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, and welcome to the retreat hall here at Pasahara Zen Mouth and Center. My name is Myogin Sikduki, Central Advent, San Francisco Zen Center, which means I have some responsibility for weaving together what happened to three temples, a ring called Pond Langer Beach in the city center in San Francisco and this place. As many of you know, we thank Happy Birthday today, the death temple. There's a secret ice cream.

[01:06]

And people saying happy birthday to us at Zen Center. It's sort of a part of that. But I actually just wanted to share one of many proclamations. We have proclamations here from Nancy Pelosi and from Mark Mino. from the mayor of San Francisco. I thought I'd read just a little bit of it upon this kind of a fancy, you know, fancy proclamation. We had even a bigger one, a marguino that's strained already. Anyway, it's interesting because it does remind us a little bit about what San Francisco's insider is about, whereas, On August 13, 1962, this episode of Death Center emerged as a creative meeting of Asian and American culture and the first home of Zen Buddhism in America.

[02:07]

And, whereas, this is from the mayor. It's all true. Whereas. I won't read the ball. There's a number of whereases here. Whereas, in 1967, the San Francisco Zen Center established the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, here at Tatsahara, which has led to the local interest and practice of Zen and other forms of meditation in a culture of wisdom and compassion. And whereas, in 1972, the San Francisco Zen Center established Green Goal's barn Zen Center near Mir Beach, as a teaching center serving the Bay Area with programs in organic farming as well as Zen meditation. And whereas, San Francisco Zen Center is well known for its development of Zen hostess and various social outreach programs, which include prison meditation groups and the distribution of food to the homeless.

[03:13]

For five decades, the San Francisco Zen Center has been enriching the life of San Francisco with mindfulness, compassion, and meditation. while significantly contributing to the vitality of our communities. Therefore, we have resolved that I, Edwin Ken, the leading mayor, in celebration of the 50th anniversary, to hereby proclaim August 13th of San Francisco's Senate Day. Next year, too? No, this is just one time long enough, and it's passed. There you go. Just a memory. Just a memory. However, we had a number of events. And some of the mayor's office read some of this at the city center on Monday. In thinking about this 50th anniversary some weeks and months ago, I thought it would really be quite fitting to invite Zenitatsu

[04:19]

Rikideka Roshi, second founder of San Francisco Zen Center, without this work that he had done many years ago, we would not be here. Paso Hora would not be Zen Center. And all the rest of Zen Center would be, I think, at least in some diminished form and may have continued. But anyway, we did it to Banda Samad. And then it's about visioning and effort and made a lot of decisions that contributed to that side of being what it is today. I wanted to recognize that. Thank you. And I'm very happy that you responded to the invitation to come. I can't resist you.

[05:21]

So, Zen Tatsu, Victor Baker, was the second abbot, beginning in 1971, and was the abbot for a dozen years, since he moved on in 1983, 1984, he established Crestone Mountain, then Center of Colorado, and the Johanneshof in Germany, and he mostly divides his time between Colorado and Germany, but he consented to fly from Zurich, Switzerland, down to this show, and spend a few days at City Center, and then they decided to meet Tashahara, too. So it was a little bit spur of the moment, but here we are tonight, and I want to turn it over to you. Please say whatever you like. Everyone here, please welcome and give your full attention to the corrosion.

[06:23]

Okay. And it really, if you can't hear me, let me know. Can you hear me? Okay. You know, Drasara, I practice with Supriyasi, from the beginning of the sixties and Suryoshi at some time said to me we need a place where I can practice with others and live and practice with others so when he said this I started looking for a place we looked here and there in the Russian river and various places and at some point I camped out at China camp and decided this road looked white, it was interesting, and I should go to the end of it. And so I drove down the end of the road and found this place.

[07:28]

And various things happened, I won't quite a little story. But Tassahar has formed my life. I think I should say what that means. And I want to say, So what was the role of Suzuki Roshi if Asahara formed my life? And so I would say that Suzuki Roshi inspired my life. Now, it's too simple to make this thinking inspire and form, but I think if we look at these two words, maybe we can catch something. Catch something. So... Inspire, it means something like to breathe aliveness into, or to infuse with breath. And that's certainly what my practice with Sri Yuktesi was, his teaching was, and his example was.

[08:34]

So let me just say that his teaching was to infuse... each person he met, and himself, and the relationship we call with others, to infuse with others with a lot ofness. Now, form, I said, does that form my life? And I didn't expect it to form my life. You know, I didn't know. I practiced in San Francisco. I pretended San Francisco was a monastery. a little bit big, but, you know, I pretended it was a monster. And when I started coming to Tarsahara, not only did I experience the difference of practicing here, but also the sangha, the budding or not really formed community.

