This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations by people like you. Good morning especially to the younger people here. Hi. I want it. I wanted to tell a story this morning at the beginning of the talk here for the kids and for the adults also you can listen in too. This is a story about what you do when something happens And you don't know why it happened. And it's kind of scary.

[01:00]

And you don't know what to do in that circumstance when that kind of thing happens. And the name of the story is The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. How many of you ever heard of that story? No? It's about a boy whose name was Bartholomew Cubbins. And a long name, yeah. They called him Cubby for short. That's not part of the story, though. Well, there you go. And he lived a long time ago in a kingdom. The name of the kingdom was the Kingdom of Didd. And the king of that kingdom, his name was Derwin, King Derwin, the king of the kingdom of Did. Yep, that's what happened.

[02:04]

And King Derwin, even though he was the king and even though he lived in a palace, the highest part of the whole kingdom, up on a big hill in a beautiful palace, a beautiful house that he lived in, nevertheless, he was kind of a foolish, He was a foolish king, which sometimes happens in kingdoms and countries, is that the people are good, but the rulers are foolish. So Bartholomew Cubbins lived in this kingdom, but he did not live in the castle. He lived way, way, way down at the other end of the kingdom, kind of near a marsh. because he was very poor. He just lived there with his mom. One day he had some berries. He picked some berries and he was going to sell them so that he could get some money to buy a little food for his family, for he and his mom.

[03:06]

And he went to the town with the berries. And as he was going along, he suddenly heard this big noise. Horses galloping. And it was the king coming through in his carriage. There were 500 guards riding on horses in front of the king's carriage to protect him. Even though he really wasn't going anywhere and he didn't need protection. But anyway, there were all of these guards in front and then guards behind and all of that. And they were all shouting. Make way for the king. Make way for the king. And take off your hats. Hats off for the king. Hats off for the king. Because as a matter of politeness, when the king went by you were supposed to take your hat off. So Bartholomew had a hat on and he took it off.

[04:10]

And they all went roaring by. And then the carriage went roaring by. And then soon after it went roaring by, the king stuck his head out the window of the carriage and yelled, And everybody stopped. Then he yelled, back up! And they all kind of backed up, all 500 of them, going backwards in the horses and the carriages. Until they were right in front of Bartholomew Cubbins, who was only like 10 years old. So he was kind of nervous. The king looked at him and said, Do the subjects of my kingdom take off their hats? And Bartholomew had a sigh of relief inside of himself because that was an easy question. He said, yes, they do, sire. The king said, well, what is that on your head then? And even though Bartholomew had taken off of his hat, when he felt up there, there was another hat there.

[05:18]

So he whipped that one right off really quick. The king looked at him and said, well, Bartholomew didn't know what was going on. He had a hat in each hand, which was already pretty mysterious. Then he put his hand up here. It was another hat. Whip that one off. Whip, whip, whip, whip. He kept whipping hats off. But every time he took a hat off of his head, there was another one sitting up there. He didn't know why this was happening. There was no explanation of this in the universe as far as he was concerned. The king, what happened to the king is very interesting because the king got angry at Bartholomew, which is one of the things that happens when you don't know what's happening. People get angry about it. And they try to control everything because they're kind of scared because they don't know what's happening.

[06:22]

And that's what happened to the king. This is not a... I don't recommend that action, but that's what he did. So he said, well, let's take Bartholomew up to the castle and we'll teach him a lesson. So they all go roaring up to the castle. One of the guards grabs Bartholomew, puts him on the back of the hat and they're galloping up. Puts him on the back of the horse, I mean, and they're galloping up. the road to the castle and the wind is blowing and is knocking Bartholomew's hat off his head and every time a hat gets knocked off his head there's another hat there. Dozens and dozens and dozens of hats one after another. Anyway there are a lot of things that happen once they get to the castle but I'll give you the short story. The king is really annoyed so he keeps trying to get Bartholomew's hat's off his head and no hat. But no matter what he does, it doesn't work. Finally, he has a kind of an awful idea.

[07:24]

Actually, somebody whispers it in his ear, which is, well, if we can't get the hat off of Bartholomew's head, let's cut his head off. So they send Bartholomew down to the dungeon where the royal executioner is. Bartholomew, in the meantime, he's very straightforward. He's just kind of going along with the situation, even though he doesn't understand it. So they send him down to the executioner, and Bartholomew says to the executioner, he explains, would you please chop my head off because the king said you were supposed to do that. The royal executioner says, sure, but could you take your hat off? Because I can't cut somebody's head off unless they don't have their hat on.

