This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. My talk today is actually dedicated to my Chico, my attendant, Juliet. Um... My patient, Chico, Juliet, very patient. Juliet said, how come you guys never talk about love and happiness? Why don't you talk about love and happiness? She's been saying that for a little while. And then, you know, I had this talk coming up. I had this idea. I said, I know, I'll talk about love and happiness. That's what I want to talk about.

[01:00]

So, yeah, talk about love. Maybe we don't. Maybe we don't talk about love all that much. I don't know. I think... There's a former Shuso, Shotai de la Rosa, who wanted to talk about love in one or more of her Dharma talks. And being a non-native English speaker, she was really curious about how the word is used in English. For example, I love pizza. Love pizza. Well, what kind of love is that?

[02:00]

I mean, I wish for the well-being of pizza. Or as popular cultural icon, Pee Wee Herman, would say, you love pizza? Why don't you marry it? Yeah, so I think it can be confusing. And I think we should, well, maybe attempt to define our terms. I will try to talk about what kind of love I want to talk about, if that makes sense. Interesting thing is, Suzuki Roshi talked about love all the time. All the time. When I looked into it, and I've had a lot of fun going through a lot of Suzuki Roshi's transcribed Dharma talks, He talked about love a lot.

[03:02]

And I thought, of course, it was the 60s. Everybody was talking about love. And I think he was really interested, curious, you know, being a non-native English speaker. He wants to find hell as preaching the Dharma in English. One definition of hell for him. You know, I think he was very curious about this word. And another one that he heard a lot that he was curious about was natural. The word natural, he got that all the time. And he was just like, what do these people mean by natural? It's not natural, man. I'm into the natural things. And at one point, famously said, I don't agree with your idea of natural because you like it so much. So love, yeah, he talked about love a lot. And my talk this morning is going to be a lot of Suzuki Roshi.

[04:08]

So I hope you don't mind that, my little Suzuki Roshi mashup. I hope you won't think, lazy tanto, letting Suzuki Roshi do the talking for you. Well, maybe so, but not always so. So... Suzuki Roshi on love. So, one definition, which will start with what I'm not talking about. August 23rd, 1969, right here in Tassajara, Suzuki Roshi was preaching on the 12-fold chain of causation, lecturing on the 12-fold chain of causation, a standard teaching in Buddhism. And he says, the next, eighth one, is chishnya, or thirst, or desire. You know, strong desire, like when you work in the sun, you know, you will be thirsty.

[05:09]

Thirsty desire, you know, is next one. And as soon as we have some good feeling or bad feeling, you will have strong discrimination, and you will have thirsty desire for good things. This is next one. And this is different from love in its true sense. It is strong attachment to something. So this is, you know, we are very strict with our, you know, love between man and woman, whether it is thirsty desire, laughs, or, you know, true love, you know. When it is thirsty desire, it is not, it is a kind of, not evil, but we say, katsuai. Katsuai means thirst. Ai means love. And our purpose of zazen is to cut off thirsty love. And to purify our love is our purpose of practice. And I think your cultural background is not so strict with this point. And the transcriber puts brackets, laughter.

[06:15]

So to me, your love is thirsty, you know, thirst, desire. When you start to love someone, you feel very thirsty, strong thirst for love. Okay, so maybe that's, shall we say, not what I want to talk about. And now, here's Suzuki Roshi in June 1st, 1970, also in Tazahara, when he was giving his famous series of talks on the Sandokai. When we say love, in our term, jihi, Jihi is usually translated love, you know, but love means love has two sides. One is to give joy, yoraku, and the other is bakku. Bakku is to eliminate suffering, to suffer with them. To eliminate suffering, to make their, his suffering less, you know, we suffer with him. We share their suffering. That is love. So love has two sides.

