Good morning, and happy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to those of you who are fathers, and to those of you who have had fathers, or have fathers. The practice that we do in Sukhi Roshi lineage and here at Green Gulch actually has a lot to do with fathers. So every morning in this room we chant the name of a lineage going back to Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 years ago. It's a lineage of patriarchs. We call them ancestors now, although the scholars still call them patriarchs. But we recognize that actually there have been women ancestors. We actually chant the names of women ancestors as well, because there have been great women

[01:04]

teachers and practitioners all along. But at any rate, we have this lineage. And we have many kinds of ancestors. The lineage of Buddhist teachers, our genetic lineage of fathers and mothers. So maybe Father's Day includes mothers, and Mother's Day includes fathers, but today we celebrate fathers. We also have a lineage of those who inspire us in our own hearts, our personal heart lineage. And part of what fathers is about and lineage is about is about time. So today there's a whole bunch of things I want to talk about. We'll see how far I get. I want to talk about time and precepts and the meaning of evil in Buddhism and how precepts relate to fears. And anyway, we'll see how far I get. So because we have this lineage of fathers that goes back 2,500 years, and of course

[02:13]

of matriarchs too, in our tradition we have a very, very wide view of time. As Zen people, we talk about stories from the Buddha 2,500 years ago and from the Chinese great Zen patriarchs, I'll call them today, 1,200 years ago. And I spend a lot of time myself hanging out in the 13th century translating Zen Master Dogen who brought this tradition from China to Japan. So we have this very wide view of time. So I want to talk about this today in terms of what my friend Joanna Macy calls deep time. So Joanna is a Buddhist teacher and philosopher and she has this idea of deep time. And particularly she is concerned with how we recognize beings of the past but also beings

[03:19]

of the future. So Father's Day has to do with gratitude towards our fathers, but also that something is fathered and that there is this looking to the future, to the next generation, but actually also to many generations. So I'm actually going to participate, help perform a ceremony next week with Joanna to invoke and communicate with beings of the future. And in some ways I think of these future beings as also kinds of ancestors. I think we have our ancestors in the future. So if you imagine the lawn out here and the walkway here at Green Gulch, we can think of people walking there five years from now and actually Zen centers involved in a visioning

[04:21]

process now and thinking about the next five years and beyond. But we could also think about who will be out there in 50 years, those beings. And what about the beings who will be in, maybe the lawn will have changed its form by then, but in a hundred years. And who's going to be out there in 500 years? So to really look at, to really imagine, who are these beings that will be around, that will be walking this land of Green Gulch in a hundred years or in 500 years? This is this view of deep time that Joanna invites us to. So as we sit here today, there may be beings in the future, 10 years or 50 years or 500

[05:23]

years from now, sitting and looking back at the people in the beginning of the 21st century, reflecting on us, thinking about us. Appreciating our efforts to keep alive spiritual tradition. Maybe they're even rooting for us to take care of the world for them. So I feel in some ways those beings and their support and encouragement of us. So just as we chant the names of teachers going back 2,500 years, maybe it's enough for us to think forward just 500 years. And what names will they be chanting? And how will the world be for them?

[06:27]

We know it will be very different if we think back 50 years. Maybe some of us can remember. A hundred years. This was very different here. 500 years. So we can't imagine their world and yet maybe they can look back and see us. And we all know that we're living in very difficult times. Difficult each of us for ourselves and also for our world. So one of the things I really like about Joanna Macy's work is she talks about these difficult times as a wonderful time to be practicing. This is a wonderful opportunity. Every effort we make can make a big difference to take care of our world. So I think this deep time that Joanna is talking about is very much related to something

[07:36]

that Dogen wrote about 700 years ago. He called it being time. He said that time is not some external container. There is the time of 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock and so forth. And second hands and minute hands. That's one kind of time. But actually time does not exist as some external container. We can look at a calendar. But actually time is not dead. Time is very dynamic. This is what Dogen says. So I thought I'd just read a little bit from what Dogen says about time. He says, do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flew away, you would be separate from time. The reason you do not clearly understand being time is that you think of time only as passing.