[09:41]

changed immediately. I mean, there were immediately people who really were engaged in practice. And this was, I mean, just this fact and experience changed my life, formed my life. And I found the same experience when we started Green Galch. I mean, to Yoshi there were various things that led to Green Galch. But, and one of them was, Suki or she said, that maybe when people leave Kasahara, it was the time of the 60s and communes and so forth, maybe when we leave, when people leave Kasahara or San Francisco, they have a place to go, maybe there should be more communal life or lay life. So, anyway, what he found And the first month, it seemed to me it was about a year, but someone told me the other day it was about six months.

[10:50]

We didn't have any form. We just let everybody live there and, you know, and pretty much do what they wanted. And we had a farm and we started the garden and stuff, but it was cold and damp and lonely and foggy and, you know, we didn't have very good place to live. People were living in where bulls used to live. So at some point, I don't know, six months, I'll be here. That's about six months, because I used to have actually the first practice period in January, September 3rd. Not a practice period. No, a practice period. In September 3rd? Yes. I know, because I applied for it, it was September 3rd. It isn't a 90-day practice period. No, not a 90-day practice period. It was a nine-year practice period. That's different. I never did 98 Practice Spirit at Green Gals, and I would have organized Green Gals differently if you were members of 98 Practice Spirit.

[11:57]

Anyway, but we did, as Steve says, I guess it was six months, we started a schedule, and the list was, and immediately started working. As soon as the schedule, regularization, It went. And I found the same thing in Europe. I was there for some years. I didn't want to do sashims because I knew if I did sashims, I couldn't leave Europe. If you can't start people and try to then walk, walk out, sit out, walk out of them. And so after a while, though, we finally, some years, we started Johansov. And I had the same experience immediately with the practicing dirkching. With others became something real. An us-ness and not a vain-ness. I'm trying to find words for you. An us-ness and not a vain-ness. So what is... So the question in my life has been, what is with others?

[13:02]

Leslie, what's your daughter's name right now? Yes. Tell me your name. Jane. Jane, damn Jane. You could want to interject at that one. Yeah, I will. I do a few good things. Hi, Jane. Okay, so Jane, he said to me today that she grew up in a practice community and then at some point you came back and did a practice period. And she said that she would love to do a practice period again, and that during that practice period, how would you describe it? I fell in love. I went back into the age. I felt like I was submerged under the water, in order that I could be there forever.

[14:09]

You almost are. So, this is, I mean, what she's saying, I think is exactly what I'm trying to talk about, because certainly one of the forms of being liveness, a very basic form, I mean, form means to mold, to find the essence of, like a blank form, it's where you fill in the blanks, to find your seed is also part of the etymology of the form. So certainly one of the forms of aliveness is being lovely. But another form of aliveness is also the 90-day cut. Yeah, so in the West, I'm convinced that the main form of practice will be lay practice.

[15:12]

I call it adept lay practice. And so the question is, does a lay practice need a monastic component? And my experience so far has been the monastic component in a lay sangha influences everyone in the sangha, even those who don't go to the sangha. If we're going to have a lay saga, and the lay life is so developed and interesting nowadays, it's hard to compete. But some people, like you, find it satisfying. So what is it? What kind of aliveness arises out of the natural practice, or arises sufficiently out of founding Tassahara that it transforms Asanga and builds Asanga, which then leads to San Francisco and to Vinaya?

[16:21]

I mean, this is kind of answering this question, is forming my life. So whilst Yukirashi inspires my life and inspired me to start Tassahara, it's... the Sahara, which itself actually, I would say, formed Maya. So if lay life, if lay practice is going to be the dominant form of practice. So there's two real questions. One is, lay life has to be a form of practice. And what practice do you bring into lay life? And the other question related to lay life, which I don't know the answer, I mean, I have no idea, I'm just, you know, I'm leading my life like there might be an answer, but I don't know if there's an answer, which is, can a lay sangha transmit the kiki?

[17:27]

So far, the concept of Mahayana Buddhism and Zen is, the concept is lay, practice of monastic, and it's been passed only monastic, of no lay lineage that lasted more than a generation ago. So if the concept is lay, but in fact the practice of monastic, and the West is going to have a dominantly lay practice, one, what is the form of that lay practice, and can the form of that lay practice be transmitted? I mean, I think the chances are slim, but what the hell? They've got to do something. So this is a good, what the heck, I mean, excuse me. Okay. So I would say that what has to be probably brought in the way of it is Zazen.

