Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Green Gulch. I am astonished at the number of people here today. And it's wonderful to have you here, to feel your energy. Actually, I take that little moment to get in touch with my imaginary playmate, your Dharma mate, that has, in the past, whispered into my ear what to say, what is coming up. There was a time where I would prepare myself with all sorts of books and quotations and material to be sure that I had something to present to you. But as of that is to say, as of the last few, well, the last couple of years in particular, I have decided that this is not a class.

[01:14]

This is supposedly a Dharma talk, and a Dharma talk is that which arises spontaneously between the speaker and the audience or the audience. people who come to hear. And so I do rely on that, but I have told people in the past that the metaphor for this is the swimming pool that one runs toward blindly and leaps. And the result will either be splash or splat. We don't know. I don't know. The fact is, even if there is nothing to say, and actually there isn't anything new to say, but since we have to say something, it's all right if we fall into... Can you hear me back there? Yeah.

[02:16]

We can fall into silence, and in that silence, what is most articulate in our lives can often come forward. This week... I am privileged to be part of a welcoming, not committee, but welcoming a group of people that come every year for our annual holiday retreat. This year we have almost 30 people that are here. They're sitting amongst us today. They started the day before yesterday, Christmas, day after Christmas, and they will stay here until through the Christmas, New Year's Eve, and our celebration of sitting that evening and other forms that we practiced. And on Christmas, New Year's morning, they will leave, and we will then go into our own

[03:23]

little holiday here, three days in which the doors are closed and we can kind of hang loose for a while before the next round of practice begins around the fifth of the new year. And it's always an important time of the year, I think, because it is the dark of the year, it is that time in which the light is now about to return and many of the traditional rituals that recognize that, such as Christmas, Hanukkah, and others, the return of the light, important time, difficult time for people, actually, not having the light in our lives. We can imagine, maybe we can imagine what it must have been for our forebearers before the dawn of recorded history to have in the northern hemispheres, Gone through this time in which the sun seems to disappear, everything gets cold, everything begins to die, and then it comes back.

[04:27]

The light returns. So this whole question of the light in our lives, you see, the enlightenment, the lighting up, the bringing back of the warmth, and so on, is very important to us. It's part of our, I think we're hardwired in a sense for that. One of the things I talked about yesterday in my class with this group of fine people over here has something to do with desire, because of the news, of course, because of the plundering, you might say, of our public coffers and so on, and the fact that our whole economic situation is in jeopardy for many people. There's a lot of stress in the air and so on. I thought it might be worthwhile to bring up the question of desire, particularly as it looked at in the Buddha Dharma. But what is it, you see, that we are, what are we trying to pull into our territory that will finally, ultimately make us feel secure?

[05:37]

And I thought it was a worthwhile subject and topic to pursue. And so I may talk about that this morning. It occurred to me, as a matter of fact, as we were having that little pause there of a story told by, do you remember Shirley Temple? Almost everybody remembers Shirley Temple. She was a child star of the 30s. Little Miss Cutie danced and... entertained and was big in the movie. International figure, in fact. Very, very important. Shirley Temple has been quoted as saying, I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to the department store to see him and he asked me for my autograph. Interesting from a couple

[06:45]

a couple of points of view. One point of view looking at that story is here is a person dressed up with a phony beard and so on, presenting himself as this archetypal figure of beneficence, of giving, of universal beneficence. And here is a little girl who is coming as just a child, not in the role that she is famed for, who wants something. It's Christmas time after all. She wants a gift. And she suddenly realizes that Santa Claus wants something from her. And it strikes me, as I thought of this story, it's coming up in my mind, that this is a kind of metaphor for what we're always doing to some extent. We're looking for our Santa Claus, somebody's lap that we can crawl up on, in a sense, some teacher, some teaching, who will give us something. that will make us feel secure and comfortable in the world.