[08:41]

Then he says, being time has the quality of being. It has the quality of flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow. Today flows into yesterday. Yesterday flows into today. Today flows into today. Tomorrow flows into tomorrow. He also says, just actualize all time as all being. There's nothing extra. A so-called extra being is thoroughly an extra being. Thus, being time half actualized is half of the being time completely actualized. A moment that seems to be missed is also completely being. In the same way, even the moment before or after the moment that appears to be missed is also completely in itself being time or time being. Vigorously abiding in each moment is this being time. So right now, time is being.

[09:43]

And it's not being as something on a clock, but it's being as our breath, as the sound of my voice as it hits your eardrum, as our shifting in our chairs, as our inhale and exhale. This is time. Vigorously abide in each moment as time being. Do not mistakenly confuse it as non-being. Do not forcefully assert it as being. You may suppose that time is only passing away and not understand that time never arrives. Although understanding itself is time, understanding does not depend on its own arrival. So this time that Dogen is talking about, this time of our actual being is moving. It's dynamic. It moves in all directions. So maybe we all know that we move from yesterday to today to tomorrow,

[10:45]

but we can also move today to yesterday, or to 2,500 years ago, or to 50 years from now. Time moves in many directions, actually. This is the actual time of our being. So when she talks about deep time, Joanna Massey talks about re-inhabiting time, reclaiming our time, seeing how the past and future are right here in the present. So do any of you remember that book, Be Here Now, written by Ram Dass? Who now lives in Marin County. It was published in 1971. I think that book was the first place I ever heard about Suzuki Roshi, because there's a little section in there about Suzuki Roshi and pictures of Tassajara. And that was an important book for many of us. But I'm afraid that there's been a misunderstanding

[11:47]

of what Ram Dass means about Be Here Now, especially by meditators. So practitioners sometimes think that Be Here Now means to be in the present in a way that avoids the past, and avoids the future. So we talk about being present in this moment. And I just recently helped translate a writing by Dogen called The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas. So a lot of our Zen practice is about fully being present, being right here, being upright in the middle of our whole life right now, this body and this mind. And we misunderstand this because there's some natural tendency to want to escape from the past. We all have regrets.

[12:49]

We all have various conditioning and ways in which we have been hurt or damaged in the past. And there's a natural tendency to feel like, well, if I can just be in the present, I don't have to think about that. And we also have some tendency to want to avoid the future, because when we think of the future, we may feel a lot of fear. We may feel anxiety about what will happen and imagine all kinds of horrible futures. But be here now does not mean to get rid of the past and the future. Actually, the past and the future are right now. The only past we can know is the past we talk about right now. And we don't know what it'll be like out on the lawn there in 50 years. But we can talk about it right now. And everything that's ever happened in the past is part of how each of us is right now,

[13:55]

here this morning in this room. And actually, things that will happen in the future are totally the product of and totally interrelated with this present. So all the beings in the future, you know, are totally present in the DNA on this planet right now. Now I have some friends who think that there have been visitors from other planets, and maybe that's a different category. But anyway, if we include all of those extraterrestrials, then all of the DNA that's here on this planet right now will produce all of the beings in the future. So the past is how we see things that happen in the present. And we can see it in different ways. And it changes the meaning of the past.

