see and listen to yourself in case the truth The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. Today is the final, I should say, my final talk of the three-day sashim.

[10:40]

And it is also my final talk of the three and a half week intensive. And it is both the first and last talk for the one day sitting. All of that is happening here. So I thought I would begin by confessing some I've watched the last 24 hours or so feeling both tired. I don't usually talk this much. And also feeling deeply inspired by all of you. But I really wanted this, I have this strong preference to give a really great final talk.

[11:51]

Like, you know, hit it out of the park. And I've gotten to see in this stretch of time how much suffering that preference has caused me. I watched my mind get anxious, try too hard, not know what to say. And after all this time practicing together with all of you this poem, the Xin Xin Ming, the mind of great faith, I heard the first line a little differently. So for me, when I hear the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences, it's very easy to quickly say something like preferences bad.

[12:57]

And I've heard this from many people. Oh, no, I have preferences. What should I do? And today, when I read this line, I saw, oh, it doesn't say that. There's nothing here that says having preferences is bad. What it says is that having preferences makes things difficult. What it says is that our preferences cause us to suffer. And actually, not having preferences, but holding. Some of you may remember the very first talk I gave for the intensive was about faith. I don't know if that was three weeks or 30 years ago.

[14:06]

But some of you may remember the proximate cause of faith. And I know this goes against protocol, but you can say out loud. You can interact. It's okay. What is the proximate cause of faith? Anyone? Yeah. There we go. Yay. So suffering. Feeling the suffering of having preferences is the doorway to faith. This is how we discover that faith isn't only getting what I want and getting away from what I don't want. We discover that right in the middle of our difficulty, right in the midst of the world's difficulty, it's been an extraordinarily painful experience. several weeks here in this period of time.

[15:10]

That it's in the midst of that that faith is born. And I just think it's important to underscore, because this is my last time to do it, that this faith Doesn't mean inaction. That having faith, that trusting things as they are, doesn't mean we don't do something. But it means that what we do comes from non-reactivity. It comes from something other than I want, I don't want. I like, I don't like. Give me, get away from me. And in the language that I've been using, I would suggest that we might say that this faith comes from love. And I don't mean love as an emotion, you know, something deep and wide that is the connectivity of everything.

[16:33]

So I've had the privilege, the honor, really, of talking to many people. Actually, I've been talking when I'm here in the room upstairs. I've been mostly listening. And so I've heard many people come forth to express and confess their preferences, their lack of faith. And it's occurred to me as I've been sitting and listening how much we assume that doing things a certain way or having certain kinds of insights or experiences, that that's good. And that confessing our difficulty, you know, I see sometimes it feels like people are just waiting to be reprimanded.

[17:46]

I have preferences. And the thing that I am so moved by as this time and experience comes to a close is the regardless of the content, regardless of the degree of suffering that people have courageously said out loud, regardless of the glimpses of freedom that people have tasted and shared, that what I received was this extraordinary gift of hearing, feeling, seeing, sincerity, dedication, earnestness. And that is deeply inspiring.

[19:05]

So thank you, everyone, those who have, I've had a chance to talk to and those who have been sitting in the midst of your own, whatever it has been. here in the temple and those online and in your lives. So the past two days, the first two days of this three-day in Sashin, we've been looking at the Dogen's three minds from the Tenzo Kyokun. Daishin, great mind. Ro-shin or ro-ba-shin, parental or grandmotherly mind. And we're looking at these minds as, I think of them both as a precursor, sort of what's needed to enter this mind of great faith, but also as an expression of it.

[20:16]

when we are willing to sit in our suffering and allow the doorway to faith to open, that these qualities, this magnanimous mind that loves everything equally, this grand motherly mind that is this unusual combination of tenderness, of love, loving, listening, but also persistence, tenacity, grit. I felt these two at play in the space this morning during the, those who weren't here, we had a memorial service. for Suzuki Roshi.

[21:19]

This is something that Zen does so beautifully. The exquisite presence of ceremony in which each gesture is full expression of here. forgotten how much I missed that. It was very moving. So today, on the schedule, we have Ki Shin, which is most often translated as the third of these minds as joyful mind. Joyful mind doesn't mean you should be happy all the time. Just like the great way is difficult for those who have no preferences doesn't mean you shouldn't have preferences.

[22:30]

Joyful mind is not 100% pleasant experience all the time. So if suffering is the proximate cause of faith, Does anyone know the proximate cause of happiness? Generosity. I don't know if anyone on the camera knows. Generosity? Kaga and Donna? I'm checking. The answer is not chocolate. So the... The approximate cause of happiness is generosity. Generosity is the opposite side of clinging. That tanha, that second noble truth.

