Good evening, everyone. Glad to see so many friends, old and new. And I would like to start by dedicating this talk to my teacher, Zanke Blanche Hartman. and to my spiritual father, Lou Hartman, and of course my grandfather, Mel Weitzman, and I always dedicate my talks to Isan Dorsey, who is a great hero of mine, and also to my Dharma brother, John King, who has passed on, and also a great Dharma brother. And actually I wanted to thank very much all the people who helped in the Dharma Transmission in the last few weeks.

[01:07]

It was quite wonderful to have so many friends to help and it taught me an awful lot about accepting help from other people. It's not something that I've ever been that good at. So actually to have people arrange the the mats, and just helping out in little ways that I never thought of. So a big, big thank you to all of the people, and we all know who you are, that helped with the ceremony. It would have been impossible to do any of this by myself. It's completely something done by everyone. Of course, the other person that we are paying tribute to this weekend is Suzuki Roshi.

[02:12]

Fifty years ago he came here, and who knows what would be here without that event having happened. So... To honor Suzuki Roshi, I'd like to start out by reading just a little piece that he wrote in, oh, well, he didn't write, that was written down, some of his words. The reason that I would like to open this way is that this is Suzuki Roshi talking about how impossible it is to talk about Zen. It's absolutely impossible. and how difficult it is to listen to someone talking about Zendorism. Which may or may not be the case tonight, we don't know. But then it's interesting to me the very idea of being able to talk about something because who says you barely branch on one side, you miss out the other side.

[03:27]

It's very, very tricky to actually say what we're doing, to say what the heck we're all doing here, or why we're doing it. Oh, steamed up my glasses already. There's someone up in the window, thank you. So this is for right attitude. When we talk about our way, there is apt to be some misunderstanding, because the true way always has at least two sides, the negative and the positive. When we talk about the negative side, the positive side is missing. And guess what? When we talk about the positive side, the negative side is missing. We cannot speak in a positive and a negative way at the same time. It's almost impossible to talk about Buddhism.

[04:32]

So not to say anything, just to practice it is the best way. Showing one finger or drawing a circle in the air may be the way. Or simply to bow. If we understand this point, we will understand how to talk about Buddhism. And we will have perfect communication. When we practice, we practice our zazen without gaining an idea. And when we talk, we talk about something. Just the positive or the negative without trying to express some intellectual one-sided idea. And we listen. without trying to figure out some intellectual understanding, without trying to understand from just a one-sided view. This is how we talk about our teaching and how we listen to a talk.

[05:41]

I greatly appreciate this because, as you know, we often talk about not falling into dualism, not falling into one side or the other. However, when we talk, it's very difficult. The English language is not very suited to talking in a way that is not dualistic. We tend to end up sounding one-sided. So I think of that rather as a disclaimer at the beginning of the talk. But it's actually what I feel is one of our essential practices to keep in the middle way that we talk about, the middle path. So how do we share this middle path with each other? And what is it that we're actually sharing?

[06:49]

Is it possible to fully develop practice, perhaps even fully develop monastic practice, outside of a setting such as a Zen center or a monastery? What do you do in your everyday life? I always say to people, there's Zazen would be no good. if you could only do it sitting down staring at a wall. It's infinitely useful. And you don't really tend to think of Zazam as being a useful skill. But when I give Zazam instruction, I always encourage more thinking. Now, I'm not talking about I can't remember realism. I'm not talking about making a big effort to stop the thinking. I'm talking about, you know, discursive thinking.

[07:53]

So, of course, thinking goes on, on and on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you just paid attention for a few seconds right now, you'll probably hear it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Blanche says, and I'm a little bit too harsh with that, she said, you could just don't pay attention to everything that you're thinking. However, I found it quite a relief to see when it's there, not ignore it, to see the thought is there, but to just be with that. Oh, well, there's that thought. How interesting, and go on ahead. So, how can we develop such a practice how can we practice this outside outside on the streets how can we practice this in conversation with our friends how can we practice this without going off to the monastery now everyone has the time or the money to go to the monastery they may have a family they may have other commitments of course it's wonderful where you can go

[09:08]

And it's wonderful if you can come and spend some time in residential training. I came back recently for three weeks after having left over a year ago. And it reminded me of a song. Don't know you seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. And I realized the wonderful container that this place is for practice. It's fabulous. It's not easy, but you could not get a better place to train. Having said that, as I said earlier, not everyone can get here. Not everyone can be here as much as they'd like to. So how can you take this practice out into your everyday life? Is it a matter of what colour of words you're wearing or what you look like?

