Good morning. Nice place, huh? Beautiful day. Spring. In my house, the wisteria is blossoming. It's especially spectacular this year. Purple and lavender and white and very fragrant. It's interesting to me how, you know, sometimes you can see the wisteria and you can feel as extravagant and beautiful as the wisteria.

[01:34]

Wow. That's me. I'm flowering too. And I'm so fragrant. or something like this, some kind of empathy or connection with wisteria. And it's spring and it's time to flower. And the energy is also coming up in me. And other times you see the wisteria and it's like, how can you be so extravagant? And I feel so horrible. What's with that? Doesn't it know how bad things are in my life and in the world? And it's just going ahead and flowering anyway. What's with that? So I was at dinner last night and a friend of mine, I met last year, Tom Ingalls does graphic design.

[03:14]

So he brought me a little gift at dinner. I think I need my glasses to read this. Excuse me. You can't see it exactly, but you know, there's a beautiful blue ENSO semicircle here at the top. And it says, although we have no actual written communication from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what's going on in that world. that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.

[04:26]

And that's a quote from Shinryu Suzuki Roshi. And Tom actually had made these up to share with his singing group in San Francisco. He sits with Jeffrey Schneider and Laura Burgess, they have a group for recovering addicts. One of my friends who sits with me, Carl Dern, he's a recovering addict. You know, he's been sober now maybe 30 years or 35 years. He's in the hospital now.

[05:30]

He's a metal sculptor. And I can actually see all of you better if I don't have my glasses. That was a reading. He's a recovering alcoholic and he's in the hospital. He's done metal sculpture for most of his adult life. So his lungs from breathing, the fumes from welding metals and things are kind of gone. The tissue is turned into metal and crystalline. So sometimes he can't breathe. So he was at Kaiser last week. I think he's home again now. And he's taking prednisone. And they warned him, if you take prednisone, you can get depressed and angry and violent and enraged. And he's gotten very calm.

[06:31]

Oh, well. But when I went to see him this last week, I was asking him about a story he told me. I think, you know, we get these letters from emptiness. Sometimes a friend of his who'd been one of his, I think, you know, sponsors in AA, his wife had died. So he was terribly despondent and upset and grieving. And he decided that he would go up to Novato to the bar where he used to get drunk all the time and to hell with it and go back there. So he got on the bus to go back to Novato. And being on the bus was pretty discouraging too.

[07:42]

People were not so well dressed. There was a smell of disinfectant on the bus. It was kind of a gray day. And the scenery wasn't so great. And he was getting more and more despondent and more and more looking forward to visiting his old haunts. And as they were, then somewhere they stopped along the freeway there, maybe Ignacio or something, and a woman got on the bus and young and fairly young and somewhat attractive and she looked down the bus and then She started walking down the bus and she walked right up to him.

[08:46]

And she said, oh, you're Dr. Gill. And you were the speaker at my first AA meeting. And you were such an inspiration to me. And they got to talking and then he got off the bus and called his friend to get a ride home. It's not just, you know, people sometimes are like that, but you know, the wisteria blossoms can also be like that, or now, We sit here, you can hear, we can hear the birds.

[09:49]

And because we're sitting in a room with, you know, others quietly this way The space that we're in can feel a little larger, perhaps, a little more spacious. And maybe all the things we've decided about ourselves aren't so true after all. I don't know about you, but most of us have fairly discouraging thoughts about ourselves. I wanted to tell you some of mine. You know, I'm pretty good at sitting up here. I've got the outfit, you know.

[11:06]

So I'm pretty good at sitting here. Oh, and I have I'm not sure what these things are even called, though, you see. Shouldn't you know what it is? I heard it's a, I think it might be a katsu, it might be a nyoi. I don't know what the difference is, you know, I'm not. So you can see I'm not very learned. And so who am I to sit up here and talk about anything since I know so little? One idea of this, you know, is that it's called the nyōi because it's the mind that reaches everywhere, symbolic of the mind that reaches everywhere. So, of course, it's shaped like a back scratcher. And Zen teachers have been known sometimes to slip a bend behind their robes, inside their robes, and, you know, you can actually scratch your back with this.

