Welcome journey that Santa Barbara, and the last time I talked here was November 4, 2018 when you were still in the McVeigh house just down the road here. It was a big milestone. After the talk, I was driving home and got a message from a fellow sitter at Ryugin who's now down at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, but he was with us in San Luis Obispo before that. The message was just brief. It said, "My condolences for your loss." I said, "What the hell was that?" Got home and found Bernie Glassman had died that day. The talk was on things about Roshi Bernie and many of the things that he's done in his life. 

It's also a joy to be here with Dharma-Joy. We've been practicing together for a quarter of a century. He got to ZCLA just a little bit before me, and we've been involved with this experiment of shared stewardship for that amount of time when Roshi Egyoku first started it. 

Today, Sensei Dharma-Joy will talk about history, about how this has been started and how it's been evolving. Then together, we'll talk about some of the components of shared stewardship - exactly what that means. You'll be able to get insights to a much larger organization at ZCLA. I don't know how many members we have there now.

Dharma-Joy: About 350. 

Shogen: Then I will give more of a perspective on a smaller sangha, because the Sangha in San Luis Obispo is about the same size as Santa Barbara Zen Center. 

Before I turn it over to him, it's our practice to pay tribute to the indigenous people wherever they may be. For folks on Zoom, here it's the Chumash. Where I live, it's the Northern Chumash, and it's the Tongva nation down in Los Angeles. We acknowledge and pay tribute to them, ancestors past, present and future. They've been walking this land for thousands of years before us, living in harmony with the land. We can take some lessons from that.

After we're done, we'll have Q&A. When we were invited, this was going to be more of a discussion about the shared stewardship model. Then we'll address any questions that you have.

Dharma-Joy 3:18

Good morning, everyone. Really glad to be here. I'm happy it finally happened. I think I started getting emails with people trying to schedule this back in March or April. There were various dates, but all of them were on those few days that I actually had a life. Finally, the last date available worked, which was today. 

It's been lovely to be up here in Santa Barbara. On Wednesday, Sensei Shogen and I are going to a conference of Zen teachers. I haven't seen him in quite a few months. We'll be together for several days, probably at a really boring conference, but in any event...

Sensei Shogen and I, as he said, are both Dharma successors of Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao. Egyoku was really the creator or articulator of this shared stewardship model. I'm going to go into the history of how it came about, but I'm also going to upend everything and do one of the things that was supposed to be later. I want to talk about it now, because shared stewardship is a way of organizing a Zen group. It's the foundational principle on which ZCLA is founded and has operated for the last 22 or 23 years, sometimes working better than other times. I'm happy to talk about my view of what it means, where it works, how it doesn't work, and what it really requires. 

Fundamentally, the thing that's really important, and that I really try to emphasize, is that shared stewardship rests on a completely revolutionary view of how we relate to our spiritual practice. If we don't have that shift, then it's all really kind of a waste of time. 

In our culture, which is very consumer-based, we tend to incorporate that consumer model or mindset into even our spiritual practice. This was true of Zen Center Los Angeles for decades. The idea was you come in, get your goods, and then go. It's what I refer to as a transactional practice of spiritual practice. That entire model works from a consumer and producer mindset. There's this idea, while not always true for everyone at ZCLA, that many people came in, paid their membership fees, saw the teacher, got the Dharma talk, and then went home. It was kind of like, "I'm going to give you my money and I'm going to get my goods." That style of transactional practice was really the model almost everywhere. It's based on a sort of hierarchical structure of the organization of the enterprise, where we're just consumers of the product.

Shared stewardship fundamentally changes this. It doesn't mean there's not a horizontal structure in the teacher-student relationship, but it means the way we relate to the organization itself has to shift from a producer-consumer model to an idea of co-creation. The entire model of shared stewardship rests on an idea of co-creation, that we are together co-creating this practice. 

This is why in our practice, and you'll see this repeated across Tibetan practice too, the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh say that in our era the Sangha has become the most important element. The Sangha was historically so devalued - Buddha important, Dharma yes, Sangha nobody really knew what to do with that. But in the shared stewardship model, it's from the Sangha that everything arises.

