don't abandon children for the most part. We also sometimes have to set boundaries. Every parent knows that. Children know where the boundaries are set and they will test them. But the underlying principle of these boundaries is as in Dogen was saying in Pisan Parental Mind Roshan. The underlying principle is not domination, but actually unconditional love, unconditional acceptance. And this is the attitude that we cultivate towards these sentient beings of our mind when they arise.

[41:47]

It's the attitude that we cultivate in Zazen Zazen, kind of like a strange alchemist's laboratory where we search for the... Zazen, thinking of Zazen as the successfully attained goal of the alchemist is the universal solvent that dissolves is capable of dissolving the suffering that we experience. We don't know how long that's going to take. Sometimes it's a very, very slow process. Sometimes it's susceptible to just shining the light of mindfulness, of awareness of our breath. Sometimes it takes a lot more digging, patience, endurance, enduring the pain itself.

[42:48]

but to keep turning towards the sentient beings of my mind. That's what my vow is. These are the bodhisattva vows. That's basically what I wanted to say today. We have a methodology. we have an approach to taking care of these sentient beings. And I'm not saying that literally you should, you don't necessarily have to see them as real beings, but you see them as transient, as co-arising, and as part of the community that creates who you are. Again, I think I'll just close with, once more, reading this verse from Whitman.

[44:05]

The first line is, do I contradict myself? Well, I may have done that. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. I concentrate towards them that are nigh, and I wait on the door slab. So this is what we can do, concentrate on those who are close to us, within us, around us, and just wait there so that we are waiting at the door, wait on the door slab, I think. I'm available. Please, let's meet. as equals, as one-to-one, as beings who suffer and as beings who understand suffering because it is not in any way separate from what we've experienced?

[45:16]

Can we live right there, right in that place? right in that moment, and we will veer away. And that's okay. Do we have the power, the strength that comes with vow simply to return, veer away again, return, just as we see our attention in the very process of zazen? again and again returning, again and again re-concentrating ourselves on them that are nigh and taking our place, waiting on the door slap. So I think that's a good place to end. I look forward to talking with those of you who would like to talk a little later. Intention equally.

[46:23]

Thank you very much.

[46:24]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.17