[07:47]

And who wants something back, actually, from us, which in a sense is our identity. And I'll come back to that in a minute. Another story, vis-a-vis this one I'm telling you, please bear with me on this, is what I call the beachcomber story. And this is the story of a person who's washed up on a beach in rags, hasn't eaten, is all alone, bereft of all the comforts and securities of the world, and is walking along in a kind of daze when, lo and behold, out of the surf, there emerges this beautiful, gorgeous woman, very tight bathing suit, six feet tall, the very essence, the very quintessence of feminine beauty and compassion.

[08:53]

And he stops and he blinks his eyes, and she's looking at him with this huge smile. And she says, hi, how are you doing? And he said, what do you mean, how am I doing? Look at me, I'm miserable, I'm in rags, I'm starving, I'm having a horrible time. She said, oh, you poor thing. Well, is there anything you'd like? Well, now, of course, he thinks I'm hallucinating here. I'm in some kind of dream world, but why not ask for something and just see what happens? She said, go ahead, ask me. There must be something you want. He said, yeah, there is. Well, what is it? Well, I'd love a ham sandwich. Oh, you want something to eat? Yeah, well, yes, I'd love a ham sandwich. He doesn't think he's going to get it, but... out of the air, nice wrapped hand sandwich, just the kind you might get at the deli, hands it to him, he opens it, eats, scarfs it down.

[09:55]

It feels really good. It feels like it's something actually happening to him. He feels new strength coming into his body and so on. He's wondering how powerful this hallucination can be. And she's still there. She's still smiling. And she said, well, now you've had something to eat. Isn't there something else you want? He said, no, no. He said, I couldn't ask. No, no, no, no, no. She said, go ahead. Ask me. He said, well, you wouldn't have a beer, honey, would you? You want a beer? What kind? He said, well, I like Lohenbrow. Bottle of Lohenbrow and a glass and pours it an ice-cold drink and drinks it down. And it seems real. It feels, beginning to really feel human again, quite marvelous. Quite fulfilled. And he opens his eyes and lo and behold, she's still there. She says, now you've had something to eat. You've had something to drink. What else would you like?

[10:57]

He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I couldn't ask for anything. No, no. She said, I'm here to serve you. What do you want? Would you have a cigar? A cigar. gets a cigar, hands it to him, a lighter, lights the cigar and he begins to smoke it. Now he's really feeling at home, back in the world. He's got all these comforts and all of his essential needs, almost, are being met. And she's looking at him and she's saying, well, now you've had something to eat and something to drink and something to smoke, now what else would you like? He said, oh. I can't ask you. And she said, now she gets a little bit exasperated. And she says, what kind of handicap do you have anyway? And he said, oh, my God, don't tell me you have golf clubs, too. Well, you can see, I mean, we are.

[12:10]

I love this story because aside from this kind of shaggy dog aspect of the switch at the end, there's something very real and very human about this story. Once we get most of our sensual needs met, we begin to look around for those things that entertain us, that fill us up, the games of life that we play. And in these stories, the two stories I just mentioned, there's something that we want, you see, and there's something that the world is going to give us that is going to finally fulfill us in some ultimate way. Now, of course, we have to eat and we have to drink. We need shelter. We do need, most of us, human companionship. There's no question about that. But there's the hunger in the universe, the hunger that we feel, the dissatisfaction that we feel of never getting quite fulfilled in some way, motivates us to search for some ultimate satisfaction in our life, you see.

[13:21]

Something that will ultimately fulfill a deep need, a sense of a hole in ourselves. something to plug that hole, something to fill that up. And this motivates us to search, to look for that which we will, that of which we feel bereft, that of which we feel we have lost in our life. In Buddhism, in the Buddha Dharma, particularly the early Buddhist canon, there is the word, the Pali word in the Pali canon, it's called Tana. In Sanskrit, it is Trishna, which is literally thirst. It is unslakeable, unquenchable thirst. And it is said that there are three kinds of thirst that drive human beings toward the grasping quality of pulling the world out.

[14:29]

closer and closer to ourselves to satisfy this thirst. The first is called, I think it's called in Pali, I think it is called Kama. Kama is sensual, the sensual. Kama Tana, the desire for sense fulfillments. Now, as I'm saying this, please don't think that I'm negating the importance of sensual fulfillment. I'm not. or that desire is not important, that is not the point of this. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for desire. But it's a question while studying and looking at it, both in the traditions that talk about this and in our own psyche in life, and how we deal with this problem in our world, in our personal world. So the first one is essential desire of fulfillment. Kamatana, or Kamatrishna. The second one is called bhava-tana, pava-tana, bhava-thirst.

