Good evening. Good evening. As different as the art of our stories may be, I think our lives intersect in this room because we all want to live a life that's worth living. And this intention is embodied in our bodhisattva vow. to live for the benefit of all beings. Dogen says in the Shobhogenso Hotsun Bodhaisin, constantly making this my thought, how can I make living beings able to enter the supreme truth and swiftly realize a Buddha's body? Making this vow essential to our lives, we would rather take up and look closely at anything that stands in the way of us realizing this vow.

[01:01]

I think for me, my earliest experience of Vow was the bluebird wish. And for those of you who don't know who a bluebird is, a bluebird is what you are before you're a campfire girl. And a campfire girl is what you are instead of a girl scout. So you're a bluebird and then you fly up and become a campfire girl. So this is the bluebird wish and This may be a bit of a leap, but I'd like you to join me. Repeat after me. This is the we would wish. To have fun. To learn to make beautiful things. To remember to finish what I begin. To try to keep my temper most of the time. To learn about trees and flowers and birds. To make friends. And I think if we all lived by the bluebird wish, we'd be doing pretty well.

[02:07]

Especially, even as a child, I like that, to try to keep my temper most of the time clause. I thought that was great. So we've all come to practice. And when we sit, we voluntarily take on certain limitations. Sitting still, sitting in a particular way, sitting at a certain time, in a certain place, with certain people. And not doing for a certain time what we usually do. Not saying what we usually say. And choosing to sit still in the midst of our life. And I think we find that in the midst of this limitation, we can taste a very real freedom. By choosing this limitation, we paradoxically... have an opportunity to wake up to our lives, to live an awakened life. And I don't think it's overdramatic to say that our freedom as human beings begins when we take up these limitations of practice.

[03:09]

Turning ourselves over to the schedule, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, being accountable to others, living in accord with the precepts, taking up these limitations, we taste our freedom. And I've always loved this quote of Robert Thurman's, and some of you have heard me say this before, but Robert Thurman said that practice is not just about sitting still on a cushion. It is recognizing our radical dharmic freedom. Rather than reacting instinctually to whatever comes up in our lives, we see that we have a choice and we turn in the appropriate direction. And this has had particular resonance for me because before I really embraced practice, I just lived in the thrall of my instincts, like a character in a fairy tale who's under a spell or a curse of some kind.

[04:12]

And maybe some of you have lived that way, you know, just living like a leaf in the wind. And I'm feeling that... you know, somebody invited me to go to Alaska, that must mean I was supposed to go to Alaska. So I went to Alaska. I had a great time in Alaska, by the way. But, you know, it's that thing of just living, living by the winds of my desires. And I'd like to tell you a very familiar story because I think it has something to tell us about the alchemy that transforms our lives when we step onto the path of practice. And I, I'm sure you know this story. But once upon a time, there was a miller. And this miller had a beautiful daughter, but he was very poor. And it so happened that one day the king came by and the miller was talking to the king and wanted to impress him. So the miller said to the king, I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold. The king said, that is an art I'm very interested in.

[05:17]

Please send your daughter to the castle tomorrow and I will test her. So the next day, this frightened Miller's daughter showed up at the castle, and the king showed her into a very small room. And all the room had in it was piles of straw, a small stool, and a spinning wheel. And the king said to her, now, you must spin this straw into gold or tomorrow you will die. And so the young woman sat down and began to weep as if her heart would break. And suddenly the door that the king had locked behind him flew open and in stepped a very strange little man. And he said, Good evening, Miller's daughter. And she said, Who are you? And he said, I want to know why you are crying. And she said, I'm supposed to spin the straw into gold and I haven't the least idea how to do it. And the little man said, Well, I can do that for you. What will you give me in exchange? And the woman said, I will give you my necklace.

