Thanks for holding still for a few minutes. I'm going to tell you a story today since it's Children's Lecture Day. And it's my favorite story. I've told it before. My favorite story when I used to read to my own son when he was younger. And it's about Horton sits on the egg. You know it. Do you know it? You're a little too old for it. But the reason it's my favorite story is because of the character of Horton. He's an elephant, clearly out of his league, to sit on an egg.

[01:01]

But he sits on that egg. The bird, whose egg it was, flew away to Tahoe or whatever and decided to stay there for a while, leaving Horton there for a long time, through snow, through rain, through the ridicule. The other animals made fun of him because clearly it was an unusual situation. And he kept wanting to leave. He kept wanting to leave the egg and go be an elephant. But he didn't. He said, no, I said I would sit on the egg, and so I will sit on the egg. And that's why I like that story, because he had to go through a lot of But he had made a promise, and he kept the promise. And so you know the end of the story. When the bird came back to claim her egg, it turned out that what hatched was a little elephant with wings.

[02:09]

Now, in real life, something wonderful like that probably wouldn't happen after great exertion, but sometimes it is the case. that something wonderful happens. So my question to you is if you made a promise to do something and it lasted much longer and was much harder than you thought, like let's say you promised to clean your room every week, would you continue to do it? Oh, now she understands. Now she's got second thoughts. Would you do it because you made the promise? No, okay. Clearly character isn't formed at your age. What about you? You would do it because you didn't want to get yelled at.

[03:18]

not the promise yes you would do it because of the promise and you would do other things too well a promise it turns out is a very big deal to tell somebody that you'll do something or be somewhere at a certain time has Anybody ever broken a promise to you? Yeah? You don't know? Oh, you wouldn't make the promise? Oh, when you didn't remember the promise, you might break it. Right. Well, how do you feel when somebody reminds you? Whoops, right, so you take it pretty seriously. Yeah, good, good.

[04:19]

Anything else about promises? Did you ever think before making a promise that maybe you wouldn't be able to keep it? That's happened to you? What did you decide to do? Yeah. So what do you do then? Yeah, you have to tell the truth so they know where you're at. And you feel better about the whole thing. Anything else? Do you all know the story of Horton, by the way? You do too, huh?

[05:30]

Thank you for coming. Pardon? Oh, I doubt it. Arlene, do you think we have Horton for sale in the office? We lost. We lost. Amazon, kid, Amazon. Good morning again.

[06:42]

Now we're alone. So today I'm going to talk about an adult subject. No, sorry. I'm going to talk about money. So actually this won't be the first time I've talked about money. I like to talk about money because it's the underside of of our spiritual practice. And so years ago, I think it might have been in the 80s or 90s or something, they all run together, that I gave lectures about money at City Center and offered a couple of classes and workshops, but nobody signed up. Nobody wanted to talk about money. And when I talked about it in lectures, people didn't ask very interesting questions or anything.

[07:43]

It was just like, you know, painful. So I persist, though, because I think it is a shadow side of our practice. And because in Zen, unlike, well, not, that's a little unfair to say, unlike other schools of Buddhism, but at least in Zen, we, our vow is to take care of everything. We don't make such a, discrimination between spiritual and material. We're in it for everything. There's no exclusion. Every possible thing we have to take care of. So that's why I've always wanted to talk about money in the material world. But lately what really brought this to the fore for me is that I have a radio show in Guerinville. It's a little local show, just goes to a couple of little towns. Hi, this is Darlene Cohen, your local Zen priest at the Russian River Zendo.

[08:46]

And I interview my friends and give a little Dharma talk. Well, this particular time, this was around Thanksgiving, and my son was up, my son who grew up here at Green Gulch in his early years, and he's now 33, and and works with runaway kids in the city. He was around, anyway, visiting for Thanksgiving, so I asked him if he'd like to be interviewed on what it was like to grow up at Green Gulch and in Zen Center. He said, I'd love to do this. So we went on the show. And I gave a little talk about community. And then... interviewed him, and I asked him, well, what was it like when you realized for the first time that you had grown up in unusual circumstances?

