Good morning, everyone. And especially good morning to the young people who are here with us. I'm wearing my party dress today because we're going to have a birthday party after this talk is over. And so I want you to, you know, we're celebrating Buddha's birthday, but since Buddha said all beings are Buddha, let's just say it's everybody's birthday and let's sing happy birthday to Buddha. Okay, would you help me? Okay? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Buddha. Happy birthday to you and many more. We celebrate the birth of the Buddha.

[01:05]

We think he was born about 2,573 years ago, but that's a long time, so we may not be quite exactly right. And my teacher, Suzuki Roshi, said to us many times, we should see Buddha in everyone. As a matter of fact, Ed Brown tells of an exchange he had when he was being quite irritated. He was head of the kitchen, and he came to Suzuki Roshi complaining about somewhere in which people weren't doing what he wanted them to do. Has that ever happened to you? And Suzuki Roshi said to Ed, Edson, you should try to see virtue. You should try to see good in people.

[02:08]

And he said, how can I see virtue when they're acting so dumb? He said, Edson, to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind. And a lot of what we do here in practicing together is to work on how to have a calm mind. even when things are not going the way you want them to, so that you can see what's the best thing to do. In each situation, what is the kindest thing to do? Look at the people that you like to be with. That's how you tell. When I met Suzuki Roshi, I thought, I want to be like him. And that's why I practice Zazen still. So when there's somebody in your life that, I mean, what kinds of things make you want to be like that?

[03:11]

Someone who's kind. What kinds of things do you look for in people that make you feel happy to be with them? Maybe they're smiling a lot. Maybe they... really look at you when they're talking to you and listen to you when you're talking to them. What are the kinds of things that you notice about people that you really like to be with that you can say, oh, I want to be like that and work on being the kind of person that makes everyone around them happy. If you pay attention to how to make the people around you happy, it will make you happy. Maybe that's... Is there something else we want to talk about, or do you guys want to go out there and play a little bit?

[04:28]

Anyhow... Our job as we grow up is to be the kind of person that we want to see in the world. So we want to aspire to be like those people that we like to be around. Because if we can all be like that, the whole world would be a happier place. And each one of us, each one of you, will be happy if you work on helping the people around you to be happy. Okay? Maybe it's time for you guys to go and have your fun. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And we're going to have... we're going to have the party right after I'm through talking.

[05:35]

So I'll be as swift as I can. There's some people back by the door who didn't have space. There's some empty cushions here now. Come in. So I guess everybody likes a birthday party.

[06:44]

Wow. It's great to see so many of you here. Are any of you here for the first time today? I'd like to extend a particular welcome to you. So as I say, today is the day that we celebrate the birth of the Buddha. In Japan, in Southeast Asia, the birth of the Buddha, the Buddha's birth and death and enlightenment, are all celebrated in one ceremony called Vesak, which is the full moon of May. But somehow in Japan, Buddha's birthday got associated with an already existing festival called Anamatsuri, the festival of the flowers, which is springtime.

[07:47]

big flowering of nature that happens when there's more light. So our festival, our Buddha's birthday, involves lots of flowers. And also, I meant to tell the kids this, one of the things that we do is to bathe the baby Buddha in fragrant tea. Apparently, newborn infants in India at the time of the Buddha's birth were bathed not just with plain water, but with water with fragrant herbs and spices. The spices, I think, probably also had, some of the spices probably also had an antiseptic effect as well. But sweet-smelling. So we'll all do that over in the park afterwards.

[08:53]

But I thought I would just sort of tell you what's the origin of that. So I want to say a little bit more about this inspiration for my practice 40 years ago. I'm still working on it. not like Suzuki Roshi yet, so I still have a lot of work to do. But this point that he made with us is to see Buddha in everyone, to treat everyone as Buddha, is a very important point. If we could do that, it's not just that everybody around us would be happier, we would be happier. There's a very strong teaching in Buddhism that our happiness depends on the happiness of all those around us.

[10:09]

And that our concern, instead of our concern, you know, the Buddha said something is... reputed to have said something on his awakening like, oh, I now see that all beings without exception have the wisdom and compassion of the awakened ones. But because of their self-clinging and delusions, they don't realize it. So how can we make real this wisdom and compassion that is in each of us? How can we really bring it to life in our life? This is the whole point of practice. If any of you play with the internet, on YouTube, there is a bit by Trungpa Rinpoche's son, whose...

[11:17]

now the head teacher of the Shambhala tradition, and it's called... I think if you look up Mipam and All About Me, you'll find it. It's a great song. But in it, it turns from a song about All About Me to All About You. And it's that turn that we work to... to create in our own lives. You know, I asked, someone invited me to come and give a talk at their practice place when he was going to be away doing a retreat somewhere else. And I said, is it okay if I talk about gratitude again? They said, oh yeah. I mean, gratitude is the seventh paramita. Gratitude is the ninth step on the eightfold path.