[18:36]

Zazen... daily or several times a week or something. Probably also there should be some relationship to a group or a teacher or something. But let's just say, what is the other thing I think, my own experience suggests, has to be brought into lay life. And that is what I would call an articulated mindfulness. So I just picked a little bit of what you know, what we could talk about. So I'm emphasizing on particulated mindfulness, in this case being what I call, to pause for the particular. Now, this is, and I talked about this in San Francisco the other day, last Saturday, is, I call this a mental posture. Instead of an intention, I think the word more effective is mental posture, like when you do zazen.

[19:44]

Zazen is a physical posture accompanied by a mental posture of don't move. And if the mental posture don't move, which you hold in your sitting, I mean, you don't say it all the time, but there's no real zazen. Many of us, many years ago, didn't want any kind of mental posture. But in fact, Zazen, Buddhism, particularly with the more developed your practice is, you have to hear the whisper of Dharma in your ear. So now, a phrase like, which I call a mental posture, to pause for the particular, you bring into your activity. This is what I feel, and this is my experience. So I'm just sharing that in here.

[20:47]

Now, it takes a while to get used to it, but when you notice, when there's an experience of noticing just more than just functioning, like I've noticed you, I've paused for a minute for the particularity of you. And when I paused for the particularity of you, you, as the present, lie before me, there's a momentariness that becomes a tangible experience. Now, the cause for the particular, if he's adopted, anybody, any layperson, anybody, monastic, you just, every now and then, and you bring it, you introduce it in a homeopathic dose, even, and Zen works in homeopathic dose, very small dose of it. with the homeopathic doctor right there. Somehow it works in homeopathic doctor doses and bringing it in to your feeling and thinking, sensing and sensing, even I say, you begin to have the experience of appearance, the world appearance.

[22:08]

And the word appearance is almost coincident with the word dharma. So a dharma is to experience each moment, let's say, as an appearance. You allow, you receive the appearance, and you release the appearance. And you can even use two words like receiving and releasing. So when you pause for your particular, you receive and you release, you receive. I receive you and I release you, I receive you and I release you. Now the pause in particular also sort of brings us back to the source, I mean, in all forms. You take that, you try to bring, I mean, Tassahara. You have to bring Tassahara. If an institution is going to survive, it has to keep returning to its source. Why are you actually creating it? And one of the forms of Tassajara is, of course, the guest season.

[23:16]

And that's one of the ways we practice with others. When we first started Tassajara, my inclination was we want to share Tassajara. We don't want to just cut out all the people who've been here over the years. We want to share Tassajara. How are we going to share Tassajara? Well, Silas Holden said, let's make a guest season. maybe even will support us. And it does contribute significantly to support, because training monasteries can't be supportive. I mean, it depends. The monks, they can't. So in Asia they have imperial support, or a rich family supports them, etc. But we're trying here to combine some way of sharing our practice, sharing practice having a with others which shares our purpose and shares this place.

[24:16]

So what I'm suggesting this evening is to bring into your thinking, in contrast to discursive thinking, bringing to your thinking some kind of posture pausing for the particular, pausing for the particular, and you can change it, you can have pausing for the pause. And, okay, so, that's all. Another practice you can bring into lay life is whenever you enter a door, an entrance, whenever you enter a door, you stop for a moment and shift to the field of the room from entering the door.

[25:26]

And, you know, once I said to him, do you always go through the door with the foot nearest the hinge? He said, oh, he laughed, but I noticed. Because in Japan, you have to tell people thinking of it. You either notice it, or you won't. But here in the West, nobody noticed it, so I'm telling them. And I found when I started practicing in Europe, when I'm primarily not practicing with people who have a lot of monastic experience, like a Tassahara, I have to be much more articulate. So that's in some ways where this articulated mindfulness comes from, is trying to figure out, find out, discover how this practice, which arises from zazen and often from monastic practice with others, can be brought in the layer. So another little practice I'll be suggesting, in addition to pausing for the particular, which is a bodily

[26:34]

I mean, you can't just pause mentally, it's a bodily pausing, a kind of bodily minding. Dogen says something like, when they're sensing and seeing, knowledge disappears. So when they're sensing and seeing, knowledge disappears. So there's no knowledge that's grasping, there's only sensing and feeling. And I like the word scent too, S-C-E-N-T, smell. But actually, it used to just me to feel it. Later it came from me, it could smell. But scent ain't like the scent of a dog, the scent of a trail, the scent of something. Also, there's a feeling of the future. So there's a sensing and a scenting. Anyway, I'm just suggesting these words because words allow us to bring our attention to what we're doing. You can use the words not to describe the world. If you use words to describe the world, you get in trouble.