[08:24]

Bartholomew says, okay, would you take it off for me? And the executioner knocks his hat off. There's another one there. Knocks it off, knocks it off, knocks it off, one after another. Finally, they give up. Bartholomew goes back to the king. who's now angrier than ever because all of his plans and strategies and schemes for taking care of this situation have failed. So his final idea is, let's go up to the top of the castle, up to the highest tower, and I'll throw Bartholomew off the tower. This is not such a nice king. Besides being foolish, he's not nice. So they're walking the long, long walk up to the tower, and he keeps taking hats off, hoping that something will happen. He keeps taking his hats off. And there's a guy who's counting all the hats that he takes off, and he gets to 450. Sir Alarec is counting them.

[09:28]

And when he gets to 450, 451 is fancier than 450. It's a nicer hat. They've all been the same up until now. 452 is nicer than 451, etc, etc. They keep getting nicer and more beautiful and more elaborate. So when they finally get up to the tower, it's 499, 500. And the 500th hat is this beautiful, gigantic hat with a giant ruby on it and feathers and ostrich feathers and peacock feathers and all kinds of beautiful things. And the king looks at the hat, and the hat's nicer than the crown that he's wearing. The king looks at the hat and changes his mind about throwing Bartholomew off the tower and says, would you please sell me the beautiful hat that you have on your head?

[10:36]

for 500 gold pieces. And Bartholomew said something like that at first and then he said, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Yes, he didn't say yeah, because it was the king. He said, yes, sire, I will. So the king takes the 500th hat off of Bartholomew's head and puts it on his own head And Bartholomew just feels the cool breeze of air. Finally, no more hats. They go strolling off together, arm in arm. The king gives him 500 gold pieces. He goes back to his mom, way at the edge of the kingdom, and says, well, I didn't get to sell the berries, but here's 500 gold pieces. So they're very happy. And the person who wrote the story, Dr. Seuss, what he says about it is, he says, the last line of the story, I think it's the last line, is, it just happened to happen.

[11:51]

And it's not likely to happen again. Which is very true of the 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and also it's true of everything. It just happens to happen the way that it happens and it's not likely to happen again. So that's what Dr. Seuss says. Now what I say is that if something happens and you don't understand it and you're confused by it and you're upset by it, if you can, try not to get angry about it. And also if you see your parents getting angry or doing foolish things when something upsetting happens to them, try to encourage them to sit still and quiet down and calm down and not do something foolish like the king.

[13:02]

And that's the end of my story for today. Now at Green Gulch, when the kids part is over, the kids go away off to do things. Are you guys going to go away off to do things or are you going to stick around? You're going to go. Okay, well, thanks for coming by and see you around. Ciao. Ciao. I say ciao because my wife is in Italy, so I'm practicing my Italian. It's the only Italian word I know. Ciao!

[14:04]

So I thought of the title of my talk last night. The title of my talk is Anxiety. Where it comes from and what to do about it. I thought it was a really good title. like a magazine you know like prevention magazine or self magazine anxiety where it comes from and what to do about it i thought i could try to get it on a magazine and then maybe i could get on a talk show talk about it It is actually what I hope to talk about.

[15:18]

But another way of saying it is that from our practice, from our Zazen practice, our Zen practice, our Zen way, we have a certain attitude, a perspective, a point of view that I think is unique. is not so common that comes out of our practice. And I want to try to talk about that. It's expressed in our practice of zazen, meditation, sitting meditation. And partly the inspiration for my talk is that a few weeks ago at Green Gulch, sister temple to city center, over in Marin County. Just like here, every Saturday morning there's a zazen instruction, same thing there, every Sunday morning there's instruction in zazen.

[16:25]

And someone once calculated it, you know, how many people have come through zazen instruction, because here at Zen Center it's been going on for decades, you know, every week. And usually there are at least a few people there, sometimes more than a few. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people have come through. So when we give zazen instruction, it's usually pretty simple and straightforward and brief. Because our practice is essentially simple and straightforward. The briefest zazen instruction I'm familiar with is five-word zazen instruction that I attribute to Katagiri Roshi, but I'm not sure if he was the one who said it. The five-word zazen instruction is, sit down and shut up.

