Good evening. Thank you all for coming, and thank you for inviting me to join you tonight. It's been a long time since I've been at City Center. I live now at Green Gulch Farm, and I practiced at City Center for a few weeks in 1996, and I Mostly since then, I've just been here for meetings. But still, every time I come into this building, I have a kind of physical memory of what it was like to just enter the practice when we first start to practice. And we're so open to Zen. So, you know, they say sweep. And you think, yeah, they want me to sweep. I've read about this. It's a... The Zen Roshi work leader has seen into my nature and understood that my task now is to sweep.

[01:15]

And I accept. What a shame to lose that. To lose... Lately, there's definitely no cosmic opportunity in the jobs that get assigned. So we get better and better at the Dharma, and we get more and more complainy, and we can forget that actually every moment, everything we're asked to do and everything we offer, really every moment of our life, is a complete cosmic opportunity actually for awakening offered by compassion of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. So, I know a lot of you.

[02:23]

It's actually nice to... to come here to City Center and see that it's really mostly my friends here. So that's nice. But there are some people who I haven't met before. My name is Jiryu. And as I said, I live at Green Gulch Farm. My life is about to change completely. I hope not just the usual ongoing way, But I have a baby coming any day now. So thank you all for your many prayers and blessings. In that, as I thoroughly leave my monastic life behind and enter, as a friend of mine said, it's like being in a monastery. But the Han, you know, the wooden mallet, is in your living room. LAUGHTER So I'm ready.

[03:25]

I feel ready for that. So Jordan when he asked me to come give this talk actually a couple months ago now I had just put out this book that was kind of some stories really a kind of patchwork of my experience training here in the States and also a year and a half I spent in Japan training. And Jordan thought that I might want to talk about that a little bit, and I'm happy to, so I'll talk very briefly about that. But I wanted more tonight to talk about where these questions of Japanese or Asian Buddhist practice and Western Buddhist practice, where those questions really leave us. or the ways in which that's really alive for me now, which has less to do with should we all be in Asia practicing, or should everyone in Asia be here practicing, or some version of kind of taking a side, and more to do for me with this question of how universal is this practice, or how elitist is this practice?

[04:51]

Is this... elite practice, or is this wide-open, totally available practice for anybody? So the more I think about this book and my own travel back and forth, I feel like that's actually the key question. What, in a sense, what this kind of West and East are representing to me these days, is these two modes, these two aspects of our practice. But just for a kind of brief sense of my story, at least the way I dramatize it here in Two Shores of Zen, is the short version is, when a young American Buddhist monk can no longer bear the pop psychology, sexual intrigue, and free-flowing peanut butter

[05:56]

that he insists to pollute his spiritual community. That is, all these people who say, well, the practice is wherever you are. Have some peanut butter. Find the way. Find the way in this peanut butter. So he sets out for Japan on an archetypal journey to find this true Zen, where there's no peanut butter, because Zen and peanut butter have nothing to do with each other. That's elite practice, where you actually, if your body can stand not eating peanut butter, then you can do this Japanese practice. And I wanted that because this seemed so kind of watery and vague. And I heard that in Japan they were really doing it. They were really training in a kind of elite way. So... I'm sure you all see where this is going, given that I'm here.

[07:00]

Arriving at an austere Japanese monastery and meeting a fierce old Zen master, he feels confirmed in his suspicion that the Western Buddhist approach is a spineless imitation of authentic spiritual effort. However, over the course of a year and a half of bitter initiations, relentless meditation and labor, intense cold, brutal discipline, insanity, overwhelming lust and false breakthroughs, he grows disenchanted with the Asian model as well. Finally, completing the classic journey of a seeker who travels far to discover the home he has left, he returns to the U.S. with a more mature appreciation of Western Buddhism and a new confidence in his life as it is. And he got married and seemed to have baby. And in that kind of outline of my journey, sort of coming home to this wide, inclusive, everyday practice and understanding, really rigorously understanding and strictly understanding that practice is never about

[08:27]

the particular conditions of your life. And it's always just about how it is that you're meeting your life. You know, in Zen, we don't care so much how you're doing. It's more like, who are you? It's not the content of your experience. It's not the conditions of your life that matter. So practice isn't about getting more practice-like conditions and getting rid of some of the non-practice conditions and jobs and people and replacing them with practice opportunities. So much as it is, whatever your moment, whatever your limitation or your condition in the moment, how do you meet it? How do you open to it? So we go to a monastery because we're going to be limited and we're going to have to deal with the fact that we're limited.

