Berkeley Center June 2007 Newsletter Mind Refresher Cakes BZC Schedule Sojun Talk, BZC, June 21, 1989 June (continued from last month) Practice Period Dinner/Skit Night eshan was meeting Lung-tan with a pre- Saturday, 6-2 conceived idea of him. He always had Ceremony DDsome idea in front of him about what he Saturday, 6-2 and 6-30, 9:30 am was seeing, rather than just seeing. Although he Founder’s Ceremony went to Lung-tan to help him see directly, he did- Monday, 6-4, 6:20 pm n't know that that's why he was going. He Tuesday, 6-5, 6:40 am thought he was going to show him something. Half-Day Sitting He didn't realize he was going to Lung-tan in Sunday, 6-10 order to be able to see. Lay Ordination/Zaike Tokudo He stayed with Lung-tan for a while. He was Saturday, 6-16 humbled when he began to see who Lung-tan Kidzendo really was. One night he was having a long talk Saturday, 6-16 with Lung-tan. Lung-tan was getting a little tired, Five-Day Sitting and said, "It's time for me to retire. It's very dark End Practice Period out there and I think you'll need some light to Weds-Sunday, 6-20 to 6-24 find your way." So he took a paper lantern, lit it Shuso Hossen and handed it to Deshan. As soon as Deshan Sunday, 6-24 took the candle, Lung-tan went "Whoo!" and July blew out the light, and the entire world was pitch Half-Day Sitting dark. Everything gone. At that point, Deshan Sunday, 7-1 dropped--everything--gone. New Deshan. Founder’s Ceremony There is something called, "pecking and tap- Tuesday, 7-3, 6:20 pm ping." When the chick is ready to come out of Thursday, 7-5, 6:40 am the shell there's a "tap-tap-tap-tap" and the All Potluck mother bird goes "tap-tap-tap-tap" on the outside Thursday, 7-5 just at the right moment. (I don't know if this is One-Day Sitting factual.) If the mother taps too early or too late, it Saturday, 7-14 continued on page 2 Kidzendo Saturday, 7-21 Bodhisattva Ceremony Affirmation of Welcome Saturday, 7-28, 9:30 am Walking the path of liberation, we Mountains and Rivers Sesshin express our intimate connection with all Friday-Sunday, 7-27 to 7-29 beings. Welcoming diversity, here at the practice of is available to people of every race, nationality, NOTE: Monday June 25, informal zazen (am) class, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical and Wednesday, July 4, informal zazen (am and ability. May all beings realize their true nature. pm). Berkeley Zen Center 1931 Russell Street Berkeley, CA. 94703 510.845.2403 www.berkeleyzencenter.org Saturday Childcare Mind Refresher Cakes Childcare is offered free of continued from page 1 charge on Saturdays from won't work, Lung-tan probably wasn't planning to 9:15 to 11:15. It’s helpful for do it. He was just handing him the light. It was a planning if you can let us spontaneous act, and a total surprise for know that you’re hoping to Deshan. attend; call or email Greg The next day, Deshan took all of Denny, 595-8162, or his commentaries and [email protected]. burned them, very gleefully burned them all, and felt very lib- Childcare Schedule erated. All preconceptions had dropped from his June 2 Childcare mind. All points of view had dropped away. Any June 9 Childcare opinion had dropped away. He was just left with June 16 Kidzendo this clear light, which permeated the darkness. June 23 Sesshin – no program When everything became completely dark, he June 30 Childcare could see his life, which illuminated everywhere. July 7 Childcare – and camp-out Then Deshan left Ryutan. But later he came July 14 Sesshin – no program back, and studied with him for thirty years, refin- July 21 Kidzendo ing his practice gradually. July 28 Childcare This is a significant part of the story, because August 4 Childcare this pitch-darkness is only one side of enlighten- August 11 Childcare ment. To have this kind of experience is wonder- August 18 Kidzendo ful. But the other side, after this realization, is August 25 Childcare learning to live your life as a new person. So the commentators say that Deshan was a little too Kidzendo hasty in leaving Ryutan after his realization. A talk in the for young ones three and He should have stuck around and not been so up is offered on the third Saturday of each hasty to leave. Sometimes we have a realiza- month (or the fourth Saturday if a sesshin is tion, and we think, "This is it," and we leave, and scheduled on the third). We meet upstairs at lose ourself in the world, and it all kind of fritters the Senauke's household (1933 Russell) for a away. Unless you cultivate after dropping, you briefing on forms at about 9:45, then sojourn can lose it. This kind of experience is very good, down to the zendo for the first 10 minutes of but on the other hand, it's not the end. It's only a lecture starting at 10:10. Afterwards, children beginning. Any kind of realization or opening may join the regular Saturday childcare pro- experience is only a beginning for the rest of gram if they wish. your life of practice. You can't stay in the new- born stage. So we let go and stay present in beginner's mind not trying to do something extraordinary, but realizing the extraordinariness of our ordinariness. These folks are all in the of Sekito kisen (Jap.). Dao-wu was Sekito's student, also a student of Matsu. I want to familiarize you with some of the people in this lineage. There are many good stories about them.

