Well, it's nice to see everyone. It's very crowded in here, isn't it? Well, I've been traveling a lot this summer, it seems. And I just came back from a trip to the mountains to visit my son, one of my sons, who's doing ecological projects in the Inyo National Forest. So the way to see him was to go to the forest. It's the only way we could get to see him.

[01:04]

And the mountains, you know, one forgets until one goes. The mountains are really, really beautiful. Zen temples in the old days were always on mountains, and it became a custom to call Zen temples mountains, even when they weren't on mountains. Because in the mountains, the pure is-ness, the pure being of things, is very clear. In the mountains, the rocks and trees and flowers and sky just appear starkly, just as they are,

[02:12]

without any comment at all, no debate and no argument. In the mountains, nothing is trying to prove anything, and nothing is trying to get anywhere. And even though everything in the mountains is very, very quiet, you are surrounded everywhere by the evidence in the stillness of tremendous force, of tremendous power. Everything in the mountains is very, very simple, and at the same time very, very deep. Whatever human problems you may have brought into the mountains pretty soon, after a few days, they seem pretty unimportant,

[03:15]

pretty silly. And so the mountains are very humbling. And in the mountains, one feels this stillness that accepts everything, life and death. We were a little bit hiking, and we went to a place we had been to before, about a little bit west of Tuolumne Meadows, out of the park. Maybe you know this place. It's called Steelhead Lake. It's about 10,400 feet high, just at Timberline. And I had a little while to be by myself at Steelhead Lake. And I looked up at the clouds in the sky.

[04:19]

Up there, the sky is very close, very intimate. It doesn't feel like something far away at all. And it's very large and very clear. And there were big, beautiful clouds in the sky at Steelhead Lake. And you looked at them, and you felt that they were absolutely unmoving, big, fluffy, unmoving clouds in the sky. But when I kept looking at them steadily, I saw that very, very slowly in this blue, blue, blue sky, the clouds were just moving imperceptibly and continuously. Very moving thing to see. But we didn't hike that much

[05:25]

because my son put us to work, so we didn't have time to hike. He is working for the IRT, which in New York City is the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, but in the Inyo National Forest, it's the Interagency Research Team. No, Interagency Resource Team. So it's about a dozen or so young people who volunteer to help manage in the National Forest. Because, you know, the National Forest has various activities going on, like logging and grazing and so on. So one project, we were checking out aspen groves to see how extensive they were and the condition that they were in, in areas that had been grazed heavily

[06:28]

to see what effect the grazing had had on the aspen trees. I didn't know there were so many aspen trees east of the Sierras in dry country. Surprising. So we made a map about 20 or so square miles, bouncing around in this little government truck and jumping out of the car and looking and seeing the aspen trees. Then another project was to collect seed from native grasses, needle grass and squirrel tail grass, because an area that had been logged they want to replant with native grasses. So we collected about three pounds of grass seed, which is really a lot of grass seed, you know. It took us a couple of days working all day long, four of us, full time.

[07:30]

We saw a lot of beautiful wildflowers and my wife is a kind of amateur botanist and so is my son and his girlfriend who was one of the volunteers. So I was with three knowledgeable botanists and we would see wildflowers and everything would stop and we would pull out all these books and try to identify the wildflowers. Which is not that easy to do. Some are easy, you know, the ones that we know that are quite common, but if you see one that isn't common or that you don't know and you're just trying to figure out what it is, it's very hard to identify a plant actually. And there was one time we spent hours debating and looking through different books and in the end couldn't identify a particular flower. The categories

[08:44]

of biological sciences are very complicated. Botany, but then there's also zoology and all the living things to categorize and understand the distinctions between them is very complicated. It's hard to even know what the different categories are. Did you ever hear of the saying King Philip came over for good sex? Do you know this saying? King Philip came over for good sex. This is how you remember the different categories. King means kingdom. Philip is phylum. Came is class. Over is order. For is family. Good is genus and S, sex, is species.

[09:49]

These are in descending order. Kingdom are the biggest, you know, and so on down the line. So if you want to know, everything is classified. Everything that's alive is classified according to King Philip came over for good sex. And this is all very neatly organized. And the less you know about living things, the more neat it is. And the more you know, the less neat it is. It gets more complicated, so it's better to know very little. I had no problem identifying the flowers. I would say what they were and that was it. But they had much bigger problems because they knew a lot more than I did. Years ago, when I studied

[10:53]

biology, there were two kingdoms, right? Two kingdoms. Plants and animals. That was it. And then everything was subcategories of those two. But now there are five kingdoms. Did you know that? Used to be two. Now there are five. There are still plants and animals. But there are also now fungi, bacteria, and protists. Protists, protozoa, and all these other kind of unidentifiable things that they haven't yet created new kingdoms for but will sometime. And then they keep changing the names of the different kingdoms and genus and phylums and so on. So it gets complicated. And of course, no creature is a static thing that wants to stay put in the category that we put it in. All creatures are in a dynamic relationship with each other and with non-animate

[11:56]

things, constantly being influenced by each other. New species are constantly appearing and disappearing and changing. Simply by virtue of being alive, they are changing and constantly shifting. So really there aren't any categories at all. These are all fictions. These categories are ways for us to understand something in a fictitiously fixed manner, even though there isn't anything fixed to understand. And it seems as if this is how we are, we human beings. We must categorize. We must make distinctions. If we don't make distinctions, we don't see or hear or taste or smell anything. And seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, and thinking

[12:59]

give us the information that we need to be alive and move around in this world. So actually our whole life depends on this ability that we have to make distinctions between things. So how do we humans make distinctions? A newborn baby doesn't make too many distinctions. Maybe at first there are no distinctions in the mind and heart of the baby. But very soon there is some pain in the baby's life, and out of this pain the baby makes the first distinctions. Maybe at first the distinction is just something like self and not-self, and there's self and mother,