[07:20]

To give joy, to give something, you know, If he is very good, you know, we can enjoy joy of practice with him by giving good cushion, good zendo, you know, something like this. So, Suzuki Roshi is talking about the first two of the four Brahma Viharas. I know this because there was actually a transcriber very kindly included a footnote. friendliness and compassion. Four balanced thoughts. Well, I know them as the Brahma Viharas, the abodes of Brahma. And this is a concept older than Buddhism, actually. It was around before Buddha. So sometimes when we have Zen and Yoga workshops, the yoga teachers will be like, let's teach the Brahma Viharas, because they're in the Yoga Sutras, too. And the Brahma Viharas,

[08:21]

the divine abodes, the sublime emotions of Brahma in the Hindu pantheon. Brahma is the god of love. He's the loving god. There are many gods, but Brahma is the god of love. And so in Pali, it's metta, karuna, mudita, upekha. In Sanskrit, maitri, karuna, mudita, upekha. And these are translated as usually loving kindness, compassion, joy or sympathetic joy, and equanimity. So he's talking about the first two. The first is to give joy, loving kindness. And the second is suffer with, to share their suffering. is compassion. So this is kind of love I want to talk about.

[09:29]

And maybe we'll talk some more and let Suzuki Roshi do some more talking and maybe we'll get even closer to a sense of kind of love I want to talk about. And now I want to talk about someone I knew who exemplified loving heart to me, who definitely is one of my heroes. And some of you knew him and some of you didn't. And so I'm sorry about that. But I'm not going to talk about him. too much, but I kind of felt I needed to bring John King, Kan Shin Da Ine John King, who passed away on August 8, 2006, bring him into the room because he exemplified to me loving heart.

[10:42]

He exemplified the kind of love I'm talking about. He was Shuso, my Tangaryo practice period, fall of 2000. And I was his Benji. And I idolized John, actually. I did. I idolized him. As far as I was concerned, John King was Maitreya Buddha. Do you know who Maitreya Buddha is? The future Buddha? You know, his name comes from Maitri, loving kindness. Maitreya means the loving one. So, John to me was, you know, he was a human being. I don't want to get cosmic on you or anything, but to me, he was

[11:46]

He was like Maitreya Buddha. And I once asked his teacher, Zenkei Roshi, Blanche Hartman, while John was still alive, I asked Blanche, what's with him? What's the deal with John? What is it about him? And she just looked at me and she said, well, Greg, I think that John is just a guy who happens to have figured out how to love everybody. Just a guy who figured out. She deliberately used those words, you know. That's stuck with me ever since. He figured out how to love everybody. She's pretty straightforward, you know. Not so fancy. He figured out how to love everybody.

[12:47]

And that has stuck with me ever since. That simple thing that Blanche put in my head and in my heart. And I thought, I want to be like that. I want to do that. I would like to do that work. I would like to figure out how to love everybody. So, what does it take? Figure it out. What does it take? What does it take to love everybody? Well, my teacher, Sojan Roshi, says, when I talk, I should just talk about what I'm practicing with. I'll throw some words out there. This is not one of those Buddhist lists, okay?

[13:50]

This is just what's up for me right now. What's come up for me? Courage, humility, respect, and don't know. Courage. That's a word I like because it comes from the heart. La coeur. Oui. It is French. Courage. Of the heart. So I once told Caitlin, yeah, courage is love in action. Maybe I can expound on that a little bit. You can have love in your heart and think loving thoughts about people and that's really great practice.

[14:59]

I recommend that. I recommend that. But at some point bodhisattvas reach out. You have to share your love. You have to tell your love. You have to enact. You probably want to do that. You probably want to study how to do that. Suzuki Roshi talked all the time about how you extend your practice into daily life. Extend your practice into relationships. Extend it. And this is what I'm talking about. I was around in the 60s, by the way. I was. I'm old enough.

[16:01]

I was a kid. But I was well aware of what was happening. I really liked Jimi Hendrix a lot. That man could play electric guitar. I bought Electric Ladyland the day it was released. With money from my paper route. And my dad hated it. I played the heck out of that record. And even though when I was hanging out on the San Francisco punk rock scene in the late 70s, I felt kind of almost obliged to some social pressure to make fun of hippies.

[17:10]

What does a deadhead say when you take away his drugs? Oh, wow, man, this music sucks. That's a mean joke. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. It's a punk rocker joke. But all the same, I feel like I was a closet flower child. Even so, I was fronting as a punk rocker, but somewhere inside me, I was a closet flower child. Jimmy said, I'm bold, bold as love. And I think bodhisattvas are bold as love. Trungpa Rinpoche often said, when two people are at loggerheads and they're both stuck, stuck in an argument, stuck in a relationship, two people, two factions, two nations.