It's easy to say this, and I will tell you that it's really, really hard in practice to continue and incorporate it into your whole way of relating to your fellow practitioners, to the organization, to what we're doing on a day-to-day basis. It's also particularly hard because people come in all the time. There's always new people coming in, and they always need to be trained. It's not a one-and-done thing. Because we all come out of a consumer mentality in this culture, everyone comes into the consumer model when they first arrive at a Zen center. It's perfectly good, that's why people come in. 

I always say people don't come to Zen centers because they're perfectly happy in their lives. It's because they're looking for something. Absolutely great, it gets you in the door. Then, as we sit, we develop the understanding that whatever it was that brought us here is not so important. We may get the satisfaction of whatever it was that was bothering us - I need to be happier, I need to be a better husband, I need to be less angry, I need to be less stressed, I need to have a happier life. All these things that bring us here, we may get that as part of practice, we may not. 

In the same way, with shared stewardship, everyone comes in because they want the Dharma, because they may have some charismatic teacher, they want the goods from the guru from the East or whatever it may be. But once you get into it, you have to have a culture that can integrate people and train them in this complete shift in mindset. And it is hard. It requires constant work.

So shared stewardship as this shift from a consumer to a co-creation model of practice, of mindset, not just about practice but about our mindset about the world that we live in, how we relate to each other, that we're not just in a transactional relationship with Sensei Shogen or with you or whatever, that it's something that we are co-creating this life together. Integrating that within the context of the very strong current we're fighting against in our current culture requires diligent effort. 

Some people are like, "I just want my goods." Okay, that's fine. I'm talking right now, and this is an issue that's come up at ZCLA. It's going to come up at this conference we're having. It comes up a lot, which I refer to as the concentric communities. 

The concentric communities are all sorts of different people who come to Zen organizations with different things they want. Some people just want to get relief from suffering. Some people want to go deeper. It's all good. It's not my view that one is better than the other, and we're only going to deal with the serious students and sort of who cares about these other dilettantes? That's not my approach at all. It's really about seeing that there are concentric circles of communities of people who come here, and then the question is, how do we serve them? But from my perspective, the fundamental way is through this shared stewardship model, because the shared stewardship model is really a recognition that we are co-creating this world together, and that is nothing more than an expression of the Buddha's recognition of the interconnection of all things. 

This was one of the fundamental recognitions of the Buddha: "I, the great earth, and all beings simultaneously awaken." So shared stewardship is just an expression of this in our day-to-day life as a temple, but it requires work. Shakyamuni Buddha didn't just order it off Amazon and get the answer. He spent hard years of practice to get that awakening and insight, and it requires us to do that too, and then to keep going, to keep deepening our understanding and working together. 

And working together sounds great, except that people are a pain in the ass. That's why Sangha practice is so wonderful, because it's about rubbing off those sharp edges. And the only way you rub off the sharp edges is by practicing together and having the commitment to waking up together. It's the together part.

That's why my teacher regularly quotes to me, "The great hermit lives in the city." When I was a young practitioner, I always had this fantasy, and a lot of people had this too. I've heard people say they were going to go off and live as a hermit in the Sierras. I was actually up on the internet scouting land at some point, like, "Oh, I'm going to go find this beautiful place, and I'm going to live in the state of samadhi and screw my husband and forget this, and I'm just going to go up there." 

The hermits are great. It's nice to have them. They get to develop understanding in a certain way, but they can't work with people. It's a very unbalanced practice. The practice is working together in Sangha, and shared stewardship is a Sangha-based practice. You have to be able to be committed to working as a Sangha together.

Now, the history of shared stewardship. I'll get back on his outline. Everyone knows there was a big scandal with Maezumi Roshi in the 1980s. Then Maezumi Roshi died suddenly in 1995. It wasn't planned. He wasn't sick for a long time. He went back to Japan, died overnight, drowned in a hot tub. Then chaos ensued.  