[09:49]

Because he, hi, he said that when he lived down here in the valley, his memory seems to be that he lived down here longer than he did, but I think we only lived down here after he was born three or four years. Anyway, he said when he lived down here, he felt so safe and so taken care of. Now, my memory is different. But anyway, I didn't say anything. I let him talk. And so he said that he didn't realize there was a world outside of Green Gulch. He didn't realize. So when we moved to the city, and he started going to... And he stayed overnight with another kid for the first time. He was seven or eight years old. And he said, and this is why I'm telling you the story, and why I'm interested in money again, or to try to talk about it, is because he said that when he stayed overnight at that kid's house, he entered a whole different world.

[11:00]

And what happened was, at first they had pizza. which we've had pizza before, but they had soda, unlimited soda. As much soda as they wanted, they were allowed to drink, because I only limited them to one, one glass of soda. And they watched Scarface on TV. That was his introduction to TV. It was Scarface, so I didn't know this. And, of course, we had to do a little processing on the air. But he said when he woke up the next day and they had McDonald's breakfast rolls for breakfast or whatever, you know, they roll up sausage and eggs. It's unrecognizable as food. And this fascinated him. And he said it came to him then that a person could just live to please themselves.

[12:07]

That could be a whole way of life, is just to go out into the world and get whatever you wanted. And he said that was the first time it ever occurred to him that that could be a strategy for life, a way of life. So he spent the next 20 years testing it out and he's now said on the air at least that he'd come back to our way of thinking but I was fascinated by that because here was somebody who there was a gap between birth and seven or eight years old in which other possibilities were introduced And so naturally, when they were introduced at a ripe old age, he thought, oh, of course, of course, you know, greed, hate, and delusion, bring it on.

[13:09]

So this made me think about it again, about talking about money. And of course, as far as strategies for living our lives, if we want something different than running out, getting everything we want or trying to get everything we want. We have no guidance from our immediate culture at the moment. It's just acquisition and speed. That's what's going on now in our culture. So you have to be an independent thinker to even question the whole thing of just trying to all the time get what you want, whatever desire arises, fulfilling that. So I also, another thing that made me want to talk about money again is I found, re-found, rediscovered this little gem of a lecture by Suzuki Roshi on money. And I can only surmise that this was an early fundraising talk when they were trying to get money to buy Tassahara maybe.

[14:21]

So I... I just want to read you a couple paragraphs from it, because I think that Suzuki Roshi, well, it's clear from what I'm about to read you that he believed that money and the way we live, the upkeep, maintenance of our body-minds, was a subject for Zen practice. But he also had interesting ideas about money. So he says... I'm just going to read you a little bit. To exchange is to purify. Interesting right there. We may feel that if we have paid for something with money, we don't owe anything else. But something is missing in that idea. Even though we paid for the labor, there is something we cannot pay for. So this is seeing the give and take in a much...

[15:24]

wider context much vaster ground than we're used to thinking of our exchanges we cannot pay the true value of what has been given to us only when we pay with respect for the things that are given to us for the result of someone's labor can we purify our life within the activities of exchange Without this, after we pay for the items we have, we still owe something. That's why we must have great respect for things, for money and for labor. This is Dovan Zenji's idea of everyday life. Our money is not ours. It belongs to society. Because we think the money is ours, we sometimes think that money is dirty. But it is our understanding that is dirty. purifies our world. It is important that we take care of it and respect it.

[16:27]

It is only when we don't respect money that it becomes dirty. It doesn't matter how much you have. Even if you have very little money, you should respect it and make the best use of it. The best use of it, I think, is to help our society. Before we study Buddhism, we should know what we are doing and how we survive. This is a part of our practice. So I think that it's up to us, again, since our culture is no guidance currently, I think it's up to each one of us to figure out a couple of things, and that's what I'd like to talk about this morning. One is, how do we take care of the material world consciously? as part of our spiritual practice. We should know it if we think money is somehow dirty or less than our beautiful thoughts about compassion and all that.

[17:34]

And the second question is, how can we live simply without scorn or envy in a place as flagrantly acquisitive as our society is right now? How do we look at people who've chosen to live very acquisitive and material lives? Do we envy them? Do we scorn them? Do we get self-righteous and judge them as more deluded than we are? And thirdly, ascetic practice versus living with a goodly amount of material things. We all have to decide where we are with regard to this. What suits us? What fits us? And what is the middle way in this matter for each of us? For each of us. And then finally, and I've considered this one of the most important things, is spiritual materialism.

