Good morning, everyone. And especially good morning to the young people who are here. Howdy. The first part of the talk this morning is especially for the young folks. And I thought I would tell a story part of a story. And I think that some of you know the story already. In fact, I'm pretty sure that some of you know it. Maybe most of you know it. So this is what we're going to do. I'm going to start to tell the story. And if you know what story it is that I'm telling, put your hand up. But don't say it. Don't say the name for a while, okay?

[01:04]

Here goes. Once upon a time, there was a girl, a little girl, she was about 11 years old, and her name was Dorothy. She lived on a farm in Kansas. And she lived there with her aunt, who she called Auntie M, and her uncle, Uncle Henry. Okay, now here comes a really big clue. And she lived there with a little dog, her little dog named Toto. I think a lot of you know what this story is.

[02:12]

The name of this story, let's say it all together. The name of this story is The Wizard of Oz. That's right. The Wizard of Oz. You know it too? Good. Can you say something? Sure. Oh, good. Uh-huh, yeah. He has that book at his school and it has a tape. So you get to listen to it or to read it when you get older and you can read it. It's worth listening to and it's worth reading lots of times because it's really a good story. as some of you know. So, The Wizard of Oz, oh, I'm gonna tell you about a part of it, but for those of you who may not know the story of The Wizard of Oz, it's about Dorothy, and it's about how she gets in a, you know, she lives on this farm in Kansas, and suddenly there's a tornado, right?

[03:27]

And then she lands up in the land of Oz. And she has lots of adventures in the land of Oz with her three friends. She meets three people there. And you know who they are, don't you? Yeah. She meets the scarecrow. And she meets the cowardly lion. And she meets the tin woodman. Those are her three companions. that she has adventures with in the land of Oz. Some of us don't want to be in the land of Oz. We want to be somewhere else. So the thing about those three companions is that the scarecrow, he thinks he needs a brain. He thinks he needs brains because he thinks he's not smart enough. But actually, he's the one, if you follow the story, he's the one who figures everything out.

[04:28]

He's the one who's got brains. And it's the same with the Tin Woodman. He thinks he needs, what does he need? A heart. He thinks he needs a heart because he doesn't think he has enough heart. But he actually has the most heart of everybody. He cares about people and he feels very... You know, he has a lot of emotional attachment to Dorothy. And the same with the cowardly lion who thinks that he's not brave enough. He thinks he needs courage. But when it comes down to it, he actually has a lot of courage. Now this is called irony. Irony. Irony is when things look one way, but they're actually some other way. Like the scarecrow who thinks he needs brains, but he's actually very smart.

[05:33]

It's very peculiar. And there's a reverse irony as well, which is that the Wizard of Oz... I am the great and powerful Oz, right? He looks like he's a big shot. He looks like he's really powerful and all of that. But we all know that he's just some old guy hiding behind the curtain. And he's not really so powerful. Yeah, yeah. That's what it turns out the Wizard of Oz is. So anyway, one of the things, oh, you didn't know, well, I wrote it for you. One of the things about this story is, is that it's about, you know, each of them thinks they need something, but they actually have it. They actually don't, they just think they don't have it. So I was going to mention that in Buddhism,

[06:38]

In this practice that we do, we say, Buddhas who are truly Buddhas don't necessarily notice that they are Buddhas, but they go on being Buddhas, being fully actualized Buddhas, and actualizing Buddhas. But I think that is a different story. So the part that I was going to tell you is this very exciting part when Dorothy is captured by the Wicked Witch of the West. And she is in, she's in the big castle of the Wicked Witch of the West. And Toto escapes from the castle. And he goes running to find her friends. And he finds them.

[07:39]

And then, sure enough, the scarecrow, as usual, he's the one who figures out that Toto has come to tell them that Dorothy is imprisoned in the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West and that they have to go and help her. So the scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion all go to the castle. And if you remember the movie, they're hiding in the rocks outside of the castle when the Winkies, the Winkies are the soldiers of the Wicked Witch of the West. They don't actually like her either, but they have to obey her. They're going into the castle. Da-do-do. Da-do-do. Da-do-ba-do-ba-do-ba-do-ba-do-do. They're marching in like that. And the three of them are watching them march in.