At ZCLA, Bernie Glassman had been named by Maezumi Roshi as the second abbot. But Bernie was often in New York doing his own thing. So he named someone as the resident teacher, kind of on a trial basis to see how it goes before naming him as the next abbot. Well, it didn't go well. There was a big sex scandal. Trying to work it out, he wasn't going to cooperate. He gets thrown out. But he was quite a charismatic guy, so he leaves and takes half of the Sangha with him. 

So ZCLA is now in complete chaos. Bernie asks Egyoku, "Will you go back?" And so she goes back, but she says, "I'll go back, but my condition is you have to give me free reign to do whatever I feel is needed." And he's like, "God bless you." 

So she comes back and she originally says it's going to be for either a three-month or a six-month basis. Two years later, she becomes named as the next abbot. Then two years after that, she starts this shared stewardship investigation and practice. 

So shared stewardship came out of the fact, in her mind, that Zen Center was in complete free fall. It was in a place where anything was possible and people were willing to try anything. She's said over the years, one of the great things about being in Southern California, in her experience, is that people in Southern California are much more open to experimentation than people in other parts of the country. 

So she's deployed various techniques or models. We've done all sorts of different things that in other parts of the country may be a little too uptight to really just be willing to try, but one of them was this model of shared stewardship. 

Shared stewardship was like, basically Zen Center didn't have a lot of money. At that point I was somehow involved with the leadership of the place, which is crazy. At one point we knew how much money we had in the bank, but we didn't really know how we got there for the last six months. I mean, there were no records, there was nothing. There was really no money for staff, no money for anything.

So part of shared stewardship came out of a pragmatic recognition that we didn't have enough. Zen Center is a relatively big organization as these things go. I don't think it's that big, but it's pretty complicated, and it requires a lot of moving parts. There wasn't anyone to keep it running, there wasn't enough money to have a staff to keep it running. 

So shared stewardship at one level was designed to basically get the entire Sangha involved in the operation and management, to go from a very hierarchical model, which is the historic Japanese model, to a very horizontal model. In the horizontal model, the idea was people would be responsible for different things, and we would trust them with it, which involves a lot of letting go of control. Some people start to see in this practice that they are control freaks and things like that. Again, all of this you have to do from my perspective within the mindset of practice. Everything gets rolled into your practice. 

So if you see your anxiety, or you see your insecurity, or you're responsible for this and you don't know what the hell you're doing, you have to be willing to just roll all of that into practice. Everything has to come out of practice. Everything, from the most exalted to the most mundane, is all rooted in practice at a Zen center. Whatever we do, that is the fundamental element. 

The other fundamental element is you have to be willing to let it completely fail. Because if you're not willing to let it completely fail, you're not willing to actually either release enough control or just be committed enough to the model. Egyoku said this a lot when I was on the board for many years and she was the abbot on the board. She would just say,"Well, just let it go. We have to be willing to let it fail." And her attitude was, if this place fails, the practice will continue. The practice is more important than the entity, than the institution. So sometimes if the structure is not working, just let it go, and then we see what's going to arise out of that. Have that sort of willingness to really have that mind of investigation.  

So out of that, we had a lot of people who were excited by this prospect. We had a lot of different structures. First, we called them circles. Then we called them... I can't remember. Words change anyway. We had all sorts of different things. 

Then over time, a lot of it went away. In my view, at the very beginning, there were probably 10 or 12 years where shared stewardship was just the lifeblood of Zen Center. We had probably 15 different circles. Each of them was responsible for different things. 

So there was one circle that was responsible for... We have seven buildings, I think we have something like 15 altars. One group was just responsible for the altar flowers, one group was responsible for cleaning the altars. One group was responsible for new members and taking care of new members. We had one group that was the healthcare circle that helped support people who had health issues. Then we had one group which was the executive circle. We didn't have an executive director, so they sort of worked together on that. And then, of course, most importantly, the tenzo circle was responsible for making sure we were fed. They were the most important.

All these different circles, and then over time, things start to fall apart. In my view, there wasn't the consistent... You know, we had this incredible shared stewardship that started with a huge number of classes and our training. Our training text was Dogen Zenji's Tenzo Kyokun, which was the Instructions to the Zen Cook, or Instructions to the Tenzo. We used that as our training manual for how to take care of each other and how to take care of the Zen temple. 