[14:02]

and not-self, not-mother, then later there are many more distinctions and there's a delight in a young child in seeing and discovering what distinguishes one thing from another. It's like creating the world one thing at a time. But as the child grows older it seems to want to define itself. And so in the interest of defining itself it has to see everything outside of itself in relation to this self that is distinct and separate from all these other things called the world. So this process of distinguishing

[15:04]

and making things distinct from one another and outside of ourself is a very natural necessary part of being an individual. Then adolescents, I think, go through a very difficult time of differing and defining and distinguishing self and world. Because adolescents are trying to find out, you know, who am I and what am I in this world? And during this kind of period there's a great deal of emotion involved in this distinction-making. Every distinction, every preference is not just a distinguishing activity. It's a life and death matter. It's not just that I like this or don't like that. It's that my liking this and not liking that

[16:08]

is who I am. So it's crucial. And actually, I think, mostly we never get out of this phase. Even though we get older and our bodies change and the emotion that we have becomes more subtle, more hidden, perhaps less powerful, still we have this self and other, this antagonistic, deeply held sense of what the world is. Ourselves are pitted against the world in what at bottom, if we really look, is a lonely and painful and quite insecure

[17:10]

situation. And if we look at groups of people nowadays, especially, we can see how clearly it is with ideology more or less removed from the situation the naked violence of peoples everywhere struggling for self-definition, making distinctions one from the other with a tremendous amount of emotion. And everywhere we can see the difficult consequences of these kinds of distinctions. Just as adolescents find it difficult at times to embrace their parents, peoples find it difficult at times to embrace each other, to understand and accept each other.

[18:11]

And this is all a very natural consequence of pain and of oppression of all sorts. So I want to go a little bit more deeply into this issue of making distinctions. And I will bring up an old case from the Book of Serenity, case number 17. Which says this, Fayan asked Shushan, a hare's breath's difference is like the distance between heaven and earth. How do you understand this? And Shushan said, a hare's breath's difference is as the distance between heaven and earth. Fayan said, how can you get it that way?

[19:16]

Shushan said, I am just thus. What about you? Fayan said, a hare's breath's difference is as the distance between heaven and earth. And Shushan bowed deeply. Fayan and Shushan were Dharma brothers and studied under a teacher called Dijon, who was... Fayan and Shushan were from the big city and they were stranded one time at a temple and Dijon was the resident priest at this temple and very quietly he showed them that they had more to study. And Fayan realized this first and stayed and later Shushan came and joined him.

[20:19]

And in Wansong's commentary to this story he tells another story about Fayan, which is very similar and perhaps will shed a little light on the original case. This is one time Fayan asking another student named Xuansa. He said to him, who have you been seeing? Who have you seen? Meaning, where have you studied? What have you learned in your travels in Zen? And Xuansa replied, I saw Master Qingfeng. And Fayan asked him, well what did he say? What did you learn from Master Qingfeng? And Xuansa said, I asked, what is the self of this student? And he answered, the fire god seeks fire. And Fayan said,

[21:28]

how do you understand this saying? And Xuansa said, the god of fire is in the realm of fire. To seek fire by fire is like seeking the self with the self. And Fayan said, similar to what he said in the first story, how can you understand it? Even though you understand it this way, how can you get it? Even understanding it like that, how can you get it? And again, similarly, Xuansa replied, I am just thus. What is your idea? And Fayan said, well ask me and I'll tell you. And Xuansa asked him, what is the self? And Fayan said, the god of fire comes seeking fire.

[22:29]

And Xuansa was suddenly enlightened at these words. Wan Song's commentary to this second story says, Fayan broke up Xuansa's barrier of feelings and pulled apart his chains of consciousness with that phrase. Broke up his barrier of feelings and pulled apart his binding chains of consciousness. Both of these stories refer to a poem by the third ancestor, Xin Xin Ming, on believing in mind, which begins, the true way is without difficulty.

[23:36]

Just avoid picking and choosing everything. If you can let go of grasping, let go of running away, everything is free and easy. But a hair's breadth difference is like the distance between heaven and earth. That's where this saying originally comes from. That's a very famous saying in Zen. And Zen students for over a thousand years have been sitting with this koan and suffering quite a bit. Because we sit trying to avoid picking and choosing, trying to avoid any distinctions.

[24:39]

And this is very hard to do and very painful, because of course what we find is the depth and the subtlety of our preferences. How minute our preferences are. How worked up we can get over the soup, over the way she walks, over the way he bows. And we discover through our effort and minute experience that virtually every instant of consciousness is an instant of picking and choosing. Time itself is nothing but picking and choosing. All perception, all distinction

[25:47]

is the distortion of picking and choosing. To be alive is to pick and choose. So what is the third ancestor getting at here? What is Master Fa Yun trying to teach us? Another Zen teacher, Tian Tong, writes a poem about this case that I think helps a little bit to understand. And the poem goes something like this. It's about a scale, you know, like a balance scale. When a fly

[26:48]

sits on the balance, it tilts. And the scale's needle shows the imbalance. Pounds, ounces, drams and grains, you see them clearly. And immediately the scale comes back to the zero point. So you see how these scales work, you know how they work, right? Whenever something goes in one of the pans, the scales are out of balance. If you want to see how much something weighs and understand its distinction in this world, you must balance the pan. Then you can tell how much it weighs. You can be clear in the distinction. When you remove the object and the weights, the scale balances perfectly again at zero.

[27:52]

So to really make a distinction that's clear involves a very careful act of balancing in the midst of a situation in which things must come off the scale and the scale must balance again perfectly at zero. So our ancient teachers are indicating to us that Zen practice is really about understanding the true and subtle depth of our distinction-making and appreciating it and developing it completely

[28:59]

in balance. When it's time to make distinctions, to make preferences and choices, we do so clearly and with full accuracy and full care for the totality of our situation in balance with all that's around us. And with our Zazen practice we return every day, every moment to the zero point. And it is this effort to return to the zero point that provides the balance necessary to make accurate distinctions since being in touch with this zero point however, means that we have to be in touch with something

[30:03]

basic that stands behind our preferences and our distinctions. Because we don't lose touch with this basis, we don't get carried away or pushed around by our distinctions, we don't get thrown out of balance. So coming back to the original case, maybe you will hear it again with this in mind, okay? Fayan asked Shushan, a hare's breath's difference is the distance between heaven and earth, how do you understand? Shushan said, a hare's breath's difference is as the distance between heaven and earth. Fayan said, how can you get it this way? Shushan said, I am just thus, what about you?