[09:30]

But I'm plenty limited when I'm not in the monastery. And I think all of us, I'd say, have really sufficient limitation to practice. So for me, working against this idea that keeps coming back, you know, of... more practice. I need to do more practice. I need to have more supportive conditions. Here I am living in a temple and still I feel like these conditions, it's not so supportive to my practice. Really trying to be, to understand the way as really having nothing to do with this kind of manipulating of my life and really everything to do with how I'm meeting at the present moment. In a sense, as a kind of increasingly a lay person, I actually need to understand practice this way.

[10:36]

For me to be doing practice, it just doesn't work for me to think anymore of practice as austere monastic effort. Because it's just not what I'm doing. So if I frame practice in that way, then practice is... Then I can't do it. And I want to do it. So... Practice is the thing I can do in any moment. Plus, having been in some monasteries, I know that pretty much a moment is a moment, no matter what it's wearing, you know. And you can meet it or you can turn away from it. So, I've been kind of amped up a little bit about this kind of practice is everywhere. And... A couple of things have happened to make me realize that I was... Maybe I'm a little stuck there, even. Maybe I've swung a little too far into this universal, always available practice.

[11:40]

It's not a matter of what your life looks like. It's just a matter of how you're working with your mind. I gave this talk not too long ago at Green Gulch, where I really... I was really kind of strictly exploring some of these things that I've talked about. Strictly exploring the way that basically any idea you have about a different life that's going to have more practice in it is complete delusion and your life is lost and your practice is lost. And so basically don't touch your life. Don't mess with your life at all. the job you have, the relationships you have, leave them exactly as they are and practice meeting, practice opening, practicing surrender to the conditions. So I gave this talk, you know, and I got kind of into it.

[12:42]

And as I was walking away, I thought, this is, this talk, this kind of talk is why Religion is called the opiate of the masses. This is the way that religion works against you actually standing up in your life. Be okay with what you've been given is the only work a religious person has to do. So what about standing up? What about standing up in our life? What about changing the conditions of our life? I thought, what is this side of just accepting? Is that really what I think Zen is?

[13:44]

Is it really what I want to be? How I want to be presenting the Dharma? Another thing that happened in this talk is that somebody who... who I think was moved at the thought that their complicated, limited life was exactly practice. Wanted to speak a little more with me about it. And so we had some tea together, and we're pretty much in accord that, yeah, no matter what you're doing, no matter how loud kids are yelling, or how mean your boss is being, basically... you have a complete opportunity in that moment for seeing and meeting the conditions that are there. So we basically agreed about this. And then the question was, well, how can I strengthen and deepen this feeling about my life?

[14:45]

How can we deepen this feeling that we don't need to change anything about our life? but we just need to meet our life. Well, there's a sashim in April, you know, if you can get a babysitter and come to sashim at Green Gulch, then that would really help you understand what we mean by the practice is always available. So another moment of doubt. in this universal, wide-open way. I see Joe here and others who are part of the Buddha Dharma Sangha at San Quentin. And when we go there, we say, you can practice here. You don't need to change. You don't need to be free to practice. You just need to meet the limitations.

[15:48]

But even within that, we do various things that require time and require effort and are more like this kind of elite or monastic effort. So this this dynamic to me is feeling like the real engine of practice and I think what surprised me is that I didn't notice that I was stuck in wide-open practice until I talked about it a little bit. And thought, well, maybe I've drifted too far. I got so burnt out with the elite practice that I maybe swung a little too far. So... My feeling is that if we think practice is either universal, which we often really want it to be, and we really want this practice to be available to everybody, but are we stuck there?

[17:03]

Are we missing the kind of skillful effort that more monastic style practice offers? And if we're really into our kind of formal practice, are we missing the basic truth that our Our formal practice is really only valuable insofar as it's opening us to finding the practice, finding our life when we're not in the formal practice. So this dynamic, these two sides of our practice, I made a kind of chart here because I felt like this covers a lot of views that we have about practice. And maybe some of these... I want to read off some other ways of talking about this universal or elite practice. And see, as I go through this quickly, see if you think that actually, yeah, that sounds like Zen practice.

[18:04]

The other one doesn't sound like Zen practice, but this one does sound like Zen practice. And if so, if you think it's one thing and not another thing, then I'm just inviting us to reconsider it. and continue reconsidering. So some of these sides of practice, the real kind of shores of Zen. So we can say elite or universal. We could say monastic or lay. Say heroic or ordinary. Is your practice going with the flow or is it going against the stream? You know, both of these images are used in Buddhist practice. Just let go completely and go with the flow. Or go against a stream of greed, hate, and delusion. Is practice hard or is it easy? Is it cold or is it warm?

