We are here in this very unique place, in the mountains. And so every time I come, I feel very grateful and I feel some humility, actually. Just being present, nestled into this niche, which is... a place of healing and a place of some restoration, a place to feel that one can actually be at home someplace. It's really quite amazing how people come out into this wild Ventana wilderness and then arrive at Tassajara and feel at home. I sat down for lunch today, and someone sitting next to me said that this was the first time they'd been here as a work student.

[01:09]

They'd been here before as a guest, but this time as a work student. And I asked, how is it, being a work student? And she said she really liked being behind the scenes and liked the feeling that everything was working and that she was a cog. I thought, that's wonderful. I enjoy myself being a cog. Everything is kind of turning together. And the feeling of being, I've been thinking the rest of the day, I've been thinking about being a cog. That characteristic of a cog is that there's a way in which a cog stands out from the wheel, but then the cog also meshes in and completely is meshed in with other wheels.

[02:11]

And so it could be that there's infinite cogs, infinite wheels and infinite cogs. And a cog is willing to be engaged. There's a feeling of offering. So right now here giving this talk, I feel like I'm an engaged cog. But the cog is engaged and being, let's say, turned by things. So offering, so I feel that the Tassar is a place that invites people. the discovery of how it is to be completely engaged and also to allow oneself to be turned by things simultaneously and without reservation, offering oneself and then receiving the support of all the other, say, wheels turning that create the space for the cog to enter and the cog to be realized.

[03:24]

so I invite you to be happy cogs. And I invite you to join in a loving-kindness meditation because it's important to recognize and be present with a sense of happiness for oneself, and then you can enter and offer that to others. So very simple. We have this loving kindness meditation that begins, may I be happy. So maybe you could repeat after me or murmur. You don't have to repeat it loud. It's more like that you're aware of yourself right now, sitting where you are, being generous for yourself. So if I say a line, then you can murmur it, being at that threshold of being aware of yourself internally and being aware of those around you.

[04:44]

So let's try it. May I be happy. May I be free from fear and live in safety. May I be at ease and abide in peace. May Tassahara be happy. May Tassahara be free from fear and live in safety. May Tassahara be at ease and abide in peace. And that includes, say, the person sitting next to you. To take a moment just to realize that there's a person sitting next to you and to extend that spirit to them, saying, may you be happy.

[05:57]

May you be free from fear and live in safety. May you be at ease and abide in peace. May you be at ease and abide in peace. So I think part of the original intention of practice at Tassajara was to cultivate this sense of quiet, sense of being at peace and a sense of being nourished by the the simple practice of sitting in the mountains. So there's the story of Suzuki Roshi coming to America and starting sitting with people in San Francisco and then at some point looking for a place for longer and more intensive retreats.

[07:07]

and looking and visiting various places. And then when Richard Baker brought him to Tassajara, 1966, and they came in and came down the long road and explored the valley, the hot springs, and then drove out. And when they were driving out, somewhere up the road, Suzuki Roshi said, stop the car. So the car stopped. And he got out and went up the road ahead, dancing. Dancing up the road, saying, it's great. It's great. Just like China. Great. And then later, Richard Baker, they stopped for lunch.

[08:13]

And Richard Baker said, so what do you think? Should we get? Would you like to establish practice at Tassahara? And Suzuki Roshi said, where could we get the money? And Richard Baker said, That's not what I asked. I asked, should we get Tassahara? And Suzuki Roshi said, yes. Let's get it. And so there was that sense of confidence in the energy of the Dharma that something actually could be established here. And that... At that time, I think Zen Center had just been functioning out of the Sakoji Temple in Japantown and had an annual budget of about $8,000.

[09:19]

And it seemed impossible. But the word went out that this was such a unique and wonderful place and a unique opportunity to think of it as a unique opportunity in all of human history and culture to establish a practice here that many people came and offered support in many ways to raise money and to make contributions so that the land could be purchased. And by the next year, 1967, was the first practice period. the first time in America for people to come and sit in the mountains in this way. So I feel deeply grateful for that vision of Suzuki Roshi's and that vision of Richard Baker, who later became, we called him, of course, Baker Roshi, when I came to Zen Center.

[10:36]

a few years later. So it's a kind of a mystery how things happen. I'm thinking again of the cogs. It's hard to tell whether the cog is turning the wheel or the wheel is turning the cog. When we think of things in a linear fashion, we tend to think of causation in a linear way. It's not actually like that. When we consider deeply how things are, it actually becomes clearer and clearer that everything is simultaneously supporting everything else. That there are actually no independent beings that are separate. Some of you know that during this last winter practice period I was teaching from Nagarjuna, the Mulamajamaka Karakas.

[11:44]

And so verses on the fundamental wisdom of the middle way. And I keep thinking about the first verse because it gave me the blues. It says, nothing is caused by itself. This is There are various translations, but basically nothing is caused by itself and nothing is caused by another. So then I thought, well, nothing is caused by itself. Nothing is caused by another. Nothing is caused by a father. Nothing is caused by a mother. Nothing is caused by the sun. Nothing is caused by the moon. Nothing is really happening and it's happening much too soon. It gets me down. It's me down to my shoes. It's the nothing but the mula majamaka karaka blues.

[12:50]

So I console myself with that. There are a few other verses I don't remember right now. But nothing is caused by itself, nothing is caused by another, is pointing to how each of us has, say, the most important place. That each point in the whole universe of things is supported by all the whole web of existence. This is a kind of a, say, an interconnected, dynamic, total working of things. So it's pointing to what Nagarjuna calls dependent origination. So once when I was talking about this, so if nothing is caused by itself, what about personal responsibility?