[18:18]

It's the bodhisattva who makes the first move. It's the bodhisattva who's willing to come down off of their high place and say, okay, let's talk. Or what do you think? Or how can I help? This is the work, and it is work. Love is work. It takes our effort. It takes our sincere effort to reach out, to love, to communicate that, to not just hide it in your heart, not just hide your light under a bushel. My dad came from, well, interesting background.

[19:23]

Poor, South, pretty strict upbringing. I don't think anybody ever said, I love you, to my dad. Maybe never, actually. Maybe my mom. sometimes but when he was growing up I don't think that actually happened to him and he had a very hard time saying it himself very hard time he was not actually seemingly capable of saying I love you to his children not that I can recall maybe I won't say never, but yeah, it was maybe a time or two, but pretty much wasn't happening for him.

[20:28]

Later in life, when he was in his 70s, and was living in the East Bay for a while, and I was living in San Francisco, we used to hang out sometimes. And I had, at that point, trained myself to say, I love you, and was capable of saying, I love you, to my dad. And... He just soaked it up. He was ready to hear it. It was kind of great. He was really ready to hear it. And it would get so. We'd be hanging out. We're talking on the phone. And beginning to be time to go. And I could see it in his eyes.

[21:40]

I was waiting for it. so sweet, almost like a puppy dog. Is he going to say it? I didn't make him wait. But just before I'd say it, you know, I could see him like, is he going to say it? Then I would say it. I love you. And then he would be able to say, I love you too. But he had to wait for me to go first. He had to, yeah. It seemed necessary. But it was an amazing thing for him. I think really meaningful. So, humility...

[22:46]

It sort of goes along with what Trungpa Rinpoche was saying about being the first one to come down off the high place, being the first one to let go of your position, to let go of your stubbornness, your view of how things should be. your view even of what love is. Here's a chance for some of us to date ourselves. In the 70s there was a paperback novel and then a movie, huge pop cultural phenomena, Love Story. Every teenage girl in my set had a copy of Love Story

[23:48]

in her purse or her back pocket at one point. It was amazing. And then the movie came out, starring Brian O'Neill and Ali McGraw. Don't ask me how I know that. The movie came out, and there was huge, God, it was just like everywhere. What? What was the tagline for the movie? Right. my contemporaries, love means never having to say you're sorry. And you heard that all the time for a little while. And then John Lennon used to be in a band called The Beatles. The Beatles had broken up at this point. John Lennon famously responded to this media blitz. He said, love means having to say you're sorry every 10 minutes.

[24:50]

I think that could be right. Love means not staying stuck, not sticking to your position, not sticking to your sense of who you are and who the other should be. Oh, yeah. Rev. Anderson likes to talk about, in the marriage ceremony, in the English Book of Common Prayer, the wedding officiant asks the couple if they're ready to plight their troth. Anybody heard Rev say that before? Yeah, nod head. Plight their troth. I love that. Plight is this old, old English. Plight meaning in danger, to put in danger. And troth meaning truth.

[25:57]

So you're preparing to marry someone. You're preparing to commit to a relationship. Are you willing to plight your troth? Are you willing to put your version of reality, your truth, in danger? To take the risk. of putting your view in like, okay, maybe this isn't how it's going to be. I'm with this person. I'm doing things together now. We're expressing this relationship. We're expressing our interdependent nature. My individual view of how things are is in danger. April 22, 1967. The purpose of our practice is to get accustomed to live without being attached to many things. When we find the meaning of life in this way, naturally, we can help each other.

[27:01]

We will love each other without forcing anything on others, keeping a harmonious way between us and between other beings, animate and inanimate beings. We are all friends. By the way, if loving-kindness and compassion, maitri and karuna, if those are two highfalutin of Buddhist terms for you, which I think sometimes they are, sometimes we kind of run the risk of over-conceptualizing it and working with it in the head instead of the heart. Please think of friendliness and helpfulness, what I talked about all last summer. Maitriya is often translated as friendliness.