[14:56]

So this deep time, which is the real be here now, is not about being afraid of the past and the future. It's not about running away from the past and the future, because it's not about running away from the past and the future. Because we have them already, right here, right now, in this present. And the present itself, of course, is also, by the time I finish this sentence, it's gone. Whatever it was at the beginning of the sentence. Mick is taping it so you can listen later, but I don't remember the beginning of the sentence exactly. It's gone. So in reality, we cannot run away from ourselves. We cannot run away from the world. We cannot run away from the past or the future. But we can decide to inhabit this present and take on the past and the future in this present. We can decide to do this meditation

[16:02]

and this practice of deeply studying ourselves and the world. So, some of you may be here for the first time. How many are here for the first time? Okay. Well, I'm sorry to say this. This may be bad news for you, but Buddhist meditation is not about finding inner peace and calm. Now, it's okay if you do find some inner peace. And of course, Buddha knows we all need it, but Buddhist practice and meditation fundamentally is not about finding some inner peace for ourselves. That may be some part of the process, and maybe we need to do that. And there are times when we intentionally put aside our concerns about the world and the past and the future and just practice intensely for 40 minutes

[17:07]

or a week or a few months. So we do that sometimes in time. But even that is in the past and the future and the present right now. So, you may feel some reduction of stress or some sense of wholeness or integration or some actual peace by doing this Buddhist practice, but that's not the point of it. If that comes, fine, please enjoy it. But actually, the purpose of Buddhist practice is the liberation of all beings. We're not supposed to say that so explicitly. And you may have heard that there's no goal or there's nothing we're supposed to try and get from our sitting, and that's true. But still, the purpose of our Buddhist practice is simply the awakening and liberation of all beings and helping all beings towards that.

[18:07]

So, some personal inner peace may be part of that. But this practice includes all beings, beings in the past, beings in the future, beings here at Green Gulch and beings in the city and beings in New York and beings in Palestine and Israel. And so, our practice is about, ultimately, awakening all beings. And I particularly, on Father's Day, want to think about with you the responsibility we have to the future beings. So, we are taking care of Green Gulch for the people who will be walking out there in five years and in 50 years and who knows what in 500 years. But I lived in Kyoto, Japan for a couple of years

[19:14]

where one quickly gets a sense of this deep time. I lived between two temples that were over a thousand years old and around the corner was a tomb of an empress who lived over a thousand years ago. We don't have monuments that old in this country yet. So, who knows what Green Gulch will be in 500 years or 1,000 years. But anyway, part of whatever it will be is what we are doing here now, today, this year, this month. So, we don't run away from the past or future. This actually relates to, there's something in the Sutra on Perfect Enlightenment that I like, the four diseases of spiritual practice. I don't know if you've heard of these. Two of them relate directly to this. One is trying to practice by eliminating thoughts. Another is trying to practice by eliminating the passions.

[20:17]

These are called diseases of spiritual practice in the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. And I think in American Zen, there's a kind of heretical school that's come about, because there's this very attractive idea that if we could just get rid of all of our passions and all of our thinking, then that would be enlightenment. Now, there is an easy way to do that, actually. But this is, I don't recommend this, but anyway, this heretical school, I sometimes refer to as lobotomy Zen. So there's an operation you can have, and you'll get rid of all your thoughts and all of your passions. But that's not the point of our practice. So, since I mentioned that there are four, I'll tell you the other two. Trying to practice through accepting things just as they are.

[21:20]

That's another disease of spiritual practice. Now, there may be times when we need to accept things as they are, but that's not enough. The fourth one is to practice through good works. That doesn't do it either. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do good works. It doesn't mean we shouldn't quiet our thoughts. It doesn't mean we shouldn't let go of some of our passions. Anyway, these are, according to the Sutra, diseases of spiritual practitioners. So, accepting this deep time is to actually be here in being time, to be present, including all time. It doesn't mean just accepting things as they are, though. It's not passive. It's a kind of dynamic, active acceptance. But we have some responsibility to the beings in the past,

[22:25]

our forefathers and foremothers, who we are grateful for and to, and to the beings in the future. So, I would say that our zazen, our meditation, is actually the very active and dynamic willingness to engage and inhabit this deep time, this present time that includes all time. . So, just to get a little further into this deep time, let's take a minute and think about the past, and think about people in the past, in your past,

[23:26]

who have been helpful and supportive to you. Pick one, whoever comes to mind. And just, you can close your eyes if you want, and just see them, feel them, feel how they are part of your life. It could be your father, but it could be someone else. And how they are part of who you are right now. Then think of somebody who lived, oh, I don't know, 100 years ago, more or less. The year 1900, let's say. And somebody who you respect, somebody who you appreciate, who you know of. Or it could be older, a little newer.