[10:12]

Is it anything that you can learn from studying a book? What's it about? Anyway. As some of them, I work in the Tandemwine mainly and also down in the Mission District in downtown. I call Zaza many things when I'm sharing it with people. I worked at the Erds Foundation at Christmas and in the Speed Project. So for the Speed Project, I called training people in Zaza and chilling for the holidays. And actually chilling for the holidays went around the Three different institutions took that one on, cheering for the holidays. And basically, all I was doing was teaching Zaza.

[11:13]

So everything I've done for the last year in various places, under various numbers with various titles, has all really just been teaching Zaza. And it's been a great... challenge to having gone this far and studied for 16 years. It's been quite a challenge to be out there, so to speak, and not depending on verbs or particular forms, not trying, I'll say trying, not to be stuck on the fact that the forms we have have been so good for me that I think everyone should do it. So my friends, the Faithful Fools, are over there from the Leaping Range. And the Faithful Fools, I'm the Temple Keeper.

[12:15]

I look after the Zendel. And everyone is welcome to come. So the question then kind of solidified a wee bit for me is how do we have full training outside of a monastic setting? In fact, is it possible? So I actually brought some little bits and pieces with me. Often I just speak very much off the cuff. But when I was talking to Blanche today, She told me a wonderful story about Suzuki Roshi, reminding me that the book, The Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, was someone writing down his talks. And Okusan, his wife, saw him busy writing one of his talks and said, why do you spend such so much time on it?

[13:20]

Probably no one will come. And he said, it doesn't matter. It's the Dharma. Did I get the story correct? It doesn't matter. It's the Dharma. So I was inspired to actually bring a few more bits and pieces with me. So I always feel like I'm bringing friends. When I bring, I have... Ichiara Roshi with me, and Suzuki Roshi, and Shogyan Shrumpa, and a little smattering of Rumi. So first, on the idea of being homeless. I've been homeless myself when I came to America. It was absolutely horrifying. But it was terribly shocking.

[14:25]

And I work a lot with homeless folks and with low-income folks. And one of my favorite teachers is Homeless Kodo. And I'm sure most people have heard of Homeless Kodo. His first disciple was Uchiyama Roshi. If you haven't heard of him, have a look at the book, The Teachings of Homeless Kodo. And he was called Homeless Kodo because he didn't have a temple. Here's what he said. People call me Homeless Kodo, but I don't take it as an insult. We call me that because I have never had a temple or a house. Everyone is homeless. It's a mistake to think that we have a fixed home. And then Uchiyama Roshi comments on this and he says, as his disciple, I did not always feel good when I heard Sawaki Roshi called Homeless Kodo.

[15:29]

The word homeless reminded me of stray dogs and cats. But now I understand that this nickname is really a title for the true person. Everyone is a stray in reality. And actually it does explain that the Japanese word, and I will not pronounce this right, Yadonashi is used in reference to both persons and animals. The concepts homeless and stray carry the same meaning and are used interchangeably. So to be called homeless, it was a dreadful insult where he came from. But I completely concur. that we're all homeless. The idea that we have a fixed base, a fixed home, is actually a wee bit mistaken.

[16:31]

It's the idea that we're going to stay like this forever. I'm not going to die, how about you? I'm here forever, you know. I'll just keep using Botox, and that you couldn't tell. In America, I realize we're in California where everyone's supposed to look like we're about 20. So I think I've lost the battle already. But anyway. Appearances. Appearances are not very important. So let's hear a wee bit on this topic. And this is Tribal Trooper. And again, I would highly recommend Chögyam Trungpa. Some people have difficulty with him because he drank. You know, someone said to me, I wouldn't pay that much attention to his teaching. He had problems.