As I said, the first few years we did a lot of classes. We did all this stuff about getting everyone on the same page about the finances of Zen Center, the structure of Zen Center, the history of Zen Center, all that stuff. So then everybody had a starting point, and then we all studied the Tenzo Kyokun together for a couple of years. We go slow in our studies, and then we were just running this place and having lives outside of it.

And then over the course of time, the classes stopped. People keep coming. They keep hearing about shared stewardship, but there's no training in it. So over time it gets dissipated. 

I thought it had a good run for 10 or 12 years, and things have continued, but my personal feeling is it's fallen away. So last year, or earlier this year, I've started a new series of shared stewardship classes to reinvigorate and revive the model.

Shogen 23:07

It's based very closely on what we did originally.

Dharma Joy 23:11

I must say, I believe in stealing rather than reinventing the wheel. And so, because I'm a naturally lazy person, and you have to know yourself. 

But the shared stewardship model, again, it rests on this shift in thinking. I think over the course of time, particularly in the pandemic where everything went into a Zoom model, the transactional mindset got really strongly reintroduced, because people are like, watching on Zoom, and they can't even come, much less... I mean, there was some work being done. The Board of Directors met like every single week on Zoom during the pandemic, and various other groups were meeting very regularly. But with a Zoom model, it's very easy to be very transactional in your mindset.

So now that we're post-pandemic, although I had COVID over three weeks ago, we're really working on redeveloping away from the transactional model back into the co-creating model. But as I said from our experience, it's a constant training. It's not a one-and-done. Every time you have new people, and they hear "shared stewardship", they have no idea what it means. 

It's like our Zen training, like the way we get instructed on how we sit. When someone new comes, we have to train them how to sit. With the shared stewardship model, it's the same thing. Sensei Shogen, what did you want to add?

Shogen 24:50

We wanted to go over some of the components of shared stewardship - what is that, what does it mean? If you would pass these out, I don't have enough for everybody. We can share, certainly. This is the mandala. I don't know how many of you... Sensei Koan, did he introduce the Gate of Sweet Nectar? Are any of you familiar with that? It's one that we used to do every Sunday at ZCLA.

Dharma Joy 25:23

We're back to doing that now.  

Shogen 25:24

Yeah. So if the Gate of Sweet Nectar speaks to these five Buddha families, you may be familiar with some of this, but you may not. There are these five circles, and they are definitely intermingled. They cross into each other. 

In the center is what we call the Buddha sphere. Up at the top in green is social action, which is the Karma energy. Education/study is the Vajra energy. See Clearly/Resources is the Ratna energy. Take Care is... I can't even read the other one. Let's say integration, which is relational, the Padma energy. 

So this is kind of the schematic, what we look at at ZCLA. In the courses Sensei Dharma Joy was talking about, things come and go. Groups, circles come and go. We used to have a really strong prison group that was very active in the prisons in Southern California. That's just kind of gone away. I still have a group, of course, up in San Luis Obispo, but that's kind of gone away. We had a strong tenzo circle that went away. Now it's kind of coming back. So the idea is that it's a process. Nothing is cast in stone.

In these realms, for example, you'll see in the center, that's kind of the teacher realm. The abbot would be there. On the relationship side of things, we have a lot of affiliated sanghas with ZCLA. My little group in San Luis Obispo is an affiliated sitting group, residents circle. So you can kind of get the gist of this. 

The resources down at the bottom, the Ratna energy, Board of Directors is down there. We have executive circles. We're connected with the White Plum Sangha. 

The study sphere is the curriculum that develops all the programs at ZCLA and trainee programs. This is an old one, from 2012, when we were actively involved with this. As Sensei was saying, there's priest training circle, study program. We have not sutras, but just text study. We have a group at ZCLA that meets. We've got one up in San Luis Obispo. 

