I vow to taste the truth of the Bhagavata's words. Good morning. I would like to dedicate our gathering together this morning to the memory of a dear friend of ours, Carol Rankin, who died early this morning in her sleep after being quite sick for a number of years. She was Dharma sister for those of us who practice here at Zen Center, and was a person who, during her life, inspired many of us with her clear eye and her humor and her strength

[01:07]

and her great courage. And I think that I undoubtedly speak for many of us when I express my feeling of sadness to have her slip out of our lives and gratitude that she is free from great suffering. We have all been thinking of her in recent weeks. I spoke with her on the phone a week or so ago and told her that she was very much in the hearts and minds of many people here. She's been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And she said with great calmness, Well, I'm going to die soon, and I'm ready. So, we wish her all good speed in this journey into the unknown.

[02:09]

And I would like to ask all of you to join me in holding her specifically in our hearts today. I would like to say a few words about what informs what it is I'd like to talk about this morning. First of all, over recent weeks I've been participating in a group of people who... We sit together one morning a week in Tiburon and follow our sitting with studying the precepts together, doing a kind of sharing circle. And we decided that we would start with the precept about not lying. We're still some weeks into our precept study group working on the precept about not lying. And as someone said last Friday, we may stay on this precept for the rest of our lives.

[03:13]

It's going very slowly. The second thing I want to mention is that this week I have been reading a book by Randy Schiltz, whose title is, And the Band Played On. Looks a little bit like the Manhattan Telephone Directory. It's some six hundred and five pages long. And I've been possessed with reading it, one of those books that I can't put down. The subtitle is, what is it, Politics, History, Politics, and People in the AIDS Crisis. A very compelling, both inspiring and deeply disturbing account of where we have been and where we are and where we will be in the face of the AIDS epidemic.

[04:20]

As a kind of subset of that, I went to spend some time with the staff at the Coming Home Hospice in San Francisco, where a significant number of the people who are in that hospice are people who are dying of AIDS. So it was a little bit like immersing myself in the midst of one of the sections from Randy Schiltz's book. Real live people sitting together talking about their experience in taking care of the dying. And the last aspect of what is cooking in me, as I think about what I want to say this morning, comes out of having spent yesterday with forty-five or so people at UC Extension, which always seems to me a kind of unlikely place to be doing a day's retreat or workshop

[05:27]

considering the meditation practices that come out of the Zen tradition. But what's wonderful about being in that situation is that it's a circumstance which feels safe for people who are interested in such things, but a little nervous about coming to a place like Green Gulch. So it's a kind of door. And, as happens for me when I do these workshops, I come away feeling deeply moved by the kinds of people who come for such a so-called class, and people's willingness to talk about what they are struggling with in their lives. Yesterday what I heard from many people was real agony about how do I make my life work given that I feel so much anxiety and stress being alive and working in the world that we live in today. So all of this is some way of saying something to you about where I find myself this morning.

[06:37]

There's a quote from Camus' book, The Plague, which Randy Schultz uses in his book, which I'd like to quote to you. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad. That, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue. The most incorrigible view being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind, and there can be no true goodness, no true goodness nor

[07:46]

true love without the utmost clear-sightedness. It sounds like something one might read from a sutra stating the early teachings of the Buddha, who, as the awake one, also observed this relationship between ignorance and suffering and the prevalence of ignorance. And it is in this tradition of Buddhism that we have continually a reminder that compassion, which is not wedded with wisdom, may bring great harm. So I ask myself, how can I bring this observance about ignorance into my own life?

[08:46]

How can I allow this observation about the nature of things to penetrate deeply into the details of my daily life? I find practicing with the precepts is one of the ways of doing this, and what I am finding particularly in this exploration that I am part of in looking at the precept about not lying, that it is an instance of coming up against expressions that arise out of ignorance and self-delusion in myself and also in the world around me. So, for those of you who are not familiar with the precepts, in our tradition we sometimes

[09:51]

talk about the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts, and of those sixteen there are ten, which we sometimes describe as the ten grave precepts, grave as in serious, in the way that we usually translate them, they are usually a delineation of things one is not to do as a disciple of the Buddha or a follower of the way. So this particular precept is often translated as a disciple of the Buddha does not lie. I have actually been working with this precept for a few months now. What I find is that as I work through the precepts, then at a certain point it is time to go back and work with one again that I have worked with sometime in the past, and I am struck each time that

[10:55]

I do that by how much I feel like I am once again at the beginning of something that I haven't really examined. One of the things that I have been noticing most recently in the last six months or so is that this particular precept seems to be especially fundamental, like some very basic ground from which everything else arises, that if I think of the precepts as guidelines for living a life which is wholesome or integrated, a life which I hope will not cause harm, this particular precept continually seems to be especially important. In our study group we started out with talking about how to work with telling the truth,