[17:34]

The thing is, I've never met anybody who hasn't got problems. with my mother, who was a fundamentalist Christian, we all have our cross to bear. Everyone has something. So this is Chögyam Trungpa. And what composes the practice? Well, of course, the first thing we're thinking of is Zazen. And when I was looking to see what Trungpa had to say on the Zazen, I realized that the best part was all in his writings on the Four Noble Truths, and that was a happy serendipity because I believe the Four Noble Truths are what the practice period is about here at this time. So you're probably familiar, or perhaps I should quickly recap the Four Noble Truths.

[18:42]

Although I'm sure Jordan's been doing it much better than I. You haven't started yet? Oh, it was comparison. The truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the fact that there is a possibility of lessening or ending suffering, and the path to do so. And of course, on the path, we have meditation, zazan. So I thought that that would probably be one of the main things that we'd have to have in training if we were going to get anywhere. So suppose we have our monastery without walls. What do we have there? Well, the first thing would be zazan. But there again, I remember the priest meeting we had here, and we talked about What is Zaza? Is it the way that you, is it the form, the correct mudra?

[19:45]

Is it, as Suzuki Roshi said, you know, hold your arms as though you're holding an egg in each armpit? Is it, what is it? I realized that a lot of the people I work with are not physically able to get into these postures. And so I began to think of it now as a mental event, not something that, I don't mean particularly just strictly mental, but I mean it's not completely necessary to be physically able to get into those postures. A lot of people can't do that. So what then is the essential heart? of the practice. And of course, I'll throw myself into discussion shortly, my goodness, time flies when you're having fun.

[20:46]

Now, I'll just go straight into Trungpa here, because I met the folks that I work with, can't sit that often, and they don't know what to do in their own homes. and they don't have to wear black, they can wear orange, and they can, sorry, and they can sit wherever and whenever they have the time, but is that the essential essence of it? I thought really what it feels like is the essential essence is the awareness. Of course the posture is the mind, it's the body-mind. There's no difference between the body and the mind. If you can get yourself in a relaxed, stable posture, then your mind also has a greater possibility of being relaxed and stable. But I tend to teach awareness in everyday activities.

[21:57]

Anything can be your awareness practice. Anything can be part of your Zazan. And Trimpa gives a lovely, lovely, he has some lovely words on this. And he talks about this as part of the Fourth Noble Truth, of course, because we're talking about Zazan. He says you do not have to push yourself into the practice of Zazan. But just let be, let be. If you practice in this way, a feeling of space and ventilation automatically comes. The expression of the Buddha nature of basic intelligence that was working its way through confusion. Then we begin to find the understanding of the truth of the path. The fourth noble truth, simplicity.

[22:58]

So he talks about, for example, having a cup of tea. Now we tend to kind of, you know, this is the urge when we rush through things, and this is something we do well here, is our own working meals. Slowing things down so that you can pay attention. Not so that you can think about it, That's so that we can become completely involved in it. Some other wise person and I said, doing one practice completely, doing one thing completely is doing the whole practice. So Trimpo gave an example of pouring a cup of tea. He said, if you pour a cup of tea, you're aware of extending your arm, touching the teapot, lifting it. And finally, when the cup touches your mouth, you sip, you place the cup down with a dignity. Remember Suzuki Rishi talked about this.

[24:03]

He, for example, would never pick up a teacup with one hand because two hands, if I offer you a cup with two hands, I'm really offering you something. If I offer you a cup of tea like that, so it's the same to myself, two hands. And, uh, What Trungpa goes on to say is you become aware that each precise movement has dignity. We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act of our lives can contain simplicity and precision and can thus have tremendous beauty and dignity. Now this actually does have a name. It's shamatha or samatha.

[25:08]

And it's mostly, it's commonly used in the Humayana practice. However, it's a way of being completely here with whatever is right in front. Things as they are, as Suzuki Roshi said. things as it is. So anything that you do, anything that you do, if you do it completely and mindfully, is the practice, does have the flavor of Zazan. Trungpa finishes saying, such practice is the attempt to see the nowness quality in action. It's the development of peace. When you see the nowness of the very moment, there is no room for anything but openness and peace.