[08:43]

Then the scarecrow, as usual, he comes up with a really, really good plan for how to help Dorothy, how to get into the castle and free her. And he whispers the plan to the tin woodman and the cowardly lion. We don't hear what he's saying, but he's whispering, whispers, whispers. And then, now this is the part that I wanted to get to the most. I'm going to have a drink of water before I get to it. So they've got this plan. And they're going to free Dorothy. And then the cowardly lion says, Oh, there's just one more thing I want to add to this plan. Which is, Talk me out of it. That's what he says. The cowardly lion says that. So they've got this plan. They're going to go in and help Dorothy escape.

[09:45]

But the cowardly lion is afraid. He's afraid to go in. So he wants them to talk him out of it so that he doesn't have to go in to help Dorothy. So that's what I was going to talk about is what do you do when you're afraid of which is really a tough thing to figure out. When you're afraid, like the cowardly lion was afraid, what can you do? What helps when you're afraid? Any ideas? Yeah. You face your fears, that's, wow. That's called a plant. That's true. You face your fears. That's what the Cowardly Lion does is he faces his fears. And I think that there are certain things that were encouraging to him that helped him face his fears.

[10:50]

Any ideas what those were? Yeah. Your friends help you. That's right. He had a Sangha. He had a group of friends. He and the tin woodman and the scarecrow with his sangha. And that's what a sangha does. Sangha is your group of friends who help you do stuff that you might be afraid to do otherwise. But that's a good idea. It's a good thing to do, but I don't want to do it. You get your sangha to help you, encourage you. So that's a very important thing to keep in mind. There's one other thing. that I think was really important in helping him, which is my idea, but you may have a different idea. Any other thoughts about it? I think that the other thing that really helped the Cowardly Lion is that he loved Dorothy. That's why he went in, even though he was afraid.

[11:54]

I think he says that. I didn't watch the movie recently, but I think he says that. I think he says, oh, For Dorothy, I'll do it. Because he loves Dorothy. So that's my message. That's my Buddhist message for this morning, is that when you're afraid, two things that may help, sometimes help. One is having your friends encourage you. And the second is to remember who you love. And who loves you? Who cares about you? Okay, I think that's it. And I'll see you guys later and have a good time with whatever you're doing. What are we doing, Amy? Oh, okay. Good, good. Okay, bye-bye.

[12:57]

Hi. Hi. If some folks from the back would like to come forward, you're very welcome to do so. Bye. Good morning again.

[14:30]

For those of you who may not have seen the movie 200 times, I recommend The Wizard of Oz as a great American myth and Buddhist teaching. about how much better than going off to the dusty realms of other lands is finding the seat that exists in your own home. There's no place like home. And finding our own home, finding the home inside ourselves and in our life, finding our home wherever we are is... an essential effort, an essential direction that we move in, in practice.

[15:39]

So I want to speak about the feeling of practice, the attitude of Zen practice. So a psychologist, psychological theorist, an Italian, Antonio Damasio, wrote a book some years ago called The Feeling of What Happens. It's a book about consciousness. It's a great title, I thought. So I want to speak about, well, the feeling of practice, which is the feeling of... which is the feeling of what happens. And what I mean by that is that in Zen and Buddhist teaching, there are various ontological teachings, various teachings about the way things are.

[17:00]

about the nature of reality. For example, one of the very central teachings in Mahayana Buddhism is emptiness, shunyata, or technically, sva bhava shunya, which is, sva is own bhava being, shunya empty, own being empty. that things and people are empty of own being. It means we don't have an abiding fixed self. The true reality of all being, shōho jisō, is that simultaneously we in a conventional way, we act and believe in our separate individual self, moving from the past into the future.

[18:12]

And simultaneous with that, ultimately, there is no separate self. an individual self moving from the past into the future. There is just one being, one time. The true reality of all being is that these two things, these two ways exist simultaneously. So this is the philosophical teaching. This is the doctrinal teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. What I mean by the feeling or the attitude of practice is that associated with that teaching, coming from that teaching, we might even say that that teaching is in the service of the feeling of practice.