[24:29]

But think how they are part of your life, in the way you think, and what they've contributed to the world. They're also part of who we are here. I was thinking of Thomas Edison. I don't know if he was, I think he was alive in 1900. So much of what we assume about the world, being able to stay up at night with electric lights, is because of him. Since it's Father's Day, think of your father's mother's father's father. Probably not many of you know much about him. It could be your father's father's father's father, that's okay too.

[25:30]

Or just your father's father's father. I actually have a picture of mine. But whoever that person is, whether you know anything about them or not, if you know where they lived, some of you. How many of you know your father's father's father's name? Quite a few, okay. Think of that person, whether you know his name or not. According to how we see the world, think of how he is part of who you are this morning. So I think we all believe in DNA. And so even if you don't know anything about him, you would probably agree he's part of who you are and how you are this morning. Here, now, in this present. Let's do it the other way.

[26:30]

Think of somebody out here on this lawn, what's now a lawn anyway, in a hundred years. And you don't know their name, of course. And we don't know much about them. We don't know if this Zendo will still be here, or some other Zendo, or something else entirely. Many of us hope that there will be a Zendo right here. But anyway, imagine somebody out here on the lawn, a hundred years from now. What would they want to say to you? What advice might they give you, give us,

[27:32]

individually or collectively? How would they suggest that we take care of Green Gulch? So this is a little bit of the feeling of this deep time, to actually allow such beings to be part of who we are here. Here, now. So as I said before, we live in very difficult times. And I happen to feel that spiritual teaching is not worth so much unless it responds to not just our individual needs, but the problems of the world. And that we should apply our spiritual teachings to the problems of the world, and our fears for the world. So when Thomas Jefferson initiated the separation

[28:37]

of church and state in this country, he didn't mean that people shouldn't think of spiritual values. He just was concerned that those values not be imposed by the state, that we each would have a way to think about this ourselves, to apply spiritual values to the problems of the world ourselves. And in fact, I happen to believe that Buddhist teaching does give us some guidance, even in such times as we're in now. So we all know that terrible things are happening in the world, and that we have all kinds of actual encouragements to be fearful. So there's the tension between India and Pakistan, and there's the horrible war back and forth between Palestinians and Israelis, and there's increased militarism, and our president has just recently decided

[29:38]

we will not follow the nuclear treaty that's been the basis for peace over the last 50 years. And then, of course, there may be terrorists out there, and we don't know what they'll do. So some people who actually pay attention to this say that in the past month we are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. So my personal koan has been how to talk about this. So when I start to talk about this, some of my Buddhist colleagues get nervous and think I'm talking about politics. To me, this isn't about politics. It's not about Democrats or Republicans or this candidate or that candidate. To me, it's about responsibility to precepts.

[30:40]

And I think there's actually some guidance in Buddhist precepts about how to think about what's going on in the world. So there are various systems of Buddhist precepts. There are 16 that we take here in precept ceremonies at Zen Center in Green Gulch. But in terms of what really responds to what's going on in the world, I've been trying to think about what's really essential, and I've kind of boiled it down to four. So the first is just that a disciple of Buddha does not kill. And this doesn't just mean that we personally don't go around killing other people, but it means that we support life, and we support non-killing. The second one is related, but it maybe goes a little further, and this is basic Buddhist principle of non-harming, or ahimsa. So a lot of our practice is about understanding ourselves because we are each capable of causing a great deal of harm.

