What I'd like to speak about this morning is the spirit of Zen practice, the feeling of practice, the attitude of what our practice is like, how it feels when we work on our practice. And also today is Mother's Day. And I want to dedicate my talk today to my own mother who I'll say a little bit about in a moment and pay homage to her

[01:01]

Homage to my mother. Homage to all mothers. Homage to the mother in each of us. Homage to the mother in each of us, whether we've had children or not had children, young, old, even to the mother and the males among us. There's a set of Buddhist scriptures called the Nikayas that were written in the, I believe in the few hundred years after Shakyamuni Buddha's life and death. And in one of them, called the Anguttara Nikaya, is a sutra, a sutta, called the Metta Sutta.

[02:10]

This is the sutra of, we call it loving-kindness, that's our translation of Metta. It also means benevolence, the sutra of benevolent regard, how we look upon ourselves and others benevolently. Some of the lines in the metta-sutta are as follows. Even as a mother, at the risk of her life, watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should we cherish all living things. Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so just in that way, exactly in that way, with a boundless mind, should we cherish all living things.

[03:20]

And we could add all non-living things as well. All things, all people and things. So the image of mother and child and the feeling of devotion and benevolence that that universally carries over thousands of years and over various cultures, that's a very core image for what our attitude of practice is. And importantly, I think, it's based on boundless. Even as a mother at the risk of her child watches over, even if the mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should we cherish all living things.

[04:26]

It's this boundless quality that... is fundamental to our way of practicing, to our attitude toward our own mental constructs, to our own emotional life, and to other people and animal and things and the earth itself, a boundless, open mind. So I do want to say some things about my mother, the particular not boundless, well, boundless in some ways, a woman, because it's Mother's Day. And also I think it fits with what I'm trying to convey.

[05:27]

So my mother is 92. years old last December 22nd she was 92 and she lives in New Jersey New Jersey is the joke that she likes to make again and again, and again. Particularly ironic because though she was born in Warsaw, she grew up in New York. I mean, New York. So it's ironic for a New Yorker to make a joke about the way people in New Jersey talk. She lives in an assisted living facility.

[06:38]

She calls it the hotel. And she's basically doing pretty good. She's basically doing very well, actually. Her health is good. She's frail. And her eyesight is going. And her memory is... gone I was there a month ago and a month or so ago and my sister and I took her to Broadway which for my mother is a little it's like comparable to the Hajj to Mecca Broadway where all things are wonderful And we saw a show, we saw the show A Chorus Line, which is a good show.

[07:41]

I thought it was a good show. And she enjoyed it. She was, she got it, surprisingly got it. But by the next day, it was mostly gone, and a few days later it was totally, totally gone. And, but, Even though her memory is gone, her attitude is very appreciative. Generally, in fact, kind of ridiculously appreciative. Like we go to a Chinese restaurant near her assistant living place, and it's not unusual for her to say, this is the best Chinese food I've ever eaten in my life. I mean, it was okay, but... A little boundless mind on her part there.

[08:41]

It's very good. So generally she's doing pretty good. Very well, actually. But how long can it last? So a concern that I have for my mother is how it will be for her when it is time for her to die, which, in our human measured way, can't be that far away. Some of you perhaps were here a few weeks ago, not last week, but the week before, and Christina Lenhair was sitting here and related in great detail and very movingly the experience of being with her mother in her mother's process of dying.

[09:47]

And it was extraordinary to hear how conscious and accepting her mother was at the end of her life. accepting of her own death, accepting of the life she had had. I don't think my mother is in that same position. I think she has a kind of magical idea that probably all of us have, you know, but hers is more blatant and obvious that she actually is not going to die. I said to her on the phone just a short while ago, but mom, you know, we've all got to go sometime.