[31:08]

Fayan said, a hare's breath's difference is as the distance between heaven and earth. Shushan thereupon bowed deeply. In the beginning, Shushan understands perfectly well. But to talk about this and to be able to understand it is not enough. In fact, it may be a distinct disadvantage to understand Zen. And I find nowadays most people understand Zen fairly well. It's not that complicated, you know. Zen isn't all that hard to understand, I don't think. It's just one simple thing. But,

[32:14]

to break through the barriers of feeling, to unbind the chains of consciousness so that actually in all situations we can really live with a true openness and flexibility and kindness and ease ready to adjust to any situation without any special Zen aura, just being a human being, just being practical and helpful, this is not that easy. And it takes many, many

[33:18]

hours and weeks and months and years on the cushion, and much more than that. It takes a whole lifetime of experience, of effort, it takes love, it takes courage. Yesterday I was thinking about what I would say to you today, and I was looking at some old sayings by Suzuki Roshi, and I came across this saying that I want to share with you. I thought it really stopped me, made me think. Suzuki Roshi said one time in 1968, we say Zen and everyday life,

[34:20]

but it does not mean just to extend Zazen practice to everyday life. Rather, it means to have a deeper understanding of the teaching as well. With Buddha's spirit, we practice Zazen. This is the true way. Actually, there is no Zen for everyday life. So, sometimes I worry a little bit that as we develop our way of practice in America, maybe we run the risk of making the practice a little too easy. I mean, there's nothing wrong with easy, right? Easy is good.

[35:24]

It's good, I think, for practice to be easy and accessible. But if it's too easy, if it's too permissive, then it's possible that we might mistake our own confused desire for Buddha's way. And then I think we're lost. Because the truth is that for sanity and real happiness for our own lives as individuals and for our world, we all absolutely need to find a true way to practice. A way that is stronger and more basic than what we personally want or don't want in our lives.

[36:28]

And this can't be done casually. It can only be done by changing our lives, by challenging our lives, by taking risks, by having courage. So I'm thinking about my own path, my own practice, and I think about myself, and maybe it's true of you too, although I can't be sure about you. Maybe we all need to be more serious about how we are practicing. Maybe we all need to be more thorough about how we are practicing. And so I'm going to practice

[37:40]

asking myself what do I have to do? How do I have to live so that I can be in accord with the way? Not only for myself and my own sanity and happiness, but for many others. What do I have to do? Am I being honest with myself? Am I indulging myself? How could I practice right now with a deeper sincerity? So I know all of you hold these questions as well, some way or another in your hearts.

[38:41]

And I want to support you in answering these questions, and I hope that you will support myself and us here at Green Gulch to try to really ask and really answer these questions. Because I'm sure that our lives and the whole world depends on our raising seriously these kinds of questions in our life. So, whether or not it has anything to do with what I'm saying, I thought I would change the subject a little bit. And for some reason we were talking about this wonderful short story by James Joyce called The Dead. A cheerful story. You know this story, The Dead? It's a great story. You always read it in college. So those of you who are far from college or never went to college, maybe you

[39:49]

don't know about it or forget about it. In this story, not much happens. This guy and his wife go to an annual, I think it's a Christmas season party at the home of this fellow's aunt and her sisters. And they have a good time and they talk and drink and so on. Then he and his wife go home. I'm skipping a lot. And his wife, just before they go to bed, his wife tells him a story that many years before when she was 17, now they're middle-aged and have children and so on, there was a young man who was deeply, deeply in love with her. And he was sickly. And he went to visit her once in the winter when she was going away. He couldn't bear her

[40:50]

to go away. And he visited her in the winter and stood outside her window and she said, go home, you'll catch cold or something. And he said, I don't care if I live or die. And she went away and he died. So she tells her husband this story and she falls asleep. And the last half page or so of the story is the husband's reflection on hearing this from his wife. And it's very beautiful so I just thought in this bright summer weather I would read this passage from the dead. The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and laid down beside his wife. One by one

[41:53]

they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world in full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not care if he lived or died. Generous tears filled his eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree.

[42:53]

Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of but could not apprehend their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a gray impalpable world. The solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. A few taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes silver and dark falling obliquely against

[43:58]

the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right. Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills falling softly upon the bog of Allen and further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Fury lay buried. That's the young man who loved his wife. It lay thickly drifted on the crosses, crooked and on the headstones and on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul

[45:01]

swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling like the descent of their last end upon all the living and the dead. Well, you're so kind to sit and listen to my long speech. And then after a chant and a few announcements, you can get up and drink tea. Thank you. May our intention So, uh, it's getting really crowded, isn't it? I really think we have to start having question and answer in the Zendo, even though it's not as intimate,

[46:03]

but it's too crowded in here, you know? But I must say that it's so wonderful to see so many familiar faces, you know? It's a great thing. I'm used to thinking of Sundays as being a day when I know a few people and then a lot of people I don't know, but actually, I know most of the people, either by name or by face, and I'm really thrilled about that. It's great. Nice to see you all this morning. This isn't so much a question as asking you to elaborate on something you were talking about. You seemed to have a great deal of emotion about it when you were speaking, which was the seriousness of practice, and practice becoming a bit too casual, and in the context of your sort of being the reformed rabbi of Greenbelch. There's someone for whom outreach is really important

[47:03]

and did you speak to that a little bit this morning? Well, the way I feel today, you know, is that life is just full of contradictions. Really, you know? I mean, if you really think about anything and look at your own self and who you are and what you're doing, it's just so full of contradictions. Of course, from the standpoint of Buddha, the contradictions are just in our minds. Things are just what they are. Contradictions only come in when we start thinking about things and putting things together. But, yeah, I'm a mass of contradictions, aren't you?