[31:42]

And the more deeply you see yourself, you may see more deeply how we are each capable of harming others and ourselves, and that we have, along with other lineages, the conditioning of family dynamics and various social patterns that are part of us also, and that we can be harmful and we need to know ourselves well enough so that we are not harmful. This is a fundamental part of Buddhist practice. But it's not just that we shouldn't harm anybody, but if we see one person harming another, we try to help and stop that harm from happening. So non-harming is the second. And then the third one, which I think is very important, is one of our three pure precepts, is that we act to benefit all beings. So I've been talking about this in terms of time,

[32:43]

that we include beings in the past and beings in the future, in our present, that we don't turn our back on them. So it's okay if you benefit from spiritual practice or whatever, but also we do this for all beings. So if you find some way of benefiting yourself and your friends and your family and some exclusive group of people, that might work for a while. And you might not care about certain people out there, and then they might say nasty things, and then we might build a big castle to protect ourselves from them, or a big tower. But you know, they might hijack a plane and fly into our tower. So actually, reality is that we have to consider all beings, that we're not separate from any beings.

[33:46]

And of course, Palestinians and Israelis are very closely related, but they feel this cycle of vengeance, and they're not willing to listen to each other's pain. Some of them are. Actually, some of them are doing that now. That's the work of peace. But there will never be peace until they can share with each other and really hear. The Israelis have to hear the suffering and the pain of the Palestinians. And the Palestinians have to hear the fear and the suffering of the Israelis, or else there never will be peace. So we can't actually exclude some beings. So we have to benefit all beings. May all beings be happy. It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to go out and try and find all the beings there are and give them all our money or do something nice for them, but we actually consider all beings. The fourth precept that I think applies to our situation

[34:49]

is telling the truth. The disciple of Buddha does not lie. So we try to speak our own truth as best we can, and that means knowing that I don't know all the truth. I don't have all the answers. None of us have all the answers to what to do. But the more we can be willing to say what we see and hear each other and communicate and hear different perspectives and actually work at hearing the truth, allowing ourselves to be aware of what's going on, not just what's in the mainstream media, but really investigating what is really going on and sharing information. This is the practice and the precept of telling the truth. So one of the other pure precepts is that the disciple of Buddha refrains from evil, or now I think we say it embraces and sustains right conduct.

[35:52]

So I wanted to talk about that a little bit because I think there's a big confusion about what evil is and I think there's a very different understanding of what evil is in Buddhism than in at least some of Christianity. So Osama bin Laden says that all is on his side and America is evil. And George Bush says that God is on his side and the terrorists are evil. So there is a word that is most appropriately translated as evil in Buddhism, but it's not this kind of evil. There's no absolute evil out there. In Buddhism there's evil conduct, but they're not evil people or evil beings or some dark force out there that's going to capture us, the dark side. Evil is simply ignorance. So we all have this ignorance,

[37:02]

this fundamental ignorance and greed or craving and anger or aversion. This is part of our human equipment and based on that we can do evil deeds, we can commit evil actions, we can kill civilians, we can hijack planes and fly into buildings. There are many ways that we can act harmfully. So evil is just what increases suffering in the world. But at least in some of Christianity, and because of the Buddhist-Christian dialogues I'm involved with, I know that Christianity is very complex so I won't say that this is Christianity. But anyway, some version of something in there. We have very deeply this idea of some evil other out there, some force of evil out there. Another Buddhist definition of evil that I like,

[38:07]

my teacher says that evil is the opposite of live. E-V-I-L and L-I-V-E. So evil is what opposes life, opposes vitality. But it's something that we all have the capacity for doing. But it doesn't mean that we're evil or that there's some Darth Vader person out there trying to make everybody evil. But there does seem to be this human tendency to create evil. I think we all have this. We want to have some evil being out there, because then we'll be the good guys, right? So there's a very strong tendency to want to create evil axes out there. We all have this. So it's important to see how easily we can

