Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch on this beautiful summer day. My wife, Linda, and a number of members from here are in the city for the Gay Pride Parade. Zen Center has been participating the last... a number of years, we have a float and people sit zazen on the float as it floats along. But it looks like they have very good weather there too. Last Wednesday morning, I had a surgical procedure on my finger, minor.

[01:10]

I had a synovial cyst, the synovial fluid from my knuckle seeped out and created a cyst that had to be removed surgically. So it's been a little awkward with robes. There's a famous Zen story about a Zen teacher. Whenever he was asked a question, he would just raise one finger. Gute's one finger Zen. So that's it for today. A wounded finger, wounded teaching. The main thing on my mind, on my heart this morning, which is what I will springboard from to speak about a number of different things, is that my mother died just recently.

[02:31]

It will be, tomorrow will be three weeks. She died June 7th. Doris Weintraub. She died in New Jersey where she's been living for the last six years or so. And People have been very solicitous, kind, and thoughtful, offering their condolences to me and seeing how I'm doing. How are you? How are you doing? Ironic, of course.

[03:47]

We're the ones who get asked how we're doing when the event actually was someone else's event, my mother's event. But I'm doing okay. I'm doing fine. And I think partly that comes from... I think partly from the fortuitous circumstances of my mother's death, which were fortuitous in many ways. Can you hear me okay in the back? Good. She had a long, relatively long life She was just about 94 and a half years old.

[04:50]

Born in 1915. If you can imagine that. Somebody was born in 1915. It's kind of hard to wrap one's mind around that. In Warsaw, Poland, she was born. And then in 1921... Thankfully, she and her family came to the United States, lived on the Lower East Side and other places. She was... Doris, my mom, was... loved and loved her children, her three children. I have two older sisters.

[05:55]

I'm the baby of the family. And at 63, I don't feel exactly like a baby, but... So her, you know, her life... was in some sense nothing special. She didn't discover the cure for leukemia, didn't walk on the moon. There's a lot she didn't do. But this deep affection, commitment, love that she had for her children and her children-in-law. One of my two older sisters and her husband are here today. I feel honored to have them here.

[06:59]

And her grandchildren. The flow of affection was unmitigated. So within our circle of family, and then it happened to happen that she also was very loving and affectionate to others around her. So these last six years, since the time of my father's death, she was living in an assisted living facility in New Jersey. Brighton Gardens was the name of it. She called it the hotel. She never referred to it as Brighton Gardens.

[08:05]

She said the hotel. So at the hotel, the staff there, she had a very good relationship with the staff there and during the last week of her life when she was in the hospital, some of the people came from the hotel. Some of the staff came too. She wasn't responsive, but they were just there. And calling her by her nicknames, Dori, DW, these affectionate names that they had for her. So during these last years, pretty regularly, Usually once a week, I would speak with her on the telephone. And in the last few months, more frequently than that. And there was never much to say.

[09:10]

How's the weather? You know, it usually didn't go too, especially in the more recent past, it didn't go too much further than that. because she wasn't able to track much more than that. She knew who I was. That was very clear. Even though she didn't know exactly what my name was sometimes or the exact relationship that I had to her, nevertheless, she knew who I was. So then at the end of the conversation, which was usually brief, we would say goodbye. And I don't know if you have this kind of experience ever where you say goodbye to someone, but you kind of wind up saying goodbye like six times to each other. Goodbye. Okay, goodbye. Love you. Yeah, I love you too. Bye-bye. Yeah, see you soon. When are you coming? I'm coming in two months, Mom. Okay, bye. Bye-bye.

[10:10]

Go on like this. After a while it feels like this could go on forever. You could be saying goodbye forever. So I think unfailingly, I don't think it was like most of the time, I think unfailingly during the goodbye time, she would say, my mom would say, and give my love to everyone. So that's very strong and a powerful force in the world.

[11:23]

And give my love to everyone. I think and give my love to everyone is very Zen. Buddha Dharma, the Buddhist teaching, the Buddhist truth, the truth of the Buddha way, floats on two wings, they say. Wisdom and compassion. Iconographically, usually, if Shakyamuni Buddha is in the center, then wisdom is on the right, wielding a sword to cut through delusion. On the right, associated with the left brain. And on the left is Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.

[12:31]

who became Guan Yin in China. She who hears the cries of the world. So these are the two sides. The wisdom side, and I'd go so far as to say that the essential wisdom in the older teaching, is called impermanence. Everything changes. Anitya. Which then in Mahayana... Excuse me. Which then in Mahayana Buddhism becomes the teaching of emptiness, shunyata.