[12:05]

and then the next week we went back to the statement about not lying, and spent a week or two wondering about what is the difference. Is there a difference between promising not to lie and promising to tell the truth? I found myself wondering about the practice of silence in learning something about how to tell the truth or how not to lie. But then, of course, what came up for me was noticing that there are times when silence can be a kind of lying, that is, a lie of omission. There is silence that can be truthful and silence which can be lying. So, one of the questions I want to raise for you to consider this morning, for yourselves

[13:10]

as well, is to wonder a little bit about what is the difference between promising not to lie and promising to tell the truth. Just asking myself about that difference has been illuminating as a kind of background wondering as I go through the day and listen to what I say or don't say, listen to what others are talking about. And of course, one of the things that came up in our study group as we got into it, we would, we take turns talking about what has come up this past week, and slowly we make some confession about something we've uncovered. And almost immediately what came up for various

[14:14]

of us as we spoke about our experience with telling the truth was some discomfort. As one woman said last week, I feel quite uncomfortable admitting out loud to all of you that I'm doing something with my income taxes, which is probably not exactly telling the truth. What about these lunches with a friend where I scribble on the tag and say, consultation, when in fact what I'm doing is having lunch with a friend? Isn't that lying? And how do I feel about it? I feel ashamed to admit to you out loud that that's what I'm doing. And as this woman who was speaking expressed herself, what I felt coming up in myself was

[15:17]

a kind of gratitude to her for being willing in any event to talk about what she was actually noticing. And what I noticed in myself was a recognition of something very similar in myself, some sense of encouragement by my colleague in our study group. And in fact, as we were all witnesses to what she was saying, I think she herself felt some support to hang in there with herself around this truth-telling and to examine a little bit more closely what was going on. To notice that, among other things, she had some feeling that she didn't want to give the government any more money than necessary. So what was that about? She wanted more money for herself or she didn't want her money to be used in

[16:23]

some particular ways. Well, if the latter were the case, might she not do that a little more straightforwardly? But then wouldn't that put her in some position where she felt like she would be taking some risk? A good way to get yourself on someone's list, on some computer somewhere. Who knows how it will show up again if one refuses to pay some percentage of income tax as a way of protesting the arms race, for example. One of the things that has come up for me in this ongoing discussion about this precept has been a reminder again in myself of what a difference it makes to have my intention

[17:24]

and my behavior somewhat aligned. That if I'm doing one thing and saying particularly to myself that I'm doing something else, there is some conflict or tension there which eats away at whatever calmness of mind I may be hoping to cultivate. And that this kind of disparity between what I do and what I say I'm doing becomes quite troublesome, especially in the midst of doing a meditation practice like zazen or breath-walking. One of the consequences of this slow investigation with the precept about not lying or about

[18:27]

telling the truth is slowly the group of us working together are seeing how difficult it is to change what we do or what we say or what we think, how much we need to remind ourselves to be patient, to be kindly, and to be ruthless in our examination of the picky details of what's actually going on inside our hearts and minds and in our lives. In a little booklet called Interbeing, which Thich Nhat Hanh has written, he sets forth his version of the precepts. In his particular translation, they number fourteen. And he is precept number nine, is one of two precepts about speaking. And the way he translates

[19:38]

the precept is as follows, do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. How often we elaborate on something, fill it out a little bit, and some slight exaggeration, because we want to have some appreciation or recognition from others. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things that you are not sure you are sure of. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety. He describes right speech

[20:46]

as speech which is free of lying, gossip, harsh language, or foolish language. Do not spread lies. I think it pretty much disqualifies about 95% of what most of us have to say, especially the gossip part. In reading And the Band Played On, one of the things that I've noticed in reading this book is how much it is a story about lying, withholding information, out of, in some cases, fear, in some cases, greed, in many cases, ignorance.

[21:47]

But it's also a story, in some instances, of great courage, people speaking the truth as they understood it, even when they knew it was at great personal risk, even when it meant risking the support of their community and their colleagues. In Mind of Clover, Robert Aiken, the Zen teacher at the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, speaks about this same precept and talks about what it means to speak from the peace which abides deeply in our hearts. If I speak from the peace in my heart, I speak carefully, and if I'm disloyal to that peace,

[22:53]

then I will engage in self-deception of myself and of others, the language of cheating, gossip, and carelessness. I may even be silent in a way which is disloyal to this peace, or I may be silent in a way which is deeply loyal to that peace. Am I willing to listen carefully and notice which is it that's happening in each moment? Am I willing to And of course, what I discover over and over again in myself and in others in working with a precept in this way is how much my old friend, the judging voice, comes up to keep me away from, at a distance from, noticing the truth of my language or my behavior about which

[24:04]