So these are all the components of this model. People have said, before you start thinking about what you said about Sangha, how important it is... I know Thich Nhat Hanh thinks that the future Maitreya Buddha is the Sangha. Isn't that something? And then talk about lotus and muddy water. One of the students up in San Luis Obispo talks about the pearl in a pile of poop, which is, I think, a little bit more graphic. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Dharma Joy 29:04

I just want to say about this... You have an empty one there. I guess you're going to give it out. These five Buddha wisdoms, these are referred to as the five Buddha wisdom energies. The point is that we each have all of these energies within us. These are not... It's not like, "Oh, you're just this." Each of us will have some resonance more with some than others. All of us have all of them in the same way that all the bodhisattvas are energies that we are connected to. 

So all of these are energies within ourselves. Here it's basically expressed as an organizational principle of the organization. You can try to clarify, we have these five different spheres, and then we try to categorize which group is going to fit in which one. Understanding that all of them really interpenetrate each other. It's a good technique, it's a good organizing principle. But as with all of these things, don't take it too seriously.

Shogen 30:12

Some things came out of this process with Roshi Egyoku. One was this idea of collective wisdom. As Sensei was talking about, we're not hermits as much as some of us would like to be in the Sierras, or where I live in San Luis Obispo. We're all in this together. So that became one of the buzzwords - collective wisdom and collective awakening. 

We did something just as mundane as... In the Soto tradition, if you go, for example, to the San Francisco Zen Center, they face the wall. That's the Soto tradition. Rinzai face out. Well, we used to, historically, we would sit the first period and the last period during sesshin facing out, Rinzai style, and then the rest of the time we would face the wall. Roshi Egyoku said, "Hey, this isn't just about me, myself and I, this is about all of us." So we now sit facing out, and it makes a big difference, don't you think? Over the years.

Another really important component of this has been council. I think you guys have been involved with some council training and doing council. That's a really, really important piece. It's a way that doesn't answer questions. 

My take on the whole shared stewardship model is that every voice is heard. The abbot is still valued. When Roshi Egyoku was there, the realization was, well, it was like going from the vertical, like Sensei was talking about, to a more horizontal program. Well, she would still, when push came to shove, she would make the final call, but she took the time to listen to everybody before she made that final call. 

I know we want to get this open as soon as possible to question and answers and are already getting a little bit short on time. Anything about doing this with a larger group?

Dharma Joy 32:30

I would just say one of the important components of understanding when you distribute responsibility is that it requires a commitment to communication. I used to basically say, in the shared stewardship model, there's 50% doing and 50% telling people what you've been doing. Because it's not that everybody... Shared stewardship didn't mean that it was like everybody gets a vote on every plan. It's really about trusting people to do things. But because there can be a lot of things going on, people really want to know what's going on. They don't necessarily need to vote on it, but it's good to keep them informed. So there's... The shared stewardship model rests fundamentally on good communication. Otherwise, it just becomes kind of chaos. That's what I'm saying.

Shogen 33:31

Let's open it up. I've got a little spiel about doing this in a small sangha, but maybe that'll come out in the Q&A time. So let's open it up.

Speaker 1 33:45

That's my question. How do you do it? I mean, when you have 12 people or 10 people, how do you do it? And what priorities would you give? 

Shogen 34:02

Well, in our group, we've got five people on the board of directors, and those are the same five people that are really involved. Even if we get... We have a Thursday or a Sunday. If we have 10 people, that's a big deal. So it's really quite small, but we've all taken on the various responsibilities, and we're using this model. 

For example, in the karma sphere, the service... We've got food bank donations, the Prison Project is a part of that. The study, the Vajra sphere, we have a head trainee program. So we have somebody that's head trainee for a year, and then has the whole... Most of you are familiar with that, at the culmination of their year study programs. 

So we do various studies both on Thursday evenings when we meet in person and Sunday mornings. In the Buddha sphere, as a guiding teacher, that's kind of my sphere with curriculum development. But I have a circle, a program circle, that helps me with that. That's just two other people. I talked about the resources section with the board of directors. So that's five of us that are on that. 