Page 2 June 2007 BZC Newsletter Vice Abbot Position By Sojun PEOPLEPEOPLE , Abbot Sojun, and the Board of Directors, have decided to create the position of Vice Nine bows and many thanks to John Rubin I Abbot for . As Vice Abbot he will (and also Claire Rubin – we think we may have I share some of the responsibilities of the Abbot. missed the opportunity to thank her when she These responsibilities will consist of administra- phased out a couple years ago) for years tive duties as well as teaching and various lead- beyond count as one of the Head Cooks for the ership functions, many of which Alan now per- twice-monthly Men’s Shelter Dinners; and many forms as Tanto. The Tanto position, for the pres- thanks to the intrepid Everett Wilson for step- ent, will remain inactive. We want to give our- ping forward to take this on. Of course, the very selves as much space as necessary to work out best way to thank them both (as well as continu- which responsibilities make sense for us to ing Head Cook Lance Shows) is to SIGN UP TO share. HELP!!!! Eventually I will step down as Abbot. But I real- * * * ize that I have been giving some confusing and Nine more bows to Carol Paul for her devo- unclear messages. This has been mostly tion to BZC’s altars as Head Chiden, ably shep- because of my own lack of clarity about my herding us through a tumultuous year where we future role and my relationship to the sangha transitioned from kerosene lamps to complicated after stepping down. Although it may seem rather candles and from incense to flower petals to straight forward, there are, after 40 years of this, whole flowers. Taking over for her is our newly some emotional sticking points that arise for me. ordained priest, Alexandra Frappier. Since I plan to remain here there are things such * * * as space, protocol, and monetary support to be Beaucoup thanks to Jesy Goldhammer for worked out. Understanding that there are things tending our bathrooms this past year, and wel- which we cannot anticipate, we want to take the come to new Bathroom Attendant, Christy time and be as clear as we can be. Calame. New resident Catherine Cascade is As of now, I have no fixed date for stepping taking over as Health and Safety Coordinator down. I will be 80 years old in two years and and as Community Room attendant; we mourn doubt that I would do it before then. Although I and miss our previous CR attendant, the late feel as healthy and active as ever, that seems Paul Winnacker. like a good possible benchmark. We all want the * * * transition to be as smooth and seamless as pos- If you would like to join the practice of volun- sible, so when that does happen we will have teering at BZC, a good place to start is helping worked out a solution where I will assume a new out with Saturday breakfast – assisting in the position as Senior Teacher, without the kitchen or with serving. Also we always need responsibilities of the Abbot, which will be given Jikidos –zendo cleaning takes an hour or two over to Alan. I hope to actively continue to work twice during one week – leave a note for Head with those who relate to me as their teacher, to Jikido Shelley Brock for training. If you’ve tried continue to teach in various ways, and to work these positions and you’d like to take on addi- with people in their practice positions and sup- tional responsibility, don’t hesitate to contact the port the three treasures without creating any Coordinator, Laurie Senauke. There’s always problems. I also have a couple of books to write, plenty to do around BZC. plus time with my wife and our dog. I am open to discussing this with whoever would like to.