[28:05]

So I think that's a little easier to work with, a little more down to earth. bodhisattvas are friendly bodhisattvas are helpful friendliness and helpfulness so he says we can help each other we will love each other without forcing anything on others and we are all friends when he mentioned animate and inanimate beings that made me think of you know the biggest the biggest arrogance of all, which has got us into this mess we're in with climate change and all the rest, you know, thinking we're the hottest thing on planet Earth and that other beings just aren't as important as we are. So that kind of humility plays into love, love for...

[29:12]

our surroundings, love for our environment, love for this planet that we come from. Respect, well, to me it's obvious. Look again. Look deeply. Who is this person? What? What are they trying to be? How do they want to be seen? Everybody wants basic human dignity. Everybody wants consideration. I think so. I think so. I think everyone deserves basic

[30:13]

human dignity and consideration. And how odd it is that we sometimes neglect that in the people closest to us. January 4th, 1970. I think we have very good spirit here in this Zendo and Tassahara. I was rather amazed at the spirit you have. But how you should extend this spirit to our everyday life is will be the next, you know, question. And how you do it is to respect things, to respect with each other. When we respect things, we will find the true life in it. When we, you know, respect plants, we find, there we find the real life of, you know, life power of flower and real beauty of flower, flower power. So love is important, but more important will be respect and sincerity and big mind.

[31:17]

With big mind and with pure sincerity and respect, the love could be real love. Just love separated from those factors will not work. And finally, don't know. Bodhidharmas don't know. Only don't know. When you let go of your old perceptions, you give people a chance to change. When you do not let go, you're participating in the continuation of their faults. That's not Suzuki Roshi, that's my teacher Mel. When you let go of your old perceptions, you give people a chance to change. When you do not let go, you're participating in the continuation of their faults. So, yeah, our perceptions enslave us and enslave others. Our story about who we are and who the other is enslaves us.

[32:19]

To not know is freeing. There's the expression, familiarity breeds contempt. And I would like to offer a corollary. Curiosity breeds delight. Who is this person? I don't know this person. Maybe married for 50 years. I don't know you. I'm not assuming I know who you are. I will not assume that. And then love can stay fresh. Love can be new on each moment. I don't know. I don't know who you are. I love the famous story about Suzuki Roshi with Ed Brown. And I actually called Ed Brown to make sure I got the story right when Ed was tenzo here in Tassahara and was complaining to Suzuki Roshi about his crew.

[33:29]

I just can't get them to do what they're supposed to do. And they do this and that. And, you know, I try to tell them and they just won't behave. You know, they're supposed to be working and they're just like standing there talking. And Suzuki Roshi is sitting there nodding his head. Yeah. Very sympathetic. Yeah. Like, you know, hearing him. And yeah, it's rough. You just can't get good help these days, you know. And finally, Ed stops talking. And Suzuki Roshi says, if you want to see virtue, you'll have to have a calm mind. And it was like, that's not what I was talking about. I want to get these people to do what I want them to do. But Suzuki Roshi said, if you want to see virtue, you'll have to have a calm mind. And I think this goes along with let go of your old perceptions. You give people a chance to change. You give yourself a chance, too. You give it... you give yourself a chance to see their virtue.

[34:29]

A calm mind. Zazen. Of course. I had to come to Zazen. April 22, 1967, again. So, true love should be based on this understanding. or else your love will become, will be selfish love. True love should not be selfish. Actually, there is no selfish love. It looks like selfish, but it is not. There is no such love as selfish love, even though love is not selfish. But when you have the idea of selfish, self which is not real, the love will become blind love without any understanding. So before we talk about love, or before we love others, we should make this point clear. and we should have the direct experience of zazen, which is beyond thinking. When you can sit, when you can just sit, you are in a position to love others in its true sense.

[35:37]

So, my basic proposition is, if you do all that, you'll be happy. So maybe I don't want to say too much more about happiness, but I said I was going to talk about love and happiness. So I want to talk about happiness anyway. Everybody wants to be happy, is what I think. And I think we humans, we deluded humans, do all kinds of things that get us in trouble in the name of wanting to be happy. But the desire to be happy... is wholesome. Plants grow turning towards that which nourishes them, sunlight.