[12:21]

There's a little curl here. Now, other people say, No, no, no, that's short for, you know, the psychedelic mushrooms that got this whole thing started. You know, the psychedelic mushroom where the head of the mushroom curls over and this is, you know, abbreviated version of that big, you know, head of the mushroom that's hanging over. So, you know, we don't know. And then, And then, of course, mysteriously enough, why is it in my hands? This is a very strange business, but it is. In spite of the fact that all those years that I spent, I lived at the Zen Center for 20 years, it's been a while now, so I sometimes can go to Page Street and they say, what are you doing here? This is only for residents.

[13:25]

Because, you know, I'm just in my regular clothes. I don't have the outfit. And I have to explain to them that, well, I did live here, you know, for 10 years. A few years back. It's perhaps before your time. But also, you know, I've let my hair grow. And if you've read Dogen, you know, priests who let their hair grow are worse than dogs. Now, I don't know, that's a different culture, I guess, because dogs are kind of high status in our culture. But perhaps in his culture, dogs are low. And then priests who let their hair grow are even lower. You know, so... But while I was a student of Zen, other people could actually sit still, and I did a lot of moving for a lot of years.

[14:30]

And when you try to stop the movement here, then it moves somewhere else, and then you try to stop that. So I wasn't very good at sitting. And then, You know, over the years, most people have nicer robes than I do. And doesn't that mean something? I wanted, I especially wore these robes today so I could show you what I mean, And this isn't the only place in these robes that's like this. This is a low status person. So my robes haven't been as good.

[15:31]

And I'm also not as, I already explained to you, I'm not very learned actually. So when I talk, it sounds like I'm talking just telling you stories and it doesn't sound like you're getting any Buddhism. Maybe you should find another teacher. Actually get some Buddhism from them that would, you know, serve you well. Because if you get the right Buddhism, it's like a tool in your hand and then you can better do what you set out to do. Become high status and immune. Anyway, that's what I set out to do. And then, you know, of course, over all those years, I was also very emotional.

[16:40]

And I don't understand how most people can walk around and not be emotional. I don't know how you do it. It's very mysterious to me. But I feel sad and scared and fragile and vulnerable and then sometimes when that gets touched, I get angry about it and I get defensive and I, you know, become impatient. And I want to, you know, distance people, get away because if you're too close, And then, of course, once they go away, then where is everybody? And I feel lonely. And I don't know how, and then there's people going around like, hi, how are you?

[17:46]

Nice to see you. Oh, really? They're the flower in wisteria. While I'm still in winter. Or something like this, you know. So I thought that in order to, you know, actually become a Zen teacher, you needed to kind of clear up clear up that kind of emotional stuff, don't you think? It's mysterious. What do you do with all that emotional stuff? Of course, some people, you know, it's much more forgivable, for instance, if you become sick and you have a backache.

[18:50]

I don't tend to get backaches. Or you You know, you have accidents. I don't tend to have accidents. So, you know, if you're sick, then you can tell people, well, I'm sick. My back hurts or my shoulders out. My hips are bothering me. This is similar to, you know, I've got PMS. But, you know, guys have PMS too. But there's not the same kind of research on it. And we haven't had a men's movement like there's been a women's movement. Because when I go to the Chinese acupuncture, they say you have constrained liver chase. So I think I've told you this before, but that's the difference between men and women. You know, women only have PMS three or four days a month. But some of us have it all the time. So this is why we're emotional, but we can't say

[19:54]

And I had the saliva test with the ZRT labs and my estrogen is just way up there, way too high. And it means you get moody and intense and short-tempered and all these things. Is this just chemistry or what is it? So I've never been very good actually at practicing Zen. I went to the Zen teachers conference in October. I was a little worried about going there because I thought, suppose they can actually see who I am. And they realize and they can see what a fraud, you know, I am. Suppose and

[20:57]

There was actually a speaker there then who talked about this, you know, he said, aren't you Zen people setting yourselves up? I mean, you know, if you're a Catholic priest or a rabbi, okay, and, you know, people, you know, you're a little short-tempered or moody or, you know, paranoid or something, you know, okay. Well, you know, There's Catholic priests all over the place, but if you're a Zen teacher, supreme, complete, perfect enlightenment. What would that look like? Aren't you guys setting yourselves up to not look so good and to not necessarily measure up to the standard? So what would that look like? And the curious thing about this, it has no mark or characteristic that you could identify.

