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. Morning, everybody. Morning, Phu. Thank you for coming. Uh... Wonderful to be here to see all of you this morning. It's great to be alive. I would like to dedicate my Dharma talk this morning to our Sangha member Cindy Morning Light. Probably none of you except maybe for Peter. I knew her.

[01:01]

She passed away on Friday, late Friday. She was a dear sangha member of our community. When I think of her, I think of the old, I guess it's a biblical phrase, a woman of valor. She was her whole life strong and forthright in supporting just causes that she believed in and opposing unjust policies and attitudes that she had. thought were bad. She always stood up for that her whole life, tirelessly. And I had a long illness and passed away on Friday. So I've been thinking about her a lot and chanting and holding her in my heart as I've been doing talks and whatnot over this weekend. And therefore unable to visit her family and visit her

[02:03]

body as she lays in state, so I want to dedicate my talk to her today. So I would like to begin my Dharma talk with a joke. This is a really great joke. I got this joke from a YouTube channel. talk that I happened to be looking at the other day of Slovoj Žižek. You know Slovoj Žižek? He's a brilliant guy. Very funny and interesting. He's a Slovenian. I guess he's what you call a public intellectual. He's a student of Marxism and Lacanian psychology. And he's a Hegelian. He's a brilliant man. So here's this joke that he told. It's about the great physicist Niels Bohr.

[03:09]

So Niels Bohr, who was Danish, had a horseshoe fastened to the door of his house. You know, horseshoe for good luck. So someone came to visit him and said, I noticed the horseshoe as I walked in the house. And I was really surprised because you're one of the most knowledgeable and rational and scientific people on the face of the earth. Surely you cannot believe in a good luck horseshoe. And Niels Bohr said, well, of course not. Of course you're right. You know, I understand. physics, I understand science, there's no force out there called luck, and if there were, I doubt that a horseshoe would be able to channel it. So of course I don't believe in this nonsense."

[04:13]

So the guy said, well, but if you don't believe in it, how come you have a horseshoe over the front door of your house? And Niels Bohr said, It's because someone told me that it works whether you believe in it or not. I told you it was a good joke. I'm not sure if it's a true story, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a true story. So this is a great Zen story, and I will interpret this Zen story. So Niels Bohr was a great physicist. He, I think, and anybody, probably half of you, if not all of you, know more about this than I do, but I think he was one of the inventors of quantum mechanics, which has within it concepts like complementarity, which means that light,

[05:28]

can be, when looked at from one angle, definitely a particle. When looked at from another angle, definitely not a particle, but a wave. And somehow, even though a wave is not a particle and a particle is not a wave, light is a particle and a wave. Complementarity. And also quantum entanglement, which says that two particles vastly far away from each other with no connection can simultaneously influence one another. So Niels Bohr had penetrated into the physical world as far as anybody ever had up to that point. And he understood that the material world, which seems so reasonable, is weirder than we think. It's going to be always one step ahead of all of our various explanations of it.

[06:38]

So although he didn't believe in the good luck charm of a horseshoe, he also knew that the world is bigger than our explanations of it. And I'm sure that if you asked him, he would say that he got some good out of that horseshoe, that when he walked into his house and looked at it, it made him feel good, made him feel a sense of pleasure, maybe amusement, comfort, maybe it gave him a sense of well-being. All of this benefit came whether or not he believed. that the horseshoe caused good luck. So he didn't have to believe in it. But he did have to make use of it. He had to fasten it to the doorway of his house, and he had to leave it there, even though he didn't have to believe in it.

[07:39]

So this joke is a good frame for what I want to talk about today. It has to do with what I want to talk about today. The World Could Be Otherwise. Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path, which is the title, just so happens to be, the title of a book that I just published at the end of last month. The World Could Be Otherwise. Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path. And When I was writing this book, I wrote it out of a sense of urgency. That was a couple of years ago, probably, when I was writing it. And now that it's out, and I'm going around to a lot of different places talking about it, I have even more urgency than I had then.

[08:44]

I used to feel like spiritual practice, Zen practice, or any other form of spiritual practice that a person would take up, is a really good thing for people who need it. And for people who don't need it, they can do fine without it. I used to think like that. But now, I really feel like to survive the many really terrible human problems that we have created, problems like sexism, racism, homophobia, toxic worldwide resentment, one group against another, but even perhaps worse than any of these, our unstinting efforts to make the planet ever warmer.

