Good morning. I feel so happy this morning being here in this room with all of you. There's a particular presence here at Green Gulch when we sit together in this space. And it's nice that I actually walked into the room this morning and felt it. Because that's what I was going to talk about today.

[01:02]

So then I'm not just making it up, it's my experience. So our Zen Center founder, you know, Suzuki Roshi said... So in our practice, we rely on something great and we sit in that great space. We rely on something great and sit in that great space. The pain you have in your legs or in your heart exists in that great space.

[02:04]

As long as you do not lose the feeling of being in the realm of Buddha nature, this great space, you can sit even though you have some difficulty. When you want to escape from your difficulty, or you try to improve yourself, you create another problem for yourself. But when you just exist, but if you just exist there, you have a chance to appreciate your surroundings, And you can accept yourself completely without changing anything.

[03:15]

This is our practice. So this morning I'm struck, you know, how wonderful and sweet it is to sit in this great space with all of you and to share my heart. You know, we all share our hearts then with one another. And when we share our hearts with one another, You know, we can feel, you know, at home, in this body, in this world, in this connection with one another and with something great.

[04:24]

Something, as Suzuki Roshi said, that is beyond form and color. It's impossible to say exactly what that is, but something... exists there that is not spiritual and not material. Something great exists, and we exist in that great space, that big space. When we get involved in our daily affairs, And we try to accomplish things, you know, we can forget. We forget sometimes we're in this great space, this heart space. This is the space that, you know, Rumi, the Rumi poem that Coleman Barks recites.

[05:28]

You know, it's like this too. The Rumi poem begins, this we have now, this that we have now is not imagination, not a joy or a sorrow. This is not a judging state or a sadness or an elation. come and go, this we have now doesn't. We all have, you know, and know this kind of presence of mind. It's not, and it's not just ours, you know, it's everyone's presence of mind.

[06:31]

You know, to be present in your life, in your body, with your feelings, with your thoughts, to know things and not get lost. I've been reminded of all of this lately because, you know, we just, Tassajara once again has survived another forest fire. And over the last three or four weeks, you know, many people worked so hard to create fire breaks and sprinkler systems and insulating the buildings. And, you know, I felt, I was so touched that

[07:33]

to know, you know, and sense the deep love that people have for Tassajara, of people who were there and people, you know, out in the world that I would meet. You know, Tassajara and Green Gulch, the Zen Center, is a manifestation of this presence and this practice that we do with each other. And last Wednesday, I had a message that everybody had been evacuated from Tassajara. And I thought, you know, they can't do that. They can't leave. We can't abandon, just leave Tassajara. And then a while later, I got another message.

[08:35]

The last car turned around. And they went back. So they were realizing the same thing. We can't leave, you know, unless we're physically carted off. So, so many prayers have, you know, gone through. for the welfare of Tassajara. And people here at Green Gulch, you know, people from Tassajara are living here at Green Gulch and the city center. And it's been so many days, you know, to wait and see, and then finally the fire now has come and gone, and people there were able to put out most of the fires that started there. And, you know, this presence of mind, this we have now, this presence that doesn't come or go, that is beyond form and color, something that we cannot describe but is not spiritual or material, something like that exists and we exist in that big space.

[10:02]

You know, actually, whether there's a Tassajara or not. Paul Haller said that in one of the messages from Zen Center. You know, tomorrow morning, we'll get up and sit. Sazen. Because that's our practice. I was also remembering, you know, at our Kassar reunion in January, Kelly Chadwick was at the reunion and at our last dinner at Green's. Many people spoke. And Kelly's about my daughter's age, mid-30s now. And he grew up at Tassara. And he said when he was... He can remember his first memory as being at Tassara. And to him, Tassara is like a being. It's like a presence.

[11:06]

It's not just a place. It has this presence and it's like a spirit, you know, like a bodhisattva mother. I think when we have this kind of, you know, strong connection or with a place, you know, we start to feel that kind of. There's a presence, a being, someone who meets us and greets us and blesses us and receives us. I hope you don't mind that some of you may think, oh, he's starting to sound so Christian. Anyway, don't worry, I'm still a Buddhist. I'm more a Buddhist than ever. But Kelly talked about how long he's known this presence and how sweet it was. like the Bodhisattva or Goddess of Tassajara.

[12:11]

And sometimes, you know, over the centuries, you know, Buddhism, mostly Zen, talks about, you know, emptiness, form and emptiness, but in this case, Suzuki Roshi calls the emptiness, you know, a presence, something great. existing without form or color, not material or spiritual. Something like that exists, and we exist in that big space. And that vastness of mind, you know, is... I don't know, I was going to say, you know, it's such a resource. But, you know, this isn't a resource you just go and spend. But it's something that is there for us. And it's something actually that's not just there for us, but we bring to things. We give ourselves to situations and to receiving people. And in that regard, for instance, recently I was in Munich and I visited with Doris Dury, who's a film director, directed the movie that I'm in.