[22:13]

Uh-oh. How would you know whether you had it or not? So, I just want to, you know, after you hear about my lack of credentials and my low capacity for manifesting what it is to be a Zen teacher, then you might start to wonder, well, if you're such a kind of questionable character, why would we be sitting here listening to you? I was about to scratch my face. Which is a very low status. So, it's very interesting, but you see, because I can

[23:25]

because I am so low status, I want to tell you something about what a help that can be for you. You might think that the way to study something is to find somebody who knows about it, because you don't. Then you find somebody who does, who can explain it to you. Oh yes, I can explain that to you, you know. Also last night, an old friend of mine was also at dinner and she said, Ed, do you remember, you know, like 18 years ago? 18 years ago. And she said, I used to come to your sittings at Gringouch 18 years ago. And, you know, all the questions that people ask are, would you help me with my suffering? And could you cure it for me? Could you fix my suffering for me? And she said that one person asked me this and I said, why would I? I mean, isn't it yours?

[24:30]

I mean, isn't it a benefit for you? And, you know, Buddha gives people problems, you know, one after another. And the person said, well, that's what I pay you for. And she said, my response was, you're not paying me enough. But because I don't know much and I'm not much of a authority. You know, I can be your friend. And I can be right inside you. And I can be exactly with you.

[25:34]

And I can feel what you're feeling. I'm not separate from you. And I know your heart. And you can be who you are with me. And you don't have to. Demonstrate to me how good you are, how brilliant you are any more than I ever could in my life. In order for me to recognize you or approve you or give you attention, I can just be there with you. And I will be your friend, a friend in the dark. And you will realize that the darkness is And you can have trust in diving into the depth of your life where Rilke says, it calmly gives out its secret.

[26:53]

Or like Anna Akhmatova, the Russian poet says, I can't tell if the day is ending or the world. You know, it's sunset. I can't tell if the day is ending or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again. And we don't know. What appears to be high or low, good or bad, is superficial designations. And to get caught up in them is to send teacher, send teachers will tell you is exhausting. And to have to maintain a certain picture of yourself or

[28:02]

try to convince others of a certain picture is endlessly tiring. So sometimes you know we look pretty good and sometimes we don't. And I know something about this. know how exhausting it can be to try to look good and try to pass and try to be acceptable. And who is that, you know? It's finally yourself who distances yourself. You know, we distance ourselves from ourselves. The disease of mind is to set one mind against another mind. I can't tell if the day is ending or the world or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.

[29:28]

Yesterday I did a, you know, sitting one day, one day sitting nine to five. You know, I've done a lot of the, over the years I did a lot of sit-ins from five to nine and beyond. And then once I was out of Zen Center, I started doing sit-ins nine to five. It seemed kind of nice to be able to have breakfast at home and then go and sit and then, you know, have dinner and relax. And I still think, you know, that longer sittings can be very useful. I'm not trying to say they're not useful, but for people just off the street can be kind of a challenge. So I thought I'd do something for people off the street. And, you know, then I heard, you know, like a friend, another friend of mine, he said, that he once went to a concert in San Francisco, and afterwards with a woman from Page Street, the Zen Center in San Francisco, and afterwards they met another fellow from Page Street who had on his Zen clothes, and she said, this is so-and-so, and this is my friend, and about my friend, she said, and he sits with Ed Brown.

[31:39]

And the person from the Zen Center said, oh, Ed Brown, yes, he's pretty good for beginners. I guess you have me in my place, don't you? I've heard that from other people too, you know, so. And then, you know, is it good to be a beginner or should you become advanced? And where was it you were going to get to? So anyway, one of the things I wanted to talk about yesterday, and I'd like to share it with you today as well, how our awareness can shift.

[32:49]

and our attention can shift and the nature of attention has as much to do with the object of awareness as the object of awareness. You know, what makes reality is the way we put it together. And then sometimes we put reality together And you know, classically we say in Buddhism, we put together reality and most people put reality together and then settle down and live it in that reality as though it was something that was actually real and wasn't what they just put together. Got it? Whereas you might study how to put together reality a little differently, which was not any less real than the way you were putting it together, which was you just made it up and put it together that way. But sometimes it's very tempting to think that the way you put together really is real. Because it's my way of putting it together.