[48:03]

I have a lot of sides to myself, don't you too? And I think it's really important to share the teaching, because the world needs the teaching. Not that the teachings of Buddha are the answer to everything, because, you know, the teachings of Buddha are not the answer to everything, but maybe the teachings of Buddha are like oil, you know, to keep things unstuck, fluid, helpful anyway. For whatever help it can be to offer the teachings, I really think that's important. And I know that as I look at my practice over many, many years' time, it's so easy to get lazy. It's so easy to get familiar with, oh, I just do this and this is it and I know how to do this and so on. But actually, we don't know. You know, I don't know anything about this stuff, really. I'm just trying to practice the best I can

[49:08]

and I always want to go deeper. And the good thing about practice is that you don't, like other jobs at a certain point, you're over the hill, right? But with Buddhadharma, you know, it just gets better all the time, right? You get to die, right? It's the practice. You know, the Zen teachers, usually their best practice is when they die, they write great poems and so on and do stunts sometimes. So, yeah, this teaching is endless and if we don't keep ourselves on the edge and keep working harder and going deeper, then, well, it'll just be like anything else. And we can't afford that. We don't have the time to just make it like anything else. It has to be our real life.

[50:10]

So, we have to, every one of us has to look at our life and say, well, how am I living? And what am I really doing here? What's really important? Am I living in such a way that I'm really answering the most important calling in my life or am I just doing this because I ended up doing it or because I think I have to or because I, you know, all the million reasons that everyone tells us we have to do this and that. So, I think it takes courage to be truthful and real. And we all have to ask ourselves and only we ourselves can answer that. You know, only we ourselves can say, yes, you know, I am doing what I need to do. And if we're not, change. Have the courage to change. And courage doesn't come out of the blue and it doesn't come from oneself

[51:13]

alone. If you really see that your life is not true and honest and deep and beneficial, then you need to say, what do I have to do to get courage to change it? And what you need is, first of all, support from others who feel the same way and you need to practice some way, some activity that you can do. Hopefully, it's very mindless and means nothing. You just do it over and over again and that strengthens you. And then you just do what you have to do and deal with the consequences. So, I don't know. I don't know what anybody should do. I don't know what I should do, you know. I'm always thinking, what should I do now, you know? I mean, I'm trying my best, but I don't know what to do. So, I was trying to encourage myself and hopefully encourage others as well to have that kind of courage. I had a retreat not too long ago. I did so many retreats

[52:16]

this summer. I get mixed up, but there was one retreat sometime this summer and it was for people in business. It was really interesting. It's a series. It's called Company Time and it's for people in business. We're going to do another one in September. So, if you have anything to do with the world of business or non-profit organizations and that kind of stuff, then it's a good retreat to come to. And we talked a lot about courage and about how in that context, it takes a lot of courage to stand up and say, this is who I am. These are my principles. This is what I stand for. And this is more important to me, even, than keeping my job. It's not easy to say that. I mean, I understand that. It's not easy. But we have to, until enough people have that attitude, well, things will roll along and people will continue to be hurt. Because there's no bad guys. Everybody's just trying their best, right?

[53:18]

So, that was a good retreat. It was good to talk to people about that. And I found, I was very inspired, actually, to find a number of people. And these were people from huge companies, right? Xerox and Hewlett-Packard and really big companies. Powerful companies in the Bay Area and in America. Who were saying, we believe in Dharma. We believe in ethical life. And we're struggling to find a way to deepen that belief, deepen that understanding and bring it to bear in our workplaces. So, September. It's in the, you know, what do you call it? Publication. It's the weekend. Thank you very much for reading that from the dead. Yeah, isn't that beautiful? Just beautiful. And the thing about always questioning my practice. And the danger for me

[54:21]

with that whole thing is I start getting into, like, it's never enough. And it's very hard for me to just kind of give myself a break sometimes and say, you're doing alright. You're working hard. And, you know, that's something I've struggled with my whole life. At the same time, I seem to come to a place where I realize that an element of that is, like you're talking about, very positive, just to question and to observe. I think not necessarily to question, but to observe. But I also have a tendency to go beyond that. Just walk around with a stick. And I don't think that serves any purpose either. Well, that's good. I'm glad you said that. Because, yeah, that's the other side. You know, it's the scale, right? It's balancing. Yeah, because, of course, we can be extreme on the other side, right? Constantly questioning, second-guessing ourselves, whipping ourselves, making ourselves feel as if everything that we're doing is inadequate and doesn't measure up. And that doesn't help, of course. It's counterproductive. So we need to have,

[55:23]

on the one hand, a complete acceptance of everything that we are and everything that is just right now the way it is. A hundred percent acceptance of that. And given that, we have to make effort, effort, effort, knowing that there's no end to it. We're never going to get anywhere. We're never going to get anywhere. Listen, folks, I hate to tell you. But we might as well get this straight in the beginning. Fifty years from now, a few of us will still be left around, you know, maybe. And the world is not going to be all that different. It might be worse. Yeah, it might be worse. And our lives are not going to be all that different. And yet, we make effort, we make effort, we make effort, and we have hope even though we have no expectation. And that's the Dharma. That's our practice. We just do that. What's the alternative to that? Despair, confusion, hedonism. That would be great if it worked. But it doesn't work, does it?