[17:34]

Very clear. But maybe, you know, shut up might be a little harsh or we can soften it. Sit down and quiet down. Sit down and sit still. Don't move. Even if you move, don't move within moving. We can say that because don't move is not, it's not athletics.

[18:48]

It's not a contest, who can not move the most or the least or whichever it is. It's not an achievement. Don't move refers to the feeling of practice. So it comes from our zazen practice. And the other side that Suzuki Roshi always referenced is our everyday life. We practice in the realm of meditation, and our meditation informs our everyday life. Chopping wood and carrying water. But we don't chop wood and carry water anymore so much. Driving freeways and sending emails. Zazen mind, driving freeway, sending email.

[19:57]

The spirit that I'm talking about, the spirit of not moving, or another way to say it is the spirit of turning toward, dukkha, particularly comes into high relief in circumstances that are upsetting people. that are disturbing to us and that cause us anxiety, that cause us upset, that make us worried and fearful. The other source of inspiration for my talk, Zazen Instruction was one and the other, is the sixth talk of Suzuki Roshi's in the book, Ed Brown's compilation of Suzuki Roshi's talks called Not Always So.

[21:14]

And that talk is called Enjoy Your Life. So I want to read something from it a little bit later. But that's the other aspect of it, is that that's the other unique thing, is that we respond to our anxiety and upset, not in the usual way, I think, called not moving, called sitting still. And out of that response, we are encouraged, that's an encouragement to relaxation, ease, enjoyment.

[22:17]

So as I say, this comes up in a very high-relief way in response to situations that are disturbing to us and that cause us anxiety. And I want to talk first about the nature of anxiety or the origin of anxiety from two perspectives. One, from the perspective of traditional Buddhist teaching, and second, from the perspective of contemporary, modern, Western psychological understanding. As some of you know, I've been studying the relationship between Zen practice and Western psychological understanding for a few decades. And I think in this response thing, this response that I'm talking about, this feeling that I'm talking about, or attitude, this is one of the areas where these two disciplines, these two ways... actually resonate a lot with each other.

[23:28]

They don't look alike. The methodology is different and the way it looks is different. You know, for Zazen we say sit down and shut up, and then in psychotherapy we say sit down and talk, right? So it looks very different. But the motive force underlying it, I think, is very resonant in this particular area. But no firm conclusions. It will take a while to figure out what the relationship is between Zen practice and Western psychological understanding. So we have to check back in about 500 years. That's about how long it takes for Buddhism when it goes someplace new to work with the elements, the local culture.

[24:35]

So even Zen, as we know, is not just Indian Buddhism. Zen is really very much Indian Buddhism and Chinese Daoism and Chinese Confucianism. So it took about 500, 800 years or so from the time Buddhism entered China until you wound up with Zen, which has this kind of melded quality to it. So my list for the West is democracy, feminism, and psychology. And I guess you could throw in... Judeo-Christianity, but I think the first three are as strong as the Judeo-Christianity. But it'll take a while to figure it out.

[25:37]

In Buddhist teaching, the fundamental source of anxiety is our non-existence. We exist and we don't exist. We exist like, you know, ouch, if I pinch myself, I'll feel it. We exist in that way. But we don't exist We don't exist the way we really want to exist, like permanently, like me. We don't exist that way. We exist as the current manifestation of infinite causation.

[26:51]

That's not the same as this way that we would like to exist. It just happened to happen that we exist. It just happened to happen that this moment arises. This moment right here, this one right now, just happened to happen this way. No one knows why. No one can explain it. And it's not likely to happen again, just like Dr. Seuss said. So there are many, many times maybe you've heard this kind of explanation, but we exist in this way of being the current front of infinite causation in the sense that obviously I couldn't be here unless My mother gave birth to me a little more than 60 years ago.

[28:04]

And of course, my father had something to do with this as well, right? So my parents both came over to the United States from Eastern Europe They were Eastern European Jewish immigrants. My mother from Warsaw, my father from a town in Western Russia called, he used to call it Dovny Gibernyah. But I don't really know if such a place ever existed. That's what he called it, Dovny Gibernyah. So, no mom... No Steve Weintraub. No mom, no dad, no Steve Weintraub. No, what did I just say? No Warsaw, no Steve Weintraub.