[13:36]

And, you know, speaking of which, I'm still like this kind of crazy person from California. I'm sorry. I went to visit a Zen center there in Germany. I was a little worried because it's actually, you know, there's actually a Japanese Zen teacher there. So I thought, uh-oh. I'm just this kind of, you know, California nobody from the edge of the continent. And I got there and they were so sweet to me. I couldn't believe it. And the Japanese Zen Master, after, first he said, you know, after lunch he said, why don't you take a nap? I think you could probably use a nap. We all do. You know, we get up at 4.30, so we take naps after lunch.

[14:39]

You take naps? This is a new kind of Zen Center. What, it's on the schedule to nap? And he said, and after that, I'll come get you around 4. We'll go for a walk. So we went for a walk up to where you... could, if it was clear, see the Alps in southern Germany. And then we came back, and after dinner he said, you know, now tonight we have zazen, but after zazen, you know, I want to play my shakuhachi for you. And we can sit by the new rock garden that we've built. And after I play shakuhachi, we'll drink a bottle of sake together. Right? I have never been to a Zen Center like this before. So after Zazen, in Zazen we all are appropriately sitting and walking and sitting and then we sat out by the rock garden and he brought out his shakuhachi and he played.

[15:59]

And the rock garden started to You know, be alive. And then, I haven't listened to shakuhachi that carefully before, but the sounds, the stuff started moving in my head. It's all kind of vibrating, and stuff was dancing around inside my head. I thought, oh, this is, I haven't had this experience before. And then he got out the babasaki, and it's all wrapped in foil. with Japanese characters on it. And he says, this is a very special bottle of sake. They don't make very many of these. It's aged in snow. I got it in February, and I've been saving it for a special occasion. Oh, God. Oh, I was so touched and so taken.

[17:05]

This is like, you know, this is such presence of mind. This is, and I just was remembering, then I started remembering Suzuki Roshi and Okusan Mitsu, his wife, and Katagiri Roshi and Kobinchino and all the Japanese teachers that I've known and this wonderful way they have to, like, make you feel special. Make you, you know, and you feel so, and your heart just, you know, and you start to have this kind of connection. I used to sometimes at the city center, I lived there at the city center for five years and across the street for five years and then Oaksan would say, come and have some tea. And I'd go to have tea and then she'd say, do you want tea or would you like a glass of wine? And I thought, oh, Oaksan, this is Zen Center. We don't have alcohol here. Don't worry, Ed. Relax. But she knew I liked Japanese pickles, so mostly we had green tea and pickles.

[18:09]

And we would sit in this great space having tea and pickles. And this happened in Germany. we started drinking sake. And it seemed like the more sake we drank, the more that Nakagawa Rishi could speak English. Because mostly he speaks Japanese and German. And then I felt such a strong connection, you know, just completely intimately connected. Next day, you know, everything is like... we're Zen people again. But we know that, you know, beyond any form, we are intimately connected. We are intimately one with each other, beyond any form or appearance. Also recently, of course, most of you must know, you know, one of our residents here at Green College was in a terrible accident and

[19:29]

head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge, Grace. And so that's also been now about six weeks, and Grace, I guess, is doing much better. And it's come out of her coma, the last I heard, and starting to relate with her partner, Phu, and her daughter, Sabrina. And again, I'm reminded of this wonderful presence that we all exist in because so many prayers, so many hearts went out to her and her family under these circumstances. And this kind of presence is there for all of us, actually all the time. And we don't know it. We don't understand it. We don't practice it. We think I'm by myself. I need to figure this out. And maybe when I figure it out, I will get some appreciation and recognition and approval and attention that I've always wanted.

[20:38]

But we could be giving it to ourself, which is what we do in sitting sasana. You know, we are giving ourself attention, approval, recognition. And we can do this in our lives with ourselves and with our family and friends, to give each other our attention. So I started, speaking of which, I started to tell you about Doris, and now I'm finally getting back there. It's the way my mind goes, okay? The artist Hundertwasser, I went to the Hundertwasser, you know, art house, Kunsthalle, Kunsthaus, in Munich, in Vienna. And you know, Hundertwasser is this wonderful Austrian artist who did a lot of spirals and brilliant colors, magical colors.