[15:39]

The thirst for existence, the thirst for experience, the thirst for relationship, the thirst to fulfill ourselves with those things that will fulfill us as human beings, our learning, our teachings, social fulfillment, And so forth. The third, the last one, is called, I think, bivava. Bivava, not the thing, but the non-thing craving or thirst for extinction. For the elimination of those things that we don't want in our life. People, places, things, events. Even in our own case, when finally it becomes too much for us and we say, you know, enough, oh Lord, or beam me up, Scotty. I want to get off the world. Let me off. That's this third one.

[16:41]

And in these three cravings, these three thirsts, we are driven around and around in a never-ending cycle, a circle of desire. for some kind of ultimacy, some kind of final fulfillment in which this whole question of grasping and thirst is relieved. Now, of course, in all religious traditions, the world, in some sense, is seen very much like this figure of the Great Mother personified by the beautiful woman coming out and offering us whatever it is that we need to fulfill ourselves, the glitz, the fancy dancing of the world itself. But we find as we, once we have satisfied the basic desires, we need to have food, of course, and something to eat and so on.

[17:43]

How much more land do we need? How much more do we need in this world? And it's a question that we often put off because we live in a society, obviously, the society that is forever stimulating the desire for more, more toys, more goodies, more things that will make us happy endlessly. Until we finally wear that out, you see, and find out that these things that are given us to slake our thirst, are not doing it in any kind of ultimate way. We're looking for something more than that. And so we are prompted or motivated to search for things that fulfill us inwardly. This is where so-called religion or spirituality comes in. And those Santa Claus figures or those archetypal figures in our traditions, the Buddhas, the Christ, the Mohammeds, and so on, the avatars in the world who have somehow stepped through

[18:48]

We're out of the cycle of craving, the cycle of the world, the cycle that's called samsara, endlessly seeking. And we go to those people or those archetypes for our answers. Even the living person or the traditions, as they are written, that will fulfill us, that will help us. the Santa Claus, the lap that we can finally crawl up on and take comfort in. And it's natural for us to do that. The whole mythopoetic legend of the Buddha, the Shakyamuni Buddha, the figure is a metaphor of the person who has everything, you see. Born into wealth, born into privilege, born into all the material needs that one might want, and is pampered and given those.

[20:00]

And not only that, but in the story, is a beautiful person, a beautiful physical person who competes and wins in every game. Never loses, you see. is fulfilled on all the levels that we think will make us happy. This is the story. And in some sense, this is who we all are. As we reach a certain level of fulfillment, we are that person for whom the world fulfills. But at some point, it's not enough. Because we know that what we get, we're going to lose. It just happens to be, the death happens to be one of them. And sooner or later, you are going to pass out of the picture. Your desires are going to pass out of the pictures. The people you love are going to pass out of the picture. And there's this craving to meet or to overcome what we call birth and death.

[21:04]

This becomes then the all-consuming pursuit for that which goes beyond the appearance of the world. goes beyond the need that we feel in the world. And in his particular culture, in the Indian culture in those days, it was one of the aspects of social life that one lived in the world, our thought was called, in the world, the world of competition, the world of fulfillment, and so on. And there was a kama world, the world of sensual gratifications, of aesthetic, aesthetic, gratification. There was the world of dharma. The dharma was the path you take as an individual in life, modified by the particular class or caste or culture in which you're born, and you follow all that path. But the ultimate path, the ultimate aim for all of this was moksha, which was liberation from this whole scene of

[22:07]

constant craving or constant regeneration or constantly being here, going through dissatisfaction, losing those things we want. I want to get off the will feeling. And so in this culture, there was, you might say, a recognition of the need for a human being to do this. And of course, there was already the Shemana class of people who had dropped out, dropouts. who did not want to benefit necessarily from all of the, from the protection of society and for the mores, and there was a place where you can drop out, but then you cannot depend upon the world to protect you. So a class of people or persons, who would eventually be called monks, were those who decided, I do not want to have anything to protect or hold onto, not a family, not property, not money.