[36:44]

Turning towards sunlight, that's called phototropism. I lived in a house in Santa Cruz for about a year, which it didn't exactly have a basement, but it was something between a basement and a crawl space. You could actually go down there and store stuff on one side of it. And on the other side, there was no windows, but there was only two small windows on the other side facing the street. And it was dirt. And some plant, I don't know what kind of plant it was, but something had grown, taken root, and then sent a runner across the length of the house, maybe 20 feet of bare stalk. It was the oddest thing. The roofs were on this side, and there's this runner going right across the underside of this house, straight to that window.

[37:47]

And at the window, poof, leaves, green leaves. Somebody was asking me if I was going to give a way-seeking mind talk this morning. And I thought, well, if I just had a photograph or a painting of that plant, I could say, here, that's my way-seeking mind talk. No? No, okay. Okay, when I sneeze in Orioki, that's a congenital thing. It doesn't mean I have a cold or I'm allergic to almonds or anything. It's something I've done all my life. And usually, you know, I can get up from the table, but I can't in Orioki. I can't get up from the table. So it's just something that a very small percentage of people are born with. That's what congenital means. You're born with it.

[38:48]

I had a friend who, his brother, came out of the womb sneezing. In homeopathy, it's called seven sneezes. It's not a big thing. As afflictions go, it's pretty minor, mild. But I do apologize. You can usually count on it happening if there's almonds. But I'm not allergic to almonds. Okay, how's that for a way-seeking mind talk? So I would say that people are also like this. I've said this in Dharma talk before. I say with people, we want to be happy. We want to be whole. And I've called that bodhi-tropism. Something is bringing us to waking up. Something which we don't always know how to work with or what it is that's calling us, but we know it and we hear it.

[39:56]

I call that bodhi tropism. That's basic premise of Lotus Sutra. It's the only reason I brought this was so I could work the words Lotus Sutra into this talk somehow and give Julia something to carry. We are all destined for Buddhahood, for waking up. I was talking about this at one point with Brother Brendan, and he shared a wonderful quote with me from the psychoanalyst Emma Jung, was Carl Jung's wife, a very notable psychoanalyst in her own right. She said, an inner wholeness presses its still unfulfilled claims upon us. An inner wholeness it's still unfulfilled claims upon us. That's what brought me to practice. This unfulfilled claims, we hear it, you know, we're responding, we're responding to that inner wholeness, outer wholeness.

[41:03]

Take your place in this universe, take your place in this life. So, what the heck, I made a list for that one too. Happiness, I said, acceptance, oh, humility again. Sharing, and getting your priorities in order. So, acceptance, in the Amida Sutra of the Jodoshin school, Amida, a Pure Land Buddhist, believe that we'll be reborn in the Western paradise. And it describes paradise by saying, blue things are blue, red things are red. That is what we call paradise. Sometimes the three marks of existence in Buddhism are called anicca, impermanence, anatman, no self, and dukkha, suffering.

[42:14]

but Thich Nhat Hanh says, well, it's a Nietzsche, Anatman, and Nirvana. And sometimes people actually talk about four treasure seals, four marks. But actually, you know, it's just the ground of existence. It's just paradise. It's dukkha if we grasp it or push it away, and it's nirvana if we don't. That's... Pretty basic Buddhism. Blue things are blue and red things are red. And that's okay. If we want the blue things not to be blue or the red things to be blue and vice versa, then we run into trouble. So, accepting this. Or, there's this very popular self-help book by a sort of self-enlightened guru, Byron Katie, called Loving What Is.

[43:22]

Loving What Is. And if you can't love what is, then accept what is. Radical acceptance. Kshanti Paramita. The practice of the perfection of patience. Patient acceptance. The character of Kshanti in the kanji character is like... this sharp thing above a heart, some kind of agricultural implement poised above a human heart? Can you allow this painful thing into your heart? I don't like it, but yes, here it is. Or I do like it, and yes, here it is, and I'm not going to get too spun out about it. This is strong training. This is a huge part of Zen training. Maybe 90% of Zen training. I don't know. But this is the practice of a Zen monk is to just say yes. They say, first 10 years, just say yes.