[13:54]

It is the case that as soon as you think person, as soon as there is a person, The decision to be a person is to take complete responsibility. To take complete responsibility for everything that is implied by being a person. And being a person is only half true. We could say, okay, one side is the side of existence, of being a person. The other side is that there are no things. No things that are caused by things. know things that are coming into existence separately. So usually as human beings we have tremendous investment in the whole notion of things, that we exist, that I exist, that I exist separate from you. So it actually is, I thought, it's a wonderful expression of understanding to be willing to

[15:05]

take one's place as not necessarily some thing. So it's funny to say that to be completely engaged, to be completely hard at work, to make total effort, is also to not resist or have any argument with reality. To not object to the way in which one's own actions contribute to the way that the whole works. So I think the experience of monastic living, monastic practice is like that, that every person contributes in their particular way. And if we all do that, if we all offer ourselves completely, there's a quality of spaciousness and seamlessness. It's very interesting and it's maybe kind of paradoxical to actually to make a particular effort, to make a great effort, just from one's own place, supports the whole working, and then that feels spacious.

[16:21]

Yes? Is that what's called the cognitive approach? Michael, thank you. I was also thinking it's the incognito approach. So each one can decide whether it is supported by your cognition or whether it's supported by you disappearing into the works. So I think that both sides have to be in balance. That the sense of, okay, I'm willing to show up and be fully participating, and not necessarily knowing, but there's some sense that, okay, I can trust what I'm being offered here.

[17:32]

So Tassajara, is this kind of a place, I think, where people can come and get a sense of how to participate in something that's really vast and impossible to describe and eventually is understood to be boundless. Not having a particular attachment to any particular place in it, but being willing to participate from right where you find yourself. that any place is a good place to begin. So, Tassajara is supported by the mountains. Mountains support Tassajara. Tassajara is supported by everyone who comes here, and everyone who comes here is supported by Tassajara. People...

[18:36]

come sometimes for a very short time and their whole life changes. I don't know quite how that happens. Some people come here and realize they need to spend a long time here before going out and offering what is inexplicable to say working to create a culture of wisdom and compassion in the wider world which desperately needs it. So we say when someone is here for a while and then they go, we have a ceremony of departure in which we acknowledge their contribution and then give them the blessing to go forward with bliss-bestowing hands to actually offer that spirit of generosity that can be cultivated here to whatever life situations that one may find oneself in.

[20:01]

I'm checking my watch so I don't violate the Tanto's dictum to end before 9.20. The teaching then, that is, say, There's a tremendous literature of Buddhist teaching, and we study it. But the teaching has to be embodied. People actually have to take it into our bodies and our minds. And that takes a lot of, say, careful attention and careful work to notice how one is interfering.

[21:06]

by one's own, say, greedy nature. So my own sense of my own greedy nature is that I tend to get attached to my own ideas about how things should be. And I've been working with that, with Zen Center, and looking at if I'm actually willing to just be free of my own ideas, can I listen? Can I listen to what's happening around me? I think many of the problems that we have in the world come from attachment to greedy ideas, or the greed itself is the attachment to ideas that are all based on personal desire.

[22:14]

And here I've been working with the notion of making a great effort without any particular expectation about the outcome, any particular attachment to my own idea of how it should go. So although I do have ideas about how it should go, and I do have ideas that it would really be good to continue Tassahara. And when we had the fire a couple of years ago, I felt, yeah, it would really be a shame to lose Tassahara. Not that we could lose Tassahara itself, but we could lose the buildings. And it's helpful to have buildings. And so I feel that we now are looking at how can Tassajara become mature and sustainable beyond this particular generation of people.

[23:27]

Many of the people, including myself who are leaders of Zen Center now, came at the time or close to the time when Tassajara was established as a mountain temple. And as I get a little older, I realize, oh, how can Tassajara be sustainable for the next generation and the next generation and the next generation? So this involves looking at, say, new people who are showing up and saying, oh, yes. When I see some... people coming for the summer to work as students here in their 20s or their 30s, I think. Oh, yes. There's a future Abbott right there. How can that person be supported? How can that person be nourished? How can that person develop so that they can take their place?

[24:30]

So it starts being willing to be maybe a a cog that is patient but fully engaged, appreciating the complexity of the workings of this whole place, supporting it from whatever position one's invited to take, and being willing to take any position and from that place offer everything that one can offer. Which means actually taking leadership from any place. Any position is a place of leadership. It may not look like it in our usual terms. But to feel that, OK, right here, where you're sitting, this is the place of enlightenment. This seat right here is the place to wake up.

[25:34]

This is where Buddha happens. Buddha is waking up right here. So every place is equally supportive of that intention. No distinction. So I want to invite everyone here to recognize in yourself that sense. This moment, this place, this is the place to wake up. This is the place to be fully engaged and offer. This is offering this life in the most vital way. So tomorrow we'll have no race.

[26:36]

It's very interesting. To have no race means everyone can offer, each person can offer their energy and make their effort according to your own understanding of your own being, your own capability, which means some people can run up the mountain and other people can take a few steps and say, OK, that's enough. This is inner listening. So inner listening supports listening to what's happening around. The mountain supports the cloud. The cloud supports the mountain. So I'll look for you all in various places on the road tomorrow. I'd like to... So we'll do our usual ending, and then after we do our usual ending and chant, I'd like to... invite people to stand up and chant the refuges together in Pali.

[27:46]

And you don't have to know it to hum along. Thank you for listening.

[27:56]

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