[29:15]

When they moved to the United States, they didn't know each other at all. But they both lived on the Lower East Side in New York City. My dad didn't have much education. I think he left. I don't know if he went to high school at all. But anyway, he started working right away. And he was working with some relative. I don't think it was his uncle. It was some relative in a fish market. He would sell fish for this relative. And my mom, her mom sent her to buy fish at the fish market. food. That was where they met. Over dead fish. An inauspicious beginning, you might think.

[30:20]

Anyway, I am eternally grateful to those dead fish. No dead fish, no Steve Weintraub. There's a koan that is referred to by Dogen in the Tenzo Kyokun, where someone says, what is the Buddha way? And the answer is three kin. I think that means like pounds or something like that. Three kin of flax. Three kin of flax or three kin of sesame seeds. That's the koan. So similarly, a thousand years from now, if we manage as a species to last that long, some question about that. But similarly, a thousand years from now, someone will say, what is the Buddha way? And the answer will be five pounds of dead fish.

[31:24]

It's the same thing. Because without the five pounds of dead fish, I don't know if it was five pounds. I made that up. I was thinking it was about 1935. Five pounds of dead fish on the Lower East Side in 1935. It's very, very, very specific. However, there's billions and [...] countless innumerable similar sorts of things. that create this moment that wind up with you here listening to me, speaking English, et cetera, [...] et cetera. An infinite number of moments, an infinite number, an infinite causation that creates this situation that we call now. Creates this situation that we call Steve Weintraub, Joe, Mary, Barbara. So in the Buddhist teaching, the Buddhist teaching says this is the ultimate truth of our existence.

[32:42]

There isn't any existence. The ultimate existence is just that. Just that all of these infinite forces come together and pop, you have the current moment. And pop, pop, you have the next moment, then the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Completely inexplicable and completely beyond Our ability to understand and conceptualize. Inconceivable. So they have a name for this. And the teaching again. So there's called the teaching of the two truths. One truth is conventional truth. Which is conventional. That is, I'm me and I'm not you. And we're here and we're not there. It's big and it's not small and all of those sorts of discriminations and specifics.

[33:45]

In Sanskrit, this is ne-yarta, conventional truth. The ultimate truth is called, is ni-tarta in Sanskrit. The ultimate truth is, That there isn't a me and a you and a this and a that and a tall and a small and a so on and so forth. There's just whoop! Infinite causation and its current manifestation. So, why... So this is interesting philosophy. Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn. So why do we care about this philosophical thing? We don't care so much. Infinite, yeah, tell me about it, etc. We don't care. What catches our attention, however, what we really notice is old age

[34:56]

sickness and death. Oh yeah, tell me about that. I want to hear about that. That's something we're very, very attentive to. We don't like it. We're mostly attentive to it. It gets negative attention. Oh, I got a pain here. I got this is wrong. That's wrong. I don't feel good. And it's so mysterious, right? Because we always say, you know, I feel exactly the same as I did 20 years ago. Inside, right? When you're 20, when you're 60, when you're 90, say, well, I'm exactly, I feel the same. Why is it that everything is breaking down so much, you know? What's going on here? Old age, sickness and death are the prominent harbingers, the way that we know about non-existence, the way Old age sickness and death is what tells us that it just happened to happen and it just happened to happen this way now.

[36:03]

And it ain't going to happen this way in a minute, even in a second. If you take infinite causation and you put everything together, you get Steve Weintraub, Blanche Hartman, Paul Haller, you get stuff. Then you throw in a few other little things. called all day sickness and death and you get no Steve Weintraub, no Blanche Hartman, no Paul Heller, no you, no me, no this, no that, no big, no small. We don't like this. And it causes us anxiety. It's a disturbing fact. It's a disturbing... It's a piece of information that comes our way. It's a dukkha. Dukkha, the first noble truth, is the noble truth of dukkha.

[37:08]

Usually translated as suffering, but I don't think suffering is such a good translation. Unsatisfactory maybe is better translation. It refers, I've mentioned this before, Etymologically, it refers, dukkha refers to when the axle of the, you know, gizmo, whatever it is, the wheel, the cart, when the axle is not in the center, you know, the wheel has a center and if the axle is in the center, everything rolls along. Dukkha is when the hole in the wheel is not in the center. So the axle is off kilter. You get the picture? What that's like? And things don't go smoothly. They don't go the way we expect them to. They don't go the way we want them to. And that's the formula. Birth is dukkha. Old age, sickness and death are dukkha.