[10:53]

And she'll say, why? No, I don't think so. I'm going to live forever. So I do have a concern for how it will be for her because she's not open. She's not so open to the idea of her own departure. And... Right behind my concern for my mother and how it will be at the time of her death is my concern for myself. And how it will be at the time of my death. How will that be? How afraid will I be?

[11:58]

How unaccepting. or accepting will I be. And I am sure that it will occur, as I think all of you could also say, I think it will occur at a time not of my choosing. in a manner not of my choosing. My own efficacy, power, strength, ability, talent. Zip, they mean nothing in the face of this event. And I raise this because our own death is perhaps the most universal and... Oh, I was also going to say, I mean, it's not completely unamenable to my actions.

[13:23]

So if, I mean, I can probably avoid dying of emphysema if I don't... start smoking cigarettes right away, and lots of them, you know, because I haven't smoked any cigarettes for 30 or 40 years, and even when I did, I didn't smoke so many. Although when I went to the doctor, I was at the doctor a few months ago, and she said, do you smoke? No. Did you ever smoke in your life? Yes, you know. When I was 20, 40 years ago, I smoked. How many cigarettes did you smoke? How many cigarettes? Did you smoke more than 500 cigarettes in your lifetime? I probably smoked more than 500 cigarettes.

[14:26]

Then I had to take a test. because they had smoked more than 500 cigarettes. I forgot what the test was. Anyway, so, I mean, there's something we can do, right? We can keep our cholesterol low, get the right numbers on our cholesterol count, and so on and so forth. Exercise. Oh, the three things, right? Eat well, exercise, and meditate. Those are all very good for your health, So we can do those things, but still, [...] as you know, when it comes to die, we're not ready for it. We don't want it. And more than that, actually, is this issue of it being beyond our power, beyond our purview.

[15:28]

beyond our ability to do it, to make it happen, when we want it to happen and how we want it to happen. So the reason I was bringing this up is because it is only the most outstanding example of that, of how things happen when we don't want them to happen in ways that we don't want them to happen. And it's particularly... Though our practice, we could say, is universal and universally applicable to all situations, it's perhaps in those situations, those situations where things don't turn out how we want them to turn out, where we can't make it happen the way we want it to happen, particularly in that situation that this spirit of practice is this attitude of practice of boundless mind is particularly useful, handy, comes in handy.

[16:33]

It's useful to have cultivated to be ready for those events. Because those events are going to happen. A woman who I speak with on a regular basis is an OBGYN, so she helps people give birth to babies, helps take care of mothers, and then helps the birth process. And usually things go well, go very well. Steve Stuckey, the abbot, co-abbot of Green Gulch, last week at Buddha's birthday, if you were here, he was talking about the birth of the Buddha. We did a big celebration of the birth of the Buddha.

[17:35]

And he didn't say this, but I felt that one of the points that he was making in the talk that he gave was how the mythic story of the birth of the Buddha is really the story of each of us. And he mentioned how, you know, when the Buddha is born, it's an extraordinary event. But whenever any baby is born, it's an extraordinary event, a wonderful event. When the Buddha was born, beings in other world systems knew about it and lotus petals fell from the sky. This is the way it feels. When a baby is born, when your baby is born, or your friends, or your uncles, or your childs, this is the way it is.

[18:39]

This is a big event for us human beings. And usually, My OBGYN friend tells me things go well and the baby is healthy and the mother, the mama is happy and the dad is happy and everyone is happy. But as we know, sometimes things don't go so well and something is wrong. What is it, genetic? It's some genetic problem or a problem during the pregnancy and or in the birth process something happens.

[19:46]

and things don't go well, and the baby is not okay, not regular, not fully formed, perhaps not even able to thrive, failure to thrive. And everyone is devastated. Of course, the mom has been hormonally preparing for this right down to the juices in her body and the shock of that not happening in the way that we hope it will. So that's the title of my talk today.

