This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. A skeptic, as he was called, went to the Buddha, greeted him and said, Lord Buddha... my theory and view is this. I have no liking for any theories or views. The Buddha replied, dear sir, this view of yours, I have no liking for views. Have you no liking for that as well? So, I imagine that all of you who come here on Sunday, or most of you anyway, are not planning to leave your lives and come and live in our Zen training program.

[01:09]

At the same time, a lot of you tell me that that's exactly what you'd like to do. You'd like to go to the monastery, leave your busy lives, and finally get some rest. So first of all, this morning, I want to disillusion you just a little bit about life in the monastery. And it's not because we don't love it here or are not grateful that we came, you know, because I think we are and we do. But it's because I'm not so sure that our life here is that different from your own. My therapist used to say to me over and over again, Human first. Recently there was a class of, I think there were fourth graders who came here to visit Green Gulch and they had a whole lot of questions that they were prepared to ask about our life here.

[02:16]

And they put them on these little three by five cards which were sent ahead so that I could prepare. And as a result I thought, I think in our local culture there's some very strange ideas about the black rogue people and what we do in this valley. So here's the questions that the kids, some of them, asked. Have you ever eaten a cheeseburger? Have you ever gone to the movies? Are you allowed to sleep? My favorite one of all, do you have any friends? Well, I do have a friend, actually, and his name is Cleve. And Cleve is a new friend and a colleague, and he lives over the hill, where I think most of you are from.

[03:20]

The place that we call, kind of a generic term, non-residential. And I think non-residential is really just a euphemism for outsiders or others, as clever as we think we are. So in Zen, the outsider, the other, is called the guest. And this is a very important relationship that we are called on to study between the guest and the host. You know, who's who? What are we thinking? So anyway, Cleve and I often chat and we laugh and we tell jokes and we talk about important things like health insurance and education for preschoolers, things like that. And then he'll say to me, Phu, you keep upsetting all of my ideas about a Zen Buddhist priestess and how she should behave.

[04:24]

And of course I don't know what he thinks. about Zen priestesses or about Buddhist practice at all. I have no idea. But I'm beginning to have a good guess about what it might be. What I think that Cleve and maybe these kids might imagine is that those of us here on the farm, on this side of the hill, are abiding in some kind of peaceful trance. You notice that the residents are laughing. So this altered state or meditative trance has some beautiful names in Sanskrit, which is an ancient language of India. Names like samadhi, meaning one-pointed concentration. There's another word shamatha, which means tranquility.

[05:28]

And yet another word called jnana, which is a sustained samadhi, being in a meditative trance for quite a while. So the word jnana is also the base of two words maybe you are familiar with. One is the Chinese word chang and the Japanese word zen. So it's not an accident, you might imagine, that that's what we're doing down here. And I think it's true that most of us would like to spend our entire day in samadhi. Kind of like some of you might wish to live in Hawaii. I think the thing about Hawaii that I recall is the smell. There's some nodding. You get off the plane and it's just like it grabs you and pulls you out. This sweet perfume. Kind of like a promise, not yet.

[06:31]

of paradise. But unfortunately, I think, again, like most of you, we have to go to work. We have to answer emails and telephone calls, and we have to fix the tractor and water the vegetables and talk to each other. Again, the residents laughed. And, of course, we take care of our guests. It's a big part of what we do. And on top of that, there are lots of things that we do that we don't have to do, but that we like to do. As I told the fourth graders, like go to the movies, eat dinner out. Maybe not cheeseburgers, but other things. And we visit our friends, and we sleep. We do sleep, although not very long.

[07:32]

So I think that perhaps here at Green Gulch we might be hiding some simple truths about our simple lives. Maybe not intentionally, but maybe it's good if we tell you what's really so. I even imagined inviting, of course not all of you, but some of you to a senior staff meeting or a practice committee meeting, because I think you would feel right at home. We argue. Sometimes we hold tightly to views. And all the while, there's a plate of cookies in the middle of the table to fuel us on. We are humans first. Several years ago, when I was... director and leading some of these meetings I had written in large letters on top of the agenda before each meeting I wrote they are not arguing with you they are complimenting as in completing what you just said they are complimenting what you just said because what I had noticed is that whatever I said

[08:55]

you know, the response was almost a perfect fit as the opposite. Sometimes partial, but sometimes complete. And I found that this same dynamic was also working in my home with my partner and with my daughter. Different. So this phrase... they are not arguing with you, they are complimenting you, was very helpful to me, actually, in truth. In order to face my own tendency to continue arguing, you know, on and on and on. My partner and I used to talk about it, like, you know, how you choose teams in baseball. Only that that would never end, you know. And I think we have that tendency to try to get across the goal line with, I was right, you know? Yes.