[39:11]

make somebody else into the evil ones. There's a corollary of this which I'll mention, which is that we also think that there's some magical right thing to do, that there's one right way for us to be who we are today. And maybe those beings of the future or some old nobodaddy up in the sky with a big white beard can tell us what it is even. But actually our life and our presence is much more dynamic than that. So I don't think there's one right way to be who you are today. And I don't think there's some force of evil out there trying to attack us. I think there's confusion, there's ignorance, there's greed, there's anger. So I don't know if people heard about the speech

[40:34]

that George Bush gave at West Point a couple of weeks ago saying that the U.S. is ready to and may well attack as many as 60 countries around the world because they might attack us, and they might have terrorists there. And we'll use all of our weapons necessary to attack them. So I don't think George Bush is evil. Some people think when I talk about this stuff that I think that, but I don't actually. I think that there is a system in this country of greed and saying that greed is good and it's okay for some corporations to act to destroy cultures around the world because it'll bring a higher profit margin. But this is not about evil people. This is about a confusion, a misunderstanding, an ignorance that is part of the system of our society.

[41:36]

And we all are part of it. It's not that there's some evil people out there doing this. There's a politician from Ohio named Dennis Kucinich who says we should create an axis of hope instead of an axis of evil. And I heard a story. The Queen Mother of England passed away recently. And I heard the Dalai Lama, as long as the Dalai Lama, talk about her. A few years ago, he told this story. He had been visiting her. It's kind of funny to imagine those two people, the Dalai Lama and the Queen Mother. But anyway, this happened several years ago. And she was born in 1900. So she lived 100 years. She lived more than 100 years. But at the time he saw her, she was in her mid or late 90s. And he asked her, you've seen this whole century

[42:39]

and she's had this position of privilege. She was the Queen Mother and she traveled. Anyway. But she was pretty aware and alert person, good person. And so he asked her, have things gotten better or worse? And she said, oh, definitely much better. And he said, how can you say that with all of the war and all of the cruelty? And I think when they were meeting, it was during some of the Balkan Wars maybe. And she said, even though people don't know what to do, people all around the world know about it when there are bad things happening. They hear about it and they care. They don't know what to do, but they want to help. And that that makes a big difference. So she said, yes, things are better. So I think that our spiritual teaching

[43:46]

should help us to find some hope and help us find ways to respond and to be aware, to actually allow ourselves to be aware of what's going on and to find ways to respond. And it doesn't mean that we know the answers and we might make mistakes and we have to listen closely to different points of view. But part of Buddha's teaching is that all beings are capable of awakening. So we talk about Buddha nature. And things happen seemingly suddenly in our own lives and in the lives of people we know. It's possible to actually let go of some addiction or change some way of behavior or overcome some great personal sorrow

[44:50]

or conditioning or confusion. This happens to us individually and it happens in the world. So after many people worked very hard for a long time, suddenly apartheid ended in South Africa. It was unimaginable a few months before and it ended relatively peacefully. And the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR ended. So we don't know how things happen in our lives and in the world. But we can allow ourselves to be aware and to pay attention and to look and to share information. And see our own tendencies to want to make somebody else evil so that we'll be good. So amid all of the causes for fear that we have

[46:01]

I think we should not succumb to that. That we can actually be ourselves and look at the world and look at our own lives and allow ourselves to be aware. And actually I am hopeful, as terrible as things are. It is possible that Palestinians and Israelis can talk to each other. It has happened. And Indians and Pakistanis. Anyway. So part of that is to recognize the fear that we do have. To not run away from our fear any more than we run away from the past or future. But to become aware and to allow yourselves to become aware. So again, happy Father's Day.

[47:02]

And please take care of your fathers or if your fathers, take care of your children. And take care of the children in the distant future and in the distant past. And enjoy your day. I look forward to any comments that any of you have in the discussion period. Thank you. Thank you.

[47:30]

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