[44:26]

Yes. Yes, I will. Suzuki Roshi said this so many times. I could go on for, I don't know, a long time. There's so many times Suzuki Roshi said this over and over again in so many different ways. Here's just one, June 5th, 1971. If you can say, yes, I will, at that moment, you are free from karma. When you say, wait a moment, you are bound by your own karma. Over and over again, he says, yes, just say yes. Yes, I will. And we get trained. We get trained this way to accept our life, to take what comes, to be present for what comes. I like it, okay. I don't like it, still okay. I accept. Humility again, this is kind of like, again, not forcing one's views. Not forcing your views.

[45:28]

Being willing to let go of your views. Or just acknowledging that if you want to be happy, you're going to have to accept that. People have different views. If you've had tea with the shuso, at this point, you might have met Prince Shotoku. Prince Shotoku Taishi was a prince in Japan, a Buddhist benefactor a long time ago. I don't know, but really early times in Japan. And he wrote this document called the Constitution of 17 Articles. And there's a famous quote from that. Prince Shotoku said, All people have minds of their own, and each person's mind views things differently. When another is right, I am wrong. When I am right, others are wrong. I am not necessarily wise, and others are not necessarily fools.

[46:31]

We are all just ordinary people. Another very wise man, Mark Twain, in his book Huckleberry Finn the protagonist Huck Finn says well I don't know but I do know that nobody ever convinced anybody of anything by arguing about it um sharing um this is uh you know mudita sharing joy sharing freely um I think we're well aware of there's a word in German for shadow joy, taking delight in others' misfortune, schadenfreude. Yeah? People have heard of that. But did you know there's also a word in German that means direct translation of mudita? Mitfreude. Joy with.

[47:34]

With joy. Mitfreude. So... This is a teaching of interdependence. You are not alone. So this is what you can offer to others and, by the way, what others are offering you, which sometimes, if we're too involved in our own suffering, we miss it. If we're too involved in our own unhappiness, we miss out that others are So sharing is also about getting sharing. It's about asking for help. It's about being willing to ask for help. Being willing to acknowledge your interdependent nature. And just as an aside, I want to mention that I have been living in California for almost my entire adult life.

[48:41]

on the West Coast for my entire adult life. And I am down with the whole hugging business. I don't go around hugging people at random. I'm not that kind of person. But you want a hug, you can say, Greg, can I have a hug? Or tanto hug? I am always good for that. I am. Definitely up for that. When we were in... My wife, Linda Galleon, and I were in Japan for three weeks. And our last day in Japan, we were met in the lobby of the Tokyo Grand Hotel by our friend Yuri, who lives in Tokyo. And she saw us in the lobby, and she came walking across the lobby, and she gave us both hugs. I thought, wow, this is the first time I've been hugged in three weeks. I thought, wow, I forgot about that.

[49:46]

And the guy behind the desk, I saw him, he was like, this woman is hugging these two guys in the lobby of my hotel. He wasn't happy. So I guess they don't do that in Japan, but they do in California. Anyway, In Japan, they have their cultural ways of sharing affection and sharing joy. And I'd say, whatever works. Whatever works for you. That's why I'm not necessarily going to hug you without asking permission or something. But you ask me, I'm always good for one. And then I said, getting your priorities in order. July 26, 1965. What is your inmost request? What will appease your suffering or agitation or irritation?

[50:47]

I went to visit my dear friend Danny Parker over an interim between practice periods. I saw him in UCSF Medical Center. on the 14th floor where they have their cancer unit. I was just talking to Danny because I wanted to make sure it was okay with him if I talked about him in this talk. He said, oh yeah, sure. He was delighted. So I can tell you that he's doing very well. He's going home to Florida and his treatment has done everything it was meant to do with No complications. He's very happy about that, and his family is happy about that. I was with Danny. I was telling him about I had just seen, because I was out. I went to a movie.