[19:22]

In this case, what I mean by the not being stuck, not being caught by things, not being stuck on some idea. That comes directly from things are empty of a fixed and stable self. Do you see how those are related? Directly from the teaching, you get this, what I'm calling attitude, feeling of practice. So the feeling of practice is not being stuck, not being caught by things. What that means is having an open and flexible mind. The quality of practice is open and flexible. Because it's not fixed. It's not, it's got to be this way. So the title of the book of essays of Suzuki Roshi that Ed Brown compiled is called Not Always So.

[20:37]

Not Always So. Which actually was an expression that he used a lot. Not always so and maybe so. Those are two of his favorite expressions. Maybe so. That's open and flexible. Not wishy-washy, but just... open to the way things are. And then from that openness is a kind of stability and strength that comes from that open quality, that flexible quality. a kind of unshakableness, imperturbability. A few years ago, at the De Young Museum, was an exhibit of Tibetan Buddhist art.

[21:45]

And some of you may know about this instance. Some of you may have been there, actually. And part of this... exhibition of Buddhist art was that there were some Tibetan monks who came and who did sand painting. Sand paint, you know how elaborate those Tibetan things are, the tankas, you know, just a zillion colors and very complicated. So these monks would spend hours and hours and weeks and weeks with colored sand creating this painting on the floor. Actually exhibiting this very quality of no fixed nature. Because in fact, it wasn't like they were dripping it onto glue or anything. It's like this painting was going to be there, this sand painting was going to be there, and then it was going to be gone.

[22:46]

But anyway, highly intricate, detailed work And at a certain point, they had been working on it for a long time, and someone came in, a woman, I believe, who was seriously disturbed, and she just wrecked it, danced all over it and wrecked it, basically, in a few minutes, this thing that they had been working on. for hours and hours and weeks and weeks. And they were, we don't know if they were upset or not. But in the newspaper accounts anyway, what seemed to be the case is that they expressed great concern for this person, for the woman.

[23:53]

Great concern for her well-being. So when I read that, I thought, hey, that's our team, you know. That was so wonderful. That is flexible, open, stable, imperturbable feeling of practice right there. Wow. Expressed by them. you know, that thing that I said with the kids, Buddhas are truly Buddhas. Buddhas who are truly Buddhas do not necessarily notice they are Buddhas. That's Dogen and 13th century Japanese Zen master. And that's Dogen in Genjo Koan. Is that correct?

[24:55]

Okay, thanks. That's from the Genjo Koan. That's the Japanese title. of a work of his, an essay of his. Genjo Koan, that title is translated as actualizing the fundamental point. So, there is a fundamental point. You've got to have a fundamental point. But the emphasis, the emphasis that I'm emphasizing today and the emphasis in practice is actualizing the fundamental point. In some sense, you could say the fundamental point ain't worth a hill of beans unless it's actualized, unless it's realized in our life, unless it's manifested in our life.

[25:57]

Otherwise, it's just some fancy idea that somebody came up with. And you could put it in the catalog with lots of other fancy ideas. So our emphasis and our style and our way of practice is this actualization. How do you actualize the fundamental point? How do you make it real? And I thought of, in connection with this, I thought of... Suzuki Roshi, the man who founded San Francisco Zen Center, which Green Gulch is a part of. And when I first came to Zen Center, he was still alive the last few years of his life. A number of you here were there then. And I don't think I would have said it at the time. I don't think I... had the lingo at the time to say it. But now I would say that what a way of saying what we got from Suzuki Roshi, what was so enormous that we received was that feeling.

[27:15]

Oh, this is, you looked at him standing at the bus stop, you know, waiting for the bus or whatever. This is the actualization of practice. This is what the harmony of difference and unity looks like. This is what the actualization of the fundamental point looks like when you put it in the body of a Japanese man. I was going to say an old man, but I'm almost as old as he was then. This is what practice looks like. This is the feeling of it, the attitude of it, as it manifests in our actual life, not someplace else. So this way of understanding practice, not so much emphasis on some special, unusual state of mind or unusual experience that we might have in meditation or otherwise,

[28:22]

Some white light. Ah, it's not so much emphasis on that. More of the emphasis is on, well, how does this actually manifest in our life, in our actual life? So I'd like to talk about that, the manifestation of the feeling of practice, what the feeling of practice is, particularly, I'm going to bring it into the arena, into a very particular realm, namely the realm of our fear, our fears and our anxieties.