[09:56]

The only problem is, if you look back, both teams are laying all over the ground behind you. If somebody wins, a lot of people lose. So for the sake of all of us in our likeness as human beings, the first thing I want to talk about today is how the Buddha understood argumentation and what we as his students, both residents and non-residents alike, might learn from what he said and how we might react and perhaps take some of this advice to heart. So one of the things he taught is that the way we find new things, learn new things, is through contrast, through opposition. Without contrast, nothing whatsoever would appear. No light without dark. No joy without sorrow. And there would be no need to say so.

[11:00]

You know, language would vanish. Which, right now, here in this room, is not the case. You know, there are contrasts. Lights and shadows. Sound and silence. The sensation of your bodies on the cushions or on the chairs and your cold feet on the floor. I sat in those chairs a couple of times and I'm really sorry. I'm not kidding. I know what you're going through right now. So I really want you to know that it's fine if you ever come back that you can bring slippers. or warm socks or anything else you like to keep your feet warm. I think it was Gregory Bateson who once said that if we want to look for other life forms in the universe, first we must look for differences. Differences.

[12:02]

So the biggest difference of all for the purposes of Buddhist study is this difference in our point of view. And right now, My point of view is I'm sitting over here and all of you are over there. But if I think about it, I can imagine that for each of you, it looks quite different. You know, depending on the angle of where you're sitting or whether you're in the back or here in the front, your eyesight, who's sitting in front of you, But at the same time, those differences are unimaginable to me. So I want to share with you a very famous parable from both the Jain and the Buddhist tradition, which I'm imagining you probably have heard, but maybe not from the source.

[13:08]

It's called The Blind Man and the Elephant. So a number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, Sir, there are living here in Savati many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite and eternal, and others saying that it is finite and not eternal, some saying that the soul dies with the body, and others that it lives on forever, and so forth. What, sir, would you say concerning them? The Buddha answered, Once upon a time, there was a certain Raja who called to his servant and said, Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savati who were born blind and show them an elephant. Very good, sire, replied the servant, and he did as he was told.

[14:11]

He said to the blind men assembled there, here is an elephant. And to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another a trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant. When the blind men had felt the elephant, the Raja went to each of them and said to each, well, blind man, Have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant? Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, Sire, an elephant is like a pot. And the men who had observed the ear replied, An elephant is like a winnowing basket. Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a plowshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plow. Others said the body was a granary. the foot a pillar, the back a mortar, the tail a pestle, and the tuft of the tail a brush.

[15:17]

Then they began to quarrel, shouting, yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is, no it isn't, the elephant is not that, oh yes it is like that, and so on until they came to blows over the matter. Brethren, the Raja was delighted with this scene. Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views, blind and unseeing. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus. Then the exalted one rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift. Oh, how they cling and wrangle some who claim for preacher and monk the honored name. For coiling each to his view they cling. Such folks see only one side of a thing. So although I doubt we will ever agree on the nature of reality, you know, in this parable of the elephant, I think we do agree that each of us is in contact with reality.

[16:35]

In fact, at this very moment. And this connection that's being formed between ourselves and reality is taking place, as we've learned, by a complex maneuver of our sensory organs and consciousness. Have you appreciated your neurons today? I was talking to mine recently, saying, stop it. Stop twining that nonsense. I was thinking some negative thoughts about somebody. Just stop it. You can feel them. Very determined. So at the moment, our primary senses, for yours, perhaps, are hearing and seeing. For the blind man, it was touch. I have a sister.

[17:38]

Her name is Janice, and she was born almost completely blind and then was blind by the age of four. She's now in her 60s, has 12 children, and is doing very well. Anyway, yeah, she's interesting. It's so many levels. But I like to watch her make coffee because... Basically, her hands and her body and her ears are what I think of as seeing her eyes. You know, she's got her thumb at the lip of the cup while she's pouring very hot coffee. She stops just before it hits the top. You know, very fast. She moves very fast. And then she knows where everything is because it's all put where she has placed it. And it'll be there when she goes after it. And then she brings the coffee and sets it right down where she thinks I was sitting. If I move, I used to do this when I was a kid. And she'd be talking to a spot where I used to be.

[18:43]

Anyway, I don't do that anymore. Anyway, I asked her one time when I was young, is it dark being blind? And she said, no, it's not dark. She said, imagine looking at the world with your feet. So this connection between our imagined self, me, and reality, which is everything else, is called Contact on the Wheel of Birth and Death, a teaching that was given by the Buddha in order to help us understand why we suffer, how we suffer, why maybe not, but how, how we suffer. So step number one of suffering is called ignorance and has to do with our believing that what we are seeing is true. You know, that I'm over here and you're over there is true. Seeing is believing. And if I think you're a tuft, then you're a tuft.

