Okay. I'd probably wake you up. I'd probably walk you up. Good morning. Today I'm going to talk about money. Maybe you're thinking, finally, something useful. How to buy foreclosed properties for nothing darn and then... So I'm not a huge profit. No. Although it does, it's because I'm teaching a workshop this afternoon called the Dharma of Money, which I decided to do last fall before the crisis. you know, this crisis strikes me as an extraordinary event.

[01:06]

If you think about it, not so long ago, you know, we used to exchange eggs for a loaf of bread, you know, or a few candles or a pair of boots. And then someone came up with this great idea called money. You know, let's have a token that represents that. And instead of having to carry the eggs everywhere, you can just have this token. And then someone else came up with another beautiful idea of credit. You know? I'll lend you money in advance of the fact that you're going to build some bread tomorrow. And then someone else came up with the beautiful idea. So even that credit has a marketable value. And that can be And that can be negotiated.

[02:06]

Yeah. So something that started as quite tangible, like you could hold it, feel the weight of it, you could smell it, see the color of it. You know, now you read in the paper about, you know, credit derivatives being bundled. And it really does seem to me that nobody really knows how it all fits together. And it's a marvelous revolution. I think most of us assumed some very smart people somewhere with the right algorithms and computer programs had this figured out. And now it really starts to seem like maybe that assumption just isn't correct.

[03:08]

It really does to me. Different people have different notions and maybe correct assessments and skillful analysis. But the whole interconnectedness of it maybe alludes us all in the complexity of its interconnections. And I would say, this is how the world is. And from the point of view of Zen practice, it's not so much to say, well, how can I, how can we know everything so that everything we do is correct? I'm taking the whole in all the details of interconnectedness and from that place of knowing I take the next step in my life. I would say life is more exquisitely challenging than that.

[04:17]

And how do we rise to that challenge? As an individual How do you distinguish between your needs and your wants? You know, Dante, in his divine comedy, he's looking at hell. And he's feeling great pity for the people in hell. And Virgil says, he offers a misdefinition of hell. He said, these are the folks... dedicated themselves to what they wanted, and they ignored what they needed. I'm not advocating that, you know, in a definitive way, but just it's kind of an interesting dimension of how we relate to our means and our wants. You know, often when I teach workshops, there's a particular exercise I do, and it's about loss.

[05:19]

First of all, You get a piece of paper and you write down three objects that you cherish that are precious to you. And almost nobody writes them. Well, obviously, you know, this costs the most money, so that goes first. That's not how they're related to it. And then you write down other things, too. Relationships, activities, and things like that. And then you lose them. The way in which people are willing, you get to choose which ones would you give up. If you had to give up three of this whole array of your life, your activities, your relationships, your possessions, which ones would you give up first? Almost everybody gives up the possessions. First thing to go. What's most expendable? Material possessions. And yet is that the life we live?

[06:27]

No. So the workshop is called the Dharma of Money. Dharma, the word Dharma, it has a number of translations, but one translation is close to the order the way things are everything from for a plant to grow it needs soil and water and sunlight this is the order of the way things are this is the dharma of plant life and then what is it for human life to grow what is the order what is the dharma of the growth of human life. And this is the challenge for each of us, you know, how, as we navigate and explore that question, navigating between our wants and our needs, navigating between the mythology, and I mean that word in a kind way,

[07:51]

of our internal workings, our subjective world, and the tangible experience of a loaf of bread, its weight, its color, its smell, its taste. And this negotiation between the two, whether you want to call it, the spiritual and the material, the divine and the ordinary. This negotiation between the two. In Zen practice, this is the realm of our inquiry. This is the realm of our learning. And it's not a static event. It's not that you craft out the law and then the law is written in stone and then that's it.

[09:05]

The only thing that's left to do is comply with the law. It's more dynamic because the ground and nature of our life is always shifting. It has shifted from exchanging a loaf of bread for a dozen eggs. We're going through a world now where most of us will combine with a little piece of plastic and just swipe it through a piece of metal and we think, this is now how you do things. the check on the internet in a monthly statement and know how rich or impoverished you are. You know when I grew up I grew up in the north of Ireland and I grew up in poverty.