[18:38]

That is strengthening our sense of self and accomplishment through spiritual practice rather than material acquisition. not changing the dynamics of our ego acquisitiveness or ego gratification, just substituting the piling up of insights and transcendent experiences instead of buying stuff. So what is the teaching for us in all of these issues? And how can we use our envy, our confusion, our dedication to authenticity, our meditation practice to guide us to some wholesome situation toward money and material things. So first, taking care of the material realm. So we tend to think of the spiritual life and the material world as either or new students come to the city center.

[19:45]

Maybe it's the same here at Green Gulch. but they come to the city center and renounce everything and they put all their stuff in goodwill, which is very good luck for older students who are already past the stage and don't see things in such black and white ways. In fact, a student of mine got some fabulous red sequined high heels to go salsa dancing from the goodwill. I'd really love to know the story of these shoes. So if any of you, I mean, I can just picture this, you know, woman coming in and saying, that's it for me. No more sequined shoes. Kind of buy a black apari and that's the end of that. So I think this is good, though. I mean, I'm making fun of it, but I think it's good to do this at some point in your life to really see what is absolutely important.

[20:46]

essential for your material existence. What couldn't you live without? And to face it, if it's a lot of stuff, you couldn't live without that. I mean, by my age and also my physical circumstance, my husband teases me when I go away for a weekend or even overnight. Actually, that's the smallest unit overnight. I have to take my exercise mat, and I have to take these clothes to keep me warm, and these clothes in case it's hot, and I have to take my belt in case I can swim. I have to take my bathing cap and my goggles and my belt and my bathing suit and my water shoes and, you know, just all this stuff for anything. So it looks like, but when I go... The good thing is that when I go away for a week, it's the exact same amount of stuff, except more underpants. That's the only difference. So what, at the very least, if you try to live close to the bone, very close to the bone, you'll find out what you need to sustain your life, your basic life.

[22:01]

What, without counting entertainment, or diversion what is it that you need to maintain this body mind should know should know what it is and of course a problem arises if we think we're doing something special when we pare it down that we're spiritually superior to the materialists who continue to accumulate and so forth but if we practice with these thoughts these self-righteous thoughts understand them as delusional or a form of spiritual materialism, I think that's okay. So I think when we practice in the material world, it means that we treat material things and financial matters like everything else, not putting them higher or lower than other things we respect. And in Buddhism, we practice according the material world, as I said,

[23:04]

earlier, and our yearning for preserving our bodies, we treat those things with compassion and loving kindness. We exclude nothing in this practice. In fact, we understand that the way we treat the parts of our bodies and material things, things we can touch, we understand that the way we treat these things reflects our basic respect for all 10,000 things. 10,000 things is a Buddhist phrase for everything in the world, everything tangible in the world, the whole material world. So this is the whole point of Zen forms, actually. Intimacy with objects and your own body. So when you offer incense, the feeling of the incense, the motion of your muscles, bringing it to your head and putting it in a bowl, the bowing, you know, very physical connection to your body and things.

[24:15]

It took me years to appreciate that about our practice because, you know, I had all those categories of too Catholic, too, you know, restricting, too whatever. And then finally... without even imagining that such a thing was possible I got it about touch touching things and now I ask students who begin studying me to start that mindfulness practice right away to be aware of everything you touch what does it feel like to touch paper instead of cloth and students accordingly do wonderful things for me like sew satin into the inside of book covers that they give me. So I can, I mean, I've brushed the satin a couple of times during this talk and it's always incredibly comforting and pleasurable to do so. So this is, the meaning of many of our forms is intimacy with the 10,000 things.

[25:19]

And someone asked me once what this stick was for. You're given a stick at Dharma Transmissions. I've forgotten the Japanese word for it, but it's like a teaching stick. You can hit people with it and make points with it. It's authority. I think of it as authority. But it's also, in this world of nowhere standing, something to hold on to. So I don't just float away. Something to hold on to. I love the contours of the stick. So, Zen forms. I think that's to my mind, what they're about. Practicing respect for the most mundane things that populate our world. Taking care of everything, including material things, but being a slave to nothing. Not being a slave to the things you take care of.