[29:23]

Like the cowardly lion, we are. We're afraid. And not just of going into the castle, but lots of other things too. Our existence, oh, this is a distinction that, I think I made this up, I'm not sure. Our existential fears and our karmic fears. Our existential fears is like our fears about our existence, or more to the point about our soon non-existence, soon-to-be non-existence. We don't exist for an infinite period of time, and then we do exist for a little while, and then we don't exist for an infinite period of time. Of course we exist, like our molecules and stuff. What about me?

[30:28]

I won't exist. Here's another little Suzuki Roshi story. He was dying of cancer and he and his wife had an apartment, a little apartment complex, where Blanche and Lou live now, in the 300 Page Street building in San Francisco. This was before Green Gulch, before Zen Center got Green Gulch. But then in the last period, I think it was the last few months of his life, they got a hospital bed, and he was in a hospital bed in a different room. And this didn't happen to me. but I read about it. Someone came in to visit him, and I don't know exactly, but the person who was visiting must have seemed very anxious, very worried.

[31:45]

Maybe about Suzuki Roshi, maybe about himself, him or herself, Anyway, I don't think Suzuki Rishi could talk so much at that time, but he waved his hand and said, don't worry, I know who I am. Don't worry, I know who I am. So this is the manifestation of Zen in life. And I think we could take it as a koan, as a mystery, as a puzzle for us to understand what did he mean?

[32:59]

What does that mean? That's one way, what does that mean? But also, clearly he was resting on some foundation. He was secure in some foundational way. So secure that he could read the insecurity in the eyes of the person visiting him. And though Suzuki Roshi was dying, he comforted the other person. Don't worry, I know who I am. It's okay. What is that? What is that foundation? How do you get that? How do you get there? That's a way of talking about our practice activity.

[34:00]

It's in that direction. So there's our existential fear, our fear of non-existence, as though that weren't bad enough, because we know how to think thinks so well and we have ideas and concepts, we not only recognize that our own life is very limited and soon will be over, sometime between a nanosecond from now and a hundred years, closer to the nanosecond, probably the hundred years. Not only that, but we realize that that life and death of our own little self is just an instance of a much more gigantic, full-on, total incomprehensibility, inconceivability. So, don't worry, I know who I am, also includes, I know who I am, I think, for Suzuki Rishi, he was including,

[35:14]

I know who I am, including I don't know who I am. Including there is no I for me to know who it is or who it isn't. Including inconceivability. So there are these very deep, fundamental, human animal fears that we have. Anxieties that we sense. We sense the lack. We sense the hole in the middle of things. And then there also are karmic fears and anxieties. And by karmic, I don't mean something. I'm not talking about transmigration or from one life to the other. It is very simple. Simply that our experience has an influence on us.

[36:17]

So we learn by our experience. And if we have bad experiences, we learn that the world is a bad place, or we learn that I'm a bad person. We learn these things by our experience. And associated with that, Sometimes, often, occasionally, are various fears and anxieties that come along with that. Some of you may be familiar with a graphic novel called Maus, M-A-U-S, written and drawn by Art Spielman. mostly about his father and family's experience during the Holocaust in Europe, and his father survived the concentration camps in Europe.

[37:24]

But it's juxtaposed because it's juxtaposed with the more current scene, which is his father living in an apartment in Regal Park in Queens, New York, which is where I went to grammar school. Regal Park, Queens, New York. So his father, you know, he's got a stove in his house and his father keeps the four burners of the stove on all the time. He never turns them off. And Art Spiegelman is saying to his dad, Dad, you know, just turn off the fire. You don't need to keep these burners on all the time. And his father says, But what if I can't find a match? That's karmic anxiety. You get it? Get what I'm saying?

