This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's about a land far away and a long time ago in which everything was and there were lots of trees and flowers and people were happy and this king and queen had two sons and then when they had the third when the third son was born the queen died and the king was grief stricken and so grief stricken that the land began to deteriorate and the trees began to wither and the flowers died and the land got sadder and sadder and sadder and the king remembered though a few years later that he had heard that there was this place called the enchanted wood here's a little picture of what enchanted wood looks like so he decided he would send one of his sons to go find the enchanted wood and

[01:25]

Of course, all three sons were, there was the oldest son, Edmund, the middle son, and then the youngest son, middle son was Owen, and the youngest son was Galen. And of course, when the king went to his sons and said, I need one of you to go find the enchanted land, and maybe that will bring our village, our world, back to life, the the youngest son, Galen, of course, stood up and said, I'll go. And the two older sons, they both laughed. They said, what does he know about, you know, he's not a warrior or anything and we're both much larger and stronger. So the king did send, finally, send the eldest son, Edmund, off to go find this enchanted wood. So Edmund goes off riding on his horse and right away he comes to gate and there at the gate there at the gate is an old woman and the old woman looks at Edmund and she says be true to the quest at any cost stray from the path and you will be lost that's my best old woman what do you think

[02:47]

So this older son, he says, get out of my way, old woman, and he goes charging off through the gate, and right away he sees a deer, and he couldn't resist going hunting deer, and he goes straying off the path, never to be seen again. So the king doesn't know what happened, so he decides he needs to send his second son to And this is his second oldest son, Owen. And Owen goes riding on his horse and comes to the gate and the old woman. And again, the old woman sees him and says, be true to the quest at any cost. Stray from the path and you will be lost. And again, he pays no attention, goes riding on. And right away, he sees a horse on armor. And right away, he's like, oh, I need to go fight this. horse on armor goes straying from the path.

[03:51]

Again, doesn't return. So finally, the king decides he has nothing else left to do but to ask the youngest son. And the youngest son's very excited and says, I'm going to go find the enchanted land and I'm going to go find my other, rescue my other brothers. So the youngest son, Galen, goes off. And again, he comes to the same older woman, who says, be true to the quest at any cost. Stray from the path and you will be lost. But Owen, unlike the other two brothers, is respectful and says, can I stay? Can I spend the night here and rest my horse so that I can go on to find the enchanted wood? And the older woman says, of course. And the older woman introduces him to her beautiful young daughter, Rose.

[04:54]

And they begin to talk about what they're going to do the next day. And they go off. Rose is being assisted, assisting the youngest son, Galen. And off and off they go. And they see, at one point, they see the oldest brother off chasing a deer. And Galen... Galen said, maybe we should help him. And Rose says, no, remember what my mother said. So instead of leaping off the path, they stay on the path. And then they see the second oldest brother, Edmund, chasing after a knight on armor. And again, they decide, with Rose's help, they stay on the path. And they walk and they walk and they walk. And they come to this beautiful, beautiful pond and this enormous, enormous tree. And they realize that they've reached the enchanted wood. And Galen reaches down and drinks some of the water from this pond and immediately all the plants around start to flower.

[06:02]

And Rose has this key on her neck and she throws it into the pond also and things just completely begin to bloom. And the other brothers at that point, they come there and they're all so happy. And the three brothers and Rose go home. And the king is now happy and relieved of all his grief. And of course, the youngest son is appointed to be the future king. And Rose becomes the future queen. And they all lived happily ever after. What do you think this story is about? Who thinks the story is about always pay attention to older women? Who thinks it's about always be true to your own heart? Who thinks it's about always stay on the path, find the path and stay on the path?

[07:11]

Anyone else have any other ideas about what the story might be about? Yeah. Listen to what other people say. You know, that's a great one. I thought that the first two brothers, they didn't listen and they tried to just go off and the third brother listened. So that's a great, great answer. Thank you. Any other? Yeah. Pay attention. That's great. I think we should sing a song together. Don't you think so? So this is actually, I have no idea where this song comes from or how I know this song in my life, but it's one of my favorite simple Zen tunes. And I'll start to sing it.

[08:17]

You'll see, you'll get it right away. And just please join in, because you'll see singing is not one of my greatest skills. So it goes like this. Hey, ho, nobody home. No eat, no drink, nor money have I none. Still I will be merry. Hey, ho. Nobody home. No eat nor drink nor money have I none. Still I will be merry. Hey, home. Nobody home. No eat nor drink nor money have I none. Still I will be merry. All right. Thank you. I think the young children can go off and go be married somewhere.