[09:55]

In that case, I think we all need spiritual practice. If we're going to turn this around, or if we don't turn it around, to survive it, intact with our hearts intact we all need spiritual practice specifically we all need to be bodhisattvas spiritual heroes who will tirelessly make effort for the benefit of others we all need to be radically unselfish people who are strong and resilient wildly idealistic and realistic and effective in our action, who are motivated by a strong positive love for all human beings and all creatures, and who hold in their hearts the possibility for a beautiful human future.

[11:11]

Now I think this is a necessity for as many of us as possible in our human family to take that attitude and live it as a mission. To be such a person, to develop a bodhisattva attitude and spirit takes effort, it takes commitment, it takes training, It takes daily activity or practice, and it takes a lot of help and support. And above all, it is a joyful path of maximum imagination. And that's what I'm trying to write about in my book. And I really think we have to do this now. We need enough of us to do this so that

[12:16]

Selfishness becomes archaic, old-fashioned, and impossible. So I'll read a little bit. I'm starting at the beginning, where I tell a story, so I'm telling you the story. So it's a story about a poet, Robert Desnos, who was a French surrealist poet. Really great poet. Amazing imagination. Desnos lived in the early 20th century. He was French, and he was a Jew. So when the Nazis took over France, and established a puppet regime, Desnos went underground and fought for the resistance.

[13:25]

He was captured. He was locked up in a concentration camp. So one day, Desnos with a lot of other men in this camp were marched out onto trucks. knew where they were going every day a truckload of men would leave the barracks and every afternoon the truck would return empty so they knew where they were going so they're in the truck of course no one says a word very somber mood they don't look at one another They can't look at one another. The truck arrives. They very slowly get off the truck as if it's a dream.

[14:36]

It feels like a dream. The guards, who are usually joking and bantering, catch this mood and they stop. and they're quiet too. So it's very, very quiet as one by one, these men are getting off the truck. All of a sudden, the mood is totally pierced when one of the men in the line whirls around, grabs the palm of the man behind him, bends his head over the guy's palm with his nose almost in the palm. Because, and this is Desnos, because it turns out Desnos is a palm reader. He reads palms. So he's reading this guy's palm.

[15:38]

And he gets really excited and happy. I can't believe this, he says. Look at this. You're going to have such a long life. Four children. Unbelievable. Four children. Gorgeous wife. You're going to be traveling all over the place. I can't believe how wealthy you're going to be. What? So nobody knows what to make of this. But one after another, the men in the line start crowding around. Notice each one sticking out his palm. And Desnos is reading palms like mad, and every single one is like this. Every one is going to be wealthy and live a long life and have happiness, and this one is going to go here, and that one's going to be living over here, and this one's going to be in America. My goodness, America, and all of this. And they get very, very excited. They're all clapping each other on the back and jumping up and down. They're so happy, and they're so excited. They cannot believe what's going on here. It seems so weird, but there it is. It's totally convincing.

[16:40]

They believe it. Well, the guards, of course, are standing there looking at this and they don't know what to make of it. Just like the prisoners, these guards had been living under an imaginative spell in which the marching of men to slaughter was a normal, everyday occurrence. But now, this spell was broken. And they were suddenly disoriented and confused. Because the reality that they had been living in a moment ago, which they completely accepted, was now cast into doubt.

[17:44]

And they're no longer sure, like, what is real and what is not real. It's not that clear what is real and what is not real. Ever. But we agree that something is real until something happens that makes us feel maybe it's not. Maybe the better natures of these guards... that had been long suppressed in an effort to conform to the Nazi madness that defined their world, maybe their better natures, long numb to the grief, the guilt, the horror, were stirred by Desnos' powerful commitment to his absurd, but maybe not so absurd, vision. Who knows what was going on in the minds of the guards.

[18:46]

But in any case, they're so undone by this crazy situation that they feel that they can't go on as planned. And not knowing what else to do, they just load the men back onto the truck. The truck turns around and goes back to the barracks. And Desnos and those men were never executed. I wish I could tell you that Desnos was, even now, still alive, but in fact, he actually didn't live. He was not executed in the camps, although there were certainly executions in those camps. He was not executed. He died after the War of Typhus. So I first heard this story at the Jewish Museum over in the city when I was participating in a poetry reading, which was called something like, Living Jewish Poets Read the Works of Dead Jewish Poets.

[20:01]

Something like that. So they had a bunch of Jewish poets selecting their favorite... dead Jewish poets, and they would present something about the poet and read a few works. And I remember reading, I'm pretty sure I read works of Paul Ceylon. I remember one friend read works of Gertrude Stein. And my friend Alan Bernheimer, who was a translator of Desnos, read works that he had translated of Desnos from the French and told his story. That's where I first heard it. So I said, later I thought about it and I thought, this is too good to be true. Could this really have happened, you know? I said, Alan, where did you get this story from? He said, I got it from Susan Griffin, who's a Bay Area writer. I'm sure many of you know about her. I don't know her, but I got a hold of her and I said, Susan, is this story true?