[23:36]

The ways in which we don't just have preferences, but we hold them. We don't just have views and opinions, but we cherish them. We believe them. We insist on them. So generosity is in so many ways the antidote to that. It's the ability to open our hands, to open our hearts, to actually allow to have the faith that life will come through here and there. and there and there and there in your seat, in your body, in your mind, in your heart. So generosity is the first, as many of you know, of the paramitas. And I guess I have to say again, because the mind is a tricky animal.

[24:48]

that I'm not saying you should be generous. What I'm saying is that when we are generous, that we have the opportunity to feel real happiness, that we have the opportunity to feel life itself coming through. For me, it's always been a kind of surprising chapter. in Zen mind, beginner's mind, where Suzuki Roshi talks about God. And it is a chapter on giving. It's called God giving. And basically what he's saying is that the trouble that we get into is that we have this world. And then we say mine. Or I did that. And he says we forget, he calls it the big I, or what he describes in Christianity, in Judaism as well, we would call God.

[25:59]

We forget who's actually responsible for all of it. So this is not something we need to do. This is something that we are invited to remember. To remember that it is all given. The parts we like and the parts we don't like. And our role is to receive what's here and then respond. And when we forget, which we do again and again, and we don't judge, we don't make ourselves bad. We just feel the ouch of that forgetting.

[27:05]

We let ourselves feel, oh, I made it mine. And we can feel, we can feel in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds, In the precepts, there is the eighth precept about not being stingy. And many of you know that there are many different ways to engage with precepts. There is the do not, don't do it, Whatever it says, don't do it. Whatever it says in the precept, it's the kind of restrictive version. And then there's what are called the compassionate version of the precepts. So if not killing is the do not, don't do it. The compassionate level of the precept would be a question, a koan.

[28:14]

How is it possible? for me or you or any of us to be alive without taking life. We place ourselves in the middle of this web of being and allow ourselves to wonder. And then there is this third layer, I would say, of the precepts, which is sometimes called the Buddha mind precepts. And the Buddha mind precepts are, Imagining you could engage with the precept with the eyes of a Buddha. And from the eyes of the Buddha, the first precept says, life is not killed. So here is the third. This is for each of these precepts. Dogen has a little, I call it a poem. I'm not sure that's quite right. But for this eighth precept, Dogen says this.

[29:16]

One phrase, one verse is the 10,000 things and the hundred grasses. All of it is here in each moment. One phrase, one verse is the 10,000 things, the hundred grasses. One Dharma and one realization are all Buddhas and ancestors. From the beginning, There has not been begrudging. There's not stinginess. There's not begrudging. The world is not stingy. The world is not withholding. And so it's for us to find ourselves softening enough, willing enough to sit in the suffering of our gripping to allow this. relentless flow of life to come through, to be expressed through us as us, each in our unique way.

[30:31]

We can't really force ourselves to be generous. It's not real generosity. Generosity comes through this understanding of plenty. And sometimes I think of it as we cultivate an attitude of gratitude. It's not a pretend, oh, I'm thankful for my knees that hurt or whatever kind of difficulty you may be sitting with. It's the gratitude for anything at all. The gratitude for, as I like to say, so much something out of nothing. Moment by moment like that.

[31:42]

This kind of gratitude is an experience in humility. releasing that clutch of mine and allowing ourselves to say, I don't know, allowing ourselves to sit in the beyond knowing, the ineffable, the mysterious, the... Well, because it's my last talk, I will read you this poem because any chance I can get to read this is a worthy one. This is E.E.

[32:44]

Cummings expressing what I'm bumbling along trying to say. He says, I thank you, God, for most this amazing day. For the leaping greenly spirits of trees. And a blue, okay, a gray true dream of sky. And for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. I who have died, that. I who have died am alive again today. And this is the sun's birthday. This is the birth day of life and of love and wings and of the gay great happening delimitably earth. don't know if you can hear that online we have a helicopter maybe flying over he goes on how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any lifted from the know of all nothing human merely being doubt unimaginable you

[34:27]

How should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing, any lifted from the know of all nothing, human, merely being, doubt, unimaginable you? Now the ears of my ears awaken. Now the eyes of my eyes are opened. When we find ourselves in gratitude, it tells us that we are awake. When we find ourselves in suffering, we are also awake. In one case, we are awake to our heart. holding.

[35:29]

In the other case, we are awake to our letting go, allowing, letting be. When I was a young student at Tassajara, I had the great benefit of meeting Brother David Stendelrost, a Benedictine monk who went on to become kind of this icon of gratefulness, sort of his specialty. I remember when I met him and he talked about being a celibate monk. And he said, you know, if the teaching says that I should love everyone equally, I thought, well, either I need to be completely promiscuous or celibate.