[51:52]

I saw The Green Hornet, Seth Rogen. Thought I was really going to like that. T.U. What a stinker. I had just seen it. I was telling Danny, this movie was terrible. I expected so much better. Everyone's entitled to make a mistake. Big, expensive mistake. The movie was marked for me by, well, a lot of things like bad writing and bad acting, but also it was full of what I could only call it wealth porn. Wealth porn. It was like all these scenes of really fancy, exotic stuff. Because the main character is this rich kid. And he's got all this fancy, exotic stuff and fancy, exotic surroundings and many cars. And somehow, I thought in the movie, you were supposed to get a vicarious thrill from seeing this guy.

[52:58]

All this display of all this stuff in this movie. And I said, it was really weird to me. Yeah, it was like, all it could come out was wealth porn. Wealth porn. And I was kind of amazed that someone would think that... I think as a society, as a society, I mean, I grew up in a culture where I would say the state religion was consumerism. Um... But I don't know. Maybe it's just the people I hang out with. But I think that actually we might be growing away from that as a society. So I was kind of surprised to see that in this movie that this was like a big deal. Yeah. I don't know. So I was talking about that with Danny. And Danny said, you know what would sound nice to me right now? I'd like to do some sweeping. That sounds good.

[53:59]

I could get into some sweeping right now. So, oh, and in the hallway there, when I was talking to Danny just the other day, I mentioned there's patient art in the hallway on that ward. I think from art therapy. And I talked about this one painting that really struck me. And Danny knew exactly what painting I was talking about. The painting was probably, it was done by a guy probably my age. or Danny's age, and he called it the big picture. And so it's this sort of, it's a rectangle, and there's a line down the middle of it. And then on the left it says before, and on the right it says after. And before is house, card, job, bills, wife, kids, portfolio, all these things, you know? Big picture. And then after.

[55:01]

Kids. Wife. The little things. He painted himself with some guy with a mustache sniffing a flower. The little things. You know, it's said that nobody ever on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more time in the office. Maybe somebody has. I don't know. Maybe somebody's talking, oh, I spent more time in the office. But actually, there's many documented cases of near-death experiences where people almost die, and they're saved. They come back from almost dying, and they're like, I have to tell my wife I love her. I have to spend more time with my kids. That's suddenly, priorities get rearranged very suddenly. But I say, why wait? What is wealth anyway? I've heard it said that wealth is being happy with what you've got.

[56:08]

That is true wealth. My parents lived through the Great Depression. And them and other people I've talked to, I used to work in a skilled nursing facility and I worked with many people who lived through the Great Depression. Mostly what people talk about living in the Great Depression, what they remember about it is everyone was really nice to each other. That's what I used to hear the most. What I remember about the Great Depression, everyone was really nice to each other. Everyone helped each other a lot. So here's... Suzuki Roshi, June 10, 1970, in another one of this series of lectures on the Sandokai. But you know, at the same time, the happiness, you know, in its true sense, is not exactly the same happiness which usual people have.

[57:12]

There is some difference, little bit difference. And that little bit makes a great difference, laughs. Little bit different. He knows. Because he knows both sides of the reality, you know, he has that kind of composure. He will not be disturbed by something bad. And he will not be extremely, you know, he will not be ecstatic, you know, about things. Last practice period, we were talking about getting giddy. And he will have true joy, which will always be with him. And basic, you know, tone of life is same. And on it, there is some, you know, good melody or sad melody. That is, you know, more or less something enlightened people may have. That is the feeling some enlightened people may have. So, in this quote, Suviki Roshi is talking about Ashley, the other two Brahma Viharas, joy, mudita, and equanimity, upekka.

[58:14]

And I don't think it's something only enlightened people have. Keep me leaving. Talking too long. Oh my goodness. Okay. Thank you, kitchen crew. Not only in life. I think everyone, every one of us has had a taste of this at some point. Happiness, which is deeper than I'm unhappy or I'm happy. I don't know if this is a good example or not, but it's something that happened in my life when my mom died. in October of 2007 I was with my two sisters and we were at her bedside for days watching her around the clock keeping her comfortable keeping her hydrated keeping the mucous membranes moistened you know this typical end-of-life care people are

[59:22]

nearing the end and my mother's was a very long slow decline so we were there for days you know and when she died we were just like completely fried you know very little sleep just having spent so much time concentrating on this one thing you know sound familiar Sashim. We were sitting Sashim. And it was in the morning. It was like mid-morning, 11 o'clock. And we were just like, now what? The usual person who took care of my mom's grooming actually had an appointment. And she just said, well, I'm going to come over anyway. We let her know that mom was dead. She said, well, I'm coming over anyway. I'll keep the appointment. And so she did mom's hair and dressed her up so nicely on the bed there.

