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. Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch, everyone. I began thinking about this talk a few days ago, and I noticed that my thoughts kept turning toward the violent images that are arising daily in the news from the world. And then I thought, oh, I think it's because of this particular date.

[01:01]

Today is September 11th. And it's pretty hard not to remember that experience of those horrific images of those giant buildings falling to the ground and knowing how that came to be. And then all of the horrific actions that have taken place in the wake of that date, 15 years ago. And it's easy for me to think at times like this, when I am feeling like this, that our world, under the dominance of the human species, is beyond repair. And maybe so. Maybe so. But at the same time, I also remembered a lovely poem and a story.

[02:05]

First, this story. This story is from the old wisdom teachings of the Pali Canon and was written or told, before writing actually, about 2,500 years ago in India. And India at that time was undergoing major transformations. The villages were being absorbed into city-states and kingdoms and vast empires. There was a lot of upheaval. as there was throughout the world at that time, ever since. And we're living in the result of those boundaries that were drawn, which will continuously be drawn, I'm sure, as long as humans remain on the earth. Thus have I heard, at Savati, King Pasendi of Kosala approached the Buddha in the middle of the day. and on arrival, having bowed down, sat to one side.

[03:11]

As he was sitting there, the Blessed One said to him, Well now, great king, where are you coming from in the middle of the day? The king replied, Just now, Lord, I was engaged in the sort of royal affairs typical of noble warrior kings. Intoxicated with sovereignty and obsessed by greed for sensual pleasures, I maintain control of my country by conquering a great sphere of territory on the earth. To which the blessed one then asked, what do you think, great king? Suppose a man trustworthy and reliable were to come to you from the east and on arrival would say, If it please your majesty, you should know that I come from the east, and there I saw a great mountain as high as the clouds coming this way, crushing all living beings in its path.

[04:18]

Do whatever you think should be done. And then a second man were to come to you from the west, and a third man were to come to you from the north, and then a fourth man were to come to you from the south, and on arrival each would say, If it please your majesty, you should know that I saw a great mountain as high as the clouds coming this way, crushing all living beings. Do whatever you think should be done. If, great king, such a great peril should arise, such a terrible destruction of human life, the human state being so hard to obtain, what should be done? The king replied, If, Lord, such a great peril should arise, such a terrible destruction of human life, what else should be done but to live by truth, by right conduct, by skillful actions and meritorious deeds?

[05:20]

So it is, great king, so it is. As aging and death are rolling in on you, what else should be done but to live by truth, by right conduct, by skillful actions and meritorious deeds. Having said that, the world-honored one, the teacher, further said this. Like massive boulders, mountains pressing against the sky, moving in from all directions, crushing the four sides, so aging and death come rolling over living beings, noble warriors, brahmins, merchants, workers, outcasts, and scavengers. They spare nothing. They trample everything. Here elephant troops can hold no ground, nor can chariots or infantry, nor can a battle of wits or wealth win out. So a wise person, seeing their own good, steadfast, secures confidence in the Buddha, in the Dharma, and the Sangha.

[06:26]

One who practices the Dharma, the truth, in thought, word, and deed, receives praise here on earth, and ends their days in peaceful rest. So I doubt that any of you found this story very comforting. I don't think it's intended to be comforting. I actually think it's intended to be an encouragement to us to look more deeply at the facts of life. And in particular, the one huge fact that nothing and no one lives forever. And yet here we are, you know, here we are, together. Although temporarily, still it's a miraculous appearance, this life. And it's continuously transforming. And we call it reality.

[07:29]

Here we are. Now, we can't really point at reality, and we can't bottle it, and we can't possess it, and we can't give it away. No, it's not for sale. However, we can look deeply into reality with wonder and in awe. And we can recognize that there are choices to be made about our life and how we pass our days. According to the Buddha, those choices follow particular patterns called karma. Karma actually is a word meaning simply action. It's action. So actions come from causes, causes and conditions, and in turn create effects. It's kind of simple, cause and effect. The Buddha famously said in a verse from a text called the Dhammapada,

[08:34]

What we are today, what we are today, comes from our thoughts of yesterday. Our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind, cause and effect. The basic law of cause and effect is quite simple. Basically, good actions lead to good outcomes, and bad actions do not. When the Dalai Lama was asked to comment on the events of 9-11, he said, don't look for blame, look for causes. I'm pretty sure we haven't gotten around to that yet. It seems like we're still in a rather prolonged period of revenge. And maybe it started way back in our evolutionary history when the first of the living cells began taking bites out of its neighbor.