[27:37]

But if you use words to bring attention to the world, it can be very powerful. So I'm just playing sensing and sensing of bodily-minded, bodily-minded in the world. Okay, so now let's go back to the Torah. you enter a door and you remind yourself to pause for a moment and feel the wind. Don't go through this over-thinking. You have to use things to help you. So as you go through a door, enter a little bit, stop. Feel the room. And then you go in. Now what you're doing there as princes right now, while I'm speaking, I'm noticing particulars like Trivus, and his glasses, and his hands, but also, simultaneously, and as a shift, I go to the field of the room.

[28:44]

I'm not really thinking. I feel the field of the room, and then I go to the particulars, and I feel the field of the room, and then I go to the particulars. And in that process, which is a yogic process, I find something to say. I think, I am finding something you say in here. I think. I feel? No, I feel. But when you come into the door, this gives you a chance to feel the room and to feel the shift from particular to feel, from particular to feel. And this particular field actually begins to develop awareness in contrast to consciousness. Consciousness has scissors in it. C-O-N-S-C-I, that's scissors. To cut, you know, cut up.

[29:46]

And awareness, the etymology isn't so good, but we can use it to mean to hold in line. And so what happens in Zazen and in this articulated mindfulness, is that you begin to actually become more right-brained body. I'm convinced there's a physiological change, in the beginning neuroscientists would mean to show it, there's a physiological change, not just an emotional, mental change, it's a psychological change, that occurs through meditation over a long period of time, incubating the practice, as I said. is transformative practice as well as enlightenment. The idea of enlightenment is when everything is groovy, this is really kind of innocent. So, enlightenment experiences and incubatory practice are what makes the difference.

[30:50]

So, anyway, so what I'm suggesting is if we're going to have a dominantly lay practice. It needs to be infused by the aliveness that arises through monastic practice, even if you don't do monastic practice. You can begin to try simple things like pause it for the particulars, or beginning to notice the particular to the field shift, the dynamic of the particular to the field shift, which becomes a kind of minding. And then you can understand Dogen saying, When you sense and see, knowledge disappears. So, what is the kind of knowing which is not based on knowledge, but is based on an immediacy where there are no boundaries in the experience of that immediacy?

[31:53]

Okay, that's it. Okay. But maybe... I mean, I could go on, but... Then there may be some questions. Yeah, anybody want to say something, I'll try to listen. I will listen. There's a hand up already over there. Yes? Yeah. Even if this isn't appropriate, but I'm just curious. How it makes you feel when people... within San Francisco Zen Center have sort of like a sense of demonizing you or sort of exercising you for your past. How does it make you feel? Not very good. And... You know, it's interesting to me, there are a lot of cultural differences that you don't see.

[33:03]

And like in one, in Japan, the ideal human being is a baby. So if you act helpless, everyone helps you. In Germany, the ideal human being is an adult. And if you act like a baby, no one wants to help you. If you act like an adult, they help you. And another invisible form that I find in Europe, for instance, is people don't believe what they hear, they believe what they see. So all of that stuff, which, in my point of view, is not how I experience my life, is gone instantly as soon as they see me, you know. I shaved my head so you can see I don't have horns. I used to hide. But here in the United States, and it's maybe because we don't live with our families and we're dispersed all over the country, the common binding, what you see in the newspaper and so forth, it takes people a long time, I find.

[34:22]

to shake off what they hear and decide on the basis of what they see. Okay. Someone else? Yes? I want to thank you for being a teacher to my late teacher, Darlene Cohen, and to many others associated with Zen Center who continue to influence all of us in that community. And I wonder if you could talk a bit about what's important for being an effective Zen teacher, and does that differ for lay and students and monastic students? Does what differ exactly? What's important for being an effective Zen teacher, and is that different depending on the nature of your students' practice, lay or monastic? Well, Dogen started out with no water issue. Okay, thank you. Dokun started out, we don't have to have four people carrying water.

[35:28]

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Dilden started out emphasizing more lay people. And near the end of his life, he began to just only monks can realize the play. I can see how I got there. Because there's no question that the people I can speak to most hope are almost all people who've practiced five to ten years monastic practice. Just the way it is, I mean, there's a reason why monastic practice works.