[26:19]

Not being a slave to the people you take care of. This last thing is very tricky. That's another lecture altogether. Taking care of people without being their slave or without obligation. So the second thing I wanted to talk about is living simply with envy, with or without envy. So if we're not attached to status or comfort or particular things, then you're free to make decisions that affect your whole economic world. Like is this high-paying job worth what you have to give up to do it family time your creative life maybe unless your high-paying job involves creativity but my experience is that creativity on demand is a little different from hanging out being inspired so people make these kinds of decisions all the time and they should make them consciously

[27:28]

I know people who feel trapped by their material comforts, their kids' tuition and their big houses, actually feel trapped, like they don't have a life anymore. They're just paying the bills. And on the other hand, I also know many people who live without much and enjoy a certain freedom of travel, of artistic pursuits, of visiting friends, staying with friends rather than in a hotel or something like that when they go someplace. But it's very difficult to get sick and have this kind of freedom. So if you're sick then it's a different story running around with your backpack. So you have to make decisions about how you're going to live. My own feeling about this is you should live different ways at different times but I've been so fortunate to have that privilege you know to have skills that that I can drop in and out of you know high paying jobs so I guess I can't anymore but I could when I was younger so if you personally live close

[28:56]

to your deepest yearnings, this is not a hard thing to do, to check in with how you should live for the next few years or the next period of time. Or the next 20 years if you raise children. Maybe you want to say, okay, I want a stable, materially voluptuous life while I'm raising children. And then after, who knows? I know many people who think that way. If you personally live close to your deepest yearnings, then you don't envy people who have much more than you do. People who have knockout clothes and toys and homes. Glamorous lifestyle. Because this takes conscientious monitoring of your own feelings on your part. Consciousness of your deep desires so you know when things shift. I try... very hard not to live out of touch with my own deepest yearnings for more than a couple of months, two, three months up.

[30:06]

That's pretty close to your deepest yearnings. It's a good way to live, to only have a gap that big, a couple months. So I think it's not a good idea to ignore or denigrate desire. It's a very interesting practice to acknowledge and explore desire. And ask at what level of satisfying your desires, your yearnings, at what level can you be a happy and generous person? What level of fulfillment of your own desires just makes you a generous person? your comfort level or just your feeling of happiness. It's very important to know what that level is and to live around that level. So that the flow, I think this whole topic of money is very close to Dhanaparamita, my favorite topic for many years, is the flow of goods into you and the flow of goods out of you.

[31:26]

And if you're able to maximize that flow in and flow out, then you're a happy, generous person. Maximize it in terms of its congruency with your own temperament. So in the book, Bodhisattva Archetypes, Taigen Leighton points out that Shakyamuni Buddha's choice is between worldly or spiritual pursuits are archetypal, in that they pose the fundamental dilemma and choice for all human beings, regardless of innate talent or social endowment, the social class that you were born into. And since Siddhartha was born a prince, much is made of his great home leaving, abandoning family and position, fame and gain, to seek spiritual truth. He left his privileged life and spent six years doing many of the most rigorous ascetic practices of his time.

[32:35]

And the aim of such effort at that time, the practices he was doing, was to totally purify his body of the material considerations, purify and expunge all worldly desires and attachment to the body. considered a defilement to transcend all attachment to the physical so his great insight came when he realized that such exertion is not conducive to true true spiritual well-being that was his great insight he recognized that his progression into lofty ethereal mental states caused by the extreme fasting and and extreme practices that he did, the humiliation of the body that he was doing, he realized that that did not lead to the cessation of suffering, to the liberation of his mind.

[33:39]

Instead, those kinds of mental states are escapes from ordinary consciousness. Those bliss states are distractions. from our ordinary consciousness. So he ended up embracing what we call the middle way, not taking a stand either in extreme asceticism or material hedonism. And the middle way, that was his first Dharma talk. Yes, his first Dharma talk in which he laid out the middle way. And that's been a prime motif accepted in all subsequent Buddhist practice, the middle way. Now, there's been a wide variety of interpretation of what the middle way might mean. Theravadan, obedience to hundreds of strict precepts and regulations, and Mahayana, marriage, and a certain level of material comfort, some degree of it.

[34:46]

The point is not to be caught by either grasping or aversion. worldly pleasures or extreme denial of the material. Again, I think practicing with desire in many experimental ways that you can come up with yourself is really an important practice. One practice I give students is to go into a department store or a bookstore or REI, whatever store, or a tech store, whatever store gets you going, and just wander around for hours without buying anything. And if you go into a store like that, at least for me, if I go into Macy's or something, I just go in the first counter. Perfume, I forgot about perfume. Wow, go over there. Belts, jewelry, purses. Oh, God, who doesn't need another purse, you know?