[38:24]

So we have these various fears and anxiety and I I believe that our practice life, our Zen way, really is a resource for us in working with these feelings, working with these fears and anxieties. It gives us a new way of working with them. The new way is not flight, not fight, not freeze. So from our evolutionary way, our methods of evolution, you know that fear is associated with danger. So when we're afraid because of danger, we do flight, fight, or death.

[39:38]

Freeze. I used to think there were only two, flight and fight. When I was in high school, I think I learned flight and fight. But then there's this other one called freeze, like a deer in the headlight, you know. So when we experience, and this is very useful for us in an evolutionary way. I think I said this before, because when the saber-toothed tiger is at the door of the cave, it's a really good idea to be anxious about it, you know. This is a good time to say, oh, my God, there's a saber-toothed tiger there. I better get the hell out of here, you know, or something, you know. In fact, our gene pool is the genes of the people who were worried about the saber-toothed tiger. Because the people who weren't worried, who said, ah, saber-toothed tiger, what are you doing? Clearly, they did not... transmit their genes except via the saber-toothed tigers in a digestive system.

[40:50]

So this is who we're inheriting this stuff from, right? Are the people who worry a lot about stuff. Good idea. It's a good thing to worry. Um... And then that worry then gets... So then, if you're worried, you fly, you run away, or you fight, or you freeze. And that will protect you. But it doesn't actually work in all circumstances. Particularly when the danger is more this... The danger is different than a saber-toothed tiger. It works when it's a saber-tooth dagger or a truck, you know. Uh-oh, there's a truck coming down the road and I'll get run over if I continue to stand here. So you get out of the way. Works really well in those kinds of circumstances. But there are other circumstances in which it doesn't work.

[41:54]

So I was thinking that I might offer a definition of zazen. And the definition of zazen is... When you are not flight, fight, or freeze, you're doing zazen. That is what zazen is. Not going off to the dusty realms of other lands, not flying away, not an aggressive, controlling, I'm going to really make this thing happen, not fighting. And not freezing, not being stiff, but more, you know, that kind of flexibility, that breath, our breath going through our body. That's the quality of zazen, and that's the quality of zazen mind. So that's a way of speaking about it, one way of speaking about it, not flight, not fight, not freeze.

[43:05]

the positive way, taking the knots out of it, the positive way of talking about it is as tolerance. Tolerating our anxiety, tolerating our fear, tolerating our internal state, tolerating it. So in the traditional literature, this is the third paramita, the third perfection or the third paramita, other sureness. The third one, excuse me. The first is generosity and then comes morality. Excuse me. Yeah, discipline, moral discipline.

[44:07]

And the third is kshanti, patience, tolerance, forbearance, K-S-H-A-N-T-I, kshanti. So our culture is not too helpful in this way. So when you go to the airport, you go through security, and then try to find a spot where there isn't a television. This is called flight, right? Don't think about your problems. Just try to go somewhere where you can actually stabilize your mind without having a TV thing blaring into your face. You have to hike to a far distant corner of the airport to find some spot.

[45:13]

Whose idea was this? To stick a television every place. There are televisions now in banks. You wait online in a bank, and there's the TV. You're watching the Wells Fargo stagecoach go across. It's telling you how wonderful Wells Fargo is. You go to the hotel, right, with the breakfast included. You go down to breakfast. You're trying to eat some, trying to eat some damn breakfast, you know. There's the television, you know. With those people, you know those people on those morning shows, you know, they're very polished, kind of, they look strange. And I'm sure they have deep spiritual lives themselves and deep suffering. But anyway, there they are, telling you about stuff that you don't care about. So you turn away. Okay, I'm not going to watch the television. You turn that way. There's another television there.

[46:14]

Four televisions in one room. So that no matter where you look, you've got a television beaming in on you. I like television. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with television. But as an automatic way of dealing with the anxiety of having breakfast in the hotel, this is not so helpful all the time to have a TV going. But this is what is on offer from our culture. And another thing on offer from the culture is fight, right? Which is, if you have a problem, let me tell you how to get rid of that problem. You know, the magazine covers.

