This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Morning, everybody. Thanks for coming out in the rain. Seems a shame to talk over it. Sorry. So my name is Jiryu, also known as Mark. I live here at Green Gulch. And my problem today is that I'm giving the Dharma talk, and I want it to be a good Dharma talk. And you may also have this problem of wanting it to be a good Dharma talk.

[01:06]

So I feel some comfort that we're more or less in the same boat. not so much of wanting something that necessarily will or won't happen, but just that those of us who want that, our wanting of that, is very likely going to block us from the actual talk that happens. That's a bit what I want to talk about today, how we deal with our wanting of stuff. and how we deal with the reality that occasionally conforms with our wanting and often does not conform with our wanting. I want to thank the young adults here in the front coming-of-age group for coming out today. It's very nice to see you all sitting here.

[02:09]

It's actually quite common for people to fall asleep in this room, so you'll fit right in if you drift off. But even just getting through it, I think, sitting through itself is its own mysterious merit. So sometimes, as a Zen person, apparently, someone who spends a lot of time around Zen forms and tradition, it's sometimes a challenge to relate to Zen the way it comes across sometimes in popular culture. So there's sometimes, you know, something is very Zen, and sometimes I'm not sure what that means. I hear something's very Zen, I figure that there's some chanting and some bowing, maybe some ancestor worship. You know, I'm doing someone maybe doing a seven-year anniversary ceremony to appease their grandfather's spirits.

[03:24]

So it's a very Zen thing to do. And there's all kinds of ways that Zen is talked about in popular culture that... or used in popular culture or just in the world at large. My teacher, Mel Weitzman, keeps a bottle of Zazen sleeping formula on his desk. I'm not sure if he partakes, but we see this word Zen everywhere in the culture, and often it's not clear that it actually, for me anyway, has much to do with the way I understand Zen. And this... So I came across something recently that maybe some of you know about called Zen Mode. Are you familiar with Zen Mode? So if you have a video game on your phone or your tablet, a lot of times you can make it go into Zen Mode.

[04:25]

Do you know about this? Some people know about this? Zen Mode. And it doesn't mean that you kind of chant and bow while you do the maze. It's a whole different thing that I discovered, especially when trying to find something for my four-year-old son to do on a long airplane flight. So sort of no restrictions on anything when you're on an airplane for a few hours. We opened this game called Fruit Ninja. Maybe some of you are familiar with Fruit Ninja? Fruit Ninja. It's a pretty good game. It's a little bit stressful. So various fruits fall from the sky and you have to slice the fruit. But what's stressful about it is that occasionally a bomb falls down with the fruit. And then if you slice the fruit, that's not so good.

[05:28]

So my son Frank is kind of a little bit high-strung, sort of like I am, easily frustrated, kind of easily stressed out, you know. So you can't have all these bombs falling around, really kind of... It creates this kind of frustrating obstacle to what would otherwise be just a lovely time slicing fruit. So, you know, if you go into options, you can get the Zen mode, and then the bombs don't fall down anymore. It's great. There's no obstacles. There's no obstruction. You just slice the fruit. So I think I saw Zen mode. I thought, what is this crazy Zen mode? How could this possibly be anything about Zen? But then I opened it and said, well, there's no, this is actually, maybe there's something to this. Maybe they actually had some okay understanding, the people who developed Zen Mode. So the thing about Fruit Ninja Zen Mode, though, is that there is still a time limit.

[06:37]

You have like 90 seconds, there's no bombs, but you have 90 seconds, and you're getting points. So there's still this kind of pressure, you know? There's not quite so many obstacles, but there's this pressure to get something, this pressure to achieve something, to beat something. There's definitely something you're you're supposed to be doing that you want to do, and there's some time pressure, and you can get points, you can beat your high score, you can beat your mom's high score. So feeling that pressure and seeing the way that it's not, you know, there's time, there's still time and there's still points, it seems like, well, that's a kind of so-so understanding of Zen mode. Maybe a so-so Zen mode, kind of Zen mode. I promise this whole talk will not just be a video game review, but I feel I have to raise another example of a Zen mode. And this is in another popular game for a four-year-old called Smash Hit, which is actually fun for all ages, but particularly appeals to a four-year-old boy in the smashing and hitting that's involved.