[23:08]

I want to search, I want to be this person who leads all of this and goes out into the woods and turns inward and looks into myself for whatever answer there may be to this drive, this thirst that is painful in our lives, since it is never quite fulfilling. And so, like many before him, Shakyamuni Buddha leaves home, he leaves his wife, he leaves his child, he leaves everything behind to go out and do that. The one who has everything, you see, gives it up. And while he's, according to the story, you see, in the archetype, sitting under a tree, after trying many disciplines, sitting until he becomes like air itself, and it's called Nerva Kalpa Samadhi, there is no self, there is no other, and so on, still has to come back into this form and deal with things. Still not satisfied with the ways in which the meditation practices and so on have been presented to him.

[24:11]

Finally, he decides, I'm going to sit down under this tree. Wonderful image sitting under a tree. The tree is always a place we come to for shelter, you see, isn't it? We even use that in our insurance logos, a good tree to come for shelter. He goes to a good tree for shelter, sits down, says, I'm not moving from here until I resolve this problem to this question. And while this happens, while this is going on, he is challenged by, of course, all of his projections, all of the desires. In the scriptures, they're called Mara. In the West, we call it the devil. In the Buddhist, it's all of those things that come forward to tempt you or frighten you. Who are you to think that you can get out of this kind of thing? So he is attacked by the forces of Mara. They send every kind of violent armies and so on against him.

[25:12]

Something to move him. Something to move him off of his intention to sit there and let it. In other words, come on. I'm going to sit here and whatever is out there, apparently out there, I'm willing to take on. And so Mara comes and entices him, dancing girls, just like this story I told you. Something that the world will give you. some pleasure, some fulfillment, and so on, he refuses to move. Finally, he says to Mara, I know who you are, in one of the stories. Mara says, no, you don't. He says, yes, I do. You are the projection of my own mind. I have met the enemy, and he is me. And Mara disappears. And, of course, in the story, a wonderful aspect of the story is He looks up and sees the morning star. Well, we know that the morning star is the harbinger, and Venus in the morning is the harbinger of the light to come, the enlightenment.

[26:16]

The day is coming, the light is coming. And he wakes up to the fact that he is, he is the light, that the light that he sees by is the light that he is, and the light that he is is the light that he sees by. And this has always, always been the case, always, as they say, always already the case. And so we hear these stories, and of course in the Western tradition with Christ and so on, Christ is the Son of God. Very interesting, he's born in a stable. The one who doesn't have much, the one who's poor, can't afford ruminy and is born in poverty. but understands that he too is the son of God, that he too is the light. Now we in our upbringing, of course, these stories have been, what should I say, turned into kind of Santa Claus stories, keeping us in a kind of childish modus operandi in which God or Buddha or

[27:29]

Santa or somebody, if we crawl up on their lap and give ourselves, it's going to save us. But that isn't really what it's about. We turn away from those examples of realized life, Christ or Buddha or Mohammed, when we're children because they are not fulfilling us. We see them as maybe the childish aspects. The problem is we turn away from God altogether. We turn away from the Buddha mind. We turn away from the light. Totally and give it up in some cases. And throw ourselves into the world because those old stories don't work anymore. In the Middle Ages they might have worked because in the Middle Ages you weren't an individual. You were a soul going through a certain tradition on earth so that you'd get into heaven. This was a world of travail and so it was in the East. But now we don't feel that way since the technological revolution.

[28:30]

It's a pretty beautiful and wonderful world to be in and we want to be fulfilled in this world. But in many ways, we gave up the old archetypes and we haven't found a new one to fill it. So we look for a new way to do this. But we've turned away from the light without realizing that we are the light, you see. And what the guru does, traditionally what the guru did or what the... avatar did, particularly in India, for example, was you would go and simply say, I give up. I surrender. Can you help me? And the avatar says, yes, you must surrender everything to me. I am the living God. Well, we don't believe in the living God so much in the West. We're very suspicious of people who say they're the living God. as a kind of material manifestation of that. We believe more in some kind of, what should I say, you know, idea or concept or something that's floating around out there as the living God, the light, and so on.