[56:25]

It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I mean, how long does it last? If it lasts a couple of years, you're lucky, you know. After that, it all gets boring and you get your body and mind are degraded, you're confused. It doesn't work. So there's no choice, you know. But what are we talking about? We're talking about living, right? Just living. There's no choice. There's no other option. So we have to do it. And we have to do it fully. And all the hands are flying. Yes? I know you were saying in your speech today, and you were just saying how you never necessarily get anywhere and it never gets easier. But as a young person starting this practice, it's extremely difficult, like very painful. And I'm wondering, I mean, it's like whatever I think about myself as I'm trying to suppress myself, really bad stuff comes up. And I was wondering if that ever alleviates against any better. Not by age 46. Yes. Yes. The only difference is that after a while,

[57:33]

you're not surprised. And there's a comfort in it. And you know, see, and you know, as you've discovered already from the answers that you got, that everybody's in the same boat. See, you might think, well, I'm a pretty good person. And you might think other people are or aren't. But then you realize that the depth of human ignorance is endless. And that we all share it equally. And so we can, you know, enjoy each other. And, uh, and forgive each other. See, this is the thing. I just, I'm reminded of, and you were mentioning about Gethsemane. I was at Gethsemane monastery. And at the risk of going on too long here to try to tell a story on this topic. So Gethsemane is a Trappist monastery. And, uh, the

[58:36]

mother, or whatever they call it, the head house of Gethsemane is in Europe, Belgium, France, maybe France. So the abbot general of the monasteries from France was there at Gethsemane. The week before this gathering of Buddhist and Catholic monks, there had been this tragedy in Algeria. Maybe you read about it in the papers. There was a small Trappist monastery in Algeria that was from this family of monasteries that this French abbot was the chief abbot of. About a dozen, thirteen monks, something like that. And they were living in Algeria in a Muslim country with a lot of radical and violent Muslim extremists. And things were heating up. There had been terrorist acts. And they were getting worried about whether they would be able to survive there. Their mission in Algeria was to be helpful to the people around them,

[59:37]

to of course do their own practice, but also to be helpful to the people around them, and to be a bridge between the Catholic and Muslim worlds. So they practiced with Muslim people, came to their monastery, and had a lot of friends. But also, there were extremists who did not like them. And they constantly asked themselves, should we stay? Should we go? And there was one occasion when things were difficult, and they took a vote. And two of them wanted to stay. And the other ten or eleven wanted to go. And after the vote, they said, this is very... But the two who wanted to stay were very passionate and persuasive. So, after the vote, the abbot said, well, let's pray over this tonight, and take another vote tomorrow. Secret ballot. The next day, they took a secret ballot, and it was unanimous that they stay. So they stayed. And the abbot, in the prayers every day, he started praying, Lord,

[60:39]

please disarm them. And then he looked into his own heart, and then he changed the prayer, and he said, Lord, please disarm them, and disarm me. Well, the abbot, all the monks were captured by an extremist group, and they were held overnight and released. I'm getting the details wrong, I'm sure. For those of you who read about it, the details are probably a little different. And they were captured again. And this time, they were all killed. Their throats were slit. All of them, all twelve or thirteen, or however many there were. And this has been stories being told by Father Bernardo, who was the abbot general. And this is the part that moved me to tears. Father Bernardo said, and you have to see, Father Bernardo looks like a medieval European monk, very thin and severe looking, speaking with a heavily accented English.

[61:43]

He said, and when I heard, and he knew all these people personally, you know, they were his brothers. He said, and when I heard about this, the first thought that I had was, Lord, I forgive them. The first thing I thought was, Lord, I forgive them. And then he said, and I know, I'm sure, he said, I'm certain that I will meet them, the murderers, I will meet them at the right hand of God. I will see them at the right hand of God. This act will be its own healing and will start a process for them and I will see them at the right hand of God. It was a very moving thing. So, maybe this is why right now I'm thinking we all need to be more serious about our practice. I mean, people are

[62:47]

facing many difficult things in their lives. And we have many advantages. And, of course, I understand that you can have many advantages and still be suffering tremendously. I don't think that somehow we're better off. We're not any better off than anybody else. And yet we do have to admit that we have many advantages. So, I think we can't allow these advantages that we have to lull us into a sense of forgetfulness about our own lives and the lives around us. So, despite what these two guys said, I think it does get a little easier. Because you're not surprised anymore. You accept. You accept. You understand. See, you could be the murderers. It's not shocking. If one human being could murder a dozen holy people like that,

[63:51]

then you could do it too, if the conditions were such. And I could do it. So, we're not shocked at that. We accept that. And we forgive. And we're constantly making the effort to change that in our own hearts, starting with our own hearts and in the people around us. And that's the only thing that's worth doing. What else would we do? What else are we going to do? Get another refrigerator? You can get a refrigerator, you know, but that's not a reason to live, right? That's just a refrigerator. More things to clean, right? Have you noticed the more things you have, the more things you have to clean? And then you might think, well, okay, I'll get somebody else to clean. And then you have to pay them. And then you have to pay taxes on it. And if you run for office, they'll say, but you didn't pay taxes. So you can't escape, you know? You really can't escape. Even if you have one little thing, you've got to clean it.

[64:55]

You'll see more places where it's dirty. If you have a lot of big things, then you've got to clean those things. So, it doesn't help that much. I really enjoyed your comments about business. I was a practicing management consultant. I still do a lot of volunteer work, small business, and that type of thing. A lot of my clients are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and so on. And I went into them. I mean, we live in a win-lose. If there's a win-lose, it's the business world. Up until now. And this was like 25, 30 years ago. I went into them with the idea that there was such a thing as a win-win. That they could be in business, and both parties could equally benefit. Nobody gets hurt, and everybody wins. You know, people would look at you and say, check your forehead for whether you had a raging fever or something. But over time, I'm seeing the kinds of things that you're talking

[65:56]

about. And this morning, if anybody here got the IJ, there was a picture in there and a story on Autodesk. And the picture was a lady teaching yoga on Autodesk premises. That's nice. So there's been a lot happening there. It was a fun time to be in that game and watch. And it's still going on. It's exhilarating, I think, now. Well, it's hard to tell what's going on, you know? Because everything's going on at the same time. The opposite of what you're saying is also going on. So it's hard to tell. And one thing I learned from this retreat was that everybody knows everything. In other words, there wasn't a single word that I said in that retreat about Buddhist teachings and all that, that already hasn't been packaged and sold to the companies in some form or another. Because there's a billion trainings, right? It's the hugest business, right? Training this, training that. So it's not like we have a new idea or something that somebody doesn't know. But, see, the main thing,