[07:46]

So you kind of float through some space. and there's these panes of glass that are sort of falling and twirling around. And you have these metal balls, and you throw the metal balls at these panes of glass, and they shatter with this very nice shattering sound that you can't get much at home. So in the normal game, you're getting hit by these... you can get hit by these glass things, and they really, you know, you get hit by them, and they slow you down, and it kind of shakes, and you lose balls, and you start to lose points. So it's also quite stressful, because you're trying to break this glass, but you actually have to break the glass, or there's going to be bad results. So again, here, there is a Zen mode that you maybe, maybe for $1.99 or something, you can turn on Zen mode. So a donation is requested, but then you can go to Zen Mode, and there's just this spinning glass, and you have as many balls as you can throw, and there's no time, and there's no points.

[09:06]

There's just you shattering some glass. There's no barriers, there's no points, nothing... can hit you. You can't really succeed and you can't really fail because nobody's keeping track and there's nothing to keep track of. There's just a lot of glass lying around and you break some of it. So it's quite relaxing, Zen mode. And I think it's relaxing because it removes this fundamental obstacle of wanting to get something, wanting to achieve something. It makes the game kind of exciting, but it's also a burden, this feeling of being able to achieve something, of needing to achieve something, of wanting to achieve something. So there's this kind of clear and easy enjoyment that can come when that wanting to achieve something is sort of taken away or undermined.

[10:11]

So that Zen mode seems like a reasonable understanding of Zen mode. I actually feel pretty good about that being called Zen mode, personally. Because it seems that they understand this basic Buddhist truth that if you're desiring to get something, you're suffering. And if you're not desiring to get something, you're not suffering. So they seem to understand that Zen is about moving away from desire, maybe dropping off desire, sidestepping desire, and moving our energy away from the things that we want to get and want to be, and coming into the present moment just as it is. So it's tempting to think of living a life in Zen mode, where we're not trying to accomplish something in each moment.

[11:17]

beat something, get something, and achieve something, but just to live in the beauty of the moment before I tried to get something out of it. Not tracking my own attainment, not trying to get ahead, not being worried about getting behind, but just noticing and living the life that's naturally living itself out. So I think this possibility of living in this really free and clear way with basically free of desire is based on a teaching that I think is kind of at the center of Buddhism, which is that suffering and desire are totally intertwined. Desire equals suffering is how I would... maybe express this equation that's at the core of Buddhism.

[12:23]

Desire equals suffering. Suffering in Buddhism is kind of the thing that Buddhism is getting us beyond or is ending. So it would follow in Buddhism that not having desire is actually the end of suffering. So just to say a little bit about this teaching and how it works in Buddhism, this basic desire or thirst for things is something that arises kind of as soon as we come into the world. So in each moment, in the Buddhist analysis, in each moment, we're sort of coming into being, moment after moment, together coming into being. And as soon as we come into being in a moment, as soon as a moment takes shape, we sense ourselves as separate from other things, and then we have some feeling about those other things, and then we either want those other things, or we distinctly do not want those other things.

[13:36]

So there are various flavors of this desire. There's desire for objects, or pleasure, or wealth. There's a common desire among more spiritual types is desire for certain states of mind, certain calm and clarity. All of these are kinds of desire. And then the whole category of desires of things that we don't want. You know, being around, we want to be around who we want to be around, and we don't want to be around who we don't want to be around. who sometimes we are around. So desire for something or desire to get away from something, there's not really an important distinction there for Buddhism. They're equally desire. Wanting to get more out of life, wanting to retreat from life, both of those are kind of versions of wanting.

[14:38]

And this isn't just, to be clear, it's not just kind of, I think we can all relate to some large-scale wanting, you know, there's something I want in my life, Maybe even just a material thing. You know, I want a house. I want a job. I want a partner. And these are all these kind of gross, big wantings. But then at this very subtle level, too, in every moment, there's some kind of wanting. There's some kind of desire for something that's not present. and some kind of desire for something that is present to no longer be present. So, I desire a different neck right now. And when I desire a different neck or a different shoulder, I do what we call wiggling. It's a technical term at Zen Center.

[15:41]

Wiggling. Wiggling is is desire. And the more you do it, the worse it gets. And so this is the thing about wiggling is that it just makes things worse. There's some sensation in my body or some feeling in my heart or some thought in my mind that I don't want And so I move away from it. And then there's something that I imagine that I do want, and I kind of move towards it. And this is happening in each moment, and you put it all together, and you get a very wiggly being who wants lots of things that aren't here. Even though, if you asked me, I maybe couldn't even say what they are. And I don't want a lot of things that are here. But again, if you ask me, I'm just, yeah.