[06:19]

She took her necklace off and handed it to the little man. And sure enough, he sat down and whir, whir, whir. He spun and he spun from the evening till the dawn of the next day till all that straw had become gold. And when the king came in the next morning, he was astonished. And of course, his avarice and greed came up within him and he said, that's all well and good, but tonight you must spin more straw into gold or tomorrow you will die. And he showed her into a larger room with even more straw in it. And once again locked the door. Once again the door flew open. And in stepped that little man. Well, the mother's daughter was once again just weeping as if her heart would break. And the little man said, Good evening, Miller's daughter. And once again he agreed to spin that straw into gold. What will you give me, he said. She said, I'll give you the ring from my finger. And she took it off and gave it to him. And so it all happened as before. The little man spun and spun all the gold, keeping up around him.

[07:21]

And the next morning, once again, the king was very pleased. And, of course, since everything happens three times in fairy tales, he said, you must spin one more room of straw into gold. And if you are successful, you will be my wife. And so he showed her into this larger room, and the little man appeared again. But this time, the miller's daughter had nothing to give to give the little man. And he said, well... married why don't you give me your firstborn child and the woman thought who knows if I will be married and if I am married who knows if I'll even have a child and so to save her life she promised that she would give her firstborn child to the little man well the next day she was wed with great fanfare and the king was quite happy to marry such a rich woman who even though she was Miller's daughter and And several years went by, and a beautiful child was born. And one evening, the queen was sitting in her room with this beautiful baby.

[08:23]

And who should appear but the little man. He'd come to collect his debt. Good evening, mother's daughter, said the little man. Well, the young woman was shocked to see him. She never thought he would appear again. And so, of course, she began to cry. And she said, please don't make me give you my child. I love it more than all the world. And the little man said, All right, I'll give you three chances to guess my name. I'll be back tonight. And so the young woman, the queen, she sent her servants out all over the land and they brought back names. And that night when the little man appeared, she said, is your name Caspar? He said, no. She said, is it Melchior? He said, no. She said, is it Balthazar? He said, no, no, no, that's not my name. And disappeared. Well, The next day, she sent her servants out all over the land, and they came back with strange names. And when the little man appeared, she said, Is your man called that? He said, No. She said, Is it spindle shanks?

[09:25]

He said, No. She said, Is it spider legs? She said, No, my man, that's not my name, said the little man, and disappeared once again. Well, now the woman, she was just filled with grief. She didn't know what she was going to do. She sent her servants out again. And that evening, one of the servants came back, and he said, I didn't hear another name, but I did see a very strange thing. She said, what did you see? He said, I saw a little man dancing around a fire. And he was saying, today my bread I bake. Tonight my earl I make. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, the queen's little baby I'll take. For lucky I go, as lucky I came, Rumpelstiltskin is my name. And that night when the little man appeared, the queen was ready for him. And he said, do you know my name, Queen? She said, well, is it Tom? He said, no. She said, is it Dick? He said, no. She said, well, could it be Rumpelstiltskin? And the little man became so angry that he stomped his foot and it went all the way into the ground and he was so mad that he grabbed his other leg and tore himself in half and was never seen again.

[10:36]

And the Queen... looked down at her beautiful daughter and knew they were safe. So that's the story of Rumpelstiltskin. And, you know, Freud said, if you want your children to be smart, tell them fairy tales. And if you want them to be really smart, tell them more fairy tales. So I hope you feel very smart right now. One aspect of the story was that the Miller's daughter has to take up the unlived life of her father. You know, he makes this offhand comment that condemns her to this dark little room. But she's the one who has to give up her freedom. She's the one who, at pain of death, is forced to do something that she feels totally inadequate to do. And she's powerless to stand up to her father or to the king or to the little man. And I think many people growing up in an unwholesome environment make a vow that they will never...