[66:57]

my main thing that I was trying to tell the people is that unless you sit, unless you really practice on your own and really make it real for you, then ideas are just ideas. They work for a while and then you get some more. So that's the difference. And who knows? We can't tell whether something, except from the inside, whether something is really humane or not. It's hard to tell, isn't it? I think the human consciousness movement has been a semi-meat club. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's a big business. There's an old smorgasbord. Right. We can package up the Zen, you know. Zen and the art of whatever. Go into the company and think how much money I got. I have a book called Zen and the Art of Internet. No doubt. Sure, there's a book on Zen and the Art of Management, I think, and everything. Sure. And this is all good things. I don't mean to say that, you know,

[68:00]

probably it helps, you know, but none of it is a substitute for, you know, oneself sitting down on the cushion and really practicing. I was going to say, I felt a little discouraged that I should start being more serious about my practice because I think just to go and practice for me at my house in my little cushion every day is a serious thing. And it's easy to beat myself up, like you were saying. But then when you were talking about bringing the balance to zero, that was helpful because that's when I do bring it back. When I sit. And like you were saying, sitting is often not fun because you sit down and oftentimes, sometimes you experience letting go and peacefulness. Other times you experience all the things

[69:04]

that you were hoping all day to forget about, or maybe your whole life to forget about. So Zazen is not necessarily peaceful and pleasant, but it's always real. And that's what we need is to be real. And that's why when we have all these great ideas, if they're not real, they don't come down into our lives. And we don't really, because it's one thing to say something, but it's another thing, just as I was saying in my talk, to apply that and make that a reality in our lives. And then nobody can tell us how to do that. We do it by the craft of our own practice and coming back over and over again to the cushion. And after a while it becomes impossible, if we do that, to be inauthentic and dishonest. We can't do it anymore. We just can't do it. Yes? When you were talking about making distinctions, I was thinking about growing up with my family, and my struggle has been to be that separate thread on the block.

[70:06]

It just wasn't okay to be separate. And then all the thinking I've been doing and the feeling I've been doing about it over the years, of being a distinct and separate person. And so I have this visual image of this thread coming out and separating from the block and massive threads and untangling. And sitting and being with myself is being with that thread. It's just saying, okay, I don't have to be part of that mass and untangling. And so I just wanted to thank you for that. The image was a really important one and another piece of my process. Zen in particular is really concerned with the interplay between each one of us being absolutely individual and each one of us being completely connected and non-separate. And how to get that straight without going overboard

[71:10]

on either side is not easy. And this is our problem. In fact, though, Suzuki Roshi was famous in the early days for saying to people, because people would come to sit in all kinds of costumes and different outfits and hairstyles and all that, and he would try to get them eventually to put on robes and so on. And they would say, oh, robes, we look the same. And he would say, no, no, no. When you put on the robes and everybody looks the same, then you can really see each person's individuality. That's when you really see each person's individuality. And it's true. In other words, when you stop insisting on your individuality and holding on to your individuality and making something out of it and just let go of it and just really be yourself, then you really are shining as an individual, because everything is absolutely individual, absolutely different. But that only really comes out when you are willing to give that up and join

[72:14]

with everything. So it's a real dance. And this is, we're working on this our whole time of practice, always trying to understand more. Who are we as individuals and who are we as nobody at all? And a lot of what we learn in practice is what it's like to be absolutely nobody at all, with no role, nothing. In Zen training, this is part of what we go through and the pain of how difficult it is to be nobody at all, and then finally the freedom of that. It's great to be nobody. You don't see birds flying around and wondering, who am I? What am I doing? Birds are just flying around. Check it out if I'm not right about this. Birds seem to be having a pretty good time. They're having a good time. They sing, they fly, they might suffer in the winter time, maybe they die, but they don't complain. That's just it. So that's good, a good way to live. So let's work on it, see what happens.

[73:17]

The part you said about having courage, that you can't do that alone, that really touched me because I was thinking about 8 or 9 years ago I worked on a project where I interviewed corporate executives in Fortune 500 companies. That must have been interesting. It was scary as all hell. They were talking about downsizing. Oh yes, downsizing and outsourcing. But it was all done in secrecy and it drove me nuts because no one would ever be public about the information they shared. They would just talk about the trends. It occurs to me that part of practice has to be to find the courage to be with others around what you know from here. Because if all these people would have just talked to each other and connected, that would have been an amazing possibility. That's right, yeah. In this retreat, several people said

[74:24]

I have never mentioned to anybody that I practice. And several said, well, you know, it doesn't seem right to mention. Others said, well, I just never thought of it. And others said, well, I'm kind of scared to mention it. I don't know what people will think of me. They'll think I'm flaky or something. But I encourage them to be honest about who they were. Because I think what they would find is that just like them, they would find other people also have those same aspirations. It's kind of a conspiracy of people not wanting to you know, it's like leave your humanity at home and go to work. But the people have their humanity, right? I mean, I'm sure these corporate executives scary as your conversations might have been with them, were also human beings, you know, who had the same stuff that we have. The same positive and negative qualities exactly that I have and that you have. But there was a kind of a conspiracy there not to

[75:27]

bring that up. Not to allow those things to influence the way that they did business. Which is completely insane, of course, you know. Literally insane. That's like using the practice to find an excuse. I'm just sitting here thinking of the word mindfulness and how people turn that into I need to be mindful for myself, watch out for my family, be cautious. Well, that's not mindfulness actually. Yeah, sure. We can... All you have to do is study the history of religious institutions to find out how religious doctrine can be a great excuse for all sorts of things. Yeah. Well, somebody surely has something cheerful to bring up. Yes? Could you say more about the air breaths between heaven and earth? No. Nah. Yeah, yeah.