June 2007 BZC Newsletter Page 3 SAVE THE DATES Summer Sutra Class he's meeting. Q. What class format will you use? aurie Senauke will teach a four-week sutra A. We'll take one sutra per class, mostly from class beginning on Thursday, July 12. We'll the Middle Length Discourses; we recite the meet from 7:15 to 8:45 each Thursday LL sutra in unison and discuss it. One sutra I'm evening. Unlike most of our classes you can planning to use talks about the other kinds of drop in to any of the sessions or, of course, causation besides karma. I'm still considering come to all of them. The cost is $5.00/ class. which other we'll study. These sutras are the original teachings of Q. Thank you. Shakyamuni Buddha, transmitted for several hundred years orally before being set down in BZC Camp-Out Revived writing. This is Laurie's second summer of pre- On the weekend of July 7 and 8, we will have senting and discussing these teachings. our first BZC camp out for members, families, Q. Laurie, why does sutra study interest you? and friends in many years. The camp-out will A. I find the sutras interesting individually, be held at Gillespie Youth Camp in Tilden Park, but even more so in their variety; I enjoy sharing a mere 20 minute drive from BZC, and a beauti- them. It's easy to overlook Zen's roots in ful spot close to hiking trails. We usually start in Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching, so I think it's the afternoon on Saturday, have a potluck din- important to bring that out. Within the sutras ner and then a campfire, wake up to birds there are different kinds of teaching - you have singing, and a breakfast is provided. It’s all over detailed conceptual frameworks, but he also at noon. Folks can come just for the evening or uses parables and even includes the supernatu- just for the morning. Look for more details as we ral at times. There's a wide variety. His response approach the dates. For more info, talk to varies according to circumstances. Often they're Laurie Senauke ([email protected]) or Marie responses to questions that people bring, and at Hopper ([email protected] ). the end of the sutra, the person has woken up; in that way I find that they resonate with Five-Day Sesshin and Zen literature, more than we usually think. The sesshin to end practice period will be And I just like to inhabit the mind of Shakyamuni Wednesday June 20 through Sunday June 24. Buddha to whatever extent we can access it If you plan to attend, you must sign up and through these sutras. It's a very spacious mind complete the registration form by the courtyard to touch. Even though modern people can be bulletin board. Participants are expected to turned off by the older style of repetition, the make a commitment of three consecutive patriarchal images, and what can seem like days for this sesshin. If you have not yet partici- prudish morality, there's a lot there to connect pated in a sesshin at BZC, or if you have ques- with. tions, please contact the sesshin director, Leslie Q. One aspect of Zen koans is their concern Bartholic, at (925) 933-3486 (before 9 pm) or with non-dualism and dualism, but the sutras [email protected] don't seem to present this issue in such an obvious way. A. They can seem very dualistic. He speaks con- stantly about wholesome and unwholesome thoughts, words and actions, although the more you study, the more you realize that underlying these teachings is a very non-dual mind. You feel it in the way he responds to the people Page 4 June 2007 BZC Newsletter Lay Ordination On Saturday June 16th at 2pm, the following members of the BZC sangha will receive Lay Ordination (Zaike Tokudo) from their teacher: Sojun Bud Bliss Max Erdstein Courtney Gonzalez Kanako Harada Jim Tomlinson Hozan Alan Senauke Jesy Goldhammer The ceremony is done once a year and is an important and significant ceremony for each par- ticipant, as well as for the whole sangha. The Mountains and Rivers Sesshin attendance of the sangha is not only encourag- Participants in this year’s Mountains and ing and supportive, but we have the feeling that Rivers Sesshin pause for a group picture after we are all participating and witnessing as the making camp in the Point Reyes headlands. ordinees receive Buddha’s Precepts (jukai), and (Photo by Ko Blix) welcoming the ordinees into the lineage of Shakyamuni Buddha. Everyone is encouraged to Paul Winnacker attend the ceremony and reception afterwards. By Ellen Webb Check the zendo bulletin board for details. Berkeley Zen Center member Paul Winnacker died on April 2, 2006. Paul was riding his bicycle The Benji Poem in Orinda