[10:20]

There were times we weren't quite I grew up in a big family, seven children. There were times when we quite literally had no money. And it was a wonderfully simple, awful equation, you know? You have no money. You can't buy any food. You don't get to eat. It's very tangible. I remember my mother saying to me, go to the corner store and ask them, you know, for some food and tell them we'll pay them on Friday. So I'd go to the corner store and I'd say, my mommy says, can we have some eggs and bread and she'll pay you on Friday. And sometimes they'd say yes and sometimes they'd say no. You know, this was the nature of our life. And then many years later, let me add another kind of detail in the middle of that.

[11:37]

My uncle was a Catholic priest. And he'd visit, you know, in the same town. And he'd come by and he'd say, how are things? And we'd say, not too good. And he'd say, okay. And then he and I would go and he would visit a publican, someone who owned a pub. And we'd have tea and we'd chat. And then when we were leaving, the publican would give him some money. And then we'd go out and then he'd keep a little bit and give the rest of me and say, take that home. So I learned at an early age this interesting relationship between the spiritual life and the material life. You know, I learned at an early age that money and food were closely related.

[12:51]

And that credit played a role in that. But you know what, credit was sort of disempowering. Anyway, when the nature of credit is, you have to ask for it and somebody else decides whether you're going to get it or not. That's a person when I chose a spiritual life and went off and did all sorts of things like that. And I got married. And then my wife of the time decided doing the business. And through her diligence and hard work and the savvy sense of revealing market conditions, she ended up with a lot of investments in internet companies as the dot com was taking over.

[13:55]

And what she did was she traded her services in PR for stocks in the companies as they were startups. And then some of the startups went from nothing to a fortune. And so she went from nothing to a fortune. But unfortunately... It's interesting because I can't remember the term anymore. I was very familiar with that. The stocks are locked up. You can't cash them in for a period of time. And in that period of time, one stock in particular went from 50 cents a share, $200 a share, and then back down. So it was like, you know, we came up from Tassahara, and we had a two-year-old daughter,

[15:04]

My wife was eight and a half months pregnant, and we had $80. And then at this point, when we were in this netherland before these stocks could be cashed in, they were worth millions and millions of dollars. And then they crashed, and they were worth nothing. And you know, now I look back on all of that and I think, I'm so grateful, you know? You know, I am grateful for that poverty of childhood, you know? And in the midst of that poverty, I was taught by example and ended that way. There's more to life than money.

[16:07]

There's more to life than wealth and possessions. I was taught by that rise and fall that everything changes, everything's ephemeral. But I wish for everybody theoretical notion that you're very rich. Just imagine, during this talk, you're extraordinary rich, but by the time the talk's over, it's going to be gone, you know? It was kind of like that, you know, you're kind of like, that many millions? Wow. That's amazing. You know, hey, while you're sitting here, and your words... I mean, but now a million dollars is nothing. I mean, you have to go for a billion or so.

[17:09]

Isn't it amazing how it's changed? You know? Like, now a trillion is real money. You know? Even a trillion is just kind of like, you know, it's okay. You can buy on a billion or so, but if you want to have real money, you need a trillion. Then we'll cover it. You know? And I feel grateful. I feel enriched by those experiences. But poverty, you know? What was the consequence living through that? Some nasty, painful things. Internalized shame. Doesn't make any sense, does it, you know?

[18:12]

You're born into an economic system and then you feel ashamed. Poverty is a shameful condition. Or somehow that becomes, can sneak in as part of our collective understanding or agreement. Some sneaking notion that you deserved it or deserve it. So this creates within each of us what I would call a mythology. I remember I went from that and then I became a monk.