[19:48]

And if I think you're a pot, you're a pot. And there is no way you can argue me out of it. So the second big step on the pathway to suffering has to do with how we feel at the moment of contact. Feelings, as we know, can go either way. We can like what we've touched or not. The lady or the tiger. But at first we're not quite sure, so I think a lot of the time we're just a little bit anxious. I like the word fraught, fraught. Every moment is somewhat fraught with the potential, not knowing which way to move, toward or away. We have a young resident.

[20:52]

His name is Frank. I love telling Frank stories. Anyway, Frank, he's two and a half, and for quite a while he was... If you've met Mac, there is nothing to fear. He's a service dog that lives in my house, and he's very gentle. But he's about the same size as Frank, eye to eye. So when I would be walking with Mac, Frank would say, Foo, please put Mac back in the house. He makes me just a little bit anxious. He's a little precocious this kid anyway. A little bit anxious. I don't think he's afraid of Mac anymore. He's getting taller. So I think it's a good thing to remind ourselves now and again that we see the world as if we're at the center of it. You know, self-centered. We're self-centered.

[21:56]

And there's no fault in that. It's just that there are consequences. And I think we've all seen and heard and know about the consequences because they fill the pages of the newspaper every single day. Warfare and rape and theft and toxins, lies. This is what the self does to the other. And all the while, the Raja is delighted with the scene. You know, I've met some people like that who kind of enjoy crossing the goal line ahead of everyone else, you know, like more than anything. There's a film that we watched during the practice period called The Queen of Versailles. It's a very sad film. It's about this Raja, a billionaire in Florida that literally has a throne.

[23:01]

And then he loses everything. And I think it's a good thing for us to see what the extremes of this behavior or this way of looking at the world, how it can become that devastating, that dream when it collapses. So in my view, this is why the Buddha directed us toward this spot at the center of the universe, the self-center, to look there, start there. In Zen we say, turn the light around. What are you thinking? How are you moving? What are you doing? What are you saying? What are you about to say? Can you wait before you let the arrow fly? Just wait a minute. Just pause. Do you really want to say that? Maybe not. We just need a little more space sometimes to reconsider our words, our gestures, our feelings, talking to our neurons.

[24:14]

I heard about this training they do for violent offenders, mostly men, I'm sorry, but it's true, who beat women. they try to train them around this behavior, and the men will say, well, I don't have any control. I just, you know, I just start hitting on her. And then the trainer says, well, did you kill her? And the person says, no, I wouldn't do that. He said, well, then you have control. So we have to find that place where we have control. Where can we stop before we let the arrow fly? We all have that control. If we don't, probably we won't get to stay among other humans for very long and enjoy our freedom. I spent a little time with some men over in San Quentin. I was in a circle of people who had, each of them had murdered someone, about 25 men.

[25:26]

I felt totally safe. They were very kind, mostly older men, who had done the killing that they had done when they were teenagers. And now they were growing old and sanguine. And they each introduced themselves by their names and by the name of the person they had killed. And then they spoke to each other. They were very polite, very wise. So I think as far as I can tell, the Buddha offered one thing only, a wise and kind-hearted assessment of all of us. And he based this assessment on having taken a very careful inventory of himself, of all of his parts, of all of his feelings, of all of his thoughts. He really knew himself well. and he knew what his place in the world was meant to be.

[26:31]

You know, he was born a prince, and he was going to be the king, and he had been trained as a warrior. But when he saw that the entire strength of his self-centered identity had no basis whatsoever, he renounced self-clinging, he put down his sword, and he resided to the end of his days in the realms of serenity and peace. And yet, despite his own great temptation to spend the rest of his life in Hawaii, he chose instead to stay in places like New York and San Francisco with people like us, trying the best he could to teach the way of peace, the way of nonviolence, to help us to overcome our inherent tendency to argue and to fight. So I would propose that through this very same careful study, we can all see how argumentation arises out of our self-centered view, of our point of view, which is just not complete.

[27:46]

We need to complement. We need to complement each other. Always. It's the only way we'll ever know is together what's true, what's so. When Dikanaka, the skeptic, as he was called, went to the Buddha, greeted him and said, Lord Buddha, my theory and view is this. I have no liking for any theories or views. The Buddha replied, Dear sir, this view of yours, I have no liking for views. Have you no liking for that as well? And then the Buddha taught, If I insist that only this is true and everything else is wrong, then I will clash with others. And when there is a clash, there are disputes. When there are disputes, there are quarrels. When there are quarrels, there is harm. When one sees that, he or she abandons their views without clinging to some other. And with that, one's heart is liberated from the darkening poisons caused by clinging.

[28:53]

So thank you very much. I hope you all have a very nice day. either side of the hill. And please let's remember that this hill belongs to all of us. 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. 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.

[29:37]

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