[29:37]

We are not ready to surrender to a person who presumes to be that. We are born with a tendency Not to do that. We're born with a tendency to hold on, to clutch, to cling. To aggrandize ourselves, to fulfill ourselves, to enrich ourselves. Years ago, the first time I ever saw Suzuki Roshi, I was just beginning to become interested in these questions, having been very disappointed in my life by the ways of the world. I was in my 30s by this time and had been around the block a few times. enough to know disappointment, enough to know that I wasn't being satisfied in a fundamental way that I wanted to. And so we began, like many people in those days, the hippie generation. I was an old hippie, but a Mustang hippie, they called me, because I drove a Mustang.

[30:39]

A Mustang hippie, but I grew up the hair. Anyway, we started looking around, you see. My friends and I, we started looking. for another alternative to what we were doing was art or theater or something in which we were trying to manifest some kind of spirit, some kind of way of rebelling against a world that seemed to be forever at war with itself. You know the whole story. And so one day we ended up in, my friend of mine, we ended up in San Francisco at the Zen Center. I said, there's this place over, the Japanese Zen Center. Let's go check that one out. We checked out the Hare Krishna groups. We jumped up and down and done Hare Krishna. We'd gone to the parks. We had social activism, but still. So we went there, and there was a nice monk who took us downstairs into the zindo and showed us how to sit, be quiet, and so on.

[31:42]

Yeah, this was pretty good, you know. Just sitting there and letting things be in their own way, and I kind of liked it. So... And there was a lot of teachers, of course, around, Ram Dass and Trungpa Rinpoche, just many people. And it was a very rich time for that. And so I decided to go hear Suzuki Roshi talk. And I went to hear him. And one of the things he said, vis-a-vis what I'm trying to bring up here was, it was wonderful. One of the things you don't get about reading about Suzuki Roshi was the kind of humor he had and a kind of impish humor. about himself. He'd kind of laugh at himself. And he'd always say, ah, you know. You know, you are not materialist. I think you're not materialist. You know? Ha, ha, ha. Like that. So he felt really relaxed. He wasn't a severe person, although he could be quite serious.

[32:42]

He was this beautiful being that was just there. saying these things and you're being drawn in and he said, well now if I offer you maybe $1,000, you'll say no saikyo. Even maybe I offer you $10,000, still you say no saikyo. But how about enlightenment? Ah! Because this is what he did. Ah! Same thing. More subtle than the girls playing. perhaps. But it comes from the same place of needing to fulfill ourselves. Well, Roshi, what do we do? I fell nailed to the wall, frankly. I thought, oh God, that's exactly what I want. I don't want money. Just give me a little bit of relief, a little bit of understanding, a little bit of light. What do you do? You pick up your clothes in the morning and hang them up.

[33:44]

You go to work. You do exactly what you're doing, but now you know that you're not doing it anymore. Buddha is doing it. Well, what's Buddha? Buddha is awake. You turn back to the light. You turn back to the light that you are. And all things that you do are a manifestation of that light. You don't have to go to some other world and so on. Anyway, this was the The truth, this was the lesson. Whatever is in front of you arising now, that is the business at hand. That is nirvana. Not down the road at some other place under some other time or condition in which you are going to get there. No, no. Not in our tradition anyway. You are already perfect. You just need a little more work to know it. And you think to yourself, I'm not perfect.

[34:48]

You might be. The teachers might be. Somebody else, these people out here might all be perfect. Me? No, no, no. If you really knew who I was. I'm not good enough for this. I can't do this. So this becomes, this then becomes the dance. Instead of the old games of life, this becomes the new dance. And of course the teacher knows that you're always going to be trying to get something. He'll give you something or she'll give you something, and you will meditate on it. Instead of throwing it away, finally, and letting it go, you will meditate on it and make it part of your collection. You know, not only am I a male, American, with a name and a past, I'm an Aquarian. I'm a little bit of a... I'm a Buddha. I've got new names, a new identity that I'm taking on.