[12:18]

And we have in our tradition something called the six paramitas, or the six virtues which we cultivate on the bodhisattva path. And the first one is dhana, or generosity, or giving. And I remember I was reading Katigiri Roshi's book, Returning to Silence. in the part about entering the Buddha way, and he's talking about the Paramitas, and he's talking about Dana Paramita, and he said, Dana is generosity of giving. But of course, a monk doesn't give material things because a monk is a mendicant. A monk gives the Dharma and fearlessness. I don't know anything about fearlessness. I guess I'd better study that. And as I really study fearlessness, I find it's not necessarily being without fear, but it's not being overcome by fear.

[13:42]

But what I find as I study fear in myself is that Fear and self-concern are very closely, mostly fear arises in me when I'm really focused on self-concern. And when I'm focused on the well-being of all Buddhas, all beings, or those Buddhas that are in my presence now, it doesn't matter. So that was an interesting thing for me to see, how closely fear is connecting with self-concern. Not all together. Those that are near and dear to us, fear sometimes arises around their well-being. But I think that indeed as we practice

[14:50]

fear becomes less dominant in our experience. Maybe I should check that out with some of you who have been back sent for a while. What do you think? You think that fear has diminished somewhat as you've practiced over the years? A little bit. Well, anyhow, I decided that since my friend was so appreciative of gratitude and gratefulness that it was all right for me to talk about it again at his center, I will talk about it for you as well.

[15:53]

Because for me, it has been a big, big planning point, discovering gratefulness in a big way, as I've mentioned here before, but some of you are new and haven't heard me talk about it before, after I had a heart attack, which I survived. The first thing that occurred to me as I stepped out of the hospital door was... I could be dead. Gee, the rest of my life is a gift. Oh, it's always been a gift. From the beginning, it's not a gift just because you missed a bullet. It's a gift because my life is perfectly fortuitous. I didn't do anything to earn it. It was just given to me by my parents or by the Incas.

[17:03]

And that is, you know, recognizing my whole life as gift then really makes me want to make it a gift for everyone. It makes me want everyone to feel that gratefulness for having received this opportunity to be alive. It was quite amusing to me, actually. I came to practice because I was terrified, because a friend of mine died suddenly with a brain tumor. And I realized, she was my age, I was 40, and I realized, oh my God. People don't just die when they get old. I mean, that could have been me as well as Pat. Oh, wow. And I was really, really consumed by fear. But the question came up in me, how do you live if you know you're going to die?

[18:08]

And that question became, I never heard of a koan, but that came out of my koan, became my koan. And I was sort of studying, how do you live if you know you're going to die? I mean, knowing that we all die, so each of us knows that we're going to die someday, should affect how we live, it seemed to me. I don't know where that question came from, but as I look at it, yeah, it should affect how I live, knowing that it's not permanent. I should make as much happiness in the world as I possibly can while I'm still around for as many people as I can. Anyhow, that question was first and foremost in my mind as I went about my life. And somebody told me about the Berkeley Vendo and I went there.

[19:14]

And then Suzuki Roshi came there and gave it I could tell by looking at him. I don't know if you've seen pictures of him. He was always smiling. He looked right at you. He made eye contact at you. When we left Zendo each time after Thousand, we would go through his office and he would be standing there and we would each bow to each other. very close. And he would make eye contact, each one of them. How often do we do that as we go around in the world? Do we actually meet the people we meet? Do we attend to them? I mean, it was clear that he was paying some attention to me.

[20:17]

The first time I saw him in Dokusan, It was very nice to see you here with your husband and your daughter. He had noticed that he just doesn't always work like that. Sometimes wife begins to practice and gets jealous like she had a new boyfriend. And I've seen that happen. When one of a partnership starts to practice, the other one feels a little neglected. Luckily, Lou and I... began to practice at the same time. So we didn't have to be jealous of each other. But really, the main change that needs to happen, I think, for us to go from

[21:18]

fear and worry to being at ease and connected in the world is to recognize that we do not exist separate from each other. We are so inter, you know, the great Vietnamese teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, has this phrase interbeing, this word interbeing that I think he invented. We inter-are with each other. But it's true. We are so interwoven and interdependent with all other life on the planet and with each other that it really makes a difference if we make a connection with the people around us. It really makes a difference if our concern turns from just concern about my happiness to concern about my happiness.

[22:30]

The more we improve in the circle of concern, the lighter it gets, the happier you'll be. Brother David Steiner has written a book called The Listening Heart. And in it he says something about happiness and gratitude. He's very big on gratitude. He's one of the people who pointed out to me how important gratitude and gratefulness is. He calls it gratefulness. But he said, you're not grateful because you're happy.

[23:30]

You're happy because you're grateful. And I find that to be true. When I recognize that there are so many things that I can appreciate, You know, just a few weeks ago, these trees right outside the window were bare. And look at them now. I was just amazed at how fully leafed they are in such a short time. There's so many things in each breath of air. we could be grateful for. We could be grateful directly to the trees right there. It's kind of wonderful this way that the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom depend on each other.