[09:24]

I want to tell another story. This is actually, well, that might be a true story as well. I don't know. But this one is a story from my own life. A few years ago, my wife and I Actually, I met my wife here at Green Gulch about 35 or so years ago, a long time ago. Actually, that's another great story. I met my wife here literally on the top of a pile of horse manure. It's true. I was in charge of the... Actually, in charge might be overstating it. I was supposed to be in charge of the horses and cows at the time here at Green Gulch. I had just driven a flatbed truck filled with horse manure that I had loaded up with a tractor up near Point Reyes and drove it back and I was standing on it unloading it by hand into the compost pile when I saw this young woman who I had never seen before looking like she needed some work to do and I invited her to come and help me unload the truck and she

[10:41]

bounded up, pitchfork in hand, and we were unloading the truck together. Now, the second part of the story, which she likes to tell, which I usually avoid, is that soon after we started unloading the truck together, I left her up there by herself. I had more important work to do. But this story that I want to tell is a story from a few years ago, after having been married for many, many years. we decided to have a recommitment ceremony. And we invited a group of friends, people we had known a long, long time, some of them are sitting in this room. And we asked each of the people who were at this ceremony to speak to the question, what is the secret of a long-term relationship? What is the secret of a long-term relationship?

[11:41]

And there were some phenomenal answers. And I wished I had recorded the answers that people gave to this. People who'd been married for many, many years and had gone through all kinds of, all the ups and downs of marriage. But the one answer that I remember and that stands out was from a woman... looking in the eyes of her husband and they had been married for probably more than 30 years I think at the time and they were both very smart, successful people who had also studied Zen much of their lives and the woman looked into the eyes of her husband and said, the secret of a long-term relationship is to constantly lower your standards. And so this actually became kind of a Zen koan for me.

[12:46]

And I realized that in some way, most Zen stories in their own way say almost the same thing. That the secret perhaps not only of long-term relationships, but the secret of finding our own our own sense of peace and calm and satisfaction is to constantly lower our standards. And in a way, meditation practice, zazen practice, is the practice of letting go of all of our standards and just actually practicing physically in a regular way seeing what it's like, experimenting. What is it like when we put ourselves in a space where there is no right and wrong, where there is no doing it right or doing it wrong or good or bad or trying to gain anything. We don't sit to try to improve ourselves or to get better.

[13:51]

We just, actually just sit, just completely sit and let go of anything. idea, any standards that we might have. And just to completely open our hearts, just to be able to completely let go of standards and open our hearts. I think this is meditation practice. This is Zen practice. I think this is practice of being a human being. Yeah, in a way, this is the, you know, we talk here a lot these days about mindfulness practice. Mindfulness practice has become quite popular. And I think it can be easy to lose sight of the power, the real potency and power of mindfulness practice.

[14:52]

You know, described as, so one of the leading definitions by John Kabat-Zinn, he describes mindfulness as paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. So how do we actually do this? So in a way, the practice of meditation is to embody being present, So non-judgmentally to me means to not only lower your standards, but to drop our standards, our ideas. And of course this is completely paradoxical. This is all completely paradoxical. And that's what I think is so important and engaging about it.

[15:54]

And I've been... become more and more aware of a paradox and even have been talking and writing and thinking a lot about how to practice with paradox. So paradox, we don't expect to hear the answer to the secret of long-term relationship is to lower your standards. This comes as a surprise to us. This doesn't seem right. And the definition of a paradox is something that appears to be impossible, but may in fact be true. That it appears to be impossible, but may in fact be true. And I'd say that you are all, we are all a paradox. It would seem impossible. How did we get here? How did we get here in this human body, this human form?

[16:54]

I mean, maybe... Maybe we can explain how we got here at Green Gulch, but even that's hard. How did we actually get here? What is this thing that we call consciousness? How did these bodies come into being? How did we get to somehow think that we're separate? How did we get to think that we're not all one body? And paradox, we don't like paradox. We really all want clarity. We don't like things to be paradoxical. We really want clarity. But what if paradox were actually more clear than clear? What if anything that we think is clear is usually one-sided?

[17:56]

So are we confident or do we question everything? Do we fight for change or do we accept what is? Do we benefit ourselves or do we benefit others? So all of these things, they seem impossible. But yet... what really has been interesting me is how can we open ourselves up and develop ourselves by not sticking to our standards, by not sticking to either being confident or questioning everything, and to see that we can do both. Or one of the kind of underlying tenets, one of the underlying assumptions about Zen, practice is that we are completely uh holy sacred creatures that that everything is completely holy and sacred and everything is ordinary that we are ordinary and we are holy and sacred at the same time that we don't need to choose between being ordinary or being sacred that we can completely

[19:22]

live in and embody being both. It's a little bit like the... Suzuki Roshi became the title of his second book where he said the secret of Zen is just two words, not always so. And then people laughed and realizing that in Japanese it was two words. But again his I think he's saying the same thing that this woman said at my ceremony, that the secret is in not always so. Whatever standards we have, don't stick to them. Don't stick to ordinary. Don't stick to holy. Don't stick to being confident. So we all want to be confident. But if you're just... If we're just confident, we can easily, like in the story I told to these, I think the two older brothers were both, they exuded confidence, right?