[47:19]

Here's three things you need to do, and then your problems will be over. Usually if it's that way, if it's all your problems, it usually takes six things to do it. 13 things to do, you know. But some of the smaller problems, just three, and then you get rid of them, you know. This is called fight. This is not... It's necessary to fight sometimes. It's a good idea to fight. We have to fight sometimes. When things are... out of order and disordered and deluded in a certain way, it's good to fight to make them right, to do our best to make them right. But again, as a panacea, as a way of dealing with our internal anxiety, it's not necessarily such a good idea.

[48:26]

And even if we're going to fight, it's better to fight from a place of tolerance first, tolerating whatever it is that's bugging us, and then acting from there, rather than a more kind of reactive. I'm going to beat him down. Oh, so Sylvia Borstein is a Vipassana Buddhist teacher. who's written a number of books, and I think her second book was Don't Just Do Something, Sit There. There it is. That's it. Because we're such a don't-just-sit-there-do-something culture where we're berating people all the time. Do something. If you've got a problem, we'll solve it. What's the matter with you? Just take care of it. But I don't think some things are amenable to that kind of way.

[49:40]

And some things are better, don't just do something, sit there. So this notion of tolerating, being patient with, having room for containing, it's a Jungian way of saying it, containing our inner life and our fear. Sitting with it. And not freezing. in it, not stiffening, flexibly moving.

[50:44]

So the third way I would speak about this, the first way is not about this attitude, this feeling of practice. Not flight, not fight, not freeze. And the second way is to tolerate kshanti, tolerate our life, tolerate our difficulty. And the third way is to, the third way to say the same thing is to talk about the Four Noble Truths. Four Noble Truths, very important teaching. Shakyamuni Buddha in the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha's life, that was his first teaching. Dharma Chakra Pravartana Sutra, the turning of the wheel of the law, in which he talked about the Four Noble Truths.

[52:00]

In Sanskrit they are dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, and marga, usually translated as suffering, the first noble truth, and cause. Third is cessation. And fourth is path. Suffering, cause, end, cessation, path, marga. So if we turn the first noble truth into a philosophical statement, you know, like life is suffering, then it's a philosophical statement.

[53:03]

And then we can argue about it. Yes it is, no it isn't, sometimes, never, always, et cetera. So coming at it from this more, the feeling of it way, my sense is that the essence of the first noble truth is that things don't work out the way we want them to. That's the essence of it. There's nobody who you could ask, who, if you asked, would say, oh yes, things have always, currently do, and I expect they will continue to always work out exactly the way I would like them to. Nobody says that. You may have noticed, you know.

[54:03]

So this is not a philosophical point. I mean, we can adjust it. We can put whatever adjectival clause we want to add to it. Sometimes, most of the time, things don't work out the way I want them to. Sometimes they don't. Occasionally, they don't. On very rare occasions, things don't work out the way I want them to. Et cetera, et cetera. But anyway... They don't work out. Oh, and so another way of saying that same thing is things are not under my control. How do you like that? What a bum deal that is. Like, we don't like it. That's why it's called suffering. That's why it's called dukkha. Things are not under my control. Like, you know, some of you who've come here before probably know I don't usually sit in a chair. I usually sit with my legs crossed. in deep samadhi, right?

[55:10]

Deep concentration. Really looks terrific, too. And it feels good to sit with your legs crossed if you've been doing it for years and years and years. You get used to it, and sometimes it really feels, it's just wonderful. So, oh, and the other thing that some of you know is that I love to ride my bicycle. I ride my bicycle from here into the city to go to work and stuff. Or I used to, I should say. So then a couple of months ago, I started getting this thing. I don't even know what to call it. Just this ache over here. The chiropractor says that it's certain muscles that are connected to my hip that are inflamed. Why are they inflamed? Nobody knows. I've gone to various healthcare practitioners.

[56:13]

So that's what the chiropractor says. The acupuncturist says, I've got too much heat. I'm hot. And that's the reason why I have these joint issues. So this was not in my plan. This was not the way I was thinking about what was going to happen. I had signed up, and my wife, Linda, had signed up. We were both going to do the Marin Century. I was going to cycle 100 miles, and she was going to cycle a metric century, 66 miles. That was our plan, August 1st. We canceled and have not yet gotten a refund either. Because of this thing. which is not in my plan, not anything I wanted to happen, not in my control. So I think that this is the essence of what dukkha means, is that that's the way things are.

