Handing out ice cream later. Some of you who don't know, who may have noticed that there is something different about the altar, I thought I'd just take a moment to explain what's happening. Behind me is a mountain. And on Saturday evening, somebody is going to be stepping down off of the mountain. And on Sunday, another person will be stepping up the mountain. I've never been up on this mountain, but I've watched people who have. It has a very good view, but there are also great storms.

[01:05]

And I would like to thank you, Blanche, publicly, for being willing to stand on top of the mountain Zen Center, I feel like I'm being squished a little bit between what I want to talk about,

[02:12]

which is yesterday, listening to President Bush's talk a little bit, and our weekend, which is going to be this rather important and enormous ceremony. And what for me was connecting the two this evening is that both have very much to do with authority, in a certain way power, and our community has been dealing with this issue for years. In one way, giving over all of our power to another person to be responsible. And many of us, in fact, do this in our daily lives, which is something that oftentimes early in a person's practice, people who come here, it's what we deal with quite a bit. Giving over-responsibility, blaming somebody else, the authority, basically reparenting each other. And then what Zen Center did, we kind of made everything very egalitarian, so we were afraid

[03:21]

of authority, so we took it all away from everybody. We gave people tremendous responsibility, but wouldn't give them any authority to deal with it. In a way it was good because we learned a little bit about, you know, less about hierarchy and more about a horizontal kind of power. And I think maybe now Zen Center maybe is becoming mature enough to allow people to have real authority, to support people in their roles, give them real authority for the responsibility that they have taken on. And I feel strongly that the only way we can do this is by having the courage to retain

[04:25]

our own power and be able, even if we're frightened, to give people an authority to continue having a real relationship with people in authority and hold them accountable and give people feedback, gently. If we don't do this as a community, we will never grow up, because relationship involves real disagreements, really acknowledging what we really feel strongly about, where we don't agree. To let things be a little bit messy, to acknowledge real differences, and to not, you know, err on the side of harmony, a fake kind of intimacy. People do that all the time in relationship, and those relationships don't ever deepen.

[05:28]

Buddha said that he taught really one thing and one thing only. What he said was that he taught about suffering and the end of suffering. When Buddha was teaching, there was no such thing as Buddhism. There weren't the trappings of priests, lay people, chants, and all of the institutional accoutrements that we're surrounded with at Zen Center. We don't really need all this stuff to learn about suffering and its cessation in our own lives, and by doing that, being able to try to address suffering in the world. In his very first talk after he was awakened,

[06:49]

the Buddha described the illness and gave the medicine. The prescription is called the Four Noble Truths, and we tend to poo-poo them because we think it was in the first Dharma talk, must be for beginners. It is. It's for beginners, it's for intermediate, and for advanced. So, last night, it was Tuesday night, and as many of you know, more of you probably who aren't residents at Zen Center, but who live outside of Zen Center, the President of the United States gave a State of the Union talk.

[07:58]

It was a very, very important talk, and because I thought it was an important talk, I thought it would be important to listen to. And I happen to know that it's difficult for me to listen to our President. It was really interesting, at the beginning of his talk, when he walked into the room, the combined House and Senate, when he walked into the room, everybody stood up and applauded a lot. And they made it very clear over the TV, the people who were commentators, they made it very clear that the reason why everybody was standing up, even people who don't agree with the way he's handling things, is because they were acknowledging the role, the position of President.

[09:02]

I thought that was really terrific. And we should do the same thing for the people who are in roles in our community as well, to practice that kind of acknowledgement and devotion. We don't lose anything when we do that. We actually gain when we're able to. But at any rate, I knew it was going to be really difficult to listen to him, because even when he's just on the evening news, in one of these little teeny-weeny clips, I can barely, I usually change it right away. But this time, I really wanted to listen to him, and so I sat down and I prepared myself. I started breathing, calming myself down, relaxing my body, sitting up straight. I even took paper and pencil.

[10:04]

I was going to take notes. I wanted to really understand what he was telling me, to see if I could communicate. Well, the first noble truth is the truth of suffering. And the way the Buddha says it is, there is suffering. He doesn't say, life is suffering. He doesn't say that. That's not what Buddhism is talking about. That's not what the Buddha said. The Buddha said, just very quietly, he didn't even have to yell, I'm sure he didn't. He just simply said, there is suffering. And everybody knew what he meant, because he was only talking to five of his very best friends. Everybody knew what he meant.