[13:36]

that things are empty of own being, which is a restatement of impermanence. It's another way of saying impermanence and not self. That nothing has an essential abiding nature. This is svabhava shunya, empty of own being. That's the essential abiding nature. One could make the case that that's the essential wisdom. That's a key kernel of wisdom. And on the other side, compassion, love, is based on interconnection, is based on relationship, comes out of, is an expression of, our deep connectedness with others and with things and with animals and plants and the sky and the universe and everything, our deep, deep connection.

[14:52]

These are the same thing. They're not different. They're just the same thing being spoken about from different perspectives. If you ask, oh, I've been studying brain functions recently, the different parts of the brain, prefrontal and the occipital something or other and the limbic system and the reptile brain and and then also left brain and right brain. So we say Buddhadharma floats on two wings, but I think it might actually be... You can refer to it depending on which part of the brain you're addressing or which part of the brain you're speaking from.

[15:56]

This is very approximate, but... maybe even metaphorically, but maybe literally. If we ask the left brain, the prefrontal brain, the cortex, about the nature of reality, we get emptiness. We get Manjushri with the sword cutting. We get that things don't have an essential nature. They don't have an essential being. They don't have an essence of their own. They're only made up of everything else around them. That is what each thing is. I could explain more, but I'll go on. So that's if you speak with the left side. If you talk to the right brain, or maybe the limbic brain, which is our emotional center, our emotion brain, the brain that's involved in relationship, then from that perspective, we just see that everyone and everything is related to each other, codependently arising.

[17:25]

Each thing dependent on everything else comes up at this moment. and then comes up at this moment, and then comes up at this moment. That quality from an emotional perspective or from a relatedness perspective, that's related to love, to affection, to... to the sense that we have of being connected. And I think actually is the basis for and give my love to everyone. That's where it came from. She didn't know that necessarily. She was just expressing that.

[18:28]

But that's where it came from. which in turn relates to that things are empty of essential nature. So I think our practice can be seen as living, practicing the understanding of the connection between things, the relatedness of things, the interconnection of things. So we understand things as separate and as not separate. There's me and there's you and there's this stick

[19:29]

But if we look carefully, we see that what we call me has no boundary, has no essence. It's composed of an infinite nexus of causation. Same with this. Same with you. Same with this moment. We call this moment now. And we say that it came from the past and goes to the future. But there is no past or future or now, actually. I mean, if you think about it. There's just one big time. Here it is. It's just one time. Then we chop it up. We chop it up into now, past, future, like that. We cut it into pieces. And we cut things into pieces, too, called you, me, sticks, cups, etc.

[20:36]

But there's just one thing. It's just one thing. There it is. So, it's very helpful to to do this kind of cutting up things and consider things separate. It's very helpful to have past, present, future. For example, one thing that is in our future, an hour or two from now, is lunch. And it's very nice to have past, present and future because then we get lunch out of this deal. If we didn't have past, present and future, we wouldn't have any lunch. And lunch is really a good thing, especially here at Green Gulch. It's very delicious. So we need past, present, and future, and we need you and me and sticks and teacups.

[21:38]

We need that stuff. But if we get too drawn into it, if we believe it too much, it needs to be complemented by, it needs to be completed by, it needs to be perfected, that's the perfection of wisdom, perfected by no lunch. That's why in the Heart Sutra it says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no lunch. Not just no free lunch, no lunch whatsoever. Lunch is an illusory conceptual designation. It's a concept that we put on a particular configuration that arises at a particular time. It's an illusory conceptual designation that we love. We love it. We love that. We really like that one. Lunch, breakfast, dinner.

[22:45]

We love them all. So Suzuki Roshi used to speak about not having a gaining idea. We should not have a gaining idea. What I think he meant is we cannot escape having gaining ideas in our life. Human life is one gaining idea after another, until it ends. Even our bodies, even our most elemental selves, we're endlessly gaining. We want to gain the next breath, the next heartbeat. We want to gain lunch, we want to gain food, we want to gain air.

[23:50]

It's endlessly gaining. And in perhaps we could say a more exacerbated form then, we also want to gain possessions or some of us want to gain money or power or stuff or stuff or if we're spiritual, we want to gain enlightenment That would be a nice thing to gain. We want to gain not having a gaining idea. That would be a good one to gain. Suzuki Rishi said not to, so it would be good to gain that one. Our life proceeds by gaining.