[19:08]

Is it directed practice, like concentration or insight? Or is it Shikantaza, is it wide open? Is practice about discipline? Or is it like fundamental laziness? Is it an aspiration for enlightenment? Does Zen mean raising the aspiration to completely realize the way for the benefit of all beings? Or is practice about getting over enlightenment? Dropping ear? Dropping enlightenment? Is it about changing your life or changing your mind? The way Suzuki Roshi talks about it is practice that you can use some improvement, or is it that you're perfect how you are? And another way that I see it, another Zen image that I'll talk about a little bit before opening it up, and I do want to hear from you how you are resolving.

[20:13]

or keeping the flow between these two sides of practice, or if you maybe feel stuck yourself. Another image for this, my view at least, is are you beating the cart or beating the ox? I wanted to bring up some examples of how the tradition integrates these two and then see how you are integrating.

[21:20]

So one way of talking about this universal practice that's always spoken very deeply to me is Dogen in Bendowa. He says, Those who think that worldly affairs hinder the Buddha Dharma know only that there is no Buddha Dharma in worldly affairs. They do not know that in the Buddha Dharma there are no worldly affairs. So people who think that your ordinary busy, crazy life interferes with your practice only know that the Buddha Dharma isn't that crazy, busy life. What they don't know is that if you're practicing the Buddha Dharma, if you are the Buddha Dharma, then there's no such thing as worldly affair. There's no such thing as an ordinary, crazy life. There's no such thing as busy, as there are not things, and there's just this moment.

[22:28]

So I've often... gone to this when I need some support for, yeah, it's just, don't you know that in the Buddha Dharma, everything you do is practice? And I was revisiting this passage from Bendoa, from Dogen, and then he gives some examples of great lay people who have attained the way. But the reason they attained the way, these great lay people, the reason they attained the way is because even though they were very busy with state affairs, they practiced zazeng. Again, it's not so cut and dry. Even in this passage that I've always thought of as so universal. Basically, the reason these great ancient lay people could attain the way isn't because they could just find the way wherever they are. That's half of it. But the other half is they made the time to sit zazen. That's another way of thinking about these two sides of practice. Does practice take time?

[23:32]

Does it take time to practice? how could it take time, fundamentally, to do our practice? And yet, to really have a feeling for that, to really appreciate that, don't we need to spend some time? And then how can we spend the time on our practice without then getting into this, getting kind of stuck in that and forgetting that the reason we entered, the reason we're taking this time isn't so that we can... perfect this thing in the zendo, but is really so that we can open to every moment. A way that Suzuki Roshi talks about this is Hinayana practice or small vehicle, elitist practice with a Mahayana mind, a universal mind. Another example of a kind of integration from my teacher in Japan, I would often kind of harass him about, well, basically complaining about how hard the practice was.

[24:55]

So I had a lot to complain about here, about the practice, so then I went there. And then as soon as I got there, I started complaining about how come the practice wasn't more like the practice here? So it was troubling to me that the practice was so hard. Like, why is the practice so hard? First you said, well, it's not hard. You're just, you know, it's not too hard or too strict. You're just not strict enough, you know. It's supposed to be more strict. I'm like wringing the water from my bones here, you know. It's like, well, you're just not being strict enough, which is why you're having these difficulties. But I kept going back and asking again, no, really, especially when I started to see the ways that this practice isn't necessarily working. This hard practice isn't necessarily working. You always see it softening the hearts and opening the minds. I said, really, why do you teach this hard practice? Don't you see it's not helping? And finally, he said, no, I just teach this because it's what I know.

[26:00]

This is just what I know. And that, oh, okay, okay. Okay, so that if we're going to hold elitist practice, to hold it as that. No, I just know about sashins. That's why I say you should do a sashin. Sashin is not the way. It's just what I know. So that to me is a moment of holding one side but letting the other side flow through it. So when we hold this universal practices everywhere side, can we let the elite training aspect flow through it? And when we get into maht, monastic, can we keep that light? So I was hoping to look at Dogen Zenji a little bit in the way that he talks about whether we should beat the...