[11:09]

Because everybody suffers, every single body suffers, we all suffer. Everybody in this room, doesn't make any difference if you're rich, poor, black, white, Asian, American, Namibian, doesn't make any difference. We all share that in common. And we all don't want to suffer. None of us. If asked, we would say, no, thank you very much. Not today. Okay. What Buddha said about suffering is very interesting. What he said was radical, a complete reversal of our usual approach,

[12:14]

which, if you're honest with yourself, is a total and complete failure. Our usual approach is, get me out of here! Denial, blame, destruction of whatever we think is causing our pain, distraction, and basically avoidance. And it's natural. It's not a problem. But it doesn't bring liberation. It doesn't bring peace and freedom. So what did the Buddha say? The Buddha said, understand suffering, acknowledge it, study it,

[13:16]

don't turn away. Why? Why are we willing, as Buddhists, to turn toward suffering when it's painful? For one reason, one reason is because, and if you practice long enough and begin to get the gist of it, you know that if you turn away from suffering and cut it off, you cut off your life. We limit life. We limit who we are. We feel contracted. And the truth of the matter is, if you listen, if you're very sensitive and tender to yourself, when you avoid

[14:19]

and separate from something, it hurts. It's painful. So I didn't want to separate myself from our present. I wanted to include his reality as my reality in my life because the fact of the matter is we are totally connected. His truth is my truth whether I want it or not. Nowadays, it certainly is. We can't afford to cut off anything anymore, not our own suffering, not the little disturbances that other people cause us, both unintentional or intentional. And we can't cut off people who disagree with us

[15:21]

in the wider community. And, you know, excuse me for saying so, but President Bush ought not to be cutting off people who, you know, really disagree with how the United States, you know, is in the world. We have to listen to those people just as we have to listen to ourselves and to others we're in relationship with. Anyway, he gave a really interesting speech. The end of it was the most interesting to me. Oh, for heaven's sake. At the end of it, he did this kind of very ancient kind of sermon, sermonic. Is there such a thing as sermonic? Sermon-ish?

[16:23]

Kind of, you know, call-and-respond, repeat-after-me kind of thing. And he listed, he listed these horrific possibilities. They have, you know, for President Bush, everybody in Iraq now is they, right? So therefore we can kill them. Ah, so painful. Anyway, Saddam has, you know, 600 pounds of, I hope I'm not going to scare anybody, but I was really scared at the end of this, 600 pounds of anthrax. And he did not show us that it was destroyed. And he, let's see, no, he did not destroy it. And he did not, no, he didn't, I forgot now. Anyway, it was not destroyed. And he, no, we don't, I forgot what he said. No, but it's something, the thing that was repeated was,

[17:27]

I can't read my notes. I should now, when I type this out and print it out, I should do it in like, the font should be like 14 instead of 12. I can't see a thing. Anyway, it was something like, I don't even know if it's the right page. Wait a minute. Destroyed, oh, destroyed. Show, nor has he shown that it has been destroyed. Nor has he shown that it has been destroyed. And he has 100,000 pounds of ricin poison. One itsy bitsy bit of it can kill, you know, thousands. And he has not found that it was destroyed. He did not say that it was destroyed. It is not, didn't show that it was destroyed. Didn't show, over and over again, didn't show it was destroyed. Didn't show. By the end of it,

[18:30]

it was frightening. I was scared to death. And I was ready to say, would you please destroy it for me? You know, and I'm sure that's what he wants us to feel in that fear. But I was sitting upright. I was paying attention to my breath. My body was relaxed. And I was afraid. My heart was pounding very fast. My muscles were tightening. I was afraid. But there was space around my perception of what I call fear. So I had the choice of responding, not out of that place, but from a place of stability and, in my judgmental opinion anyway,

[19:31]

sanity at this point. Anyway, I'll skip to the end. Here's the point. I was going to say, fear is separation. We have to understand separation. When you understand it deeply enough, you understand. What do you understand? You understand when you see suffering really deeply. You understand that everything is moving and changing. It's just perception and so on. And when you understand that everything changes, you don't really feel like grasping after it because when you grasp, you know that it causes suffering and so on and so forth. There's no really self in there anyway. We just create an idea of self and we grab onto it and that creates separation. And then I was going to say that separation is an illusion. And then I was going to show you my home page on my computer to prove to you,

[20:32]

just in case you don't know, that we live one life. There is nothing separate from anything. We all live one life. We are one life. So I'm going to prove it in this way. Most of these I'm going to pass around so you can see them up close. And you can even take them home if you want to because I saved one of them. That's what I want. All right. My home page happens to be the universe. So I get a shot of the universe every single time I open my computer, which completely blows my mind apart, which is a good thing. So I have the, it's called the astronomy picture of the day. And I actually have pictures

[21:34]

of the universe. So I will start you first at home, which is the earth. And if you're standing on the earth and looking out, you see the sun. Not very long ago we had a total eclipse of the sun. And so what they did with this picture is they blocked out the disk of the sun and you can see a blue sky with a blocked out sun and the crown of the sun, not just the corona, the little light right around the circle, but the crown of the sun. Okay? That's what that one is. Okay? You can pass that around. And then they took a closer picture of the sun itself. Now this is outrageous because the only thing that's happening are these massive, it's just completely nuclear explosions.