[16:44]

So, you know, we could say we sit down so that we get calm and stop wiggling. And maybe that's true. But also I think when we sit down, say, in meditation, for many of us the experience is not so much of, wow, look how calm I got, so much as, wow, I am wiggling all over the place. I was running around all day not noticing how wiggly I am. But now that I've sat down, I can see that I'm really having trouble noticing and appreciating and fully feeling what is here because I keep trying to get something I don't have and get away from something that I do have. So the alternative to wiggling, of course, is stillness.

[17:53]

So in stillness, we're not pushing something away. We're not trying to get rid of something that is present and not trying to get something that isn't present. And I want that. I want that stillness. So I try to kind of wiggle out of my wiggling which also doesn't help. So the moment just as it is, wiggling or not, is the moment to find stillness in. As soon as we think there's some little tweak on things that we need to do to find stillness or to find contentment or to find appreciation, we're back into wiggling. Maybe you can relate to this experience of wiggling.

[19:05]

But maybe harder to relate to this kind of broader teaching of desire. equal suffering. I think for a lot of us, especially coming up in this culture, it's kind of hard to imagine that living without any desire would be at all an interesting way to live. It seems like desire is who we are. Desire is beautiful. Desire is our kind of passion and our longing and our love and our energy. It's what makes us who we are and gives life a kind of depth and richness. So we might think that it's, of course there's some pain in human life, but it's not worth getting rid of desire is kind of cutting too deep at what we are. We also might think that we get happiness, desire is kind of necessary for happiness.

[20:17]

because we want something and then we get it and then we're happy. So when desire kind of, when it works, happiness is the result. So again, it seems like, well, if I'm just not wanting anything, then I would never be happy. There's also these very wholesome desires, desires to calm ourselves, desires to be of benefit to others that we maybe find it hard to imagine letting go of or even imagine wanting to let go of them. And certainly if there's a religion that says you should cut off your desires, they will only bring you suffering. You may be a little skeptical. It's a marketing challenge. to say anything you desire is suffering.

[21:24]

So come get what you want at Sun Center. It's hard to work with the ways that we do want something and we respect that we want something, but that really anything we want by wanting it is a problem for us. I think a lot of us don't really want to hear that, that desire is suffering and that letting go of desire is freedom. So we may think that we can leave that part of Buddhism aside, which I think would be a reasonable response. So if Buddhism seems to have a lot to offer, but this whole desire equals suffering thing just seems like a little over... overdoing it a little too much, then maybe we could have a newer Buddhism here that doesn't have this whole desire equals suffering, go beyond desire thing, which is kind of a drag on everybody.

[22:34]

So we could have a new Buddhism that doesn't have that. And maybe we should have that kind of Buddhism. Or maybe we do have that kind of Buddhism. But it seems a little quick to me that we would, at this point in the transmission of the Buddha Dharma from the east to the west, that we would make the decision to just kind of get rid of the desire equals suffering equation. I sort of feel like we should give it a little try. Just a little try. See if there's actually something to this desire equals suffering. Actually, having something in a religion or in a teaching that's a problem that doesn't sit right, that doesn't sound right, to me is kind of the point of having a religion or having a teaching.

[23:37]

And I don't know if that makes sense, but this has long been something important to me anyway, that having a teaching is kind of wrestling with a teaching. If we take some teaching, but then we take out all the parts that we don't agree with, what have we actually learned from the teaching? I would like to be transformed, and that transformation means transforming myself from my preconceptions and my limited views. But then I'm using my preconceptions and my limited views to determine whether the teaching is the right teaching or not. Does that make sense? That that would be a little bit of a problem. Dogen, actually, the Soto Zen founder in Japan, has a comment about this in one of his rants about students today, which would be us.

[24:40]

He says, students today cling to their own discriminating minds. Their thinking is based on their own personal view that Buddha must be such and such. If it goes against their ideas, they say that Buddha cannot be that way. Having such an attitude and wandering here and there in delusion, searching after what conforms to their preconceptions, few of them ever make progress in the Buddha way. So searching after what conforms to our preconceptions, few of us make real progress. So we always want to adapt the teaching but there's also room for the teaching to adapt us. Isn't that why we took on the teaching? So there's plenty in Buddhism that I have rejected, that I do reject without actually thinking so deeply about it. I could give examples.