[11:37]

We live that life as adults. And then, as if under a spell, they do. You know, some of us sometimes find ourselves living a life that our parents wish they had lived or that they live vicariously through us. So she has to take up the unlived life of her father. We never find out where her mother is. I think that's interesting. But sometimes we're lucky enough to find our way to practice. And... Rather than continuing to live under the spell of greed, hatred, and delusion, rather than unconsciously perpetuating the ancient twisted karma of our families, we realize we have this radical dharmic freedom, as Robert Turman says, this radical dharmic freedom to choose something else. We may live at the beck and call of our instincts. We may... live an unconsidered life that's caught up in negative emotions, and be fortunate enough to stumble on the path of practice.

[12:44]

And I think something in us wants to practice, something in us calls out for practice, I think, especially when we're in that darkness of living by our instincts alone. And in this story, the funny little man does this miraculous thing. straw into gold and saves the young woman's life. At first the miller's daughter, and we never learned her name, she only has to give trinkets to this little man in order for him to save her life and spin straw into gold. And then a year goes by and she forgets all about him, she forgets about her debt, and finally he demands of her the most precious thing she has, this small child. We could say that Rumpelstiltskin represents our own strong negative emotions, our anger, our resentment, our fear, our delusion, our greed, our hatred, our harsh judgments of ourselves and of other people.

[13:48]

We could say that he represents addictive behavior or self-destructive habits that we cling to. And we have this great We have this great gift to be able to sit still and sit upright in the midst of our lives. And we have this opportunity to gather equanimity towards us with which to face and name these things, to name these negative emotions and these deeply ingrained habits, many of which we learned as we were growing up. And these habits and negative emotions may have served us well at one time, You know, there's probably a good reason for our anger and our fear and our resentment. And we may have more than a cloak of invisibility for ourselves with those things to survive at certain times in our lives. And now we find it's time to let go of those things and face the world courageously without the buffer or the padding, you know, of those negative emotions.

[14:56]

And so we have practice which helps us face and name those things without stepping them or denying them. We can watch them arise and pass away like a cloud or a strong wind. And we come to know the impermanence of those things that we don't and can't cling to them, that they come and go. From a practice point of view, you might say that if we fail to confront and name them, these tendencies towards greed and hate and delusion. And if we live in the thrall of our instincts, if we continue to respond and react instinctually, if we find ourselves constantly in a fight or flight mode, at the beck and call of our negative emotions, of self-destructive habitual behaviors, if we live in the spell of these things, eventually we're asked to give over the most precious things we have, just as the young queen was asked to give up her newborn child.

[16:02]

And I think when we're living in the thrall of those instincts and emotions, finally we give up the ability to open our hearts to others. We give up our compassion, our wisdom. Even the simple belief that life is worth living, we lose touch with that. We can't see it. We can't hear it anymore. And finally, most importantly, we give up our ability and our desire to live by the bodhisattva vow, to live for the benefit of all beings. We can't when we're trapped and buried. You know, in some fairy tales, there's a wall of thorns around the castle. No one can get through. And in Rumpelstiltskin, these capabilities, the capability to face our life with courage and compassion, it comes in the form of this newborn baby. Just as each of us come to a fork in the road and had to choose, the miller's daughter is presented with a radical opportunity.

[17:08]

And what does she have to do in order to be free? She has to give this strange little man, this little demon, it's like a little demon, to give him a name. And it's by naming this groovy, hateful little demon that she's finally able to be free of him. And he's so angry. And he stomps so hard that he stomps a hole in the ground and tears himself in half. It's such a frightful image to think of that concentrated rage that this little man represents. In considering and working with this story, and I've told this story both to adults and children, I've come to have compassion for this strange little man. You know, after all, his heart melts a little bit. when she doesn't want to give up that baby. And he gives her three chances to find his name. And it makes me think that maybe he wants to be named. Maybe he needs to be named. And maybe our own shadow, our own inner demons want and need to be named.