[24:51]

He didn't mean you're supposed to escape gaining. There is no escape from gaining. What he meant is, if we get too caught in it, if we don't complement it, perfect it by no gaining, if we don't actualize that simultaneously in our gaining life, then we cause great difficulty for ourselves or for others or for ourselves and others. It needs to be tempered. Our usual life, our ordinary life, our gaining life, needs to be tempered by this sense of no-gaining idea, which is emptiness, which is love.

[25:53]

If we don't, if we don't temper it, then bad things happen. And I was going to refer you to the headlines on the newspaper. This is from untempered gaining ideas, leads directly to oil spilling, spouting in the Gulf of Mexico and poisoning beings. This is from exacerbated, rigidified separation-itis. when you have a separate idea and it's too exacerbated and it's too rigidified and it's not flexible and it doesn't allow in that our illusory conceptual designations are just illusory conceptual designations.

[27:24]

If we believe in them too much and don't temper that belief by recognizing that it's just that we're thinking it and we can't, we don't, we shouldn't, We shouldn't believe what we think. Don't believe what you think. Don't believe thinking. If we don't temper it in that way, it leads directly to aversion and grasping in its most extreme forms. So I'm understanding that our practice is this kind of actualizing of softer, true understanding that where we don't forget one side or the other.

[28:34]

This is what we work on in Zen practice. However, it's useful to recognize that though we work on it in Zen practice, this is not some special province. This is not some province of some special activity that you only get to by sitting zazen for 22,000 hours. This is not, it's, I'm not, I recommend sitting Sazen for 22,000 hours, but the truth that we understand from this is quite common. Sarah, who lives here at Green Gulch, used to be the head of the farm, Sarah Tashkar, and her husband, Jiryu, just had a baby a couple of weeks ago

[29:45]

Three weeks ago? A month ago? Six weeks ago. Yes, she knows. She helped bring it into the world. Is that true? Six weeks ago. Anyway, they just had a baby. His name is Frank. Frank. So we take turns doing dishes at Green Gulch. And the other night, I was doing dishes after Friday night dinner. And Sarah came in with Frank, draped over her shoulder and introduced me to Frank. Hi, Frank. He was just there, you know. Learning, learning, [...] learning. Doesn't look it, but he's learning, learning. Anyway, it was great to meet Frank. And Sarah and Jiryu are crazy about Frank.

[30:49]

Of course. And other people at Green Gulch are crazy about Frank. Right? Because that's the way we're built. Right? Survival of the species. We see these little... In Yiddish it's called a pizzala. A little, little being. A little pizzala. And we say, oh! You know, you just... want to go over there and have them throw up on your shoulder. Can't wait. Frank. And then my niece-in-law, my wife's sister's daughter-in-law just had a baby too, two days ago or less to yesterday. Mira, her name is Mira Moons. And then I'm giving a little catalog here.

[31:52]

And then some friends who used to live here at Green Gulch, I think maybe met at Green Gulch, a man and woman, and got married, met here, got married and had a child, and they've been living in Georgia for... some years came to visit. I saw them yesterday and they have a daughter. Her name is Harper. She's three. Three years old. Another beauty. So, why am I telling you this? I've gotten so carried away thinking about Frank and Mira and Harper. For some reason I'm talking about them. Oh yeah, that's right. Now I remember. So, So we have unconditional love. The parent's unconditional love for the child is a taste of a feeling for this deep interconnection that through practice we can realize also.

[33:05]

But it's as common as Frank and Mira and Harper and how we feel about them. And even if your mother had not such unconditional love, even if you don't have a baby, even if you don't have a niece, this is still available, commonly available for each of us. It's already in us, in you, in me. This is not something esoteric, far away, distant. We don't need to go off to the dusty realms of other lands. This seat right here is completely sufficient. Our life as it is, is completely full of this possibility. Here the way unfolds means that right here, right in this life is where this happens.

[34:09]

not in some distant place. So practice then is a matter not so much of creating something new or some special state of mind or something like that. Practice is a matter of recognizing and not amplifying but actualizing practicing this reality of interconnection. That is actually what Gute meant. That is the one finger. This is what he was referring to. one reality, the interrelatedness of everything, the emptiness of each thing.

[35:23]

There were a couple of other things that came up that I wanted to mention also. So my mom went into the hospital on Memorial Day, and my sister and I flew out there the next day. And then, excuse me, and then I think the next day, she stayed in the hospital, but she went into the hospice wing of the hospital. And my two sisters and I were there with her. After the first day, she wasn't responding very much at all. But we were just there. And in fact, in this hospice wing of the hospital, at the end of the hallway was a room that was built like as a family member's room.