[22:36]

Right? Constant nuclear explosions. The sun is not this solid thing. The sun is this kind of mushy, looks mushy to me, kind of just exploding thing. It's just exploding all over the place. So that's this picture. Now pass it around that way. Wait, just a second. See? That's that one. When you get to that one, that's what that one is. And then I just did this one because this is the southern hemisphere and I've never been to the southern hemisphere so it's a different looking sky. And then they had a picture of the Atlantis Challenger exploding off of the earth into space. So we're going to go on a trip. So here you are. That's the Challenger exploding off of the pad, shooting up into space. And then this picture

[23:39]

is a shot of the moon from space. We're now in space. A shot of the moon. It's a moon rise over the earth and you can see the blue earth, the clouds, the little teeny weeny bit of atmosphere that we depend on. It's just a little bit in the scheme of things. You can like, somebody could go along and blow it and it would just blow right off. It would be a problem. And behind it is the moon coming up over the earth. And then from space, we now have the Hubble telescope and we can take pictures of things that we have never seen before closely. So to start with, this is just close to us. These are just some of the stars in our immediate area. These are the Pleiades which are just beautiful up in the night sky.

[24:39]

These are the Pleiades a little bit bigger. Okay. Did you like that? Judas likes the Pleiades. And then a little farther away, we have, from the constellation Orion, we have the Horsehead Nebula. So we're getting a little bit farther away and the universe is getting a little bit bigger. So this is the star in Orion's belt, that one there. And then this over here is the Horsehead Nebula, that little black patch in the red. Okay. And then we have our first shot of a galaxy. We're getting much farther away. And this galaxy is very much like the galaxy we live in. And if it were our galaxy, we would be in about here in one of the arms.

[25:41]

Not too close to the center, but not too far away. And of course, as you know, a galaxy, there are billions and billions and billions and billions of stars in a galaxy. Okay? Our star is just one of them. Are you still with me? Oh, I'm sorry. Did I pass the last one to that way? I forgot. Okay, that way? Oh, I'm sorry. No, we'll go this way. Okay, now we have a picture a little bit farther away still. And I'm going to show you the picture first. This is a picture not of a group of stars. Okay? This is a picture of a group of galaxies that the Hubble took a picture of. Okay? This is a group of galaxies. Oh, and you can see

[26:46]

one of them is a beautiful little spiral galaxy just like ours, only it's billions of light years away. It's big. Where we live is big. And the reason that you're laughing, I think, is because, in this next picture, the word that they use is enormous. Okay, but I'll show you the picture first. It's outrageous. This picture is the one I want back. This is a picture. It's called, I think, Abell number 1689, and it shows a warp in space. And the reason it shows a warp in space, and this is, by the way, billions and billions of light years away, two billion light years away, is because it's a picture of a bunch, I mean,

[27:46]

a really, really large, see, the reason why, see, it's because, the reason why our life is inconceivable is because words don't touch it. If I show you this picture and I say, like it says over here, it says, the power, oh, let me tell you what the picture shows first. It shows a bend in the universe because there's so much mass here that space is curved, just like Einstein predicted. So what they say about it is, is the power of this enormous gravitational lens that this bend, that this gravity makes, distorts the galaxies that are on the edge of it. You can see this, it makes a kind of a circle of galaxies. And they call it the enormous bend, warp. Well, you know, the word enormous, you know,

[28:50]

but it's the same thing when we say flower. It's just as ineffable. What we are experiencing in our life is so beyond what words can touch. And yet we use words to separate and make the suffering that we, the smallness that we live in. It's not small. It's enormous. So this is that picture. These are bunches and bunches and bunches of galaxies two billion light years away from us. Two billion light years away from us. And you can see a circle that bend, they bend space and so the galaxies are kind of shown like this instead of straight on,

[29:51]

like this. Anyway. So it's our job as Buddhist practitioners to wake up, to wake up to the mystery that is us, that is life itself. No separations, no boundaries. There are no little countries drawn on the earth from space. We're all one event. And being asleep to that, believing the separation, pushing away pain, excluding things that are uncomfortable

[30:54]

in our daily life is a misunderstanding. It is ignorance. And it's our job to illuminate that misunderstanding and live from a place of connectedness and peace. So that's longer than I usually talk. So if you want yourselves to be, your mind to be just smithereens daily, you can take one of the pictures, but give me back the one that shows the enormous bend in space. All right.

[32:04]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