[21:04]

Where did you get this from? She said, I got it from my friend Odette, who was a concentration camp survivor. She wasn't there, but I'll ask her. So she said, well, Odette says she got it from a guy who was there. And she is sure it's true. And not being such a swift researcher myself, that's as far as I got in determining whether or not this story is actually true. But after a while, It struck me. This story is definitely true. There's no doubt. This is a true story. Definitely, absolutely true. Because the imagination is powerful. We've got the imagination so

[22:06]

domesticated, that we think of it as like Walt Disney, cartoons of elephants and stuff like that, content for platforms that make money, harmless, tame. But in fact, the imagination is a very powerful human force, and it creates its own self-validating truth, strong enough to effect inner and outer transformation. So when I say that I'm absolutely certain that this story of Robert Desnos is true, I'm not saying that I am 100% certain of its objective facts. In fact, the details of the story must be different from what we hear. But the story, as a story, is definitely true. And its truth changes my heart, changes my mind, and expresses something essential about who we are as human beings.

[23:16]

Because as human beings, we are imaginative creatures. We make the world with our imaginations. The world is not the world objectively. The world is some objective reality plus our imaginations. And how we engage our imagination is how we are human. And when you think about it, the Bible, the Buddhist sutras, the stories of all the great sages, all of the folk tales and all the myths and all the rhymes and all the epics, all the poems, all the plays, all the novels, all the anecdotes, all the music, all the ritual, all the pictures, and every dream we dream at night. These are all imaginative productions that rise up from the unconscious to expand the soul and to help us feel through who we really are and what we're really living in this strange life.

[24:33]

the world would be crushingly impossible if it were just nothing but feeding the body and fixing the roof. We need a vision. We need a sense of purpose. We need something that brightens up and expands the world for us. So imagination is not an escape from reality or an alternative to reality. There's a reality on one hand and imagination on the other. That's what we think now. No. Imagination makes reality. Imagination deepens and enriches reality. It adds depth, feeling, and possibility. All that is creative and ennobling in us comes from the imagination. Without imagination, reality is just too flat, too one-dimensional.

[25:47]

To go from the possible to the impossible, which human beings have done over and over and over again, you need to imagine it first. So the century that we're living in now is rough. very busy. If we're privileged people with creative and demanding careers, we have social lives, we have families, we have a lot of interests. For those people, probably most of us, human life on earth is better than it's ever been. But for that reason, exactly for the same reason, it's also more demanding, more stressful than ever.

[26:48]

Because the possibilities for growth and accomplishment are absolutely dizzying. We must be more than we are. We must know more than we know. We must experience more than we have experienced. We must have more fun than we did before. And the pace of this more is constantly accelerating. It's hard to catch your breath. But the majority of the people on Earth are not privileged like this. The vast majority of the people on Earth feel like a decent life is further away than ever. Even though, actually... so many millions of people have come out of poverty into prosperity. Still, there's so many people now that the vast majority of them are struggling.

[27:55]

The top 10% of the people own 90% of the wealth. And as we know, we have great economic statistics here in the United States, but actually most people don't feel like they're prosperous. Plus, whether we're privileged or not privileged, we now are aware of the world beyond our households because the news media has become our collective nervous system, twitching our attention with constant jolts of true and false information. It gets to where you can't tell the difference anymore between... true and false information about political, environmental, economic, and social problems. And this is what constitutes the sort of bottom level of our consciousness, of our psyches, and all of our conversations end up being about this.

[28:57]

What's the future going to be like? What's the world going to be like for our grandchildren's grandchildren? Will there even be a human world by then. I think that there's dread in the atmosphere around us. You could almost, like, taste it, even though we all naturally try to forget about it most of the time. How could we survive if we were aware of it all the time? We try to forget about it most of the time, naturally. But we never... completely get away from it. What are we really going to do about it, really? It's beyond anything anybody can do about it. So, sorry to get you so depressed.

[29:59]

But you knew this already, so it's not like I'm suddenly springing this on you, right? I hope not. You already knew this. So, yes, my goal here is not to get you depressed. What I want to say is that in the face of this, the world could be, not only could be, actually is in the moment we decide that it is otherwise. That the world's possibilities need not be and actually are not limited to the tangible, the knowable, the negotiable, They are not limited to the data. We are constantly collecting about practically everything measurable. Data gives us the illusion that we know the world. We have big computers, so we think we know the world. It's an illusion. Because just like Niels Bohr knew, the world is always going to be more than we know, and we forget that.