[18:15]

In fact, maybe it was kinder to call this little being the shadow rather than a demon because It's so easy to demonize a demon and think it's something other than ourselves. Also, she doesn't find out his name by herself. She needs help. And this reminds me of how we need the help of our teachers and the rest of the sangha to know ourselves most deeply. Our negative emotions, our habitual patterns begin to lose their power over us when we give them a name. In the Gnostic Gospels, a book by Elaine Pagel, she explores some of the Gospels that were left out of the Bible. And in the Gospel, according to Thomas, he says, and this was left out of the Bible, but he said, Jesus said, if you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

[19:17]

So we would... do well to look closely at whatever stands in the way of our ability to be of service to others, at whatever keeps us from being able to bring forth that which is within us. And for me at least, I feel that my own practice began and didn't begin until I was able to turn and face my own shadow, my own demons. This little man, this woman, the monster, the dragon, and give it a name. I came to Zen Center in 1975, and at that time I had a very flawed definition of freedom. To me, freedom was just doing whatever you want without worrying about the consequences to myself or others. And I had to find what my teacher calls the freedom of restraint. What a wonderful notion, the freedom of restraint. So to turn the whole idea of freedom around, that instead of

[20:21]

feeling like I can do whatever I want and not care about what happens. The freedom to not act, even if I want to act. The freedom to keep still, to keep quiet. The freedom to sit in the midst of my life and not react or act out, as we say. So just for a time, the freedom to sit up straight in the middle of my life and no longer be that leaf floating in the wind. At the same time, we can find and practice the courage to speak up when it's appropriate to speak up. We can find the freedom to act when it's appropriate to act. And we might find that we're acting from a different place in ourselves than the place where we used to act from. You know, we're not acting out of our negative emotions and our habitual patterns. We're acting from a place of wisdom and compassion that we've gathered to us through the teachings and through our teachers and our fellow practitioners. I've read a teaching that encourages, and I've just found this so helpful, to meditate on that which causes resentment.

[21:28]

So this is very different than living in the grip of resentment, to meditate on what causes resentment. It's possible to live in a sea of resentment and self-pity and anger and not even realize it until our practice helps us to wake up and name those things. And once we name them, these things... begin to lose their grip on us. We'll probably never completely be free of them and we don't need to pretend we don't have strong emotions. Very often our strong emotions give flavor to our lives and even give us the energy and the motivation to do positive things in the world. A strong sense of injustice or a wrong that needs to be righted. you know, at least we can lighten up and not take ourselves quite so seriously. Another practice that's been really helpful to me is that when caught in the grip of a strong emotion, I can feel it as a connection between the rest of humanity and myself.

[22:38]

So in my grief, if I go deeply enough into it and taste it and feel it, I can remember I'm feeling grief that all who have grieved have felt before. And in my anger, I can know that this anger that I feel that makes me want to tear myself in half like the little man, this anger connects me to all who have been angry. It is at a place where we are broken that we are most able to be of help. I wish I could say I read that in the sutures, but I heard it on Prairie Home Companion. It was at the place where we are broken that we are most able to be of help. Or I love this line from Leonard Cohen, everything has a crack in it, that's how the light gets in. So I find this very encouraging that we don't have to cultivate some other mind or body in which to practice, to exchange who we are for some perfect being, to search outside ourselves in order to wake up.

[23:46]

We're already enough. We already have what we have, what we need to do that. As Suzuki Roshi said, just being alive is enough. And if we practice wholeheartedly in the midst of our life, in the midst of confusion and chaos, we can bring back with us into the world a pinpoint of peace that we have to offer other beings. This is the bodhisattva vow, this desire to wake up. We can offer this to the world. Jack Cornfield likes to say that we have to give up any hope of having a better childhood. But I think we can have a better past when we make use of it to serve others. What Jesus calls in the Gospel according to St. Thomas, calling forth that which is within us. and working wholeheartedly to dispel whatever stands in the way of us being of service to others.