on a lovely spring day when he appar- By Ross Blum ently lost consciousness, fell off his bike, and Well, the practice period is about to start and suffered a severe brain injury. Paul was 64 years with it, another Benji poem will be penned! A old. copy of it will be placed in the three-ring Benji Though he had spent time in Japan doing binder in our library (beneath the tram window), graduate studies and had worked for the after the closing of the practice period. I keep Japanese Consulate in San Francisco for thirty the original books and pass them out to the years, Paul’s active practice of Zen Benjis when "their" practice period begins. began after he met his wife, Tracy Apple, nine was our first shuso in 1989. years ago. Paul and Tracy started practicing Baika was her Benji. She composed a fine together in a sitting group in Walnut Creek and poem worthy of Maylie's spirit which filled our then developed an on-going relationship with temple those six weeks. The following year Fran teacher Reb Anderson with whom they sat sev- Tribe was the shuso and Nora Sugahara was eral sesshins at Green Gulch Farm. They regu- the Benji during this time. I felt compelled to larly attended morning sitting at BZC, and Paul chronicle our Benji's creative expression and became a member a little more than a year ago. purchased a blank book to record their poems He was serving as Community Room Attendant which were so evocative of the shuso they were at the time of his death. attending and the practice period in general. Paul’s interest in both sitting and the teachings Even though a year had passed, Baika was still was quite special to behold. He took to the prac- able to repeat verbatim her poem for Maylie tice like “a duck to water” and never looked which she transcribed into the book and thus the back. It brought him great joy, which he shared tradition began. Please enjoy reading the Benji generously. It was always an inspiration to sit poems as well as other books in our library with him or to talk to him about practice or a carefully tended by our librarian, Greta Pearson. recent lecture. (Ross Blum was Benji for Rebecca Mayeno in 1991.) June 2007 BZC Newsletter Page 5 About Faith: from the recent with her broad confident smile stopped me and class on the Hsin Shin Ming said, “Please don't ever think anything is not exactly as it should be." By Andrea Thach Our suffering arises from thinking that some- hat is faith? Dictionary defines faith as thing is missing in ourselves, and we try to fill in " confident belief in the truth", "value or the missing part. This sense of lack arises out of WWtrusty worthiness of a person, thing, or our ideas of ourselves, or our internal chatter. idea", "belief in something that does not rely on When the mind quiets, and these thoughts come logic, proof or material evidence." In Christian and go, like clouds passing in the big blue sky, faith, it is belief in something outside ourselves. we know spaciousness where nothing is out of In Buddhism, we speak of faith that arises from place. What is this utter rightness, or perfect bal- our experience. In Zen, we speak of that as faith ance? Can there be perfection, or to use anoth- as activity, specifically as our er word, benevolence, in rain zazen. Faith is not a thing, as falling, in ice melting, in road- Buddha Nature not a thing, but side bombs, in children starv- an activity, one that co-arises ing. Perhaps benevolence dependently. This is the faith of our practice that seems too soteriological. Too oriented toward Seng Tsan is describing. the good, not neutral or dispassionate. However, Within Buddhism faith there is doctrinal faith: it seems to me this describes Buddha activity. that we will become Buddha. And ancestral faith: Since everything IS Buddha nature, and Buddha that we are Buddha. How do we come to know nature manifests wisdom and compassion. This this faith? The Awakening of Faith, appearance is beyond our knowing, beyond an early Mahayana text, Asvaghosha describes words and ideas, deeply recognizing the rela- how the mind can be inclined toward doctrinal tionship, the dynamic functioning of Indra's net faith. The remarkable thing is that he says that of co-dependent origination.Then maybe benev- in order to begin to practice, one needs faith! olence might feel to be an appropriate word. How many times have you sat through achy I think this is part of what Seng Tsan means knees on long sesshin days and wondered why when he says, "To live in this reality is to be free you do it? We say we come to practice out of from anxiety about non-perfection." If we