[76:36]

Somebody else? Where we all live, I assume that's Mesopotamia, or Marin County, so many different flavors of religious and spiritual traditions, du jour, I was looking through your book store and everything and there's a whole bunch of other traditions that are represented there. You were talking earlier about going on retreat with different Catholic monks. Do you feel that it's easy to integrate Zen practice with other religious traditions, that they are not usually exclusive or they complement each other? I think so, but you have to be careful that you're not just doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of this, and then nobody catches you anywhere, right? In other words, you never face yourself because you're doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So I think what's strong is to come from a tradition that is your home. It might not even be the best one, right? Who knows why we're

[77:38]

practicing in a given tradition. Maybe it's just chance or whatever. But that's a reference point. And then from that place to work with other traditions can be very rich. So usually the way it goes for most people is they go here and there in the beginning because they're trying to see what really feels right. So they do. They go here and there. They do this and that. And then at a certain point, that becomes an evasion or unsatisfactory. So then you take something up and practice it really fully for a number of years. And then it becomes very interesting and very powerful to look at other traditions from that standpoint. I think Zen in particular, because of the teachings of Zen, they make it very, very easy actually to combine other traditions with Zen. Particularly easy. In fact, when I was at Gethsemane, I had very good relations with so many of these Catholic monks because almost all of the ones that I met

[78:42]

practiced Zen. That's the number one practice. Do they call it that? Some of them do and some of them don't. Some of them actually had worked with Zen teachers. Japanese Zen teachers. American Zen teachers. Some of them had worked with Vipassana teachers. Asian and American Vipassana teachers. Some of them had worked with Catholic monastics who were teaching Zazen and had received the teaching from Japanese teachers. And some of them were practicing ancient forms of Catholic prayer that they understood were virtually identical to Zazen. Like the Centering Prayer, which is a very big thing. Very powerful movement. I just had no idea that there were so many powerfully spiritual Catholic monastics and not only monastics, but now groups of lay people that are related to the monastics around the monasteries or inspired by the monasteries. We have actually lots to learn from them. And they from us. That was the whole point of the encounter. But how do you balance that against the Pope slamming the Dalai Lama in Buddhism

[79:43]

in his book? You don't balance it. The Pope is the Pope. These guys have the problem of having to deal with that. We just say forget it. But for them it's a serious problem. In this conference we didn't get into that because we were talking about how we practice and what we do to help each other learn. But it's very obvious that they have this kind of problem. My wife and I this morning were talking about this movie that maybe you've seen. It's an old movie. Ten years old or something called The Mission. Did you ever see that movie? And that's a very typical type of thing where these were really good people going out, in this case, to help others. And they did a certain amount of good. And then in the end the church politics ruined them and just completely made a mess. So that is the kind of thing that happens. So they're doing this very delicate negotiation all the time with the church which they must

[80:47]

uphold. And a lot of times it's a losing battle. And we don't have that problem. We have our own problems. But we don't have that problem. What's the view you would suggest for those who are raised Christian or Catholic and have some sort of deep identification with that perspective. And that perspective does denounce really any other way. So I heard you say, well that's their problem. We don't deal with that. Well no, I don't think that no, these were Catholics who did not denounce other ways. So now the Pope is one thing. The Pope is the Pope. And I don't really know. I mean I'm not an expert on Catholicism. I don't even know. I know hardly anything about it. I'm sure most of you know more than I. But I can tell you that I was with many, many, many devout Catholic religionists who were devoting their entire lives to the church and Catholicism

[81:50]

who were very open minded. Not only open minded but you could share exactly where you were with them. So these people were obviously not taking the position of well the church is right and this is the only way. What they understood was that you, for us, we love Jesus and this is your way of doing the same thing we're doing. That was their attitude. And I haven't read the Pope's book. So I don't know. But I actually think myself that the Pope I mean this is my fantasy right? But I believe it. That the Pope is actually a spiritual person who also feels that way and has his reasons for trying to protect people from something that he might feel is detrimental. I remember before, see this is statements that I guess you're referring to in the Pope's recent book. But before that book came out there was an encyclical issued by the Vatican that made some remarks about meditation practice

[82:52]

and it sounded negative about meditation practice. But when you read it and looked at it carefully you could agree with it. Because what it was saying was well if meditation is about identifying real spirituality with certain kinds of phenomena that you experience mentally or emotionally then it's dangerous and not helpful. And I think that's true. But you could read that and say well the Pope doesn't like meditation. And in fact in the conference one Bishop, Bishop Joseph Gary from Maine gave a talk. This was one of these conferences where people write talks and they get up and they read them and then they question and so on. So this guy gave a talk and he quoted somebody in the talk, something to the effect of if a monk finds that their prayer isn't working they shouldn't take up something like meditation or some other, I don't know how they put it, some other

[83:55]

technique that's not the thing to do. So then right away all the Buddhists went whoa. And then Brother David who was the moderator said well would some Buddhists like to say something about this? So I said sure. And so I said well that's pretty good meditation instruction. You know, that's pretty good. Yeah, I mean if there's something wrong with your life don't think that you're going to sit down and breathe and then you're going to feel happy and this is going to take care of it. It's not about technique, right? It's about reality. So meditation is not a great technique to relax and solve all your problems like a drug or something. Meditation isn't a drug. It's a way, it's an access to your heart and to the reality of your life. And if your life is entangled well you have to untangle it. Or accept the tangles. But meditation is not a drug that all of a sudden we're all blissful, right? Nonsense. So I said that's pretty good meditation instruction. And then he stood up and he was very quick to say gee, I never thought that in quoting that I would be

[84:57]

could be interpreted in that way. I meant that monk has to look at their life and not try to introduce some trick. I said yeah, that's right. So you see, this is an example of how to a lot of people it sounded like fighting words. From his perspective he had no idea that he was being offensive. And if he didn't take offense then you could understand that. And so it could be that, I mean I should look at that book of the Pope's. I probably think I have a copy but I haven't seen the part. And I don't know what he says in there exactly but I would look at it really carefully because I have some faith in the Pope's sincerity and spirituality. Now some of the logical consequences of that spirituality are socially disastrous. I know. Like the stance against abortion and contraception and all that. And I had a really great conversation with a priest, not at this encounter but several years ago on this point. It was absolutely incredible to hear him defend contraception. I mean the prohibition