[20:34]

They were so confident in their own ability, they became so confident that they weren't listening. They weren't paying attention. They weren't actually being present and being with what was happening in the moment with the... older women. They weren't really listening. And yet, if we're just questioning, if we're always questioning, we might not be able to be confident enough to move ahead. So there's some power in questioning. And it's interesting. It takes tremendous confidence to question. And then by the more we can open up to our questions and doubts, the more confident we can become. And I think the same is true with this paradox of fight for change and accept what is.

[21:40]

I think this is one that I think comes up in our ordinary lives, in our day-to-day lives, over and over again. whatever we're doing, we're looking for what change do we need to make in our lives? We're always wanting, I think, from making our relationships better to improve our communication. Or in our work lives, we might want to be serving our customers better or making better products that we do need to be envisioning What is it we're wanting to change in our practice? What is it we're working on? What things are we actually looking to shift in our practice? Maybe we need to become better listeners. Or maybe we need to be studying more and learning more. There's all kinds of things that we identify that we want to shift, want to change.

[22:48]

And at the same time, it's paradoxical that the starting place is by accepting what is. So whatever it is we want to shift, so often we want to just not face the reality of where are we now? What are my listening skills like now and how can I actually change them? Or what's the shape of my relationship? What kind of work does my relationship need? Or what's happening in my work life? How can I improve my work situation? And there's often what I call these creative gaps between what is and what we want to be. And a lot of a lot of our practice is being able to stay in that gap, in that it's a little bit uncomfortable, that place.

[23:59]

It's uncomfortable seeing that we want something to be different. We want something to be better. And yet by completely staying in that place, by staying with what is and moving towards what it is we want to be, this is kind of the practice. And it's kind of the practice of mindfulness, the practice of paying attention and simultaneously kind of embracing this complete acceptance and looking at what we want to change. So I think there's some huge problems. You've probably noticed there's some problems here in the world. with violence, with poverty, with inequality. So in some sense, I think it's really important that we fight for change and at the same time that we find a way to accept what is.

[25:09]

So it's interesting how there's power. There's real power, I think, in the practice of... meditation and really embodying a sense of over and over again letting go of our standards over and over again embodying being able to accept ourselves as we are completely I think strengthens us and gives us much more the ability and power to fight for change whether it's our personal change or the larger changes that we want to see in the world. And I think it starts, though, by this practice of accepting what is, is the practice of being kind and compassionate with ourselves, which is surprisingly difficult. Surprisingly difficult how hard it is for most humans to love ourselves, to be kind to ourselves.

[26:20]

And it's also so, it can be challenging to be able to practice compassion. To practice, you know, so compassion is the practice of feeling the suffering of others and the desire and action to relieve another person's suffering. And this is kind of the fundamental principle practice of Zen. And I think this is what my friend meant when she said constantly lower your standards. Because it's our standards, I think, that get in the way of just accepting and loving ourselves and being able to be compassionate with others. So it's just this practice, the practice of seeing what it's like to not have standards over and over again.

[27:30]

There's also a famous Zen koan where the question is what is the secret of enlightenment or how can I find real peace and happiness? And the the response is, just avoid picking and choosing. Just avoid picking and choosing. Again, the same theme, I think, keeps coming up of just avoid picking and choosing. But of course, it's impossible to avoid picking and choosing. I'm picking and choosing these words. You're picking and choosing how you hear me. You've chosen to be here. And yet, and I think this is why coming back to the meditation practice and zazen practice is actually practicing avoiding picking and choosing, practicing constantly lowering our standards. Another story from my own life that I think is a way to talk about how I tried to practice this and

[28:48]

This was actually, I think Mother's Day is coming up. This is a Father's Day story from my life when it was the morning of Father's Day. And this was several years ago because this was when my daughter was 17 years old, 17 or 18. And we had a tradition of writing cards. on Mother's Day and Father's Day. And this was Father's Day morning. And my daughter handed me a Father's Day card and looked at me and said, you might not want to read this today. I had a feeling this was not a good omen. But of course, I did read it. And this must have been when she was 17. This was a time... when I describe my daughter as being allergic to me, that I noticed that she would walk into the room and she just didn't want to be around her nerdy dad.

