It's amazing being back in this temple after having not practiced here in the city center for nearly 30 years. There's certain things that bring tears to my eyes being back here and other things that make me smile. I've noticed I feel teary each time I hear the vibrations of the time drum at the end of the second period of Zazen. And just the smells in the hallways of the incense, I feel so much like I've arrived back home. And I smile often when I enter the dining room, checking out the floor and remembering that for the year that I lived here, I mopped the dining room floor every Sunday afternoon. And I notice I go in and see how clean it is. And whoever's doing it now is doing a good job.

[01:02]

It said, I'm sure you've all heard that the story about when Dogen was a young boy, how he tasted how impermanent life is by seeing the smoke from the incense rise above the body of his dead mother. And he vowed to fully enter into the mystery of birth and death and to devote his life to finding real freedom and helping others find their freedom. I often feel how fleeting my life is each time I look into my son's eyes, who was a baby when I lived at Tassajara and is now nearly 20 years old. There's an expression that you've probably heard that says, to practice as though your head were on fire. Though this isn't a pretty image, I think the meaning of it is important and powerful in our lives.

[02:10]

Since the theme of this practice period is the paramitas, what I want to talk about tonight is the fourth paramita, the paramita virya, which is translated as energy or vitality, sometimes translated as zeal. I was reading that the... The Chinese translation of this word virya is ching ching. And ching means essential or single-minded, single-minded vigor. And ching means to urge forward or advance. And the Japanese translation of this word refers to a simple meal of herbs, berries, and wild potatoes that were eaten by sages living simply and without distraction. So together, this word that's translated as energy has a feeling of being undistracted, vital, single-minded movement.

[03:19]

In particular, I've been thinking about how energy and vitality are connected to this experience of impermanence, how short our lives are. and connected to having a purpose in our lives and how we affect each other's energy. And also I wanted to address how practicing with energy and vitality can also lead to a sense of lightheartedness and perhaps even practicing with friendliness and a sense of humor. About seven years ago, my mother became quite ill. She was living on the East Coast. And we flew her from Florida to my home in Mill Valley to come live with us and die with us.

[04:23]

And my daughter, Carol, who's now 14, she was seven at the time. And she was very connected to my mother and was really attentive and caring and helping her. One day I got a phone call from Carol's phys ed teacher asking if I was aware that Carol was complaining about a pain in her ankle, that she was missing some classes. I was a little surprised to hear that, and I mentioned that it might have had something to do with my mother. And a few days later, Carol's homeroom teacher called to say that that Carol's ankle was hurting. And again, I didn't think much of it. I talked to Carol about it, and she didn't really say very much. A few days later, Carol's homeroom teacher called again and said, not only was Carol's ankle hurting, and not only was she limping, but half of the class was now limping, and that it had become a real problem.

[05:34]

There was a rule that if you limped, you had to go to the office. You couldn't stay in class. And she was sending half of the class down to the office. So that night, Lee and I spoke with Carol about asking her what was going on with this pain in her ankle. And she began to describe how her grandmother, she called my mother Mama B, my grandmother, how her grandmother's blood had gotten into her ankle and that somehow her bad blood had found its way there. And that she also felt that wild animals had gotten into her ankle, these tigers and lions and other creatures. And we talked to Carol about opening to what she was feeling and letting the bad blood and letting the animals come out. And right away...

[06:37]

Carol was able to picture this and visualize all of these things leaving her ankle, and she and her classmates very quickly stopped limping. And to me, this is an example, there's many examples, but this was one about how literally we're connected. particularly our energy is so connected, that we're influenced by each other's energy all the time, in the zendo, out of the zendo. We can take on each other's pain. We can share each other's openness and vitality, that our effort and enthusiasm can be a kind of offering to others. As my mother got closer to her death, it became clear that there was no way that she could heal herself. She had been trying for a long time to find some way to get better, and at some point, basically,

[07:44]

the doctors had told us that it was really time just to make her comfortable and let her die peacefully. And my mother always had a way of making decisions very fully, quickly, wholeheartedly. I remember after After my father died, within a few weeks, she had sold the house that she had lived in for 30 years and moved to Florida and just decided to do that. And when it was time for her to die, it was really clear. She said that she'd had enough fighting and that she just wanted to die. We'd given her a bedroom in our house in Mill Valley, which we thought would be a kind of quiet, secluded place. And right away, she made it clear that where she wanted to spend her time was in the middle of things. So she kind of perched herself on our living room couch, which was the center of our household.