[26:18]

Now, I do like to lose some time for discussion, and I realize I have about half a dozen lectures here. And I feel that the main point is actually what I've already mentioned. I thought of what else would be useful. for a monastic training in the monastery without walls, I thought the other things I won't go into soon deeply, as I say, there's another two or three lectures there, but the other thing that came up for me was community of Sainda, as we call it, a community of people to sit with. I found it very difficult to sit much meditation before I found others. to sit with.

[27:23]

For some reason, that's amazingly supportive. Again, that doesn't depend on a building or anything. That's a community of like-minded people. So we have our Zaza, we have our good spiritual friends, and then the last thing, which is one of my big ones, is silence. I find personally that it's very, very important, especially now that I don't live here, to have at least an hour or two in a day when I'm completely silent. Because the mindfulness in action is one aspect of our meditation, but the silence, to pay attention to what's going on, is very, very important. So that would be my third would be silence.

[28:23]

So community, zazan, and silence. I could not resist bringing Rumi with me. Let me see. He had some wonderful words on each of these aspects. So I'll share those and then I'll welcome me everywhere to discussion, so to speak. So my three were community, Zazan, and silence. And here's Rumi, and I can recommend this book very highly. I looked for Hafiz, but we don't have it in the library. I looked for Paul to borrow it, but I couldn't find him. Excuse me. Oops. But Rumi, I very much enjoy Rumi.

[29:26]

He talks, they're like, why would I explain so much poetry? Goodness me. Okay, community. Community of the spirit. There is a community of the spirit. Enjoy it and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise. Drink all your passion and be of disgrace. Close both eyes to see with the other eye. Open your hands if you want to be held. Sit down in the circle. Quit acting like a wolf and feel the shepherd's love filling you. At night, your beloved wonders. Don't accept consolations. Close your mouth against fruit. Take the neck, taste the lover's mouth in yours. You know, she left me, he left me.

[30:28]

Twenty more will come. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open? Move outside the time there of fear thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down. You're always widening rings of being. So that's community of the spirit. Silence. It often refers to love and the beloved, and I think of that as the source, the essence.

[31:34]

You might think of it as God. Quietness. Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. You've covered with thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life There's a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. And finally, people ask me a lot what was Dharma transmission and

[32:43]

What did it do? That's impossible really to answer. But this gives a little flavor. And also gives a taste of living without thought. A taste of living without paying too much attention. all of this blah blah blah blah blah. When you're not paying too much attention to those things that you think compose yourself, it really is possible to let the self go. I am dust particles in sunlight. I am the round sun To the bits of dust I say, stay.

[33:47]

To the sun, keep moving. I am morning mist and the breathing of evening. I am wind on the top of a grove and surf on the cliff. Mast, rudder, helmsman and keel, I am also the common reef they thunder on. I am a tree with a trained parrot in the benches. Silence, thought and voice. The musical air coming through a fleet. A spark of a storm. A flickering in metal. Both candle and the moth crazy around it. Rose and the nightingale lost in the fragrance. I am all orders of being. The circling galaxy. The evolutionary intelligence. The moved and the falling away. What is and what isn't.

[34:50]

You who know. You, the one in all. Say who I am. Say I am you. I am you. So those were a few thoughts on what we're doing, and perhaps even on how we do it. And I'd like to have a look at Blanche's watch. So I'm not going to keep people up late, but I thought it might be interesting if anyone else had some input or some questions, and perhaps another different ideas of what would compose a monastery without walls, how we can take our practice out.

[35:51]

So, I'd just like to throw the discussion open. Yes, Craig. Thank you very much for your talk. Thank you. I was wondering, when it comes to not paying too much attention, if you thought that kindness would go all in. Yes, yes. Thank you. I think kindness definitely, definitely plays a role because particularly for those of us who grew up not feeling very valued, we end up sometimes treating ourselves very unkindly. I find it fairly easy to be kind to other people But I always find it much harder to be kind to myself. Could you repeat the question?