[35:54]

More subtle identity. But what the teachings are trying to show you is that is part of the trip. That finally this identity that we're trying to fulfill is that which you already are. There is nothing to fulfill. Somebody said, it's like going and taking a lantern, walking outside at high noon and looking for the sun. Where is it? Diogenes, remember? Diogenes in the West said, I possess not in order not to be possessed. We have all these things, you know, we accrue the stuff around us to make us feel at home and so on, and we become... in a sense, a victim of those possessions, because they require a great deal of maintenance, they require... We build up a home around ourselves, a terrapin, a shell, and live in that shell, and we're reluctant to give them up until something comes along and takes it from us.

[37:02]

And we find out, you know, you find out that the sun is still shining on you, and you're still breathing, and Tolstoy said, six feet from your head to your soul, from your head to your feet, is all the land that you need ultimately. We don't need so much. And so we all here are probably looking for a way to live in the world without being so needy. And recognizing that we are at the same time needy. And it's all right. It's a human way to be. We have to work with that. That's the material we're working with. That's the good stuff. The teacher wants to say, this is the good stuff to work with, you see. Our neediness, our wantingness. And there's nothing wrong with it to bring things in and make them beautiful. But we know, [...] sooner or later the bubble's going to burst. And then we're going to want, you know, we go back to the guru for some more milk bone.

[38:06]

Give me another bone. Give me more. The ante goes up. Maybe I can fly down to South America and take this ayahuasca. Some plant, some psychotropic thing will help me to understand that the dimension in which I live is not the only dimension there is. Or maybe I can have an aneurysm in one part of my brain like this woman scientist, this brain scientist did. Probably you know who I'm talking about. Wonderful story, you know. Brain scientist. Do you know that story? Yeah, I can't think. What's her name? What? Taylor? Jill Taylor. Well, she's a scientist, you know, a doctor, a scientist studying cognition, studying the brain, and all at once she's having a stroke. And it's happening on the right side, left side of her brain, so that her usual cognitive faculties and so on, even as she's watching, are becoming diminished.

[39:14]

It's very difficult to begin to make sense out of things like language and letters and how we proceed in the world and how we plan the future and how the past. But the other side of the brain, in this particular model, the other side of the brain, the right side of the brain, is the brain that feels the oneness of all things. that is not dependent upon the cognition and so on, in which we feel the presumption of separateness is not there. And she said it was blissful. I was suddenly in bliss. But I knew I was in trouble at the same time, but I didn't want to leave this state of bliss that I was in. So you see, we need both sides. We're two-sided people. And she eventually came back, but she's not the same person because she realizes that the usual way of dealing with the world, the left-handed side of the brain and so on, is not all there is, that we are this light.

[40:16]

And she used that word, light. It's been used again and again. The brightness, the clarity, the sense of the eternal, the fact that the whole universe is nothing but light. And so we hear these stories, and they're encouraging to us, you see, because all of us have had moments in which we have actually felt that, and maybe every night when we go into deep sleep we experience that, although the experiencer is not there. The question is we want to experience it all the time, you see. We want to be enlightened. We want to be free of this constrictive, contracted, separate self-sense that we walk around in so much of the time. And so we come to places like here, where we hope to find a way to that dimension of our being, the fourth dimension, the fifth dimension. And it's a healthy pursuit.

[41:21]

It is a search. It is a path. And eventually we'll understand that the search itself is a problem because there's nothing to search for. We are already it. In the Vedanta tradition, for example, they say, you know, don't bother with your life, worry about your life. Don't bother with society. Just keep asking myself, yourself, who am I? What is this? What is it? What is it? Everything is Brahman or everything is God. I'm that, you're that, the dog is that, and that's that. And if you know that, then you can be happy. You see, in that tradition. Just keep going back and back. Who is this I that is asking the question? There are many traditions that turn the light back onto yourself. Who is it that wants this? One of our classic stories in Zen is the teacher who comes to Emperor Wu in China, you know, and said the emperor has many, the emperor finally got religion after bringing the country together and