[21:45]

And he said, the straight line is godless. Right. And he used to go to architectural conventions and tell the architects that they were a bunch of fascists, making people live in straight lines. And he said, don't you know that when you only walk on flat surfaces, your feet go dead. Your feet need to walk on surfaces that, you know, change, so your feet will stay alive. So in his buildings that he designed, you know, the floors. Yeah. ups and downs to them and he said the workmen got it done in the same length of time because the work was so interesting and invigorating for them and they just had such fun doing it and they were so engaged in the process that the work got done in the same length of time and you know there's different shaped windows and then the windows are painted outside and you know anyway straight lines so my mind is not

[22:48]

Godless. It doesn't go in straight lines. And you know, in Qigong, not Qigong, but Feng Shui, they say, you know, evil goes in straight lines. Evil doesn't know how to turn. So that's why when you come into the restaurant, there's the fish tank right inside the door, because then evil can't come in, you know, past the fish tank. Or there's something right in the middle. You come in and then you have to turn. So that keeps the bad energy out, you know. So in case you're wondering why your life hasn't gone in a straight line, like the river of your life had been converted into a slough, a concrete slough, and then you can speed along in your concrete slough to your destination in your life. No, your life gets to meander around the turns and corners and lose its way and come back into the stream. And it's like that. Munich. Doris. So I started to tell you, you know, California boy.

[23:52]

So now I've gotten interested in fingerprints. And Richard Unger was one of the world's foremost hand analysis people and fingerprint people lives right here in Tiburon. You can go see him. And he's now, his book is now out on life prints, which is about just the fingerprints. And by studying fingerprints, you can know it's the map of your life right here at your fingertips. You want to know your way? Look at the map. And then he tells you how to read the map that's your fingertips. So I looked at Doris' fingerprints, and we were both kind of disappointed. Doris said, I thought I'd have some more interesting fingerprints. And I said, I thought you would too. But what Doris is, Doris has a lot of the fingerprints for what are called tended arches. But tended arches, when you have enough of them, you're in the school of what's called the school of wisdom in venerable Richard Unger's school of hand analysis. You get to know what school you're in at Earth University, the school of love, the school of wisdom, school of peace, or the school of service.

[25:02]

You get to know what school you're in. Sometimes you're in more than one school. You know you have double major. But you're working on certain issues, so for someone in the School of Wisdom, those people either stay on the diving board for a long time or they dive into everything. And Doris has spent her life diving into things. Diving into things. And when Doris dives into something, she dives into it. It is just astounding. I met another person in the School of Wisdom, for instance, when I was leading a meditation retreat in Austria, and he said, Yes, that's me. You know, when I was 19, I got on the magic bus in Istanbul and headed for Afghanistan. And I think you could see the cloud of hashish smoke from across the desert, 10 miles away. And there weren't any seats on that bus. You know, it was just a big mattress. And you got on there with your rucksack and whoever you were with, and you hung out while the bus, you know, took you places.

[26:04]

And the bus broke down, and then he had to make his way to Afghanistan. And they were in Afghanistan when it was still this amazing place. And he said the Pashtuns would walk down the street with their bandoleros and then India. And then this sweet, amazing little detail. He said, everywhere I went in India, and then I went to Ladakh. People were telling me, this is a Buddha. This is a deity. You bow. Here's how to bow. And he said, I could never bow to a Buddha or any other deity until I got here to Purig, which is this Zen center in the Austrian Alps. And on the altar there is a rock in place of any statue. And he said, I can bow to rocks. And he practiced bowing for the first time in his life. But anyway, coming back to Doris, so here's, I want to tell you this one story about, because it's related to, you know, presence. What a gift presence is and how we give it to each other.

[27:06]

So Doris had just gotten back from the Grand Canary Islands, which are somewhere off the coast of Africa, and she'd gone with a group of film students. They got the low-price special for 500 euros. You can fly from Munich to to the Grand Canaries and back and stay there for a week at this hotel, all food and all alcohol and beverages included. You know, and there's these little ladies from England saying, honey, I think you should have one of these drinks because, you know, they're free. Anyway, and when they get there, then all the students say to Doris, what are we doing? doing here. This place is so run down. How would you dare to stay in such a place?" And Doris says, I was loving it. I just love it. And look around and like, look at all this. Look at this. It's great. And she's just like taking everything in and interested in everything and having a wonderful time. And then, so then the students, little by little, get used to being there.

[28:11]

And the students, she had asked the students to interview African refugees about their life story. and about how they got to the Grand Canary Islands. So towards the end of the week, it turned out that none of her film students were able to really find out any stories from any of the refugees. She says, I don't understand it. And this is like, Doris, you've got a real gift here, and you've used it. You know how to dive into situations and give your attention to somebody and get their story. You know how to do that. That's who you are. That's your great gift. And other people don't quite know how to do that the way you do. So what she did finally was she went to one of the refugees that she'd been talking to, you know, and she says, it's not hard. You just say, hi, my name is Doris. What's your name? I'm a film director. And where did you come from? And how did you get here? And she got to talking to this man. And then after a while she said, I'm a film director. I do classes in the afternoon. My students are here to find out about refugees.