[36:36]

So you could stay there overnight. So my sister stayed there one night and I stayed there one night. So we were there like 24-7, so to speak, for a few days. A friend of my sister's works for hospice and is also a chaplain. So we had been going on like this, pretty much being there the whole time. You know, Frank Sinatra... CDs on the machine, on the iPod or whatever they're called. Those things. Anyway, music. And so we were there for one day and then a second day and then a third day. And then this woman, friend of my sister's, was very helpful with lots of

[37:38]

and good things to say. So she said, you know, you don't really need to be there overnight. You don't really need to be there 24 hours, seven days a week. Your mother is going through whatever process she's going through and it may actually be useful for her for you to give her some time on her own, by herself. And this was in the context of what I'm now getting to, which was one of the key things she said. So this hospice advisor said, you know, after all, death is not a crisis. Death is what happens. So I thought that was very useful.

[38:38]

Death is not a crisis. Death is what happens. So quickly I would add, well, sometimes it is a crisis, of course, if there's a great deal of pain, anguish, upset, anxiety. It just so happens that a dear friend of mine died a few months ago, and there was a lot of conflict. He was not in conflict, but there was a lot of conflict swirling around him among immediate close people. And that became kind of a crisis. Actually, a number of crises occurred there. So, of course... It can be a crisis in that way. But still, I know what she meant.

[39:40]

She was saying, because our culture is so crazy and so afraid, so in denial and avoidant of old age sickness and death due to fear, due to terror, that when it comes around it feels like, ah, there's a crisis. But old age sickness and death is not a crisis. Old age sickness and death is what happens. And if we can access this understanding of interconnection, this understanding of emptiness, which softens our mind so that we don't have some stiff idea, then the possibility of having greater composure in the face of our old age and sickness and death is greater.

[40:59]

A second instance, which is a similar theme, I think, is that... So my mom went into the hospice and after the second day she was not really responsive and she wasn't eating or drinking. And that went on for one day and then a second day and then a third day. And these are very, very long days. Such days are long, long, long, long days. Looking back, it's three days, but it felt like much longer. Then at a certain point around there, we began to...

[42:09]

doubt our course of action. Oh, maybe we should have, I mean, she's showing so much life, maybe we shouldn't have gone in the hospice route, which, as you may know, is the palliative route, not treating people to try to cure what ails them, not trying to get them better. That's the hospice route that she was in. Maybe we should have done the more usual medical route, and seeing if she could revive and come back to some continued life. That had happened actually a few weeks previously. And in fact, she had come back and was back at the hotel but way slowed down and stuff.

[43:10]

And in retrospect, I feel like, I feel quite settled. I don't know if good is the right word, but quite settled with not doing that. Not trying to make, not trying to gain something in the situation. I think it's necessary and useful in that case and in all cases to review one's decision and to discern, well, is this the right way to go? What's the right way to go? Have we been going down the right road or should we change course? But two things.

[44:15]

One is, psychologically, it's very easy for that to devolve into corrosive self-doubt. And that's not so helpful. So you have to be really careful. Is this actually discerning or is this just me second-guessing what I've already decided? And actually what's necessary is to stay with the decision, to stand with it, to sit with it. That's one part of it. And then the other part of it is we were in the hospital and I believe, I think it's true, that not universally, but as a general characterization, that Western medicine always will be trying to get the person better.

[45:22]

Even when it's sort of like, no, no, no, no, no. I think, as we know, I think partly it's insurance, right? You can't say, well, it's time for this person to die because you'll be sued for a zillion dollars or something like that. So we've kind of institutionalized what... winds up being a very gaining idea mentality. Gaining is the only thing that's allowed, rather than, no, it's time to let go. So I think in this case, in this instance, that sense of we don't have to keep trying to make this happen at all costs was good, was right.

[46:44]

Shakyamuni Buddha's earliest teaching was about this old age sickness and death. And we sometimes approach practice as though Zen is some way of outsmarting. Outsmarting or escaping. We won't care and then we'll escape. the suffering of old age and sickness and death. But I don't think that's actually what the path, what the Buddhist path is about. Our practice path is about living in this world. And by virtue of appreciating our interconnectedness and the emptiness of each thing, Then we get to really enjoy the sunny day and the birds chirping.

[48:02]

Thank you.

[48:05]

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