[29:55]

And so I read this card on Father's Day morning and it kind of outlined all of my faults as a human being and as a father. And it was something I had tried so hard at. And it was hard to see that I had utterly failed in my daughter's eyes. And my first reaction was that I was completely... I was quite devastated by this and angry. And I kind of wanted to hide and wanted to run away. And I felt like... I felt like this was a place where perhaps my many years of Zen practice actually had some influence on me. I was able to get to a point where I could drop my standards and I walked into my daughter's room and knocked on the door and I said thank you for this Father's Day card.

[31:06]

This was really hard for me to read But I'm so glad you could just speak your truth to me, even if your truth was hard and difficult. And I always, always want this, no matter what. And of course, I began to cry as I told her this. And of course, she began to cry. And we completely hugged and embraced. And it was just a really beautiful moment in my life and in our relationship. And then she said, please, get out of my room. A few years later, I took her to a conference called Social Venture Network. It's a tribe I've been part of for many years of socially responsible business people.

[32:11]

And she just loved it. The first night, I wasn't sure what she would think being around these young entrepreneurs. And we were sitting at dinner. And she looked up. She said, why haven't you taken me to one of these before? And I tried to think. And I thought, let's see. Well, the last two years, you were out of the country. She was traveling a lot. And I said, and the two years before that, you weren't talking to me. And she kind of, she sank in that moment and she just looked at me and she said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So it was, so for all of you with teenagers or about to be teenagers, there is hope. There is hope. So I think the, in a way, one of my favorite, and I think of it perhaps as the ultimate paradox of Zen, Zen sayings.

[33:14]

There are many, but one that's been, I'd say, is one of my favorites that I've been turning for the last, you know, almost 40 years is this words by the great founder of Zen in Japan in the 13th century, Dogen, who famously said, and these three lines, in a way, kind of outline, I think, are a path for practice, right? Where he said, to study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to become awakened, enlightened, at one, everything or everyone. So how wonderfully paradoxical is that? But I think it's a really powerful path that this practice You know, if we want to study the way, and I would interpret the way as how to be a human being, how can we be a full human being, start by studying ourselves, that the practice of studying ourselves, getting to know ourselves, especially the things, especially our standards, right?

[34:32]

To really see all of our standards and all of our fears and all, as well as all of our love. but to study the self and that the more we can study ourselves the more and more we can become less ideally less and less egocentric less self-conscious and also practice more and more compassion the less we're worrying about ourselves the more power and more ability we have to help others to be compassionate for others And there's... I was just reading wonderful studies that are happening now. We live in a really interesting time where the science of mindfulness and the science of compassion are one of the... These two subjects are extremely popular subjects. And there's a book that I...

[35:35]

Actually, I just ordered it. I've been reading about it. A book called Give and Take by a Wharton professor named Adam Grant. And he's been studying. Basically, he's been finding that it actually makes us happier. It makes people happier. And it makes people... We're more motivated by when we're giving than by we're receiving. A simple test he did is... They did a test for some surgeons where they put up a sign that said, hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases. And another sign that said, hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases. So they just did these just by changing the wording on these signs. And then they measured the amount of soap that was used at each of the stations. And it turned out that doctors and nurses at the stations where the sign referred to their patients used 45% more soap.

[36:43]

So just the thought of helping others. And this was just one study of many, many studies. So I'd like to try something. So if we can just... Just for a moment, bring your attention to your own breath and body. Just for a moment. Just notice that you're breathing. Notice that you have a body. And see if you can let yourself bring some wishes for kindness and well-being to yourself. Just see if you can allow yourself to wish that you are happy, that you feel free of suffering, that you feel some peace.

[37:48]

And then open eyes, or if your eyes are closed, and just look around the room. talking just look around the room and see if you can make eye contact with a few people you can just turn to the person next to you and without saying anything just wish them wish the person next to you to be free of suffering wish the person next to you to be don't be shy you can do it you can do it it's okay just wish the person next to you to be free from suffering wish them Just try on. How does it feel to wish other people to be happy? Great. Thank you. And I want to just finish with a poem. By the way, how'd that feel?

[38:55]

Getting thumbs up here. This is a poem by Ryokan, who is this Japanese Zen poet, Zen teacher, layperson who kind of rejected the kind of formal structures of Zen at the time and wandered around just trying to help and live his life as best as he could. And this is a poem from the late 1700s. With little desire, all is sufficient. With grabbing mind, myriad things are confined. Light vegetables satisfy my hunger. A patched robe wraps my body. Walking alone, I am accompanied by deer.

[40:01]

Singing aloud, I play with village children. I wash my ears in a creek under the boulder, delighted by pine trees on a ridge. I wash my ears in a creek under the boulder, delighted by pine trees on a ridge. Let's go wash our ears under boulders and find delight in this beautiful place. And even in the midst of whatever struggles and difficulties we're having, let's see if we can delight in those as well. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive.

[41:06]

Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:27]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.8