[09:39]

But regardless of who started it and who we'd like to blame, there must be some way or some time or some place where the killing can be brought to an end. And so we have to choose, each of us inside of our own hearts, with our own voices, and our own hands. You know, we have to choose which side we're on. One being the side of greed, hatred, and delusion, and the other the side of compassion, morality, and wisdom. So I'm not pretending that these issues of global violence and ancestral hatred can be easily transformed by those of us here in this room. wouldn't that be nice? I'm simply proposing that each one of us needs to know for ourselves, as did the warrior king Pasendi, what we're going to do with this one and most likely only precious life, given that our time on earth is short and our legacy is truly limited.

[10:55]

Last night I was watching a one of the segments of a series called Shakespeare Uncovered. Any of you know it? It's a wonderful, wonderful series. Anyway, there are major Shakespearean actors in each episode who have played the part of one of these characters in various plays. And so each play is being talked about by the actor, and they show clips of films that were done of these famous plays. And rehearsals at the Globe Theatre and so on. It's quite wonderful. And last night I was watching the segment on King Lear. And I'm, excuse my ignorance, but I didn't know the story of King Lear. I haven't gone to the play and I hadn't read the play. But I do now. For those of you who know that story, it's remarkable, you know. It's the retelling of this very conceit of all of us. our pride and our failure to recognize that we're missing the point.

[12:02]

We're missing overlooking the love that's there before us in the flowers and in our children and in our neighbors. Anyway, it has a very tragic ending, but something about the way that Lear dies at the end, holding his beloved daughter, that finally he knows what he'd been missing. There's some moment of peace and transformation. So I don't know how it is for all of you, but for me this threat of the mountains closing in, you know, the metaphor the Buddha uses to remind us of our mortality, sounds still like something that's rather far away. Just like reading the news of the world as it arrives while I'm sitting around reading the paper on a lovely day in Marin County, far, far away. When I was younger, I truly did imagine that the end of life was in a far off and distant place and time.

[13:10]

And although for a while I avoided traveling in airplanes just in case. But after I turned 50, I thought that the end of life seemed to have moved somewhat closer. you know, like into the neighborhood. And now that I'm approaching 70, I'm certain that she's in my house. What's really interesting to me, however, is that along with the proximity has come a feeling of greater intimacy with the thought of life coming to an end. You know, the unknowability, the inconceivability, the impenetrable darkness. The darkness out of which we all sprang in the first place. The mothership. And out of which each of us is springing forth alive and fresh right now. Right this moment.

[14:12]

And each and every moment we arrive alive and fresh from the darkness. From that which has passed away. It truly is a miraculous appearance. So although reality is not a thing to be possessed or given away, still, from the very moment of our birth and even before that, we each have a vital and equal share of it. As it says in the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi by Chinese Zen Master Dongshan Yangjie, you are not it. It actually is you. You are not it. It actually is you. So a few weeks ago, I joined the president of Zen Center, Susan O'Connell, and the head of practice from the city center, David Zimmerman, and my two fellow abbots, Linda Ruth Cutts and Ed Sattison, for an overnight visit to Tassajara.

[15:17]

And for those of you who are new to Zen Center, Tassajara is our monastery down in the Ventana Wilderness near Carmel Valley. which unfortunately at the moment is directly in the path of a great wildland fire, the Sobranas fire. And the reason that we went to visit was to see for ourselves the preparations that had been made to meet that fire, which at this moment is about 2.3 miles away. So there are new water systems, there are new sprinkler systems and hoses and pumps and storage tanks, Everyone there has fireproof gear and masks and have been thoroughly trained as wildland firefighters, with the one exception, until they actually meet a fire, they won't get their final approval for their training. So as we were being given the tour of Tassajara by a fire marshal, the students who have all volunteered to stay there

[16:24]

continued in their daily practice of sitting meditation, of managing hoses, of working in teams, and of learning when it's time to let the buildings go. I think for all of us the most important part of that visit was being shown the shelters which had been established in the stone offices and the stone rooms. which are considered by the professionals to be quite safe. In fact, the safest place to be if the fire should break through. But as we said to the students when we met with them the night we were there, we Buddhists have vowed to save all beings, not all buildings. So please, please be safe. I was very grateful to hear from the professionals who spoke to us, who were there helping the students prepare. that if they'd heard any bravado about staying, that those people would have been asked to leave. You know, firefighters are required to be sober and calm when they meet with the ferocious Lady of the Forest.

[17:33]

O King, when such a great peril has arisen, what else should be done but to live by truth, by right conduct, by skillful actions and meritorious deeds? So the basic thing that I'm talking about this morning is the very same thing that we're always talking about here at the Zen Center and that the Buddha was talking about during his 80 years of life among the villagers in northern India. And that is that there is a choice to be made and we can choose to be awake while we live or not. And it's because we human beings are not things, we are not solids, we are not set in stone that things can be changed, we can change. We are processes, meaning it's natural and for the most part involuntary, the series of changes that we undergo throughout our lives, and particularly the biological journey from our birth to our death.