[57:21]

This characterizes our life. And, you know, I'm not joking. It's a serious issue, but The one I'm talking about that I can't sit cross-legged, you might say it's relatively minor. There are many other things that are much more gigantic that happen in our life that are beyond our control, that we don't like at all. Great suffering of one kind or another. So there's an idea about the Four Noble Truths that sort of, in the ether, that I think is an oversimplification. And if you go too far in this oversimplified way, I think it's really just wrong-headed, which is that the... So there's this formulation, which is suffering, and then the cause of suffering, and then the cause of suffering, in this way that I'm talking about, is located as, sometimes it's called grasping, or attachment, or desire.

[58:28]

And sometimes those are a little bit confused. They're actually different things. And then the cessation is ending your desire, which then ends your suffering. And then the path is how you do that. And I don't think that makes any sense, to tell you the truth. Because... Because... was a few different reasons. One is, we're human beings. Human beings are built for attachment. We're built for desire. That's the way we're built. Otherwise, we're not rocks. So to try to eliminate our desire is kind of counter to sort of locate that as the problem, wanting things, The problem is not that we want things.

[59:34]

Wanting things, or wanting this and not wanting that, that's our natural human activity. No way we're gonna get rid of that. Oh, and that's the other problem, is there's a self-contradiction in this kind of effort to eliminate our attachments, which is, it's being very attached to eliminating our attachments. There's kind of a problem there, I think, you know? It's, you know, a very elevated spiritual attachment to want to eliminate your attachments, but it's an attachment nevertheless. They're actually just exactly the same as wanting a hamburger, you know? It's the same thing. So, it's a really steep hill to climb to eliminate your attachments or sort of... try to suppress them, you know. So I don't think that that's what Samudaya and Narodha refer to.

[60:36]

I would offer today that what Narodha, what cessation refers to is more like is more like kshanti, is more like Tolerating our life. Tolerating our desires. Tolerating how things don't work out the way we want them to. To live with that. Breathe with that. And the path is the path of actualizing that tolerance, actualizing that patience, actualizing that stable, open mind.

[61:51]

I know who I am. That's when you really know who you are. in the Fukan Zazengi, which is the universal recommendations for the practice of Zazen, written also by Dogen. It's a wonderful short, that he wrote, which is this wonderful combination of very specific physical details, you know, get a cushion and put your leg this way and put your right foot on your left thigh and stuff like that, combined with these very deep teachings. So right in the middle of it, he says, He goes through these various instructions about how to sit with your legs crossed.

[63:00]

He doesn't mention sitting in a chair. And he says, settle your body into a steady, immobile sitting position. And then there's this very central thing. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen. So a couple of people chuckled because they may have been responding the same way I responded for the first 20 or 30 years of looking at this, which is, what is he talking about? Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen. If this is the essential art, what does that mean?

[64:01]

So it is a little mysterious, or it's actually more poetic. It's not so mysterious, it's more like poetry, which is mysterious sometimes. In an earlier version, however, of the same work, he says it a little bit differently, and I think in a way that helps open it up. So what he says in this earlier version of the Fukanzazengi is, what is it? Stabilize? I've forgotten exactly. But sit in a steady position, immobile. Settle yourself in a steady, immobile sitting position. Then in the very place that he said this thing about think not thinking, he says something different. He says, When a thought arises, be aware of it. When you are aware of it, it will disappear as an object.

[65:08]

So, at least I get that one a little bit more. When a thought arises, be aware of it. When you are aware of it, it will disappear as an object. So my version today is when a thought arises, practice tolerance. When a thought arises, when a feeling arises, when a state arises, cultivate the practice of tolerating it. By cultivating the practice of tolerating it, by cultivating patience, by cultivating an open mind in which we allow things to come and be there, in which we are not flighting, fighting, or freezing.

[66:25]

by cultivating that tolerance, the power, the strength of that thought, feeling, state, it loses its power over us. Its power over us decreases. Okay, thanks.

[66:55]

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