[31:06]

I was saying all this at the city center the other day, yesterday, and Basia said, Petnick told me. She said the word maya. I didn't know this. The word maya, which means illusion, you know, in Sanskrit. The etymology of the word for maya. Some people are named maya. Anybody here named maya? No? Yeah, a lot of people named maya. But anyway, the word maya, illusion, the root of the word is to measure. Isn't that interesting? And yet, our imaginations have been completely captured, colonized by the measurable. And don't get me wrong, it's wonderful that we have all the science we have. Look what it's done for us. I'm sure there are some of us in the room who are alive now, who would be dead if it weren't for the science we have. So, it's wonderful. But at the same time, it has colonized our imaginations in this pernicious way.

[32:11]

The imagination... is not that which measures. It doesn't measure. It doesn't devise. It doesn't instrumentalize. It doesn't define. It doesn't manipulate. Its nature is to open, to mystify, to delight, to provoke, to inspire. It extends without limit. It leaps from the known to the unknown. It soars way beyond the facts. to visions and intensities. And it lightens up a dark world, the dark world we imagine we live in, just like those guards imagined they lived in that world. And because the mass of people in that world, part of the world, believed in that imaginative vision, Mr. Hitler was nothing if not an imaginative guy.

[33:12]

Because they believed in that imaginative vision, they created that world. So spiritual practice, I'm arguing, is the practice of engaging and expanding the imagination. That's what all religion has always been supposed to have been about. Of course, we know it ended up not being about that. But now we have to reclaim it now in this moment of maximum human peril. we have to reclaim the power of religion in us for the good, for the bodhisattva path. Even though we all, I'm sure, can relate our experiences of the narrowness and the oppressiveness of the religion that we grew up with, Or we could say, look at all these other religious people. They're so narrow-minded. They're so anti-science.

[34:15]

We know all that. But if you look at any religious tradition, and certainly we know it from practicing Zen, because it's all over our practices as Zen practitioners, mostly because it's a foreign religion. We don't even understand it. It's not embedded in our culture. We have no idea. So we just take it in the best possible light. I was in Vancouver talking about all this and there was Vancouver, you know, there's a big, big Chinese community in Vancouver. So there's this Chinese, young Chinese lady there and she says, I grew up in China and the last thing in the world I was interested in doing is practicing Buddhism because it was, I understood Buddhism was like this totally superstitious thing that only old people were interested in. You go to the temple and you burn a little paper of fake money and you put it in the pot and then you pray that your granddaughter gets a good mark in the exam. Who was interested in that? It's ridiculous. So then I came to Vancouver and I see all these white people practicing Buddhism.

[35:20]

And I'm thinking, what are they doing? Why are they doing that? That's crazy. And then I kind of got involved in what they were doing and I thought, well, this isn't like the Buddhism that I know about in China. It's not like the Buddhism in Nepal or Tibet or Vietnam. This is really different. So now she's a practitioner in our local Vancouver Sangha, you know? So that's why we're lucky, because since we're ignorant and since Buddhism just got here and is not embedded in our social institutions and is not like a paragon of the state like it is in China or somewhere else, we can see, oddly, paradoxically, that it was supposed to be. Always. All our religions have embedded in them the mystical, the experiential, the challenging, the true, the imaginative. It's there everywhere, and we have to reclaim it. So, in the book, the main thing that I'm

[36:31]

concerned about is developing the bodhisattva spirit. I think I said this in the beginning. Bodhisattva spirit. To be a bodhisattva takes training. It's a whole way of viewing your life. You realize that the life that you thought you were living all this time, you realize all the stuff I've done which I thought was for this purpose. It turns out it was all for the purpose of being a bodhisattva. It was all so that I could be in a position in life where I could be of benefit to others. Whatever my position is in life, it's a bodhisattva position, a position from which I can be of benefit and in which I have the perfect conditions to develop the bodhisattva heart ever more strongly and ever more deeply. And every Religion, I believe, has some version of this idea of a bodhisattva.

[37:34]

Someone who serves others, who loves others. Serving others not out of a sense of guilt or a sense of duty, but a sense of identity with everyone and love for everyone. Joyfully serving. Bodhisattvas don't mind difficulty. They're not looking for specific results. They have full confidence that goodness is good and goodness is empowering. So to do good in any way, large or small, is a good thing. And whatever the short-term results seem to be, the long-term results are guaranteed. So they keep on going. And even when there are many, many setbacks, things that they had hoped for don't occur, they say, well, of course not. How was I supposed to know what was supposed to happen? I never knew. So I just keep going. And if this is hard, it just makes me stronger. Bodhisattvas never give up. They keep on going and they're joyful because they practice joyful effort.