I feel some discomfort. A friend of mine calls it her committee. So, in working with this precept, I must, in a very radical way, be willing to notice all of it, all of the speaking, the silence, all of this behavior, whether it is a negative instance of my abiding by my promise to follow the precept, or an instance of my not doing that. And of course, to the degree that I'm willing to notice those situations where I'm actually using careless language, where I'm saying something about another person who is not present, where I'm, in fact, engaging in some kind of self-deception, if I'm willing

[25:12]

to notice those instances, it is precisely that noticing which makes it possible for me, slowly and kindly, to begin to change what I'm doing, to allow some self-deception slow change to occur. In pushing those instances in which I fail to observe the precept away from myself, I also push away from myself the opportunity to live my life in a way that is in touch with that deep peace in my heart. Which connects me with others, with all beings, including myself. So this week, this small group of us who are working together on this precept, have agreed

[26:16]

that what we want to do is to pay particular attention to those instances that have to do with truth-telling, with not lying, as it pertains specifically to those instances to ourselves. What are those moments when we are, in fact, lying to ourselves about what's going on, not being truthful? What I've noticed so far, our group meets on Fridays, so this is two days into the week with this particular focal point, and what I notice in particular is that if I am really going to work on this business of self-deception, that it's very helpful for me to go public. This is a kind of radical going public. But to go public with my intention to not deceive myself, to ask others to help me notice

[27:25]

those moments when that may be what's happening, that I can work with great sincerity on not fooling myself. But if I don't allow myself to be in some wider feedback loop, I am indeed bound to deceive myself. It seems to be in the nature of things, or at least in the nature of this thing sitting here. So this is where I need your help. It is in this area of our lives, I think, that we all need each other's help. We can do this with friendliness and kindness. We don't have to help each other in this realm with righteousness or a kind of policeman mind.

[28:29]

There's something about noticing what's happening with another person that includes myself, that allows the other person to hear what I have to say. That certainly is true for me. When I feel some reassurance that someone is not about to expel me from their lives as they are telling me about something they see, particularly if it's something that's hard for me to hear, some friendliness or kindness can make a big difference. And of course, in the midst of this way of practicing with ourselves and each other, what comes up is our willingness to cultivate a listening mind. If I'm truly devoted to listening to myself and others, it means that I will be silent more often, less eager to speak up quickly

[29:45]

before I've really listened to what others have to say, leaving open the possibility that I may not yet fully understand the situation. I do have some tentativeness when I draw a conclusion about this or that. And of course, when we do some breath meditation, when we practice zazen or walking meditation or even my beloved half-smile, in those moments of letting our attention rest with the breath on the inhalation and the exhalation, what is the truth that arises as we follow each breath in and out? Can we be fully attentive and open to whatever arises as we sit quietly

[30:55]

or walk slowly following the breath? Or in those moments, sitting at the stoplight with lifting the corners of the mouth and following the breath for three breaths, what comes up? To the degree that I'm willing to notice whatever it is, not minding that sometimes it will be unpleasant, that that which arises will not always be neutral or pleasant. My willingness to be present with my experience with what is in that way will bring me closer to cultivating this capacity for telling the truth. What I find in this practice is continuously the question,

[32:03]

am I willing to be more or less uncomfortable as I meet something that is ready to be uncovered? Recently I've been thinking about this way of practicing as going on an archaeological dig to Mesopotamia. If I go on an archaeological dig, I'm interested in whatever I find, some piece of pottery or a bone or a scrap of cloth or whatever the earth itself may have to tell us about what has gone before us. Can we have that same kind of curiosity and interest, radical interest in whatever surfaces in our own experience as we go along? As we sit quietly, following the breath?

[33:05]

As I think I've suggested, what I'm noticing in practicing this way with these precepts with other people is how much what I meet is a connectedness with other people. Connectedness with others. Not a sense of isolation in what I do badly, the incidence of lying or not telling the truth, but some sense of comradeship, of company, of witnessing from my friends and colleagues who are also on this path, which makes it a little easier to face some uncomfortable evidence of how things are, and is in a very radical way the source of real and deep healing. Some opportunity to have some experience of our interconnectedness,

[34:23]

which does not depend on our being friends in the usual way, something that is deeper and ironically not necessarily so personal. I'd like to close with a quote from a poem by W.H. Auden about this business of our connection and our loving of ourselves and each other. What Mad Nijinsky wrote about Diaghilev is true of the normal heart. For the air bred in the bone of each woman and each man craves what it cannot have, not universal love, but to be loved alone. And no one exists alone. Hunger allows no

[35:29]

choice to the citizen or to the police. We must love one another or die. I think that this normal heart is the heart which in some deep way knows what is peace and what isn't. And when we speak to ourselves and to each other from that deep peace in our hearts, we know when we are speaking or silent in a way which is truth-telling and when it isn't. And when we speak the truth with compassion and care, no matter how fearful our anticipation

[36:30]

may be, we can find a way of keeping each other company as we travel on this way. Thank you very much for your company.

[36:46]

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