So everybody's kind of picking these things up, just because of, I think, their love of the Dharma, and they want us to succeed and have a center that we can continue to reach out to share the Dharma. I don't know if that answers your question, but it's like, yeah, people just step in. And in my experience, it's been quite wonderful about how serious they are and how much time they're willing to devote.

Dharma Joy 35:51

The real challenge in small groups is the danger of burnout, because that's part of what the shared stewardship model was designed to address. But it does require a certain critical mass of bodies to be honest. If you're talking about three people... According to Shakyamuni Buddha, three people's enough to create a sangha, but there's a lot to do, and if it's always the same three people, it just ends up being burnout. 

Part of the shared stewardship model requires there being enough people to really distribute some of the responsibility to. Now, the advantage of it is that, from as I hopefully tried to convey, it's a really exciting way of relating to our practice, where it isn't like, "Oh, they're doing the work and I'm just going to show up." But it does require buy-in from a certain number of people in order to basically hand out some of the work. If you can get that, it's a wonderful and exciting and challenging way of doing things. But if you don't, it's just really hard. 

That's why I say you also have to be willing to let things fail, because we don't want this... The Dharma is not about grinding people into the ground.

Shogen 37:29

Sensei said that the buy-in is just so important, and spreading it out so it's not just... We've just got the core of five people that do a lot of work, and there are others. We've got maybe 25 people on our email list, actually 86 on our MailChimp list, most of whom I don't even know. I don't know who they are. I might have seen them three times. But yeah, the buy-in thing is just so key. And yeah, there's a real chance of burnout. So you really have to model that on how much people are doing. 

It just made me think, for 20 years, because we've had the sangha up there for, I think, 23 years... For most of those years, I was practicing down at ZCLA, so all we had was a Thursday evening group for years, and then...

Dharma Joy 38:31

So just to clarify what he just said, every weekend Sensei Shogen would drive from San Luis Obispo to LA and be there for the weekend to train with our teacher, and then go back. He did that for 20 years, and then finally we got a restraining order.

Shogen 38:51

So this is an existence. Some of this is new. It was actually the pandemic that really catapulted us. Yes, it's transactional, but it also allowed us to go... We have offerings seven days a week now. Now, some of them are just on Zoom early morning sit, six to seven in the morning, but we're meeting in person on Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings now. And we've got a whole calvary now of people that have been head trainees, and they're offering Dharma talks. 

So we're on a rotational basis, so I'm not having to do talks every week like some teachers do. But we rotate. There's about four of us right now that are rotating that, and we have, because some of the group members, they wanted to have a study group, so we now have a study group reading Basu Bandu, one of his works, and they're meeting on Tuesday evenings, Zoom only. 

So it's grown, so in a sense, we're still kind of new at this as it evolves and comes... One of our members was just saying,"Wow, we used to just sit on Thursday evenings. What happened? We've got all this other stuff going." So there's a lot of really good energy. I don't know if that answered your question.

Ken Cohen 40:18

Just a few things. First, I think this model would have been perfect several years ago, when we were up at Pico Bay and there was a vibrant, ongoing community and practice. Sensei Koan was our anchor. There was a dynamism where not only were we sitting together every Sunday, but we would have one and two day retreats and the sheens. So there was an active community. 

Right now, we are a disparate group of people. We meet once every two weeks, with very strong independent lives. My issue over the last several months has been to even get a coffee with one of our community members. So there's a present reality, just the basic coming together. That's the first challenge. 

And the second that came to my mind was, I was sitting when Maezumi Roshi on that particular day, when he just let it all out. He confessed everything. And what I saw then was that he was trapped in that hierarchical model, and there was no way for him to get the kind of peer support, therapeutic support that he so needed. He had nowhere to go. And I've seen that of other teachers within that hierarchical model. Basically he was saying, "I have too much responsibility, pressured." So the stewardship model, the peer model is very superior, but it needs a vibrant community.

That's the last part of it. When I first started practicing, and many of the others here, we were all in our 20s, 30s, and the world was our oyster. We were going to transform it. Now we're in our 50s, 60s, 70s. I'm going to be turning 80 soon, so it's a different dynamic.