[27:04]

beat the cart, which to me means trying to change the conditions of our life, or whether we should beat the ox, which to me means get your mind able to see the Dharma. And how Dogen integrates, how Dogen keeps the exchange. But I would actually rather open it up, just say for Dogen... beating the cart turns out to be the tradition passed down from the Buddhas and ancestors. But beating the ox is also the way. And there's beating beating, and there's the ox beating the ox. And beautiful playfulness with these two sides of our practice kind of embodies, so much of Dogen's writing embodies this non-stuckness. So how about us? When we think about and practice, even in a moment of zazen, when we're sitting, are we practicing wide open, it's everywhere, any thought is a dharma flower kind of practice?

[28:15]

Or are we practicing, actually, I really want to be here. I want to make some effort. And whatever side of that we're practicing is the other flowing through it. So one more integration example. of this kind of art of practice. And then I do want to hear from you. So this is Acharya Ling Zhao, Laman Pong's daughter. So Laman Pong is sitting in his statched hut studying the sutras and says, difficult, difficult, like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seed all over a tree. And his wife upholding American Zen says, easy, easy. Like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed. And then Acharya Ling Zhao says, neither difficult nor easy. On the hundred grass trips, the great masters meaning.

[29:18]

So how are we playing with these two sides and where are we stuck? I don't know if it's usual, this is a rather formal talk, but often on Wednesday nights at Green Gulch, we have a little exchange, and I wonder if anybody wants to add anything or speak to their own stuckness, especially, or their own freedom from these two ideas about what practice is. Do you really think the practice is available to everyone all the time? Or do you really think... Somebody once told me all of Buddhism, all of the monasteries, all of the teachings... are in order to enable one or two people in each generation to really wake up. The rest is chat. So, do we think it's that? Do we think it's wide open? We think it's both. What does that mean? How do we bring them together? If anybody wants to offer some thoughts and thus spare the assembly, Dogen, Zenji, on...

[30:28]

cards and oxen and various beatings. Any thoughts? You almost make it seem like one beats the other. really just two sides of the same thing. Yes, practice is everywhere, and yes, practice is trying very hard to live a lot of this environment about it. Maybe not at the same time, and maybe it's other things, too. But it almost seems like

[31:28]

Thank you. Yeah, I think what I was finding is that actually when I'm doing this disciplined practice, I'm sometimes not remembering that it's about this other thing. And when I'm doing this other thing, so yeah, basically noticing that I am separating these things and how to bring them back together, how to keep them together. Thank you. It's all included. Are we including it? Thank you. Where's the moral part of this? Yeah, integrated in warmth, or melted, the distinction kind of melted in warmth.

[32:38]

But sometimes, is there ever a time to do cold practice? I sometimes thought if we need to, that, for me, when you express that, they're unified. They're unified in this warmth. But I feel like even if they're exclusive, maybe better to make the mistake of warmth. We're going to make a mistake. Maybe we should mistake on thinking everyone can do it rather than thinking only I can do it. But really to keep them together. Thank you for that. Losing track of it, everyone. But what I got to is there's really much no choice.

[33:48]

I mean, there are few people in the world who practice something called them, and there are many people who are engaging reality and engaging with me. And one of the things you talk about is meeting. And like that, I don't know. There's just something about this, this sense of, I want to, another joking line that's coming up. Inside the gate, there are grasses. Outside the gate, there are grasses. And it kind of seems like he's talking about there's an inside the gate and there's an outside the gate. And he's always setting up these tricky, ostensible dualities.

[34:56]

But it's kind of like, if you think there's an inside and outside, I mean, with grasses standing for collision, it's more of that. It's more just like setting up Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. For me, in my life, I find that I can let choices that I need to make in the dream, you know, I can be present in a way that kind of denies that I really have to make that choice, you know, or do this

[36:07]

this kind of non-discrimination, just meeting my life in presence, and find that sometimes I'm actually kind of stuck there in a way that I can't take this other side, like my choices that I actually have to make seriously or value them as practice too. So I really appreciate what you're saying as kind of ultimate, kind of basic truth of our practice. But then sometimes we do need to You know, stand up and do something. And it's true that that arises naturally. But there's a way, I've found, that my idea of just be present can block something, can block some other side, some other realm that I need to function in as well. But it doesn't have to be that way. And it sounds like you're speaking from a place that there's actual integration. It's not a conflict. Exactly.

[37:18]

Energy. We need to settle into our life, but are we settling for something that we don't need to settle for? And I feel like I've gotten very good at settling in, but sometimes there's time to not settle for, and to discern that kind of razor, and to help each other. So I think keeping other people around that have different views, So I've been into saying, like, no Zen in the West, you know, and trying to keep people in the room who think that there's no Zen in the West, you know, to kind of keep this flow or to help. To make us ask whether we're being complacent or whether we're being attached. Who's another? Thank you.