[38:11]

It's a wonderful comprehensive formula. Being associated with people and things that you don't like is dukkha. Being separated from people and things you do like, love, want, care for is dukkha. Not to be able to get what you want is dukkha. is unsatisfactory, doesn't go smoothly. This dukkha, this old age sickness and death comes directly from, is sponsored by, our non-existence.

[39:14]

Just like Gillette, right? It's the sponsor, the official sponsor. Non-existence is the official sponsor of old age, sickness and death. They come knocking on our door as representatives. Is that what I'm saying there? Does that kind of get the idea? Oh, here's an interesting little side note, which I thought would be important to mention.

[40:17]

For those of you who are into it a little bit, in a certain way, part of the teaching of the two truths, of the conventional truth and the ultimate truth is they are equal. The two truths are equal. The reason I mention that is because Zen students sometimes tend to favor the ultimate truth. They say, let's not worry about all this conventional stuff. We're going to really get the ultimate, the final truth. That's what we want to know. We want to base our lives on the ultimate truth, not conventional truth. This is understandable. But it's that true. The thing is that if you prefer the ultimate truth, that's in the conventional world.

[41:20]

From the ultimate perspective, There's nothing so great about ultimate, you know? There's no difference between the ultimate and the conventional, between measurement and no measurement, discrimination and no discrimination. There's no discrimination between those. So if we're starting to make discrimination and talk about how, hey, let's get into the ultimate world here and remind this conventional, you know, world that's just like a shadow, like a cloud, like a bubble. We want something real solid, the ultimate truth. That's totally in the conventional world. From the ultimate perspective, the ultimate truth and the conventional truth are equal. That's why in Zen practice, in our practice, our Soda way, we don't diss the world. The world is...

[42:25]

We include the world completely. We love the world. This is not a practice where you're trying to get away from the world. That's part of this spirit that I'm talking about. It's turning toward things, not turning away. So just briefly speaking, I'll say something from a Western psychological perspective. In the Western psychological world, as some of you know, I think quite a bit about it. Just like in religion, you know, there are all of these sects and they're fighting each other and heresies. And this one is no good. And that one is it's humorous if you read the history of this stuff. So back in the 1940s, the main thing was a Freudian understanding.

[43:31]

And there was a psychoanalyst named John Bowlby, his name was, and he came up with this very different understanding. I'm just kind of giving you a little taste of this. It's much more complicated than this. But basically, in the classical Freudian understanding, Freud's understanding, what drives our activity most fundamentally is our sexual drive. And then later he added aggression. Sex and aggression is really what motors us through life, you know, with various twists and turns. What Bowlby... realized or decided or figured out was that actually what's much more important than that is our attachment to other people. Our relationship with other people. That that's what's actually completely central to the way we develop as human beings.

[44:38]

He was considered a heretic, you know. If King Derwin, if Freud was King Derwin, he would have cut off his head, you know, is that kind of a thing. But anyway, so he was kicked out of the psychoanalytic societies, et cetera, and so on like that. But there's a whole school of thought that has followed from Bowlby that is about our attachment life. And I'll just mention in passing, I know in Zen... It's supposed to be non-attachment. I've heard of this, you know, cutting off all attachments. But I think there's a big misunderstanding what's being referred to there. That has to do with this thing of not rejecting the world, but embracing the world. So, Bowlby basically, the fundamental thing that he said was, the most important thing to us is our attachments. That's what really shapes our development during our formative years as newborns and infants and children, which kind of makes sense if you think about it.

[45:48]

So as things progressed, there were these various other people who made contributions. One of the initial things that came out of this attachment idea... the centrality of it and then also a fundamental division, the fundamental kind of split is between secure attachment and insecure attachment. Secure attachment comes from contingent response. Contingent response is when I call out, I say something, I gesture something, I communicate something. You, this is contingent, you hear it, you take it in and process it, and you respond appropriately.

[46:59]

So when the baby goes like this, right? A contingent response from mom or dad or whoever is, oh, you want a hug. Come here, sweetheart. You know, big hug. That's contingent. But if the baby goes like that and mom is... depressed or preoccupied or putting on her makeup and thinks that's more important or just got beat up by her husband, your dad, and is recovering from that or so on and so forth, she may not even notice that you've got your arms out. And if she does, she may say, stop bothering me.