[35:47]

And then that's just the first couple of counters. And then you're just led here and there and here and there and here and there. Until we get to my real weakness, shoes. And so on. So if you just go around watching these desires arise as these things are presented to you, it's really a very interesting practice. My dad, when they... When the kids, we used to go visit him in Ohio from Green Gulch when the kids were here. And I used to take my son and another child to accompany him. And my dad, the great materialist of all time, Dayo Show, he used to pick us up at the airport and go straight to Toys R Us and say to the kids, now you can have one thing. I'll buy you one thing, anything, but just one thing.

[36:51]

And to watch them just go berserk. You know, they would take this, and then they'd be holding this, and look at that. And then, ah, such deliberation. You'd think they were spending a billion dollars or something. Anyway, then they would... These two boys I'm thinking of, particularly my son and Kelly Chadwick, they would be happy with their purchases. But there was another little boy who would come occasionally who had doubt mind. And the minute it was purchased, he had regrets, buyer's remorse. Because just the act of having it meant that he had to single, you know, wean his desires. down to one thing everything in the world was focused on this one thing and had he made the right choice you understand the state of mind anyway I thought it was fascinating to me to watch the kids do this not so far from how adults are so so I think we should not

[38:10]

Push desire away. I think we should know very well what desire does for us. In fact, I, for many years, have thought you're not really practicing unless you're in the midst of desire, some kind of desire. Otherwise, you're just getting a free ride. It's in desire that you're up against what you're made of, what the world is made of, what practice is made of. That's why I think sex is just a great way to practice. I mean, not having sex, but having a sex drive is a great motivator for practice because it's so strong, so compelling. And if you're having strong sex drive, yearnings in a sashin, you just watch it attach itself to this person, then they pass by, and then you attach it to this person, and then just to watch desire is fundamental to our practice.

[39:19]

So, let's see, oh, and that's why sashin or long sittings is so important, because in sashin we practice surrendering ourselves to the schedule and that figure background with the schedule being the foreground and the background being our desires you know then we can watch it not like we usually do in our daily lives succumbing and toppling over and or holding back or whatever but in Sashin you're just sitting there so you can just watch it rise and fall it's so important to know this process this is the way that that we're liberated from the process because we know how it works. It gives us a glimpse of ourselves that is very important. So lastly, when am I supposed to stop? Oh, okay. Real quick, spiritual materialism.

[40:24]

So in order to practice with all these questions, that I've raised this morning. We must encounter in ourselves the one who doesn't care about winning or losing. We have to get down to that in ourselves. The one that's not keeping score. The one that just is. Just having direct contact with satin or sticks or watches or money. The one that's having direct contact It's necessary to get down to that to find our way in all this. So we need to understand the difference between having money and wealth. And when we practice, we acknowledge our frantic clinging to whatever means security to us and averting from fear in the name of our solid selves. We all want security in an insecure world.

[41:29]

It's not secure. We can get all the IRAs in the world. And we should. Because we don't want people to worry about us. I have friends now my age that we worry about. They'll have to live in our Zendo if anything happens. We'll have to take care of them. So if you have an IRA, maybe, probably, that will keep your friends safe. and children from worrying about taking care of you. But it may not do the trick. It may not do the trick. So you may take an umbrella when it rains, but you may get drenched anyway. Doesn't mean you shouldn't take an umbrella. So we should recognize our neurotic attitudes toward money. When I first started observing mine, it was so funny to see, you know, I'd get a parking ticket. So I wouldn't buy myself anything, you know, lunch or go to a movie or anything for weeks until I've kind of, that faded, that reality faded.

[42:41]

You know, or I'd get, or I'd find a $20 bill on the street and then I'd buy something that was $100. I mean, it's just, it doesn't make sense, you know. We should know these things about ourselves, know how we're pushed in one direction or another. So we become familiar with and accept the neurotic, acquisitive, and jealous mind, the mind that watches what status it's able to accumulate by any means necessary, materially or spiritually, and know it for what it is and work compassionately with these patterns that we have. So I think that's enough. I'll leave you with something I've always liked that Suzuki Roshi said. He said, renunciation is not giving up what you have. It's understanding that everything changes.

[43:43]

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.

[44:07]

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