[29:11]

They haven't been able to do that. I'm wondering if you would come to our class this afternoon and talk with them about your experience. I'll give you my salary for the afternoon, 100 euros. This is a lot of money for a refugee. So he said, sure. And then, so that afternoon, he spent an hour and a half telling them, everything in great detail, in horrifying and horrendous detail, how he'd gotten to the Grand Canary Islands. So finally, by the end of this, everybody in the room was crying. It was such a touching story. And then he also said, with both relief, appreciation, and some anger and resentment, you are the first people who've been at all interested in my story and how I got here and what happened to me and who I am. And this is a gift we can give to each other.

[30:19]

How are you doing? Tell me about it. What's in your heart today? What's up for you? And, you know, we can be together in this great space. And this is all happening in the room, you know, without our talking also. But sometimes we do it in talking. But this is also what's happening in the silence. We receive each other in this great space. So, you know, I don't want to talk too long, so I'm trying to decide whether to tell you about the six things to think about when you're out shopping. Oh, we're doing pretty good on time. Okay. I thought this was so interesting.

[31:23]

You know, the other day, I'm working on putting three of my books back, you know, into one book called The Complete Tassara Cookbook. Two of the books are out of print, Tassara Cooking and Tomato Blessings. So I'm working on this. And while I was talking the other day to someone at Shambhala, he said, well, you know, we're working on another book by a woman about shopping and how to stop being a shopaholic. And included with the book is going to be a little wallet-sized card that you can keep with you and remind yourself what are the six questions to ask yourself when you're about to buy something. And I heard this expression and I thought, this is great. This is like having your own Zen master with you or your own inner voice, your own teacher. And because it also is not just about shopping, it's about eating, which is a big deal for some of us. And it's also about, it turns out, about meditation.

[32:25]

So I thought, this is great. And the first question is, what am I doing here? And, you know, we all ask this question, you know. We can ask this question while we're out shopping, and we ask it, you know, when we're sitting here in the Zendo sometimes, like, what am I doing here? Who are these people? Why aren't I outside? Why aren't I at the beach? Why am I sitting here with my legs hurting, facing the wall? And... And then the second question is, what am I feeling? Which is another good one, you know, because we forget sometimes to notice, what am I feeling? And we think, you know, we have various reasons for abandoning ourselves and not noticing our feelings. You know, I don't know about you, I was trying for many years to be a grown-up.

[33:30]

You know, and grown-ups don't have those kind of... Childish feelings. They put away childish things. And I thought eventually I'd be like a Zen teacher or something. When I got to be an adult enough. Anyway, so what am I feeling? I mean, it comes and goes. And feelings are these two kinds. The kind that come and go and also the presence that doesn't. This is a kind of... What in sometimes, again, another expression in Zen is subtle feeling. This is subtle feeling reveals illumination. And we're all children of the Buddha. Anyway, the third question is, do I need this? And I think that's good for, you know, you're out shopping. It's also good for when you're sitting at the table. Do I need this? And then it's also good for meditation. I think, you know, because you can be having, you know, various experiences in meditation and then you can think, do I need this?

[34:34]

Do I need this? Why am I sitting still for this? Normally I wouldn't sit still for this. But the bell hasn't rung yet. So in meditation, you have the experience of whether I need this or not, I'm in for it. I'm in. I'm in. And then there's the question of how am I going to pay for this? And this is a good one for shopping. It's a good one for eating, for sitting. And then I love it. where am I going to put this? Where am I going to put this? For shopping, it's sort of obvious. And then eating, where is it going to go again?

[35:40]

And for meditation, it's kind of convenient. It's one of the great things about meditation, that you don't have to worry about where to put it. It sort of takes care of itself that there's no place to put it and that it wasn't a thing to save or there was nothing to gain or lose in the first place and how sweet that is. And you're just in this great space and not having to worry about gain and loss and buying and where to put it or how to pay for it. Feeling your feelings. And being settled. So I'd like to finish here. I'd like to come back to the Suzuki Rishi quote I started with. See if it sounds the same or not.

[36:48]

So in our practice, we rely. on something great and sit in that great space. The pain you have in your legs or some other difficulty exists in that great space. As long as you do not lose the feeling of existing in Buddha nature, you can sit even though you have some difficulty. When you want to escape from your difficulty or you want to improve your practice, you lose yourself and create another problem for yourself.

[38:02]

When you just exist here, you have a chance to appreciate your surroundings and to accept yourself completely without changing anything, without changing anything. Anything. This is also our great love, our great compassion for ourselves and each other and for the world, for our homes, for Tassajara. So again, thank you for being here in this great space with me. in such good company. Appreciate it. Lessons.

[38:59]

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