[24:32]

I mean, that's one of the real obvious examples of our interdependence in the world is the way the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom support each other. Why not? It didn't come from the plant. Bare carbon dioxide comes from the milk. And neither of us could live without it. And the whole world is like that. Everything that we receive, we receive through the kindness of others. Everything. And others receive what they need through our kindness. So when we can realize that and give some attention to how we are supporting those around us, I think we feel the connectedness much more.

[25:42]

And feeling the connectedness is really, really important, I think, to realize how much we depend on each other and so to appreciate each one around us. Not just to the well-being of the world, but to my own well-being. If I want to be self-concerned, let me do it that way. Let me take care of my self-concerns by how well I support those around me so that this reciprocity can flower. So how do we... What happens when we find ourselves overly concerned with I mean mine, what about me?

[27:06]

If we're paying attention, I mean, in that situation, we feel stressed. We feel worried. we feel, you know, it's not a happy feeling with what about me feeling. That's one thing to notice. It doesn't necessarily make things better for us. It just makes us worry more. So as we turn our attention to those around us, What about you? In fact, my life becomes lighter. Lou and I used to have these arguments about, he would say, you're always taking care of me. And I'd say, no, I'm not. You're always taking care of me. That was a great way to argue. It's a nice kind of connection to set up with people.

[28:13]

But when you put your attention on how to be supportive of other people, they would separate. And it's a much less kind of anxious environment to be in and worry about how things are going to go for me. There's... Brother David has a website called gratefulness.org and he sends out a quotation or a thought each day to sort of support the cultivation of gratefulness. And there's some great quotes on there. You can check it out, gratefulness.org if you want to get some experience of... He's quite...

[29:21]

a remarkable guy. He's another guy that sort of brought out that I want to be like him thing. He was talking about monasticism with us. He's a Benedictine monk. He was a student of Suzuki Roshi's and I met him when I first went to Tassajara. And so he was speaking with us about monasticism in his Benedictine tradition down at Tassajara. And somebody asked him about celibacy and he said, well, if I want to love everyone the same, I either have to be celibate or very promiscuous. And I really appreciate that thought of loving everyone the same. Loving everyone. And certainly whenever I'm with him, I feel like There's a great deal of love coming from him.

[30:27]

And that's another one of those, I want to be like that feelings. I want to know how to radiate love the way he does. So that gives me a lot to work on. You know, because I can get irritated just like anybody else. But I notice the irritation does not make me happier. It really is a very miserable state of mind. Anger is a very uncomfortable state of mind. I don't like it. I don't want to cultivate it. I want to find out how to recognize the first beginning of it in the first little irritation and look at it and say, no thank you, I don't want to go with you today. Every time I go walking with you, I feel bad. I don't think so. Go take a hike by yourself.

[31:37]

We can learn to notice the arising of unpleasant states of mind, unwholesome states of mind in the very beginning. You know, we're can just, particularly as you sit sansen, you can begin to see right where they start, there's some little contraction somewhere. And if you catch them in the very beginning, they don't have a lot of energy and momentum behind them. If you catch them in the very beginning, you can recognize, oh, been there, done that, you know, it doesn't, I don't like it. I don't think I'll go there today. Once you've got a lot of steam behind it, it's really hard to let go of it. But if you can catch just the first little beginnings, veritation, you can just say, oh, better not go there.

[32:39]

I know where that takes me. I don't like where it takes me. But you know, you can do it in a friendly way. You don't have to do it in a punishing way. Oh, there you go again. You're such a bad person. Don't do that to yourself. Be kind to yourself as well. In the cultivation of loving kindness, which is a very traditional meditation in the Buddhist tradition, metta meditation, it always begins here. May I be happy. May I be at peace. May I be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May I have ease of well-being. And sort of focusing on your own heart. And as you feel some opening then, opening that out wider to include those who are near and dear to you. And then opening it out wider to include those that are sort of neutral about.

[33:43]

Until you can actually include all beings. The meditation on metta leads to, may all beings be happy, all living beings, whether weak or strong and high or middle or low realms of existence, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy. But they begin right here. It's very hard for you to be more kind to others than you are to yourself. If you're being... complaining about yourself, oh, shame on you, you know, there you go being, you know, that kind of... criticizing yourself, then you're not going to be very open and welcoming to all those around you. You're going to be... Notice, when you feel critical of yourself, you...

[34:45]

critical of everybody around you. Don't you find that to be true? You get in that kind of critical mind. But if when you notice that some unwholesome state of mind is arising and say, oops, don't want to go there, when you notice it, if you'll say, good, you noticed it, now you don't have to go there instead of bad, you're an awful person. If you say to yourself, shame on you, you're an awful person, how often are you going to let yourself notice? I mean, who wants to get beat up on like that all the time? So in practicing, notice wholesome states of mind when they arise and be grateful for them. Notice unwholesome states of mind when they arise. And be grateful that you notice them so now you can let them go and not follow them down the road to more and more and more angst and upset.

[35:46]

Building and building and building a whole case for goodness knows what. When we could just say, oh, that kind of thinking leads me to misery. No thank you. Thank you for calling my attention to it so I don't have to go there. I think that we really want to go have a birthday party. So maybe that's enough for today. Thank you all for being here.

[36:22]

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