[08:49]

I knew that one of her favorite foods was a milkshake and I was taking care of her and I put a bunch of fruit and ice cream and milk in a blender and brought her this milkshake. She was lying on the couch as I handed this to her and she looked at me and she said, I'm trying to die and you're making me a milkshake. What could you be thinking? And I said to her that it was fine with me if she died, but that I wanted her to die healthy. And we both laughed, and it was moving for me to connect so deeply and immediately with my mother. where our energy was so intimately connected and that the lines between death and pain and humor all became blended and non-existent.

[09:57]

I felt in a lot of ways that she was taking care of me as much as I was taking care of her. And as she became weaker and weaker, I would sit and breathe with her. I followed her breaths in, her breaths out with my breaths in and out. And sometimes as I breathed in, I would breathe in her pain. And as we breathed out together, I would breathe out, kind of wish for her to be at peace and to have a safe journey wherever she was going. And sometimes I would chant the Heart Sutra. And being with my mother, as she was close to dying, brought forth this tremendous feeling of this single-minded energy and also the sense of lightness, the sense that all distraction, all outside influences were stripped away. I think when I spoke the other day, I mentioned Harry Roberts, who was a friend and teacher of mine and a teacher of many people who lived out of Green Gulch.

[11:03]

And one of the things that Harry said was that a major difference between American culture and what he referred to as the Yurok Indian culture was that Yurok Indians believed that everyone was born for a purpose. and that it was the parent's job to provide an environment where children could learn and explore and discover what that purpose was. Harry said that if you think back carefully to what you loved, what your passions were when you were three years old, it would be an indication of what your own calling was, what your own purpose in life is. Harry also was very fond of saying that our lives are actually very simple, that all you need is to answer three questions. Those questions are, what do you want? What do you have to do to get it? And can you pay the price?

[12:04]

And after he said that, he would let out this big hearty laugh and said, yeah, real simple. He said, most people never really even get to the first question. And the first question, of course, is the most difficult and requires tremendous energy and intention. This question of what do you really want from your life? What do we really want from our practice? What is our intention? Harry would smile and suggest that that we not ignore these questions, but that we also not get too serious and not get caught by them. He said that the most important thing is to quiet your mind. And he would sometimes say, he would kind of laugh at Zen students and all the trappings we had of practice and forms and Zafus and Zendos. And Harry would say, just go sit on a rock. And I think that we... I think that we all have a dual purpose, that one purpose is what we as Buddhists call way-seeking mind.

[13:14]

Our purpose is being aware of and working to undo the human tendency towards restriction and habit and desire, and to be truly alive and energetic for our lives and for others in our lives. And I also think that we have a parallel purpose, some kind of activity that we're each called to do. It takes energy to uncover what this purpose is. But with a firm belief that we are here for a reason and that we're born in this time and place, that it's no accident, that we each have some unique gift and in some way some kind of sacred contract can really bring us energy in our practice. Harry used to say that our job as human beings is to discover our song and sing it. This practice of virya, energy, can be done in many contexts. One obvious context is in our zazen practice, in our meditation practice.

[14:19]

When sitting, we can really sit with energy. Classic instructions for sitting posture are all aimed at increasing our energy. Dogen says, since we are Using the same sitting posture as Shakyamuni when he received enlightenment, think of the place where you sit as the diamond seat. Some monks practice on large stones. Sit with your back perfectly straight. The form of your sadhana should be stable like a mountain. And we're all instructed to keep our shoulders back, head straight, and to hold our arms as though there's an egg under each of our armpits. All these instructions are ways to increase energy and awareness. All of us will have to deal with various crises in our lives. taking care of dying parents, troubled friends or children, confronting all kinds of difficulties, our own old age, sickness and death,

[15:39]

If we approach our zazen practice with our full energy, it can be like a crisis, a kind of controlled crisis. Sitting can give us this experience of facing ourselves, our pain, our suffering, our bare feelings, and the immensity of our lives. By sitting still, just being present, We can learn to accept whatever comes our way. We can feel cleansed and transformed and feel the energy and confidence to meet whatever we face. And we can practice energy in our relationships by being attentive, by really meeting and caring for people in our lives. Giving our energy and our presence to each other is a practice I think we can do even more of here at Zen Center and during practice period. What is there to hold back? What are we hiding? How do we find the balance between caring, friendliness, and at the same time giving each other space? When we realize and fully feel how short our lives are, this can be energizing and also help clarify our direction and our purpose.