[18:41]

And while we don't control the earth, water, fire, or air, we don't control aging or illness, death, hatred, greed, or ignorance, we are made of those things, and we are made to meet them. Our bodies are built to sit upright under the weight of gravity, our eyes and our hands, our ears and our mouth face forward in search of food or in search of love or a safe place to spend the night. And we have the mammal's instinct to nurture and protect our young. And still we have to choose the same choices that have been there before us from the very beginning. You know, very simple, simple choices. But as Birdnest Roshi said from up in his tree where he used to sit meditation, when a monk came by and asked him the secret of Buddhist practice, he replied, do good. Avoid evil. and purify your mind."

[19:47]

The monk said, well, that's easy. Even a child of three can understand that. And Bird Ness replied, yes, a child of three can understand it, but a person of 80 years may not be able to practice it. So this is the challenge that we all face as practitioners of the Buddhist teaching. You know, where When and how does the practice of the Buddha's way appear? Zen Master Dogen, the founder of our tradition that we practice here at Zen Center, says that it will happen here, meaning all places. It will happen now, meaning all time. And it will happen to you, meaning all beings. So this is one of the great teachings known as the ultimate truth, the ultimate teaching, where there's nothing outside of that truth. It's reality itself.

[20:47]

It's also called first principle, the first principle. In the first principle, cause and effect, the goal and the result are one and the same thing before distinctions arise between what is good and what is bad. So that's why we say in Zen, you know, just sitting. Just eating. Just walking. Just being. Just this is it. And as Shakyamuni Buddha said at the time of his own awakening, the entire universe in the ten directions is the true human body. The entire universe in the ten directions. is the true human body. And yet within the body of reality, differences appear. Miraculous appearance. Differences of view, differences of opinion, and differences in the way we like things to be done.

[21:58]

This is called the second principle, or the relative truth. So this is the truth, the relative truth is the truth about our relationships to one another. And it's also the truth about the way we treat things, the way we handle those things that we see and hear and taste and touch, and how we feel. The truth of how we as sentient beings are able to open, to realize and enter the practice of the Buddha way. So because of the appearance of differences within the true body, the one body of reality, we find ourselves telling stories about the things that we think we see. In fact, each of us is a story, one that's never been told before, utterly unique. A non-linear story in a non-repeating universe. And it's a secret story.

[22:59]

that no one else can hear or see. So that's the very place where righteous choices are made of how to live, moment after moment. And those choices are made whether we notice them or not. I was thinking about ourselves as stories, and I was reminded of a Leonard Cohen song that came to my mind as I was driving down to Tassajara a few months ago. It's a song called In My Secret Life. And the lyrics include, I smile when I'm angry. I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right. And I die for the truth in my secret life. So I thought that was a pretty good title for a talk about Buddhist practice, of which Leonard Cohen has done quite a lot.

[24:06]

He practiced down at Mount Baldy near Los Angeles for many, many years. If you've ever watched him in recent years, it's a lovely way of bowing to his wonderful musicians. He bows to each of them. I also happen to know for myself that the greatest portion of my life is not visible to me or anyone else, for that matter. In Western psychology it's called the unconscious mind, and in Buddhism it's called the alaya vijjnana, or the storehouse consciousness. In both traditions, East and West, this underlying consciousness is the support for all that we see, feel, think, hear, and believe. It's the support for all we do that's good and all that we do that's not so good. And it's the support for thinking that there are such things as doing good and not doing good, for telling the truth or for telling a lie.

[25:11]

In other words, our unconscious mind is the support for a life of ignorance. But at the same time, it is also the support for a life of awakening. And it's therefore that the Buddha taught that the utmost importance for us is to study the mind until there really is not much left of it. Now, if all of that seems like a bit much for one short lifetime, I have another idea for all of you. And that is to find within yourselves the true heart of our human existence. The true heart of our human ancestors, of those who hunted, who built with clay and straw, who walked barefoot on the earth, who prayed for rain, who made offerings to the inconceivability from which they too had come.

[26:16]

I once had the privilege of spending time on the Navajo land. with the people who live there. And I was quite envious when one of the young boys who was traveling with us pointed to a mesa way off on the horizon, and he said, that's where I live. And he knew where on the earth he was from, where his ancestors were from, and where he would spend all the days of his life. And he was home. But you know, I think we're home too. It's just that somehow many of us have forgotten how on this earth to truly live. So I want to finish today with a song, an Inuit song. And I thought over again my small adventures. As with the shore wind, I drifted out in my kayak and thought I was in danger. My fears

[27:20]

those small ones that I thought so big for all the vital things I had to get and to reach. And yet there is only one great thing, the only thing, to see in huts and in journeys the great day that dawns and the light that fills the world. Thank you very much. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:15]

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