[38:41]

That's one of the six practices of bodhisattvas. So in this book, the bulk of the book is how it's like a training manual for bodhisattvas. And every chapter describes and discusses one of the six great practices of bodhisattvas. And at the end of the chapter, there are lists of practices so that you can develop these six practices more strongly. So one of them, as I just mentioned, is joyful effort. Bodhisattvas cultivate joyful effort, and they know how to do that. And they work at it. They don't, of course, always feel it every minute, but they're always working on it every minute. So they practice generosity, ethical conduct, patient forbearance, joyful effort, meditation, and transcendent wisdom.

[39:41]

And in doing those practices, and they do them every day, even when they take a rest, It's in the service of joyful effort. Everything they do is bodhisattva practice. They do this with an altruistic motivation and with joy. And they're going to keep doing it forever. That's their commitment. In fact, when I'm done talking, you're all going to take bodhisattva vows. Did you know that? You've been doing it every Sunday when you come to the Dharma talk. Nobody mentions it. It's not very nice that we don't mention it to you, you know? We should put a little warning sign over the front door. If you come in for the Dharma talk, at the end of the talk, you're going to become a bodhisattva. You're going to actually commit yourself, as you will in a few minutes. You, each one of you. So don't say this if you don't mean it. Because each one of you is going to commit yourself to saving an infinite number of beings.

[40:46]

That's true. How are you going to save an infinite number of beings? Well, it's going to take you a while. I don't think you'll do it in this one lifetime, but you'll do as many as you can in this one lifetime, and then you'll continue because you're going to vow. Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. There are an infinite number of confusions and delusions. I know we all have our favorite list. We're going to put an end to every single possible confusion and delusion. We're going to do every single possible positive practice by entering every single possible Dharma gate. And we're going to completely squeeze our life, reshape our life, illuminate our life until our life is nothing but the Buddha way. This is what you're going to promise to do as soon as I'm done talking. So my talk is actually just an introduction to the vows you're going to take right after I'm there.

[41:57]

So how could you possibly take such a vow? In a way, it's like completely ridiculous. There's one Zen teacher I know who at the end of sessions used to sing the song from Man of La Mancha. To dream the impossible dream. And so on and so on. Because that's what we're doing. Because that's what bodhisattvas do. And how can you do that? Imagination, right? The only way you can do that is with maximum imagination and giving your whole heart. And when you do that, your life is different. You look at people differently. Your activity is different. Your sense of purpose is different. So, we can actually be bodhisattvas. We can do it. I know for sure. Because I know lots and lots and lots of bodhisattvas that happen to be personal friends of mine.

[43:06]

Lots of them. So I know it's doable. Now this is not to say that we can become perfect human beings and everything we do and everything we think is perfect. No, it means that we're walking in that direction. We're walking in the bodhisattva direction and we're very honest about our many shortcomings. But they don't matter as long as we're willing to be honest about them and work to overcome them and keep going in the bodhisattva path. Okay, enough, enough, enough. I will conclude my Dharma talk with a poem of Robert Desnos, which is called, for some reason I can't understand, Ebony Life. Ebony Life. A frightening stillness.

[44:10]

will mark that day and the shade from street lamps and fire alarms will sap the light all will go silent the quietest and the noisiest the squalling infants will finally stop crying the tugboats the locomotives the wind will silently glide. The great voice that comes from far away will be heard passing over the city long-awaited. Then, at the millionaire's hour, when the dust, the stones, and the absence of tears arrange the sun's dress on the great deserted squares, finally the voice will be heard coming.

[45:12]

It will growl endlessly at the doors. It will pass over the city, ripping out flags and shattering windows. We will hear it. What silence before it, but even greater, the silence that it will not disturb, but that it will charge with approaching death, or it will wither and condemn. O day of sorrows and joys. The day, the day to come, when the voice will pass over the city, a ghostly gull told me that the voice loved me as much as I loved it, that this great, terrible silence was my love, that the wind carrying the voice was the great revolt. of the world, and that the voice would favor me.

[46:16]

So thank you very much for listening. And maybe I'll see some of you. I'm going to continue to talk about this in the afternoon. Some of you might be coming, or please come if you can. And don't chant if you're not going to do this. But if you do chant, maybe now you'll know what you're actually doing. Thank you all for being bodhisattvas. You wouldn't be here today. if you weren't already bodhisattvas, that's for sure. Take care of yourselves. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[47:24]

Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:50]

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