[16:53]

I always had a very kind of physical practice for myself. Up until recently, for the past 15 or 20 years, I ran like five or 10 miles a day. Five or 10 miles a week, not a day. In many ways, though, I feel like I've taken my body for granted. Though I took good care of my body, I didn't really pay so much attention. I recently started feeling some pain in one of my legs and found out that one of my hips is deteriorating, that I have arthritis in my hip. And finding this out has really changed my life in a lot of ways. I really feel the sense of how short my life is and that my life, that my body is in the process as all of us, our bodies are deteriorating.

[17:57]

And I've noticed that I've been somewhat self-conscious and that I sometimes walk with a limp. My son, of course, offers great advice. He says, just get a cane. Canes are cool. But I've noticed, now that I walk a little bit with a limp, I've been really surprised to find out that it seems like half the people in the world walk with a limp. And I feel like I've kind of joined a certain club. And if you're not in it, you too will all join this club someday, something to look forward to. I started working with a healer who suggests that one way to work with this deteriorating hip is to very consciously put energy into my walk and to start walking, to really consciously walk with a spring in my step. And I've noticed that's been a really interesting practice. The Buddha's great gift in teaching is showing us that we can direct and focus our attention and energy to the practice and experience of not clinging to our views and desires.

[19:14]

Our energy, this life force, this beating of our hearts, this breathing, where does it come from? Who is doing it? What an amazing gift this is. If we can just give in and give up and get out of the way, we can discover a deep reservoir of energy and lightheartedness. We can discover real freedom, which is freedom from ourselves. Looking up this literature about this parmita, virya, and its energy, and it says that there's... three kinds of laziness that prevent the practice of energy. And one is procrastination, which is putting off practice, thinking that tomorrow would be a better day to practice. The second form of laziness is distraction, or being caught by some kind of pursuit that takes us away from what's most important.

[20:23]

And the third kind of laziness is discouragement. Discouragement is usually caused by comparing ourselves to others. I'm amazed how often I tend to think that everyone else has it so together and that it's just me. It's just me kind of wallowing around making mistakes and Pema Chodron offers this practice of whenever you're feeling a sense of something missing or that everyone else has something that you don't have and that if you only had that, your life would be better, to imagine and realize that at that very moment, there are millions of people throughout the world feeling exactly the same thing, that it's a habit and tendency of the human mind This literature also says that there's three kinds of energy or vitality.

[21:27]

The first is unflinching effort, which is not giving up, continually coming back to our breath and to practice. The second is creating virtue. It's said that this is achieved by keeping in mind the six paramitas, generosity, discipline, patience, vitality, meditation, and wisdom. The third kind of vitality is benefiting others, helping to ease the pain of others and to bring joy and to engage other people in practice. For several years now, I've been co-leading retreats for business people with Norman Fisher at Green Gulch Farm called Company Time. There's many people who are interested and hungry for ways to integrate spiritual practice with their business lives. looking for ways that we can be more of ourselves at work. I often raise the point at these retreats for business people that there's also ways, I think, that there's something that business practice has to offer to spiritual practice, and that has to do with energy, that the business world can be very energetic and vital.

[22:43]

I feel lots of energy. by the fact that in the company that I run that we have to have enough money to meet payroll every two weeks, and that individuals' livelihoods are dependent on my decisions. And I'm energized by the various risks that we take, that we make products and spend a lot of money not knowing what will happen, whether anyone will actually buy these things. that everything in my business has very clear goals and measurements. And success and failure are part of my day-to-day life. And I find this both very energizing and also kind of terrifying. And in our practice, there's many parts of our practice where we're setting goals. We're setting the goal in our meditation practice of following our breath, letting go of our thoughts. There's the goals of the paramitas and the Eightfold Path.

[23:49]

And we often set this very strong goal, this vow to save all beings, to end all delusions, to enter the Dharma, to become Buddha's way. These goals are very lofty. We set what could be looked at as very impossible kind of standards for ourselves, for our practice. Of course, what spiritual practice has to teach business practitioners is that the aim of these goals is what Suzuki Roshi says is no gaining idea. We try our best and give our full attention and energy to each moment without measuring and comparing and without getting caught by the goal. We don't sacrifice our state of mind for some outside goal. The paramitas are, in a way, better translated as imperfections. And they're tools to help us awaken and really utilize our energy and see our own habits and tendencies more clearly and to help acknowledge the gift of our energy.

[25:00]

Practicing with energy is more like opening a door than it is kind of following some kind of to-do list And practicing with single-minded purpose and energy is a way to open a door to ourselves. When we enter this realm of setting these very lofty goals and simultaneously seeing that there's nowhere to go and nothing to gain and that we have everything we need in our practice, I often think, what else can we do but laugh at ourselves? What choice is there? Excuse me, but I'm going to quote a couple of brush dance greeting cards. One says, blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused. And the other card says, I get up, I walk, I fall down.