[42:31]

the slaughters of many thousands and hundreds of thousands of people and so on, now wanted to gain merit so that he could, by gaining merit, have a rebirth that was closer to this light that we're talking about, Emperor Wu. It was a big thing in the East that gained merit. So by gaining merit, you'd have teachers and you'd set up monasteries and so on. Emperor Wu says, anyway, bring this barbarian forward, this Indian teacher forward, fifth century Bodhidharma, the bringer of Zen. in the tradition. So he said, you know, I have set up temples and endowed monks and so on, and I'm living a righteous life now. I'm sleeping with my own wife again, and so on. Well, what merit is there in this? Bodhidharma says, no merit. Now, he's talking, Bodhidharma's talking to the king, you know, the emperor. The emperor can say, off with your head, you know. But here's a man who feels there's nothing to lose.

[43:31]

He's already it. So he can feel what this exchange is really about. And of course, this is really about ourselves, you see, the two sides of ourselves. He said, all right, what is the teachings of the holy truth? Yeah, what is the teaching of the holy truth? Nothing holy, says Bodhidharma. Nothing holy. Vast emptiness. Meaning nothing to get hold of ultimately. So then he says to Bodhidharma, well, who is it that's standing in front of me? Bodhidharma says, I don't know. Ultimately, we don't know. But, if I would have been Emperor Wu, I would have said, well, who is it that knows that he doesn't know? There is something that knows that you don't know. There's always this cognition going on. I've told the story of my life many times to people.

[44:35]

In Zen Center, we have to do this thing called way-seeking mind talk. And then way-seeking mind talk, how I came to practice. If you've ever done this very much or told stories to people about your life, a very interesting thing arises, a kind of phenomenon arises, and it is this, that every time you tell your story, you feel some dissatisfaction. That's really not who I am. It's a story about me, but that's not me. And no matter how much I try to describe who I am, it never quite makes it. That is because who you decide is you, that person that you look at in the mirror, who later grows old, who later seems to change, that feeling that is looking, the one that is looking at that has not changed, it feels. The appearance of it has changed. But the sense of the beingness, the being here in us, has not changed.

[45:36]

Am I right? Of course, you know, one I must finally say at the end here, I'll shut up in a moment, is that when you get old, you know, you don't really need much, maybe just a good poop a day and a little bit of sunshine. And you're happy, you know. You don't need that. It's kind of one of the benefits of getting old, you see. It's simpler and simpler for you. Anyway, I did bring some notes along, which I never bothered to look at, because my, my, my, my make-believe buddy, who I, by the way, lately, I might as well just tell you this, I call her, my, Playmate, my imaginary playmate has had many names. Sometimes the gender is he, something. Right now it's her. Her name is Dot. And she lives in org, so dot org.

[46:38]

I just thought of that a couple days ago. Hey, Dot. But she says, don't call me Dottie. You know, Dottie means a little bit. She says, you're Dottie. I'm not. Yeah, there are a lot of things I was going to say about it. We'll keep them for next year. But I do have a poem. I always like to read one poem, not my own, but someone else's, and this is by James Tate. James Tate is a post-modern poet, one of my very favorites. It's called Consumed. And I think he addresses this question I've been dancing around this morning. Why should you believe in magic? pretend an interest in astrology or in the tarot. Truth is, you are free. And what might happen to you today, nobody knows. And your personality may undergo a radical transformation in the next half hour.

[47:43]

And so it goes. You are consumed by your faith in justice, your hope for a better day, the rightness of fate, The dreams, the lies, the taunts. Nobody gets what he wants. A dark star passes through you on your way home from the grocery. Never again are you the same. An experience which is impossible to forget, impossible to share. The longing to be pure is over. You are the stranger who gets stranger by the hour. You are the stranger who gets stranger by the hour. Isn't that true? We are strangers to ourselves. When we get stranger, the more we look at it, the stranger we get. The more wonderful it all seems, the more bottomless and open. You are the stranger who gets stranger by the hour.

[48:44]

Thank you very much for listening.

[48:45]

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