[24:55]

We can transform the suffering of our past, of our own childhoods, and remember our own grief in order to soothe the grief of someone else. We can transform the energy of our negative emotions to become a force for good in the world. That is spinning straw into gold. This is what we call in practice taking up our everyday life, finding and naming the place where we're broken and helping from that place, breaking the chain of addiction and misery that runs through a family for generations, stepping into the path of recovery. That is spinning straw into gold. Suzuki Roshi said that we are all able to do some small thing to shine a light in one small corner of the world. That we're able to reach out to another suffering human being. That is spinning strong to gold. So I know there are people in this room that practice forgiveness, that visit the sick, that tend to the dying, that help those who are in distress, people who transform their own grief

[26:10]

and their own negative emotions into positive force in the world, teaching and practicing meditation, reaching out to the homeless visiting people in prison, all of these are antidotes to the deliberate manufacture of misery that human beings are so good at. All the things that each of you does to ensure that there's a place here at Zen Center where people can come to practice That is spinning straw to gold. Sometimes I think we don't want to suffer, we just want to keep doing the things that cause suffering. And when we name those things, our anger, our hatred, our fear, our resentment, and we notice their impermanence, and even say to ourselves, there's my old friend, resentment. Oh, here comes anger. Come on in, take a load off your feet. That familiar friend of jealousy or envy. If we cling to the feelings and identify strongly with them, they have us in their spell.

[27:15]

They have us in their grip. And if we refuse to give them a name, if we deny them, pretend they aren't a part of us, they also control us. So I'd like to read just a short passage from Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron and coming from the Tibetan tradition. She says, that long touch of acknowledging what we're thinking and letting it go is the key to connecting with this wealth that we have. With all the messy stuff, no matter how messy it is, just start where you are, not tomorrow, not later, not yesterday when you were feeling better, but now, start now just as you are. Melarepa is one of the lineage holders of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Melarepa is one of the heroes, one of the brave ones, a very crazy, unusual fellow.

[28:18]

He was a loner who lived in caves by himself and meditated wholeheartedly for years. He was extremely stubborn and determined. If he couldn't find anything to eat for a couple of years, he just ate nettles and turned green, but he would never stop practicing. One evening, Melarepper returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over the joint. He knew about non-duality of self and other, but he still didn't quite know how to get these guys out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind, all the unwanted parts of himself, he didn't know how to get rid of them. So first he taught them the Dharma. He sat on a seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we are all one. He talked about compassion and shunyata and how poison is medicine.

[29:21]

Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally he gave up and just sat down on the floor saying, I'm not going away, and it looks like you're not either, so let's just live here together. At that time, all of them left except one. Nalarepa said, oh, this one is particularly vicious. We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that's all we've got. He didn't know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of a demon. and said, just eat me up if you want to. Then that demon left too. The moral of the story is when the resistance is gone, so are the demons. And of course, we don't have to do anything special to transform our everyday life into gold.

[30:28]

We don't have to do anything special to make our everyday minds into gold. We just have to notice that they are gold. But for us human beings trapped in our habits, sometimes it's hard to notice that. And practice can be our spinning wheel. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha can be our spinning wheels, helping us transform our everyday life, spinning it into gold. Again, from the show Bogenzo, Dogen says, even if virtue which might make us Buddha, has matured and is about to be consummated, we turn it towards living beings, realization of Buddha, and attainment of the truth. This mind is not in the self, is not in others, and it does not appear. But after the establishment of the mind, when we embrace the earth, it turns completely to gold. And when we stir the ocean,

[31:30]

It at once becomes sweet dew. So that's all I have to say, but maybe we have time for a few questions or comments. Jeffrey? Thank you, Laura. I always like to hear you tell stories And, you know, I've heard you tell the girl of filthings before, and, of course, our younger period growing up, and I've always felt really sorry about filthings, you know, curious, lonely, gnarled little fellow who gets, you know, who holds up his end of the bargain, and that kind of gets cheated out of his pain. And, you know, and so we've got the beautiful young woman with her child, she's there at the game, Your quality, I think it's like, you know, to, you know, for quoting Jesus tonight, you know.