are suffering, yet we probably all have had some imperfect, then everything else must be, for we early experience of the rightness of all things, or are only manifestations of our activity, intrinsical- truth or non-self that lead us here, or gave us ly united with the activity of all other Buddha confidence that there was some other way to activity. Seng speaks of observing the unfolding deal with our lives other than the suffering we of events and the coursing of our mind with were experiencing. equanimity. He says, "Equanimity is not the There is a story of the Buddha as a young rejection of anything. It is knowing that putting boy. While his father attends to business in the your hand in the fire is not a profitable enter- fields, he sits under the shade of a large tree prise; knowing that a headlong pursuit of sex, canopy, listening to the birds, watching the fame, sleep, and fortune will only result in dis- insects, feeling totally involved and at ease in may and weariness. It allies itself with the quali- the experience. I would imagine we could all ty of restraints in one's life that is not based on have been that little Buddha in some moment, dislike or rejection but grounded in wisdom, an when the world stands still and nothing is miss- experience of self-knowing and a knowing of the ing. And this is so whether our natural inclination world." is as a "doubt type" or a "faith type." In Pali, the word is upekka, which means bal- Years ago, I was tearfully whining to Maylie ance. It is the peak of the 4 heavenly abodes, about my lot in life as a loveless, single woman. loving kindness, sympathetic joy and compas- She listened with brief, full attention and then sion, and those qualities are most fully manifest- continued on next page Page 6 June 2007 BZC Newsletter About Faith continued from previous page voices ed as equanimity is established. The dictionary says equanimity is the quality This World Which Is Made Of of calm, even tempered, composure, a balance Our Love For Emptiness that arises out of trust or faith in ourselves to By Rumi just be ourselves. The deep meaning of things is Praise to the emptiness that blanks out exis- this natural harmony, or unfolding activity that is tence. Existence: this place made from our love co-dependent arising. If our ideas are obstacles for that emptiness! to accepting the unfolding of events, then our Yet somehow comes emptiness, Buddha Mind cannot manifest itself. this existence goes. It is not ‘not to have preferences’, for this is Praise to that happening, over and over! impossible in our human lives, but to act natural- ly as ourselves, without wanting an idea of some For years I pulled my own existence out of self we think we are, nor creating anyone spe- emptiness. cial, just being. My dog is a good example. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, Dogie nature, just chasing a squirrel because that work is over. she is a dog and that is what dogs do, manifest- Free of who I was, free of presence, free of ing her true nature. This true nature is Buddha dangerous fear, hope, Nature. No aversion, greed, or delusion, just free of mountainous wanting. yip! And off she goes! And squirrel manifests The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a squirrel nature, zip up the tree. piece of straw Sheng Yen says use your mind in a natural blown off into emptiness. mind, neither trying to control it nor letting it run free. Natural or authentic, means being free of These words I’m saying so much begin to lose ideas of who you are (or anyone else is). To meaning: existence, emptiness, mountain, walk freely and undisturbed means to lay down straw: words the personal agenda of our lives and to trust in and what they try to say swept the natural unfolding of things, and to see our out the window, down the slant of the roof. selves, our lives, our Buddha Nature as part of (Submitted by Ann Livingstone) the natural unfolding of how things are. Maylie used to say, the deeper into practice you go, the more serendipity there is. Sunday at sesshin, Sojun was asked how we can keep the mind of a fire to our practice when our lives are not threatened by war, catastrophe, or in any immediate danger. When we let go of our agenda, what needs to be done is apparent, right before us, it is immediate. That immediacy, or present moment as informed by our Bodhisattva vows, is the ever-present fire. As Sojun said, this is Buddha mind in action. The Buddha mind in action is the mind of practice always on fire.

June 2007 BZC Newsletter Page 7 Berkeley Zen Center 1931 Russell Street Berkeley, CA. 94703