[48:05]

This is non-contingent response. So in this understanding of attachment theory, non-contingent response creates insecure attachment. We become insecure. We're frightened. And again, if we just think about it, it makes a lot of sense. It's like, I'm communicating something, and then... And then what I get back is just totally doesn't match my communication. So I then come to the conclusion, well, I must have done it wrong or the world isn't a place that responds. And therefore it's scary. And therefore I better really protect myself. You see how that works? Non-contingent response creates an insecure attachment. Insecure attachment we experience as anxiety.

[49:11]

And other ways too. That's one of the main ways we experience it. So. When we feel. feel this anxiety, whether it be from our fundamental non-existence, the arrival and incursion of old age, sickness and death, or whether it's from some deep confusion about our relationship to other people or the world, we respond So I made a list of three ways that we respond. Fundamentalism, denial, and compulsive activity.

[50:20]

So we respond with fundamentalism. The current popular fundamentalisms are Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. I guess there's Jewish fundamentalism. But anything is fundamentalism. Buddhist fundamentalism, scientific fundamentalism. The quality of fundamentalism is, I don't have to worry because I know exactly the way things are. That's fundamentalism, right? I know what's right, what's wrong. Who's on the good side? Who's the bad side? Who does the right? I know what are good things to do and bad things to do. I know everything there is to know. Therefore I don't have to worry whatsoever. Me? Anxious? No. No need to be anxious. Because I am sure. I am convinced. I am convicted. I am a convict. Some fundamental idea that I know is true and is impervious to error.

[51:30]

There's no way that this could be wrong. Therefore, it's right. Therefore, I don't have to worry about anything. Just have to stay on the side that's the right side. This is a very common way. Or we try to deny our non-existence, that source of our anxiety, and say, well, no, I don't get old. I don't get sick. See? See? Yeah, I just nip. What is that? Nip and tuck, you know? Botox? Collagen? I went on a bike trip with my son a few, back in August, a month or so ago. And he's 21. Dave. And I just got the pictures back from it. We took some pictures, you know. So there's a picture, you know.

[52:33]

There's two guys, you know, wearing those yellow vests, you know, Scream Yellow. That's the name of the color of the vests, you know. And one of them is a young guy and one of them is an old guy. Who is that old guy? Who is that guy? It's so funny. How come I'm not that guy? He's 21. He's a mountain climber. He's a rock climber. He's got a real... He's a real... With a good sense of humor. He and his sister are the people who he read. The 500th Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins II.

[53:33]

So we try to deny our old age, our sickness. We take pills or whatever. Which is a refusal to the ultimate truth, which is, you know, as they say, in the blink of an eye, we won't be anymore. Infinite causation will create something else that we won't be able to identify in a conventional way as me who I am now. Third response to our anxiety is our compulsive activity.

[54:46]

So we have this hole of our anxiety, this black hole, this black pit. And then we're just shoveling, shoveling stuff into it. Food, throwing up, achievements. I was talking with somebody the other day and they said, I'm an achievement junkie. It's a compulsive need to achieve success. Shovel, shovel, shovel. Sexual... You know, conquests, shovel, shovel, shovel. Cut, cut myself. So these are very difficult to deal with. All of these responses naturally come forward.

[55:48]

They're all very understandable responses to this unsureness. that we feel, to this insecurity that we feel, to the anxiety that we feel. And we don't know any other way. So practice, Zen practice, this practice, offers us some other way. So let me say just a few things about that. So what is it that it... How do we talk about what it is that it offers us? So the first way is what it's not. Don't do those things. Don't, as much as we can, as much as we can in the sangha of whatever sangha we participate in, encourage ourselves and others to not become fundamentalists, not get stuck, not be fooled by things, not get stuck on some idea, and not act compulsively.

[56:52]

Not endlessly try to shovel up some hole that can't finally be filled. And not deny the way things are. If we do that, then naturally, this is a very good first step. And it's a lot of what practice is. That's why we say sit still. Sit still means don't be compulsive. Not exactly don't. It's more like encouragement toward that direction. That's what sit still means. That's what don't move means. So that's one way to say it. The other way to say it is, this is a long Sanskrit phrase coming up here, anu palabdi dharma kashanti.