[36:54]

Thank you, thank you. Because I have actually, I should confess, I have a great advantage now as I get older. I'm not paying too much attention to the blah, blah. I actually have a terrible memory problem now. So that's why I had to ask you to repeat. It's kind of dyscalculia. You should check it out online. It's very interesting. So yes, I noticed that when I started to suggest that my discursive thinking was often, often, oh, you did that wrong. That's not right. Look at them. They're doing that better. Look at him. He looks better than you do. Look at her. She's got it. You haven't. It was self-criticism a lot. And then, of course, that extended out into, oh, look at him. You know, look at him. And what was going on, the hamster running around in my wheel was constantly judging.

[37:59]

And it was very unkind. So I believe that kindness, you have to start here, and the kindest thing to do is to not pay a lot of attention to how bad you are, or actually to how great you are. Celeste Rest, our dear, dear librarian who passed away, seems like very recently, If you look at the books in the library, you'll see the stamps you put on them, and it says, have an ordinary day. And it's a smiley face, but it's got a straight, have an ordinary day. Thank you. Anarita. I just recall, as you were speaking about Zen Down Without Walls, I don't know who did this, but Christina related to me that someone who had actually taken that word made a sign, Zendo, and placed it over their departure door so that when they left their apartment, they were entering.

[39:08]

Oh, that's a wonderful idea. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I've taken a sign saying meditation group and just go and stick it down and sit down and see what happens. I might actually do that pretty soon. Okay. We're going to public our intervention here. Oh, wonderful, thank you. Any other questions or suggestions? Yes, we can. Hi. I appreciate your question for paying attention in everyday life in all the other topics other than the general meditation. I just want to also hear the other thoughts of What do you think about the steadfast love? I think of the steadfast love every day in the Zanda. Couldn't be better. I mean, personally, I started the first meditation technique I learned, I was 12 when I first learned about it.

[40:19]

But I would only use it if I felt I was in difficulty. And then later on, I learned some more in my 20s. And again, I used it just every now and then to find some peace. But it didn't have much of an ongoing effect. It didn't have much of a sustained effect. It was like having little glibsies and not quite being able to, you know, stay with it. And I found it immensely valuable to have no choice. Actually, I couldn't believe it when we got to that writing Tenkin notes and things like that. I believe the only reason you don't go is if you're dying. Even then you should go. There was something great about having to, and people say, that's someone else telling you what to do. No, it's not. you know, where do you stop and someone else begin anyway?

[41:22]

It's wonderful, yes. To have the container there and to have teachers to work with or to discuss your practice, fabulous, really fabulous. I would recommend it to anyone. Everyone. If you can get here in the morning, if you get here in the evening, if you sleep late, come to my Zendo. We start at the crack of dawn at nine. So we're all welcome there. But yes, a regular sitting. And again, folks say to me, we have the Zendo. It's fantastic. And people have asked me, you know, out there, people have said, well, How often do I have to do it? And I say, well, it's not the how often or, you know, a particular number.

[42:23]

It's regularity. So suppose you set aside 10 minutes every second day and you get your spot and you sit down and you do that 10 minutes, then you build up, then you can start to build. But I think there's nothing that... To compare to sitting in Zendo, I also know that a lot of people can't. When I first started to sit there, I had extreme post-traumatic stress disorder. And to sit in the dark with people walking around behind you and making occasional hitting noises and things was terrible. So I know a lot of people can't do that. But I would recommend it, yes. And of course we can get to Tassara for a week and do that. But I fear that the practice is shrewd, which is a terrible word, but the practice must be wide open for everyone.

[43:30]

And I think some people get put off by the idea that they think they can't really do it unless they're innocent to it. or it's not the real practice unless they're in the monastery. And I was simply trying to widen that a wee bit and say, yes, it's real practice. If you can't make it to the monastery, you can still practice. Yes? This evening I've heard you speak a lot about kindness. I'm wondering how you would recommend to the lay person So when they go into the world with the effort, the intention of being kind, and they don't receive that, for example, they might have an institution like this. They're intending to be kind, and then they don't receive it from... Yeah, so I always want to deal with that.