Dharma Joy 43:28

Well, let me just say, this practice is about transforming ourselves first. And this is why I actually started with the point about shared stewardship resting on this shift in our thinking about spiritual practice. Because how we start to relate to spiritual practice, if we can make that shift in ourselves... All of this stuff, in my view, is great. It's nice. Someday they'll teach it in business schools or something. But the most important part is the internal shift, and that, I think, doesn't necessarily involve anyone else.

Ken Cohen 44:17

And yet, there's just one last thing. I think a lot of us were, coming into practice, engaged in what I call magical thinking - the world is now transformed, and it's not transformed. None of this is real. So it negates Sangha and Dharma. What is that particular mindset?

Shogen 44:51

The consumer mindset?

Ken Cohen 44:53

The "me" kind of practice, which in an individualistic system, society, just like transactional, suits us very well.

Dharma Joy 45:05

That's right. That's why I said this is not... As they used to say, this practice is not for sissies. I mean, it's hard work.

Bob Nyosui Sedivy 45:27

And it's not just that. We're going to save all sentient beings as a side effect. The first thing I want to thank you both for today. If I'm coming away with one word, it's "exciting." So thank you. 

But you know, I was the guy who wanted to be the hermit too. I asked Doug, when he was our priest coming down once a month from Santa Cruz, I said, "Where's my mountain monastery now?" And then he said, "Where is it not?" And so that shook me up, straightened me out. 

But part of the joke here is, I call it the Santa Barbara "where is the" Center. We don't have a temple. We don't even have a room. We thankfully, the hospice gives us this for free, but only once a month. But how are we going to recruit another priest when Sensei Koan is gone? How do we bring somebody up from LA once a month? How do we do anything? 

Our board of directors, except for Michael, the five of them, I don't think members here can even name our board of directors, and none of them live here now. They do keep the website going, but it's like... And they don't attend. So we don't even have that core.

So we're looking for it. But I think when we do our social meetings at Elisa's house and Michael's house, the core is there. The spark is still lit. So I have hope.

Shogen 47:14

And it'll be up to you to do... Are you going to maintain or continue to be a Zen center? What direction do you guys want to go? I mean, you're going to have to explore that and ask those questions. 

And if it's okay... In fact, Roshi Egyoku got this one. She tells this story. She was heading up the administrative side of things. It was a mess. The finances were just God awful. And so this was being expressed to Roshi Bernie and he said,"Egyoku, let it go. If it's going to dissolve, let it dissolve. It's okay."

Ken Cohen 47:52

We had...

Bob Nyosui Sedivy 47:56

We had a saying at work: Come to work every day prepared to be fired. With that attitude, we got things done. But you can get a lot done if you don't need to take credit. But with this attitude of "let it fail"...

Shogen 48:14

And there are other models out there. I've talked to a few people in our... There's the White Heron Sangha, and they have, what, 250 members now. They get maybe 25 to 30 at their main meeting on a Sunday evening. But this is a group that's comprised of folks from different traditions. So there's some Zen folks in there, certainly, but there's Tibetan. 

And they are volunteer only, and they invite teachers. They don't have a teacher that's a full-time teacher there, so they invite people. And I cannot believe the Buddhist rock stars that they're able to get and bring in for... They don't have residential retreats, but they'll do three, four day retreats over long weekends. And it's a successful model. So that's out there as well. 

And then maybe that's Zen in the West now, where we're blending. Who knows?

Dharma Joy 49:12

The one thing I'll say, I do actually believe... As I was sitting this morning, I know we're out of time, but for me, I'm the fifth abbot of ZCLA. I'm incredibly privileged. I mean, I'm privileged in all sorts of other ways, but I'm incredibly privileged because I became the abbot of a place... We have seven buildings. We have 25 residential students. We've got a staff of six or seven or whatever.

So I'm in a very fortunate place, but most of Zen in America looks like this. You are the beating heart of Zen in America, and that, for me, is exciting. Because this is... There's so much creative potential here. And I really encourage you to connect with that. 