[19:16]

And when I was a monk in Southeast Asia, you only got to eat once a day. And honestly, I was hungry a big chunk of the time. And I remember once thinking, how did I get into this again? And I remember coming to Zen Center and finding out my relief and delight that you get fed three times a day. And not only that, there's a snack kitchen. And not only that, most of the time, you can take as much food as you want. Because when I was growing up, the food went on the table and you got your shirt and That's, you know, as much as you got. It wasn't like everybody can have as much as they want and there's stuff left over.

[20:25]

So part of the poignancy of our human life is such experiences mark us. Wound us. They leave us frightened, shameful, resentful. They create within us a mythology. And there's always to experience And then there's always to empower money from a mythological perspective. When I have enough money, I will always be satiated.

[21:32]

I will have a status in society with my peers. I will have security. I will be safe from the ever-changing nature of the world. I will have freedom. I won't have to work at a job I don't like. I'll be able to say, shove it, I'm out of here. And I would say it's very valuable, I would even say important, to explore that. And maybe I'm talking a little bit more than money, maybe I'm talking about our own notion of material possessions.

[22:36]

But within that, money plays Powerful and significant role. I gave a talk like this many years ago, maybe about five. And in that talk, I gave out dollar bills. But I'm sorry, I didn't have any dollar bills. Well, tell me what I did. I asked people to look at it. Because it's something, you know, it's like a dollar bill. It's a particular size. It's a particular color. It's being touched and passed from hand to hand. It has, you know, it's an icon. It's a symbol. It's powerful and significant in our society.

[23:40]

And so that's our collective mythology. And then each of us has our personal mythology. And the reason I touched on my own is because we all have our own version. Each of us went through impressionable periods in our life that left some expression that says This is what money is. So on one hand, this dreamlike, this mythological carryover of previous times. And then on the other hand, this extraordinary, tangible, relevant negotiation of your life right now. So many of our interactions involve money.

[24:55]

Not too many merchants are interested in your mythology. They want to know, are you or are you not going to pay your bill? how do we explore both sides? How do we explore our personal mythology and our collective mythology? And how do we have a conscious relationship to it? I remember when I came here somehow being in a community we only ate once a day and re-experiencing hunger and lack of something to eat when I'd like to eat I remember coming here and by that point I had learned the practice of mindfulness and I would notice when women kind of came that was a significant event for me

[26:22]

I was like, it's lunch. Not always associated by how hungry my body was. It was more like how hungry my mind was. To explore the dimensions and the characteristics of what we are. habits that have become established. Not that we can then set about questioning them. Not that we can, you know, set about some heroic journey to some pure ideal. But that we can be educated about that mythology and that we can start to relate to it and know about it and see how powerful it is for us.

[27:33]

And now all these years later my whole relationship to new time has changed. Now I have all sorts of weird notions about money. And yet in some ways they're linked back to my uncle taking me to the public. The relationship between a sense of scarcity impoverishment and a sense of abundance and generosity and how the spiritual light of awareness illuminates that for us and helps us be more adaptable, more ingenious

[28:52]

than the stories of our own impoverishment. To see that the world and the transactions within it are more porous. How to live in a world where we can differentiate between the wants of our mythology and the needs of our human life, singularly and collectively. And then on the other side, realizing that we live in the world we live in. In a highly, in a powerfully significant way, this is a materialist society. And yet, that doesn't exclude the spiritual dimension of our life.

[29:56]

Sin Center lives that out. We have an annual operating budget of about $3 million a year. Part of that income comes from the money we make at Tassajara. The money we gain from the money we receive from seven books and things like that. And part of it comes from people just giving us money. It's a combination. And it's interesting because our heritage is Shakyamuni Buddha. His admonition was, don't even touch money. Have nothing to do with it. Don't even keep food from one day to another. Trust the abundance of each day. And then in China, Bajan said, well, let's grow our own vegetables.

[31:05]

It's a wonderful thing to do. Which is in touch with the earth. Helps us see that engaging in life, engaging in the material world, has its own wisdom and dignity. And now here we are, as a center, as a collective community, straddled between two worlds. And I think like each one of us individually, we struggle to balance our books. Can we have enough income to balance our expenses? And then we don't, you know? How do we relate to that? How does each of us hold a sense of community?