[32:34]

Sorry about that, Jeffrey. You know, Jesus said, to those who have, to those who have will be given it. From those who have not, it will be taken away. Or in that context, if you have a cell, I will give you a cell. If you do not have a cell, it will take it away. So, would you talk about that, please? Well, it seems to me that if we see this demon as someone outside of ourselves, as someone we've entered into this bargain with and then we cheat, there's some unfairness there. But if we see that demon or that shadow, you know, as a part of ourself that's unacknowledged and wants to be acknowledged, and once he is acknowledged, he disappears. or is subsumed into us to be made use of, to serve other beings. That can be a different take on it.

[33:35]

But there are a lot of things to be questioned in this story. For example, who would want to marry somebody that says if you can't spend this drawing to gold, you will die, you know? And where's your mother, you know? And what about her father? There's a betrayal there as well. So I think fairy tales give us a lot to chew over. I've also heard that whatever you might think about this, whatever fairy tale was your favorite fairy tale when you were little was the material you had to work on or were working on in your own childhood. So you might think back, what was that fairy tale that really spoke to you? The fairy tale you wanted to hear over and over again. The fairy tale you wanted to enact with your friends. And see if you can reclaim that story as part of your own story. Anyone else? It's from the Hotsu Budaiso.

[34:39]

Yeah. Probably not pronouncing that right. Yes. Don't be like a leaf blowing in the wind. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of you said about that and you said some interesting things, but I think a lot of it also goes against an idea of unnatural way or not resisting. You know, I think a lot of those that I see my life is always that go with the flow. So I just wonder what your thoughts are on that. That's a good question. I think, of course, we still want to have spontaneity in our lives. We want to be playful and joyful like a leaf on the wind. But I think that when that joyfulness and that playfulness and that spontaneity is rooted in practice, it has a very different quality than a kind of natural going with the flow.

[35:40]

You know, for myself, I feel like I had to put down that quality of just being a leaf on the wind and dedicate myself wholeheartedly to practice and... deal with that shadow. And then something else arose in me. I felt like I could truly be myself rather than being at the mercy of that wind. I could feel grounded and yet free. Not that I've totally mastered that, but that can be certainly a gift of practice. to be rooted in the earth but to still have a sense of joy and looking forward to things and taking life as it comes and having that very important flexibility. And I think what you're cautioning us against is becoming too rigid or inflexible and to keep a sense of play about us, which I think is also important.

[36:47]

Thank you. Yes. Yeah, I'm thinking that the woman in the story is in a dilemma. She's made this agreement because she's confronted with a situation where if she wants to stay alive, that's her date that comes to give up the thing that's most precious to her in the whole world. And then a year later when she has to not actually go through with the deal, she realizes that she can't go through with that. And I was thinking that, in a way, maybe that represents that a lot of us in our lives might at some point make that decision that in order to survive somewhere, it might be in order to survive in our families, or in order to survive in the world, or in order to make a living or whatever,

[37:51]

we give up something that's very, very infectious to us. We think, well, I have to give up the most, maybe it's music or art or poetry, maybe some other deep part of ourselves. And at some point later in our lives in the story, everything is compressed. Maybe at some point later in our lives, we need to go back on that agreement that we made and say, well, I'm going to hold on to what's precious or recover what's precious and do whatever I have to do to get that back. Thank you for that. I do think later in life people often get in touch with that feeling that they've left something behind, that they can reclaim, that they have the freedom to reclaim. And I also think that how could that young woman have known that that baby would be so precious to her? You know, we don't There are things that are precious to us now that we didn't even imagine when we were younger.

[38:55]

And there are going to be things in the future that are very precious to us that we don't even know about now. So what is the true gold? What is the true wealth in our lives? I think that changes as we grow in wisdom and compassion. Anything else? Well, thank you all very much. May your practice continue always.

[39:25]

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