[25:45]

The blood bowl hell comes to mind as something that felt like didn't need a lot of consideration for me to let go of. But a teaching about how to live that's so much at the basis of the tradition as desire equals suffering seems like this is worth wrestling with. So what if we did? What if we asked ourselves, as I've been asking myself, in my own life, does my desire cause my suffering? Would it be useful for me to explore the relationship between my desire and my suffering? And maybe between myself and my desire? Rather than assuming that it's just good to want the things I want. To open a little crack in there and start to study that relationship I have to my own desire and that relationship of suffering to desire.

[26:47]

Still raining. So I'm, say, actively considering the possibility of letting go of desire, of letting go of wiggling and not letting all of my itches that I have drive me. and instead to make an effort to try to appreciate what's here before I decided that something else would be better. And I feel like in taking up this practice, however unsuccessfully, I'm really practicing what we also call renunciation, letting go, renunciation. Noticing that I'm always trying to get somewhere, to the next place, the next thing.

[28:06]

to get something and that there's a basic discomfort in that. You know, if renunciation seems like too stark a word, this letting go of desire for me also has an element of non-self-centeredness. My desires are mostly pretty self-centered. I have an occasional generous desire, maybe. Occasional generous desire. But for the most part, the things I want are kind of about me. So sort of shifting my energy from getting my own desires, shifting my energy away from that is also kind of activating some non-self-centeredness. It's kind of stepping away from having myself be at the center of my world and the things that I want and

[29:07]

think I need to be at the center of kind of defining my activity or my life. I recently had the privilege of going through a ceremony we call Dharma Transmission, which seems like a big deal before you do it. It seems that, you know, Dharma Transmission would be about the Dharma being transmitted and that you'd get something out of that. Like if someone said, I will transmit to you the Dharma, you'd get pretty excited, right? Like, this is going to be great. I'm going to get something. called the Dharma, which is like the best thing possible. And I'm gonna get it.

[30:10]

That's worth 20 years of thwarted desire to get. What became totally clear, increasingly clear in that ceremony is that what's transmitted, and sorry to spoiler alert here, but what's transmitted is letting go. What's transmitted is a practice of renunciation. It's not something that's gotten. It's a practice of letting go. So even the ways that I want the way, that I want Buddhism or enlightenment or compassion or however I understand that, those are all oriented towards a kind of getting that misses the point of what the practice is, which is in the direction of letting go. Somebody recently asked me about how desire for mental states, desire to meditate really well, motivates us.

[31:31]

It takes us... that must be necessary, right? Are you saying don't desire to get calm when you sit? That's crazy. How else would you get calm? And so I think there is something to this. There's a role of this desire even in our meditation practice. But in the traditional teachings on meditation, that desire might get us there, into the room. But if we actually are desiring any sort of mental state, it's blocking us from getting that mental state. So even in the progression of jhanas or higher meditative states in the early tradition, there's a little bit of wanting. You get to one and you kind of like it. You kind of don't want it to change. You kind of want to keep it. And that's what needs to be let go of. It's not that you get the next one by wanting the next one or by getting the next one. You get the next one by letting go of how you want the one that you have.

[32:32]

Does that make sense? And the bodhisattva stages are the same. There's a little bit of holding on. And it's not by kind of attaining something that you go higher in these stages. It's about letting go of some traces of wanting that were left. I actually, I heard a story, I don't know if it's true, but a friend who had done some practice in the Vipassana tradition in Asia mentioned that there was a well-regarded teacher of these states of meditation and many students around trying very hard, desiring these higher states of meditation and really wanting them. And so he kind of kept a Zen person around. I don't know where they put the Zen person, but there was kind of a Zen person around. And when people were going through these states, were getting stuck by their own wanting of the state.

[33:35]

Because the whole tradition, in a way, is geared towards, let's do this, let's get these. But then it's like, oh, you really are trying to get this. Go talk to the Zen guy. We've got to deal with this. And then Zen, hopefully, can undercut that wanting. There's nothing to get. There's only letting go. So I'll make a couple more points. One is another story, or a teaching I got from someone I used to practice with, Tassajara. Kathy Egan actually said this story, or talked about renunciation and desire in this way, that at the time I felt was a little kind of loosey-goosey, but I've really come to appreciate.

[34:39]

And that is, her take was that desire itself isn't a problem. And the desire she was experiencing at the time, because we're at Tassajara, especially food is, you know, in a Zen retreat, food is kind of the main thing that's happening because there's not really anything else happening. So food is what's happening all day. So the desire that she used as an example was the perfectly roasted cashew. So she wanted very much a perfectly roasted cashew. And she didn't think that was a problem. I sort of thought that was a problem already. And we might continue to debate that. She held that the problem wasn't wanting the perfectly roasted cashew. It was, what happens when you don't get perfectly roasted cashew? So you can just sit there kind of wanting a perfectly roasted cashew. And the question is, do you freak out when the non-perfectly roasted cashew comes? Not having desire or not having desire, but what kind of space is there around our desire?