[32:25]

Whether you think of your community as your family and friends, being a member of Zen Center, or the global community. How do we relate to the sense that half the world goes to bed hungry So command line, the challenge of Zen practice, and in Zen practice we call it a koan. The nature of a koan is, it's not exactly a dilemma. It's more like a challenge that's asking us to participate skillfully, wisely, compassionately.

[33:28]

each day, each situation that we find ourselves in. How do you balance your individual welfare with our collective welfare? How do you balance your mythology around money with this materialist world that you live in, where money has a function? How do you do it? How do you distinguish between want, What values of our society do you say, okay, fine. And then what values do you say, no. How do we buy into that? From where I see things, that is not something I'm going to try to uphold. That's actually something I'm simply going to ignore. I mean, if you think about it, we're going through this collective learning.

[34:39]

Under the strictures of global warming, suddenly we realize there's a limited amount for us all to share. As we sit around the family table, there really is a limited amount of food on it. I grew up using great potatoes for dinner. I know it's an Irish cliche, but it's true. Pretty much you were expected, you know, to notice how many potatoes, how many people. Take your share and nothing more. Actually, take a little less than your share because... You need to make sure everybody else gets their share.

[35:43]

So as we move forward, maybe the greatest learning needs to happen in the United States as we sit at the world table. this is part of our challenge. And from the point of view of Zen practice, not so much to do with gain or loss, but more to do with all of this is part of the agency of awakening. All of this teaches us something about how to live. It teaches us something about how do we skillful about your mythology.

[36:52]

It has a power. It has an influence. Don't be fooled. Don't think, oh yeah, that's when I was whatever. Now I'm asked that. And similarly with the material world, it has power and energy. But when we hold the two and acknowledge that power, to realize that the amazing thing about awareness is that it changes us from a fatalistic existence. I will just simply reunite my childhood experiences every time I sit down at the table. The liberating gift of awareness, I can sit down at the table, be aware of what's going on, and respond to the calling of that moment.

[38:02]

Now what? This being so, This being experienced the way it's experienced. Not that I know everything. Not that I have seen all of who I am. Not that I've figured out the implications of credit derivatives bundled and sold through, you know, multinational financial organizations. But given what I am seeing, what I am feeling, how this all appears to me, now what? The energy, the particularity of being offers itself to us in that moment. It's a catalyst, it's an agent

[39:08]

in being awake. It's a catalyst. It's an agent in being alive. And these are formidable times. It's quite easy to feel under the sway of forces that are beyond my understanding and beyond my capacity. to act intentionally. And this is where the spiritual becomes a powerful ally. Because our well-being fundamentally is not a materialist

[40:09]

of material conditions. Someone was doing a little way-seeking mind talk here during the week. Allison, a student here. And she went to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh. And he held up a tangerine, as Thich Nhat Hanh tends to do. And powerfully and beautifully and poetically said, This tangerine is a miracle. You know, the white part underneath the skin, that white part that I don't know the name of, helps in eating that, it helps you absorb the vitamin C in the citrus fruit. And vitamin C helps you absorb other minerals and amino acids and all sorts of things that your body needs to be nourished.

[41:18]

How amazing is that? How generous and precious the interconnectedness and the interdependence of existence. It's a miracle. And we're part of it. Tangerine is a miracle. And our very life is a miracle. Way beyond, you know, the size of a bank account. Way beyond our fears and concerns and desires with regards money and the material world. And this is the support we're offered when with insight that arises from awareness we look a little deeper into the nature of the world and this support offers us quite literally

[42:39]

the capacity to engage this dynamic of each moment, of each set of conditions. And as we engage it, something is literally brought to life. And we are part of that something. This was Shakti Muni's Dharma. the law of the way things are and then for each of us to explore that to relate to it humbly as a student what is it to live this human life how is it to live this human life Thank you.

[43:52]

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