[86:01]

against contraception. I mean he was actually completely understood the good, the problem. And was completely humane about it. But the problem is simply, we started out this conversation, right, with the idea that we're all a mass of contradictions, right? Remember? And that's the truth. I mean I contradict myself all the time. Well ever since St. Thomas Aquinas the church is not allowed to contradict itself. So the consequence of certain doctrines of the church, logically applied, mean that you can't have, use birth control even though they know that everybody uses birth control and it's fine with them. You see? Isn't that odd? But that's the way that's what this priest was telling me. He basically said, I know that everybody uses birth control and it's perfectly alright but we have to say this because blah blah blah blah blah blah. And it all made sense, you know? Because if we didn't say this, then this would happen, then that would happen, and this would happen and then the whole doctrine would

[87:04]

fall up to pieces. And of course from a Zen perspective he'd say, great! Because, you know from our perspective, doctrine is just skillful means. And one of the monks from Spencer Mass stood up at the end and he said, yeah I get it. He said, the Catholic church has skillful means. And I said, yeah that's right. But the Pope doesn't feel that he can say that. So they get into all these, but this is a big problem. I mean I don't want to minimize it. It's really, I mean when the Pope agitated at that population meeting some years ago to prevent statements about population control and birth control from coming out and whatever it was, world meetings this was a really bad thing to do, right? I mean the social consequences of this were really bad. And you know Buddhists don't believe in, I mean, now Zen is different from Buddhist, right? Because there are Buddhist doctrines, right? It's just that Zen doesn't worry about them that much.

[88:08]

But Buddhists also, you know, don't believe in abortion or birth control. It's just that they're flexible. Like the Dalai Lama said, yes we think that these things are bad too. He said, but look at the population, look at these problems. How can we, we can't hold to doctrines like this anymore in the present circumstance, even though we really feel like we agree with the Catholics. We just can't, we can't promote these kind of ideas in the current situation. But the Catholics seem to be stuck with some, maybe some, well there already are great Catholic theologians who get around that, but I guess the Popes can't believe in them or something. I don't know. I'm glad I don't have those problems. Boy, I'll tell you. I'm really glad. Yeah. This question is on a different tag. Thank you for your talk this morning. You're welcome. The question relates to the earlier part of your talk when you were in the mountains looking up wildflowers in the brooks. And it reminded me of something I read recently that got me quite riled up. And this was an essay by

[89:12]

John Fowles, don't he say it? A British novelist. On the tree. A beautiful essay that's just about our relationship to nature. In the course of this essay, he suggests that the sort of beginning of the end of civilization and our attachment to nature is when we started naming things. That naming things separates us. And I got really upset about this. I found myself upset about this and then related it to my experience of coming here as an immigrant. And I still, although I've been here 25 years, don't know the names of most of the wildflowers that I see. And I don't bother to go look. And I feel separated to some extent from this environment. And when I go back to England, I can walk and I can name all the wildflowers. And I sort of talk out loud to them. I say, oh hello, meadowsweet and stitchwort and there's yellow vetch. And I feel a tremendous love and connection to the flowers

[90:13]

because I know their names. And so I guess my question coming back to what you were discussing about distinction is is the naming of things a separation or is the naming of things giving them their own distinctive qualities so that I can relate? I relate to things better when I can name them. Yes, yes. So this is the answer to your question about Hare's Breast Deviation. Yes, that's the thing. It's a contradiction. And I tried to indicate in what I said that, remember I was talking about the delight that a child to ever see a child get a tree. It's literally, I think that that's what the myth in the Bible is about. God created the world and created this and this and this. It's like when a child says tree, the child is creating the world. And there's a tremendous joy and gratitude and generosity in that act.

[91:16]

So that's one side of it. That's very true. But then there's the other side as well, which is when we have this overlay of feelings and consciousness to our distinction making in the sense of binding ourselves and separating ourselves in our naming, then it becomes destructive. And this is what it is to be human. So Hare's Breast Deviation, we have to be right on with it. We have to name it and not separate. Even though there's a shadow of separation in the naming. When we're dead, you know, we're not going to name anything. We won't have this problem. But as long as we're alive, we're going to make distinctions and we have to make distinctions with that perfect balance. Of course we won't. But then we all, whoop! We have to understand what it's like to become self-centered. That's what it is. When we make that distinction in a way that's unwholesome, that means we're becoming self-centered.

[92:19]

Instead of the joy of just, that's a tree, it's like what we're really saying is, okay, what can that tree do for me now? And how am I different from that tree? And how can I control it? And how can I protect myself from it? Et cetera, et cetera. When that enters in, that means we're out of balance. We have to balance the scale. So naming is both wonderful and the essence of being human and loving and totally unavoidable. Because even though, yes, you don't name certain wildflowers, but you name a lot of other things in your life. You can't survive without naming many things. But when you put it in balance, when your distinctions come from this place of love and generosity, and when you acknowledge that in the distinction there's already a shadow of selfishness, but you can work with it. That's why you can appreciate his article, because he's showing that when there's a Harris-Bress deviation, everything's destroyed. But it's completely ridiculous, the idea, well, now what shall we do?

[93:23]

Stop naming anything? Impossible. Shall we stop being human beings? Impossible. Should we all jump off a bridge? No, that's no good. Because we have a function in this world. It's actually a wonderful thing to be a human being. We have a function. We made a lot of mistakes, and there's been some big deviations there, but that's what we have to work with. We're here for a reason. And we have to articulate our life accurately. So that's what I think. There is another way of looking at this question. There's a third alternative. And in naming, what really, my answer to this lady is, it brings and it creates association. And that association, which is the beginning of connection, that is why naming is satisfying. It brings satisfaction. Yes, it brings us into contact. So if you don't name, then you don't have mental associations.

[94:27]

Or you have to find a different way of making that mental association. Yes. Or you have to find a different way of making that mental association.

[94:33]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