[58:05]

Anu means not, palabdi means production or conception. Dharma, things, kashanti, patience, the second, third thing. of the six paramitas. Not conception, things, patience. So what Robert Thurman, in a very beautiful poetic way, how he translates that in a footnote at the end of his translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra is, the intuitive tolerance for the inconceivability of all things. Intuitive tolerance, that's the kashanti part. For the inconceivability, that's the anupalati part of all things, the dharma part. The intuitive tolerance for the inconceivability of all things.

[59:09]

Inconceivability is a synonym for infinite causation, for ultimate truth, for shunyata, emptiness. Or in the story, why did it happen? We can't say why it happened. It just happened to happen. The intuitive tolerance. So part of our practice is, so we have an intuitive. That means we are capable of doing it. We've got this in us. Intuitive tolerance means our practice is we encourage this tolerance. We encourage the tolerance of inconceivability. We encourage our tolerance for our own old age sickness and death, the harbingers of non-existence. That's the spirit of don't move.

[60:17]

So I'm going to just conclude getting close by talking about the results. This is going to be good for the magazine article. The good results of practice. This is what you get if you practice. So there's two results that I'll talk about. One is love. You get that. So what I mean is, joking aside, what I mean is that back to the baby with the arms out. If the mom is secure, is not anxious, then she has room for the baby. Then she says, oh yeah, come here sweetheart. That's the way love works. Love is when we have room for the other person.

[61:39]

Because we're not so worried about ourselves. Because we're not so anxious about our own fate. This is non-attachment. That's what non-attachment, I think, refers to. Not some separation from the world. Not some divorcing from people and things. We like people and things. We love them. And we make room for them. As a result of practice, we become stable and practice encourages us toward stability and room so that we're not so worried about this one over here, which means there's lots of room for those over there, for each of us. So this was, I realized, This is what they mean when they say wisdom and compassion are the two wings of Buddhist practice, the bird of Buddhist practice.

[62:46]

This is what they mean because if you have the wisdom, the intuitive, the wisdom which is the intuitive tolerance for the inconceivability of all things, if you fan that flame and develop that sense of things, then what it looks like is compassion. It looks like Let me take care of you. What's the problem? Let's go. It looks that way. So that's one result of practice is love. And the other result is then we also get to enjoy things. We enjoy our life. So here's Suzuki Roshi talking about enjoying our life. Page 27.

[63:50]

Things change. For the usual person, this is very discouraging. Now he's about to see, he's talking about the first noble truth, dukkha, discouraging. unsatisfactory. You cannot rely on anything. You cannot have anything. And you will see what you don't want to see. You will meet someone you don't like. If you want to do something, you may find that it is impossible. This is his own little, you know, restatement. of the formula. It's right there. So you will be discouraged by the way things are going. This is our usual way. Then, as a Buddhist, but as a Buddhist, you are changing the foundation of your life.

[64:54]

He says Buddhist, but he means as a practitioner. We don't have to call it Buddhism. You could call it Uncle Fred, it doesn't matter what you call it. By this way you are changing the foundation of your life. That things change is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. When you change your understanding and your way of living by virtue of zazen, by virtue of sitting still, by virtue of not moving, the spirit of not moving, the intuitive tolerance of not moving, when you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment. The evanescence of things, he used to like that word evanescence, a very long English word for a Japanese person to say, I'll tell you. The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. So the thing that was the problem before, we didn't like it, things changed, this is now the source of our enjoyment.

[66:02]

Because, hey, here it is. And here it is again and again and again. The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life. When you practice in this way, your life becomes stable and meaningful. When you turn toward the things that we don't like and tolerate them and digest them, then our life becomes stable and meaningful. So the point is to change your understanding of life and to practice with the right understanding. That's the point, all right. Oh, this talk was given the day after the first moon landing. And he's very funny in this talk because he says, oh, someone landed on the moon yesterday. It's a great accomplishment, you know, but I don't think it's such a great accomplishment. It's okay.

[67:04]

It's not such a big deal. He goes on and on about that. It's wonderful. To arrive on the moon may be a great historical event. But if we don't change our understanding of life, it won't have much meaning or make much sense. It doesn't matter. A number of times in that talk he says, don't go hopping around the universe. Go hopping around the universe. It looks like a big deal. but it means nothing. We need to have a deeper understanding of life. The only way is to enjoy your life. Even though you are practicing zazen, counting your breath like a snail, you can enjoy your life perhaps even more than taking a trip to the moon. That is why we practice Zazen.

[68:04]

The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by things. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[68:51]

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