[33:52]

It's the way I've always put it together. So I just want to give you a little story about this. I hope I'm not talking too long. It looks like it's okay. I got my watch out. Okay. So when I first got to... You know, a Zen center was on Bush Street in the old Jewish synagogue that was Sokoji Temple, where Suzuki Rishi had come. And my friend and I, we just went in and sat down, trying to be a little inconspicuous. You went up in these big doors and then up some stairs. And at the top of the stairs, there's a shoe rack and then there's a door. And when you went in the door, you were in the meditation hall. It seemed like, you know, golden light was coming out of that room when people went into it.

[34:54]

Is that real? And we took off our shoes and we went in and we sat. And we hadn't had any instruction. So we just sat. And afterwards, you know, we used to, in those days, we would line up at the back of the meditation hall. We'd go out through Suzuki Roshi's office, which was a different door, into his office, and then out the other door to his office and back down the outside hall to the shoe rack. So one by one, we would bow to Suzuki Roshi. And of course, I thought, I was very concerned. What will he think of me? How will he see me? Am I a good person? Am I a bad person? Is there something wrong with me? Or am I okay? And so I kind of wanted to check.

[36:01]

And so when you bow, usually you put your head down, but I was kind of like, That's low status, isn't it? It's a low status. But, you know, he didn't seem to be thinking a thing. Other people had this experience too. You know how it seemed you could look right through you and it was just fine. You were just fine and it wasn't even about being fine. It wasn't like it was fine or not fine. It was neither here nor there, but you felt completely received, completely seen. It's different than if somebody kind of like doesn't really see you and kind of is dismissive. And so then that's a different kind of, they don't seem to think much of you. This is like being completely received and then it didn't.

[37:03]

And you know, about 20 years later, I read in Dogen, Supreme, perfect, complete enlightenment is like meeting somebody for the first time and not thinking about whether you like them or not. So that's what that was when I met Suzuki Roshi. And he didn't seem to think anything one way or another. Who knows? A letter from emptiness. And then Suzuki Rishi said to my friend and I, wait over there. And then after everybody had gone out, he said to Karagiroshi, give them Zazan Instructional. So we went in and Karagiroshi explained, bow to your cushion, turn clockwise, bow away from your cushion, sit down, turn around, cross your legs, lean left and right, take a couple deep breaths, put your hands like this. And a lot of things are going to happen, just stay with it.

[38:06]

This is where you get, you know, not so much instruction because, I mean, aren't you clever enough to figure it out? You know, in Zen we say, to give too many instructions is like gouging a wound in good flesh. You can find out how to live your life. It's not up to somebody else to tell you, you do this and you don't do that and then you do, you know, And then you try to be a good child, rather than an adult, and do what you're told. And then you worry about whether you're doing it right or not. And then you grade yourself if there's nobody else around to grade you. Because you've got some instructions to follow. Anyway, so Kata Grisha gave us instructions, and then I went to sit on a Saturday, and Saturday there was a sitting, And then we had breakfast on little trays in the zendo.

[39:13]

And then after breakfast, there was a period of work and cleaning up. And nobody told you what to do. And people were washing the dishes. They were sweeping the floor in the meditation hall. They were cleaning the bathrooms. And it's like, well, what do I do? So... Boy, you had to be quick to get your job before somebody else took all the jobs that were there to do. And you were just supposed to figure it out and get with it. It was kind of like unbelievable. Isn't anybody in charge around here? Now Zen Center is so developed, you know, we have people who are in charge of things. But back in the day, you know, when it was small enough, we didn't have anybody in charge of anything. And then it was so amazing to watch Katagiri Roshi. And, of course, there is a tradition in Zen, you know, that people of high status do low jobs still, like cleaning the toilets.