[35:42]

How welded are we to these things we desire? What if it's something else? Then how are we, you know? And if we're totally identified with ourself and our desires, we kind of break, you know, when we don't get these things. But to the extent that there's space between what we are and what we desire, there's a kind of fluidity, flexibility there. I wanted this, I got that. Okay, this is composure, which is, in our tradition, a kind of synonym for enlightenment, composure. just having space around everything. So I'm suggesting that we could try more and more, that it's worth exploring whether we want to try more and more to live with some space around, some freedom from desire. But I also need to acknowledge that there's something more basic than that. And I think that if we can understand this more basic Buddhist truth,

[36:44]

then having space around desire will become quite a bit easier. So this basic truth that I think is the key to being free from desire is the truth that there is nothing in the world that can be gotten. There's nothing in the world that you can grab a hold of in the first place. Buddhism teaches this. I think that ecology, science, and our own personal experience teach us that the world is not made up of things that we can have and keep. Everything is constantly changing in this sort of dynamic flux of interconnection. Each thing is totally intertwined with every other thing. and that whole sort of vibrant mass of life is constantly changing. It doesn't come in pieces.

[37:46]

And even if it did, the pieces don't stay pieces. So there is nothing that can be gotten hold of. So it's one thing to hear the admonition, don't want anything. It's another thing, I think, and maybe a deeper and truer and more freeing thing, To look at the world, to see the world as not the kind of world in which you get to have stuff. And if you've ever gotten anything, maybe you know that. You don't actually get to keep it. As soon as you get it, it's not the thing you wanted. It's all slipping away in each moment. The desire is based on this idea that there's something out there that's going to stay there, that I can separate out from everything else, and that's going to stay as it is, and I can get it and have it and keep it in my little treasure box.

[38:56]

But that's not the world we live in. So desiring those things kind of reinforces the delusion that we live in a world where we can get stuff. Does this make sense? It makes a lot of sense to me why, if insofar as this is true about the world, that it's actually not made up of things we can have, why desiring things would cause suffering. Because it's already, it's kind of futile, you know. Desiring stuff would make a lot more sense in a world where you could get stuff. It doesn't make so much sense in a world where you can't get stuff. So one way of thinking about this for me has been to do this practice of non-getting, this practice of not attaining anything or not wanting things, based on the truth that there's nothing that can be gotten in this world. So all day and all night, I want things that can't really be gotten, that are constantly changing, and I want to get away from things that are also

[40:12]

As soon as I started to run away from that thing, it turned into something else. And maybe I decided I wanted it after all. It started running back. Nothing is fixed. And I'm part of that. So not only is there not something out there that I can get, but I'm also not the kind of thing that is solid and permanent and dependent enough to get something in the first place. So there's no stable me at the center of things that could actually get any of the things I want. As soon as I get something, not only is the thing a different thing, but I'm a different me. He got it, but where'd he go? He just got it. So I'm also constantly changing in constant flux.

[41:13]

I can't really find my edges. I can't really find my solid self as separate from the world. This whole process of arising together with the world and then sorting myself out from it and sorting the objects I want and dislike out from myself, that whole process is basically a dream, a confusion. So renunciation isn't just a practice, and not just because in the end we're going to die and there's a kind of mandatory renunciation that's sort of part of the life package. It's just that the world is already kind of renounced. There is nothing that can hold on to anything else. I sort of want some tea and maybe a muffin.

[42:24]

And I want to enjoy the rain while it's here. And I want and I want to help you and I want to be helped by you to live in a way that's a little... less full of obstacles and achievement and attainment, and that's a little more oriented towards appreciating and opening to the moment of life as it is given, moment by moment. So I don't mean to take this all too far, as I sometimes do. I just mean that. I just mean, instead of looking ahead to what I can get out of you and what I can get out of this, or even what I can give to you and what I can give to this, to just be here in stillness and appreciate what I have.

[43:35]

My hope and my belief is that in doing so, actually some benefit arises in the world. So may it be so. May our exploration of the path together bring some measure of ease to us in our own lives and may that ease extend out bringing peace and well-being to beings everywhere. Thank you very much for your time and patience. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:36]

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