[26:05]

Meanwhile, I keep dancing. Suzuki Roshi once said, the purpose of Buddhism is not to establish Buddhist teaching or Buddhist groups, but to help people find their own way when they cannot find their own way. So please, let's all use our energy and our sense of humor to help each other find our way. I think we have time if there's questions, comments, issues. I see my buddy Steve is back there. The bum came to the lecture. Yeah, that's a good question.

[27:10]

I noticed that I tend to have... I tend to have lots of energy for things that I do and tend to be quite driven to accomplish things. So it's really helpful for me to distinguish, to find the difference which feels real subtle about what is this energy that's coming up. which is energy that's really about helping people and connecting, which feels different than a kind of energy around looking good or trying to do it right.

[28:10]

And I also noticed that I feel like my life right now, I feel like I'm living on this edge of energy where... I can feel when I'm suddenly feeling exhausted and it's time for me to stop. And I'm really good at taking naps. And I notice a 10-minute nap really re-energizes me and really helps clarify things for me. Any other questions, comments? I don't feel a lot of energy in this room. I have a question. Yes. You mentioned that now that we might start using the stick in the zenda.

[29:16]

Is that the energy during ? Yes, definitely. I was telling someone, maybe it was Paul that I told today, that when I look around, sometimes I look around the window and I've really been eyeing Jordan's back, thinking, I really want to go hit Jordan, very lovingly. There's something that I feel like the stick in the Zendo feels like such an expression of love and intimacy, and at the same time, really just... I sometimes think they should play a little tape in the Zendo of the sound of the stick, because it's just the sound and the feeling that is very energizing, or even just the...

[30:23]

Just the shadow, just kind of seeing the shadow of someone walking with a stick. Tremendous tool for awakening. It's easy, of course, you know, it can... Really, it's important that it be done in that spirit. Yes? I don't know. You know, what comes up for me is this, you know, immediately, when you said you have a lot of energy, I thought, great, you know, we all, you know, help energize us here, that it's a great gift.

[31:53]

But it also, I think, as you point out, the other side is, you know, we all have the, you know, our energy is, I think of it as kind of like fire, you know, that fire can bring great light and it can also do tremendous harm and that if we really, really need to be very careful and I think like with fire to embrace it and it's a real gift And just to become more and more intimate with those feelings that come up. And if you find that you're doing harm with that anger, with that energy, just to note it and embrace it and go on to the next thing.

[32:54]

Without judging it, I think I mean, I do see, I see there is really good energy here. And I think that, for me, it's wonderful. And I think this sense, I think this energy, and I know that everyone feels, I think there seems, we all suffer from this disease of our times, because everyone is busy and stretched. But I think one of the things that really gives energy is when we're with other people and to approach people with curiosity, with a sense of curiosity and just really wondering who these other people are and what people are thinking and feeling and what each person has to offer and helping

[34:15]

really helping to bring each other out. In some way, it's kind of a simple practice of real friendliness, of kind of attentive friendliness. And I've often thought that maybe it's heretical to say so, but I think Zen Center could stand to, in general, be a much more friendly place. I think it's not a practice that's I'm not aware of it being talked about or encouraged so much, and I'd actually like to talk about it and encourage friendliness. Yes? Well, it's something that came out of some classical Buddhist texts about where people had really studied.

[35:18]

What was it that got in the way? What were the hurdles and barriers to this practice of energy and vitality? I think kind of laziness, and this talked about being discouraged as a kind of a form of laziness. And in a way, I think it's, the way I see it is that if If you don't use your energy, or there's this image that Thich Nhat Hanh, we talked about this a little bit, has of choosing what flowers in your garden you're going to water. Are you going to water... energy and vitality, or are you going to water laziness and discouragement? So it's mostly just the practice of, I think, being aware and then consciously deciding where we put our energy.

[36:27]

Does that kind of get at what you're asking? I still don't know if there's a point where I would consider like... I think we are. I think they're all this interconnected different sides of the same feeling. Yes? I love being Kenzo. I found it in the really wanting to encourage people's practice by the food that we served and the way that we put it together brought me a lot of energy.

[37:39]

I love looking through cookbooks. and coming up with creative. I may have been criticized for being a little too energetic and creative in the kinds of things that we pulled off serving in the Tassajara Zendo. Veggie burgers and ketchup was one. But I found that the kitchen, the energy in the kitchen, just filled with energy, the feeling of working together and practicing together. Well, I appreciate you all coming to this lecture instead of watching the Giants game.

[38:51]

And I hope that they won. Thank you very much.

[38:58]

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