[40:20]

And Katagiri Roshi would do this, you know, Japanese thing, you know, of having a damp towel with a board, and then run, with his hands on the board, run across the meditation hall to mop the floor. You know, it's like downward dog, but running. And pushing this, you know, wood with a towel on it. It was so incredible, such energy and such willingness to stoop. And nobody could do it, you know, like that. If you see Doris Derry's movie, you know, Enlightenment Guaranteed, then you see Westerners trying to do that and how they fall over and how awkward it is for us to do anything like that. Anyway, then after breakfast there would be a couple sittings and, you know, I could sit for one period and it wouldn't hurt.

[41:24]

But then the second period it started hurting. I didn't know what to do. What do you do if something hurts? And you want to look good. I mean, if you moved, I mean, like, everybody would know what a miserable failure of a Zen student you are, and how you gave up so easily, and how you just were such a wimp, and whatever, you know? I mean, I was 20 years old. I mean, you know, this also has something to do with being macho, right? afraid that a lot of sin in Japan is we're macho and are you as tough as we are. And there's something to be said for that I suppose. So I was sitting and my knees were hurting terribly and I didn't know what to do but to withstand it.

[42:25]

You turn your awareness to withstand So then, in order to withstand something, you have to keep that something there, you know, molesting you, as it were, so that you can practice withstanding it. You wouldn't want to see it differently. It has to be an ongoing, continuous threat for you to withstand. But also then, the more you're withstanding something, in order to withstand the pain in your knees, What I did was tighten my jaw. And then another way to withstand things is not to breathe. Only after a while you kind of have to breathe a little bit because you can't hold your breath for the rest of the period. So I was kind of gasping for air.

[43:32]

and not being able to breathe, and then the pain is getting worse. If you make, it turns out that if you make your body hard to withstand something, then that makes the something you're withstanding worse. You know, I mean, this is like, nowadays this is such common information, you know, after Jon Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction and what have you, that if you, soften your awareness and are just aware of something and mindful of it, you don't have as much pain as when you're resisting it and you try to get rid of it and you're pushing it away and you're walling yourself up to get rid of what's painful or difficult and you make yourself hard and so forth. So it doesn't work. But I didn't understand any of this, so I did my best to, you know, what I knew how to do, which was to withstand it. and sent him a gun, but there was a woman, it turned out, at one point there while I was sitting there, I felt this hand on my leg, on my knee.

[44:39]

I've been sitting for over 40 years, this has not happened before or since. You do not do this. You just don't. They're doing their practice, you're doing your practice. You got your practice, they got their practice, don't have fear. Let them have their difficulty. Only the person sitting next to me was a woman named Jane Ross, and she was the president of Zen Center, and she practiced that in Japan. She was one of Suzuki Roshi's oldest students, so I figured she must know what she's doing. And I didn't tell her, like, leave me alone. And there was her hand on my knee, and I was waiting for it to go, there, there. It's okay. You know, a little patting, a little stroking.

[45:45]

This is often what people do. Calm down. Relax. You'll feel better. It says, wait a minute for him to tell me what to do. As soon as, of course, you tell somebody what to do, you've made them wrong for doing whatever else it was. Do you understand? Like if you're saying, calm down, relax. You're not calm down and relax. Now get with the program and calm down and relax because what you're doing isn't a thing to be doing. So it's very interesting when and I was waiting for what she was gonna tell me to do and she wasn't telling me anything. Her hand was just there. It wasn't doing anything. And slowly my breath started to soften and my body disappeared.

[46:54]

There was only one thing in the whole universe, which was the sensation there. And besides that sensation, there was glowing heat, warmth. So this is, you know, like a friend in the dark. I feel that hand on my knee from time to time. I know that presence of mind that's not telling you what to do, what not to do, how to get over it. So often you hear people, get over it. Grow up. Don't be so emotional. Look at it this way. And I'm trying the best I can, even if it's misguided.

[48:01]

And so, you know, over time, this is something we each can do. A presence of mind that's not giving out any instructions, it's receiving you, your experience. As Suzuki Rishi said, I called it letting things come home to your heart. And you know, each of us has this kind of good heart. It's our mind that judges. When things come home to our heart, our heart has no problem. It's our mind that judges good and bad and right and wrong and better and worse and you should this and you shouldn't that and What are people going to think? And our heart's praise receives. So thank you for your presence today here in my heart and I hope I've been good company in your heart.

[49:21]

Okay, thank you.

[49:23]

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