[36:32]

But, I don't know. That's true, that's my experience. But I completely appreciate lay practice. And I practice with many people who really make lay practice work in their life. And you can't... So what's the difference? The difference would be, if I think of the difference, say that I get a group of five or ten people together to talk about practice. Some are monastics, some are lay people. The monastics I can speak to in a way of... how you understand this so you can transmit it. And the lay people, I talk to people in a way, how do you understand this so you can practice it? There is that difference, you know.

[37:33]

So that's the problem. This isn't simple to solve. How can lay practice and monastic practice continue? Then I also have the problem, maybe somebody involved in Colorado, It's really a good lay practitioner, and somebody in Vienna is another good lay practitioner, and somebody in Hamburg, they don't have a common understanding. They have a lot of common understanding. So now I'm working on how to develop common understanding among different lay practitioners in different places. Yes? I wanted to ask you, this idea you have of... paying attention to the particularities of the moment and then also the wider field. How would you, not that Zen ever incorporates any kind of techniques or methods while you're sitting on the meditation routine, but if you did, so then... You don't think you're bad and speak solely. Okay. I was just wondering if you could maybe just address more practically how, when we're sitting in meditation, you can switch from the field of awareness, a board of field,

[38:42]

see the particularity moment while we're sitting out in kushi. Oh, okay, fine. Okay, you just do practice the five skandhas in the sense that you start out, when you practice the five skandhas, and that's an extremely important teaching to study. When you start with the first skanda is, well, fifth skanda, I would say. is consciousness. But you're starting with consciousness, you're coming to the meditation room, you have to find your cushion, and you sit down. What happens fairly quickly, and you can use the stunness as a way to enter meditation, you let consciousness, discursive thinking, settle, out of sight, disappear. And then you're in associative mind. Now this is what Thore discovered. Thore discovered he puts people in a meditation posture lying on a couch, they start to pre-associate. And when they pre-associate, they know things, particularly if the analyst tunes himself to the modality of pre-association.

[39:53]

So there's a with others there. In pre-association, you know things you don't know unconsciously. And that made him think, oh, there's an unconscious where these things you don't know is reside. Buddhism wouldn't say that. They'd say there's a non-consciousness, which some of it might be, you could call, unconsciousness. But I don't want to get into that, why there's an unconsciousness, and when it started in the 17th century, it's not universal. So then, the next thing, as you let your associative mind, you enter percept-only mind. like you hear these crickets. And you're not thinking about the crickets. You can play with airplanes. You hear an airplane and you can peel the name off the airplane and just hear the music of the spheres.

[40:56]

And when you do that, there's often a bliss associated with that. And when you enter, each of the five skandhas has a vertical dimension leading to consciousness or leading to awareness when there's form as appearance. It also has a horizontal dimension where you can totally be only in one skanda. So, let's take the skanda of percept only. You just wait, just hear it. You're hearing, hearing. You're not really hearing the crickets. You're hearing your own hearing of the crickets. Other crickets are hearing something different. You can only hear what your ears can hear. And when you only hear what your ears can hear, your body is often filled with bliss. So the third scound of precept only is extremely blissful. It is one of the scounders that you bring into meditation where you begin to have a feel your body

[42:04]

the spatial dimensions of your body disappear, and you just begin to feel the character, you're actually, when you're doing that, you're changing not only psychological processes and physiological processes, you're changing the way you're constructed. And then you have a feeling, primarily, I would say, best understood and found this as a non-grascible feeling. Right now in this room, there's a certain feeling. It's more subtle than sensation, pleasure, neutral, etc., or painful. There's a feeling in this room right now that's different than a moment ago, and it's different than when we started. And in that feeling is mostly the information. And so you can, and that feeling is also a fatigue.

[43:09]

And you learn, let me say something. In yogic practice, in yogic practice, all mental phenomena have a physical component. All mental phenomena have a physical component. All sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. So if you feel something, say you have this feel, this bliss feel of hearing your own senses, minding your own mind, this is also a bodily experience. So through yogic practice you learn the bodily experiences that are associated with particular modalities of mind. And you can really tune in. The body allows you to tune in particular modalities of mind, so you can sit down in Zazen and go straight, like, straight to Persept Ilman. And so, but this all takes a little skill, a little yoga skill, a little time, you know.

[44:16]

But anyone can do it. Okay. Someone else? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. What a pleasure for me to be here and to see you and to talk with you and talk to you. Thanks, come back again. Okay, welcome. 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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[45:07]

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