Now, the one thing I'll say is, I don't know anything about the White Heron Sangha, except I go into a rage every time he has his head trainee ceremony, but I do encourage you, if you're a serious practitioner, to really work closely with a teacher. And if you're not working closely with a teacher, really try to. 

I'll say at ZCLA, we have four teachers. All four of us see people on Zoom every single week, and we do not restrict it to members or non-members. So if people are interested in studying with a teacher, I just encourage you, if you're interested in deepening your practice, do so. Just email me and I'll connect you to the right people to get the list so that you can just sign up on the Google Sheet for a link and you can see a teacher. 

My email is very easy. It's dharma-joy@zcla.org. If you're interested, I just encourage you to work with a teacher and really commit to your practice. And find if this container works for your practice, that's great, and if it doesn't work for your practice, that's great too. 

It's just about clarifying for ourselves. This whole practice... It's your whole life, it's investigation. It's all investigation. So whatever comes up that's interesting... My teacher, her stock phrase is, "Oh, isn't that interesting?" Like, it's a great way to move through life. "Oh, isn't that interesting?" It's not good. It's not bad. It's interesting. How do we work with this, whatever's coming up? 

Her partner is a scientist, so it's very scientific method. It's like, "Oh, I'm just interested." I am the experiment. I am the result. It's inquiry.

Unknown Speaker 52:03

Curiosity.

Dharma Joy 52:04

Curiosity.

David Dietrich 52:07

I'm going to jump in because I identified my role as keeping the trains running. Our train has left the station, and I want to thank you very, very much for coming up and joining us today. This is extremely helpful. Thank all of you for being with us today and sitting together. It always feels better sitting with people, sangha. It feels good sitting at home, but it feels really good to sit with people. 

Bob, do you want to continue?

Bob Nyosui Sedivy 52:36

Yeah, in the meantime, page 41.

David Dietrich 52:41

Before that, and then we could do announcements. Is this an announcement, Terry?

Ken Cohen 52:47

I think it's announcement/commentary. I was with Sensei Koan last week, and he was conversational. He's still very difficult to find the words, but he, in our conversation, was very curious and concerned about the health and well-being of our community. And I intend to see him again today. And if there's anyone who is able to and would like to join me...

Shogen 53:25

I try to come down once a month, but his cognitive skills are better than they've been in a year.

Ken Cohen 53:30

So anyway, that's what I wanted to share.

Bob Nyosui Sedivy 53:35

So we'll do the Four Vows three times - English, Japanese, and English. 

Shogen 53:42

We don't have the cards.

Dharma Joy 53:43

You can just recite them.

(Recitation of the Four Vows in English, Japanese, and English)

David Dietrich 55:48

Alright, we'll clean up in just a second. Any announcements, though, before we get this room back together?

Ken Cohen 55:54

Well, I came upon a truism today that I believe is going to transform my life, and I think the same with you. And it is that, did you know that "stressed" spelled backwards is "desserts"?

David Dietrich 56:11

Thank you for bringing the verbal cookies.

Just a reminder, as a Zen Center, which we still are, at least organizationally and legally, we exist through donations and dana. It's very important in Zen practice, this idea of giving and giving of yourself, sharing the Dharma and sharing your resources to support this enterprise. 

So you can go old school, the basket's over there. You can leave dana for our teachers, or for our Zen Center. Or you could do it online, and there's instructions on our website. And if you...

Shogen 56:28

If you don't want to Zoom down to ZCLA, you like San Luis Obispo better, I'm up there.

Dharma Joy 56:36

Yeah. So we've met... I refer to him as the barbarian, and so we've met halfway here. 

Ken Cohen 56:44

Are you still sitting at the same place? 

Shogen 56:47

Likewise, we have no... Thursday evening we're at Crows End, so we don't have our own temple either. So we have Thursday evenings at Crows End, and then the White Heron Sangha space that I mentioned, we meet there Sunday mornings.

David Dietrich 57:05

Thank you. Jim, you could take the zabuton and stack them outside the closet in the hallway. We put the boxes in first and then we put those in. So out in the hallway.