[44:36]

There are expectations. I was just going to say, I don't have that expectation. Yeah, well, I've known John for eight years, and that time I have come to this front door several times and not felt comfortable. And despite that, like, you know, helping with the Dharma transmission, I still don't always feel comfortable here. So that's very forthright. And I wonder how a teacher would recommend, you know, what he recommends to someone like me. Right. When I first came here, I felt very uncomfortable. I had my last cup of good coffee because I didn't think that I'd have coffee in the Sun Centre. I came there and I'd better coffee than I could afford. Yes, my experience, I've been celibate for many years now. When I came, I was a very out there queer, and that didn't feel comfortable either.

[45:42]

And it seemed terribly white, and that didn't feel comfortable either. But I can't allow myself to stop. from what I want to do because of my assumptions of what people are thinking. We don't actually know what other people are thinking. So I would say, of course it's important that everyone feels comfortable and if there's a particular thing that causes discomfort, we would address that in a practical manner. But I would say The most interesting thing about feeling uncomfortable is, what does that show you about you? I think it shows me that I'm like, I'm disgusted because that is when I have an expectation of kindness when I knock on the front door.

[46:45]

I'll make you be candid. Okay. You can be candid. People do expect kindness, and I think people also expect these kind of holy people. And I remember talking to someone about something being stolen from in here, and they said, not at the Sand Center. And I said, well, who do you think lives there? I said, we're just people. And I rang. But we do make our best effort to be kind and I know that I fail and I know that we all fail. And I apologize on behalf of Zen Center if someone was unkind. I think we all fail. That's a good thing to turn towards and learn and see why that failure happened.

[47:52]

Not that there's anything that great about failure of success. But I also found it hard to be kind and smiley here. Well, Lanceman says that this place is for advanced practitioners and Tassahara is for beginners. Because, I mean, yeah, everybody thinks, well, I'm at Tassahara, I'm a real monk. But surely there are so many potential distractions. If you think about it, if you've been at Tassahara, you can spend the whole day and you don't have to talk. You get a job to do in the afternoon. It doesn't really matter. The first job I had was working in the shop. And I said, shop? We might have swore the word that we saw. You know, cultural and misunderstanding. And then the first job we gave him was to fix a manual. The wheel wasn't going around on this lawnmower. And so I took it to pieces.

[48:56]

I knew nothing about lawnmowers. And I said, we can't lying in the bottom. And I picked that up and I... Oh, a cog. I must go with another cog. So I put together all these cogs and I fastened it all up again and I took it off the bench and I put it on the floor and ran it back and forth. And right enough, the wheels went round. So I went to the head of the shop and said, Nick, the wheels go round. And he said, that's lovely, but the great of the blades went round as well. So it didn't really matter. You try your best to do the best effort. But here, I must say, it was a little bit trickier. You know, if you've sat in the morning for a couple of hours, and then something really, really hard comes up, and you're trying to deal with it. And then you're in the front office. I was the front office manager. And then you have to answer the phone, hello, San Francisco, I'm so good.

[49:57]

And, you know, somebody comes in and you go, hello. And it's just not always that easy. I'm keeping people out of bed. This is awful. I also would say that sometimes we'll get stuck on farm. Here's the farm. Here's how we do it. We're doing that wrong. First there's a mountain. When there is no mountain, we have to go onto the mountains here. So two people understood that. Thank you both. So I think actually I should stop. But it really has been a wonderful treat to be here and to talk to you all. As far as the Dharma transmission goes, oh, there's Vicky, thank you, Vicky.

[51:02]

I thanked everybody at the beginning. Vicky was the instructor for the Dharma transmission. The thing that it has left me with is that I didn't do it. I couldn't. I couldn't possibly do a zillion barrels each day as I was supposed to. I couldn't do it. But it was done. And I wrote, we did it. And it wasn't me. It was all of you. It wasn't me. But that's what I'm left with. So I want to thank you all very much for doing all of that bowing and all of that chanting and all of that work. And keep going. Keep going. Thank you so much.

[51:58]

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