[36:47]

And I thought it would be simpler to be celibate. It was amazing to me to hear someone's renunciate vow. coming from such a loving place, not in a punitive way, not in a do not way, but because he wanted to love everything equally. Anyhow, Brother David has this wonderful saying that I'll share with you that points us to the relationship between gratitude and joy or happiness. And like most things, when we wake up, when we see something clearly, it's sort of the opposite of what we expected. He says, if you think happiness will make you grateful, think again. Isn't that what we think? That if I'm happy, if I get what I want, if things are going my way, then I can be grateful.

[37:54]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for... being nice to me, for liking my talk, for feeding me food I like, for whatever the goodnesses are in your life. If you think happiness will make you grateful, think again. It is gratefulness that makes you happy. So this confusion, our confusion that Tsung San talks about in the Xin Xin Ming of imagining that if we get what we want and we get away from what we don't want, that will make us happy. And he's pointing again and again, not that preferences are bad, not that we should get rid of them. We don't have to get rid of anything. But we do need to stay awake.

[38:57]

And our faith, our faith is the faith in the whole catastrophe. Our faith is the face in the whole extraordinary event called birth and death. Called being here. That we are Constantly asking, could you just move over a few inches to the left? No, a little bit this way. Oh, up that way. And we miss the show. So this kind of true generosity that comes from aligning ourself with the fullness. of the generosity of the world. This is gratitude.

[40:03]

This brings true happiness. So in that spirit, I have some thank yous to make. So first, deep bow of thanks to Suzuki Roshi, who I swear I saw him smiling in that statue upstairs today when he was being offered tea and rice and all of this exquisite care and attention, who founded this. my deep, deep thanks to all of the staff and all of the people living here at Zen Center.

[41:04]

Certainly to the kitchen staff and to Aihito, even though you are sitting, it's your kitchen for feeding us. We'll give you a formal thanks later in the Zendo. And having the privilege of sitting in in some of the meetings of the senior staff here and watching the the care and dedication you know in the midst of all of it in the midst of all of the tumult and difficulty this willingness to keep the practice alive to continue sitting and cooking and walking and creating the schedule and ringing the bells and creating flower arrangements. So thank you to Habit David, as Jozen calls them, and to Paul and Anna, who walked in the middle of this with a lot of graciousness, and May and Tova and Brian for your extraordinary care and hard work.

[42:22]

for interviewing me and hopefully ushering some of you here. And also Heather and David, who's supporting all of you who are online. And to all of you, of course, because none of this happens, right? Subject and object create one another. I don't get to be here if you're not there. You don't get to be there if I'm not here. We create this together. And to Nancy, who's not here, who has stepped down from her role, but who is the proximate cause for my being here, who invited me to come. And of course, to my dear Tia, who told me by mistake that she was feeding my dog a ham and cheese sandwich this morning.

[43:39]

Tia. She said, oh, and then she said, oops, maybe I shouldn't have told you that. So Tia is responsible for this. Tia is responsible for a steady and persistent invitation, asking me again and again, come on, please come home. And wouldn't hear no, no matter how many times I said no. So thank you, dear Tia. So my dear Jozen, best GCO ever. Drop mic.

[44:42]

After Nancy invited me to do this, I called Jozen in New Jersey and said, will you come? And they said, yes. And none of this would have been possible for me or us without Joe Zen's exquisite care. They were the primarily responsible for making sure that I was in the right place at the right time with the right clothes. Not a small task. But of course, that is not really the role for me or for you. There is at the heart of this practice, this quality of mind to mind, of heart to heart, of how we care for one another.

[45:49]

That was the thing that brought me in 30 years ago. when I saw how it was that people bowed to a cushion, when I saw how it was that people engaged with one another, it wasn't perfect, but it was not like anything I had seen anywhere before. And I am deeply grateful that it is still alive. here. One last poem. Reminding us of the reciprocity of

[46:57]

This is, perhaps you won't be surprised, a dog poem. It's from Mary Oliver called Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night. He puts his cheek against mine and makes small expressive sounds. And when I'm awake or awake enough, don't worry if you're not all the way there. Just enough. When I'm awake or awake enough, he turns upside down, his four paws in the air and his eyes dark and fervent. If there was ever an expression of faith, of this willingness to roll over and show your happiness,

[47:59]

tender, vulnerable, underbelly, and just say, okay, world. He puts his cheek against mine and makes small expressive sounds. And when I'm awake or awake enough, he turns upside down, his four paws in the air and his eyes dark and fervent. Tell me you love me, he says. Tell me again. Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over, he gets to ask. I get to tell. Thank you all very much. Unsuppressable.

[49:52]

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