[60:29]

And the person who ran the place where we were at said, look, there's nothing for you to do right now. You need a break. Take a break. And we thought, that sounds good. We didn't know what to do. I mean, we're just completely bereft and just like, now what? OK, so we go out to lunch. We go out to lunch. at a Chinese restaurant nearby. And we're on the way out of the Chinese restaurant, having had lunch. The hostess is standing there at the door. She goes, have a nice day. And we're walking away, and my sister mutters, well, that ship has sailed. That ship has sailed, that means never mind. Well, anyway, we just started giggling. And, you know, we weren't happy, but we weren't unhappy.

[61:32]

It was a different definition of happiness. We were together, orphans. Together, you know, we had each other. And even though we were totally bereft, somehow in the midst of that, there was some feeling of joy. there, sharing that experience. So, I come to my favorite Suzuki Roshi quote of all, my favorite Suzuki Roshi story of all, which is maybe because it involves his disciple Sojin Roshi, my teacher, which is, there's not much to the story, It's just that Mel was in the hallway at City Center, and Suzuki Roshi siloed up alongside him for no apparent reason, apropos of nothing else at all, not continuing a previous conversation, just walked up alongside him and said, just to be alive is enough, you know.

[62:44]

Zen masters, when they get old, they get They get merry, childlike even. That's the kind of happiness I'm talking about. And you can say, just to be alive is enough, you know? So, I know I've talked a long time. I would like to finish with a poem. a poem aptly titled Spring Morning. And I want to thank Alison for sharing this poem with me or reminding me of this poem from my childhood. It was written by A.A. Milne, who wrote the Winnie the Pooh books and books of children's verse. Where am I going?

[63:50]

I don't quite know. Down to the stream where the king cups grow. Up on the hill where the pine trees blow. Anywhere, anywhere, I don't know. Where am I going? The clouds sail by. Little ones, baby ones, over the sky. Where am I going? The shadows pass. Little ones, baby ones, over the grass. If you were a cloud and sailed up there, You'd sail on water as blue as air. And you'd see me here in the fields and say, doesn't the sky look green today? Where am I going? The high rooks call. It's awful fun to be born at all. Where am I going? The ring doves coo. We do have beautiful things to do. If you were a bird and lived on high, you'd lean on the wind when the wind came by. You'd say to the wind when it took you away, that's where I wanted to go today.

[64:54]

Where am I going? I don't quite know. What does it matter where people go? Down to the wood where the bluebells grow? Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know. So that's the kind of happiness I wish for you. And for... for all beings I'm sorry I've talked a long time and it's awful fun to be born at all just to be alive is enough you know and we do have beautiful things to do But in case, I know I've gone a long time, but if anybody has a question, I mean, it's not like we're actually, I mean, we do have beautiful things to do, but if anyone has a question, still, we can do that.

[66:06]

You know, I've talked you all into total submission. I'm sorry. Yes, Carla. Carla, Carla, it's March 12th. Carla's been, Reverend Carla, today marks six months since she ordained as a priest. And I was going to have her be doshi today, but she's so cool. So she's going to be doshi tomorrow. Thanks for doing that, but I'm sorry. What was your question? It's all good, that's true. That to be free of karma does not mean to be free of your karma.

[67:15]

It does not mean to be free of cause and effect. It means to be willing to let go of your point of view. Yes, that's very good advice if you don't want to be reborn 500 lifetimes as a fox. Okay, well, thank you very much for your patient listening, and thank you for everyone's practice. This practice period is really great. Yeah, we do have beautiful things to do. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[68:20]

For more information, Visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[68:28]

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