[38:23]

You spoke about, they were going to speak about zazen, and that lay people walking out, and the reason they did it is because of zazen. So what is zazen? Zazen is completely opening. whatever condition is arising with with a warm spacious heart and full loving attention feel like since they did some zazen since they took some time to go to a room where people were telling them to do that then they learned they embodied that in a way that they could then keep when the conditions got a little bit more like the neighboring country is starting a ward, you know.

[39:30]

And they could say, well, this is just a moment arising to meet with spacious, loving warmth and attention. But the Zazen that Dogen means is both, but it definitely includes they got up early, you know, and they stayed up late, And they took the time. They quit their job. They didn't quit their job, but they did it on top of their job. They didn't settle for the opportunities that they had already. They took time to train. So both. But that ongoing mind is the most important thing. And the question for me is, how do we keep that real? And like, I get into these things where, oh, every moment is my life, right? Like, yeah, every moment I'm doing it, right? It's like, actually, not really.

[40:32]

Do some Zasan, you know? There's the Han. I know you're tired, but going will help make this other thing real. So a lot of the kind of criticism of Soto Zen and I hate to say, California Zen, but is that we get good at talking about this, saying, yeah, every moment, meet it completely with warmth, but are we training in that, and how are we training in that? How are we fulfilling that completely? So it's both. It's taking the time, but then it's not thinking. It's the thing that takes the time. That's what we're doing. That's the training wheels, as Vicki Austin, who actually sends her... for her own loving regard. Actually, I had the privilege of meeting with her for a minute before this talk. She told me, oh, that's just training wheels. It was very helpful, teaching. The other two.

[41:35]

You used the word elitist a number of times. This is practice elitist, and it's practice in Japan elitist. One thing we're focusing on at Center is making... being welcoming, being welcoming, widening the circle, trying to make this practice more accessible with Eugene and San Quentin. Many people are offering meditation groups in different settings, and I'm sure there are people here tonight who are here for the first time, and that's wonderful. I want that to happen. So how do you reconcile those two? I'll lead a step. Welcoming in. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sort of troubled about it, actually. I feel some trouble. I feel like I really want it to be universal. When Dogen says, you know, universal recommendation, I want it to be universal.

[42:38]

And so then I say it's universal. But then I hit these places where it's like, well, no, actually... I'm saying it's universal and you're hearing me say it's universal, but you don't know what I'm talking about because you haven't taken the time. Your life hasn't opened up such that you can take the time to do this elite thing. So I really want it to be that. And I guess I'm opening to, in my wanting to be that, I'm kind of like not highly enough valuing this part that does take time, does take special conditions. not at the level of ultimate truth, but at the level of fulfillment and actualizing. Please, Michael, and then we should end. You can say that you should sit down with the Buddha and stand up and stash a ropey. And it's easy to land on one side.

[43:47]

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I'm seeing one statue kind of standing and sitting. One last last word and then really we should end. Two. Just. thinking about acceptance is to say that we are able to clearly acknowledge what's happening. And clearly acknowledging what's happening does not necessarily mean that what's happening is sustainable and we can continue that way.

[44:53]

So to truly acknowledge if you're in an abusive relationship that that cannot continue. It's not okay. And to have the discernment, the reason why we will sit in front then is to have people who will be able to discern what is it that needs to change? What is it that needs to say the same? That which brings us closer to presence with our own true nature, it's okay. So I have to say that a lot of personal experience of Japanese practice or formal practice was completely the opposite of what we required a tremendous amount of ability.

[46:02]

But Zazen itself, in my personal opinion, is the least elite of anything. That we don't, that some people will not make that choice, does not make it more elite. It simply means that they haven't made that discernment yet. Thank you. Do you have something, and then Luke should stop. Thank you for your talk. A brief analogy that makes sense to me. I was sitting with a couple of friends, also filmmakers, and I was trained in academic setting, going through all the history and methodically dissecting filmmaking. Another friend worked his way up with no formal education, worked his way up, you know, early on, you know, working this and that.

[47:09]

And another friend who was a little experimental filmmaker, and we were kind of arguing for a while about what's the better way to, you know, be a filmmaker with all these things. You know, it seemed like the pie was covering, you know. And we ended up saying, no, actually, I wish I had your background, you know. And it was very interesting. But it was all... Thank you for that. Thank you all for listening. I hope my words didn't interfere with this important topic and may our coming together tonight be of some benefit to the suffering world. Thank you very much.

[48:00]

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