[20:49]

The title is what's to be done when nothing's to be done. And I offer that when there's nothing to be done, our practice feeling, our practice attitude comes in particularly useful. And again, don't get me wrong, of course there's a great deal to be done. To keep the mom healthy while she's pregnant and to monitor the baby when she's in the womb with the sonograms and the other things that happen. And even if the child has some problem, to help to do everything possible. Of course, we do that.

[21:53]

And yet there is in that what's to be done when there's nothing to be done. When there's a problem, one of the things we do is, well, we start to blame somebody. I should have done this. If I had only done that, how come I didn't do that? That's blaming myself, or we blame the other person. If you wouldn't have done that, such and such wouldn't have happened. How come you didn't do it? Why didn't you better take care of things? So on and so forth. This is very natural for us to do this. We all know it does no good whatsoever with the situation. It's not a real way of... It's not an effective way of dealing with how things actually are, but it's very natural.

[22:56]

We do it because it's some attempt that we're making to have some power in the situation, not just feel like victims. This just happened. If I can blame myself, well, then at least that's something. At least that's some way of... exercising my my will in the situation or if I can blame someone else if I can get angry then it looks like I have some strength so there is something to be done but There isn't something to be done. What's to be done when there's nothing to be done, or that part of things about which we can say, like our own imminent demise, like the things that happen that we don't want them to happen that way.

[24:01]

I've forgotten the beginning of that sentence, but anyway. So a fellow who is a Zen practitioner, a Zen student, worked for a couple of years at the Zen Hospice in San Francisco. And he's a journalist and a writer. So he was telling me this. This was probably 10 years ago. He was telling me... but it came to mind in this connection. He's a writer, and he was going to write a book about his experiences at Zen Hospice. I don't know if he ever actually wrote the book, but the title, the working title of the book, I think is particularly appropriate, and I thought it was a terrific title. The working title of the book was Sitting Close, Doing Nothing.

[25:13]

Or sit close, do nothing. I don't remember exactly. Sitting close, doing nothing. This is expressive. This begins to be expressive of this attitude that I'm talking about in practice. To sit close and do nothing. With our death, with our birth, with everything. everything that arises in our mind with others, with the world, sitting close, doing nothing. It doesn't sound like much, you know? Sit close, do nothing, big deal, you know? But sit close, do nothing is the middle way. It's not... Not being there. It's being there. It's being present.

[26:15]

For me to be present. That's the sit close part. So it's not that extreme called absence. And it's not the other extreme called... interfering with things, meddling with things, getting too much involved with things, trying only to make things better. It's not that side either. That's the do-nothing side. It's in between those two extremes. If we can sit close and do nothing with our own then we develop a calm mind. That is what a calm mind is.

[27:19]

Oh. Uh-huh. I had one more story to mention, a little vignette. I hope you see the connection among these. So someone else who I talk to on a regular basis, her son is a mom. Her son is about 17 or 18 years old, and he's a very proficient athlete. He's involved in an athletic activity, not a team sport, but like an individual sport. It's not, it isn't this, but just as an example, like gymnastics. And he's very, very good at this. So that he is involved with competitions, you know, like national competitions, international competitions.

[28:26]

I mean, he's, you know, world-class athlete. So he did one of these competition things, and things didn't go so well for one reason or another, even though he spent a zillion hours, right, practicing. You know how they jump on that bar and go twirling around doing various extraordinary things that most human beings couldn't even imagine, you know? And then they go flying around and they flip off and they flip around and they flip and then they land. Right? So he didn't land or something like that. Anyway, he didn't land right. He fell, he got points off, etc. So then after the competition, his mother said, do you want to talk about it?

[29:29]

No. No. of course. Then a few days later, he had to go to a practice early, early in the morning. And it was like at a place an hour or so away. So she said, why don't I drive you? He hadn't said a word, you know. So the picture that she was painting for me, the story she was telling me is, they're in the car and She's driving, and it's like, you know, 5 o'clock in the morning, and they've got an hour or so drive to the gym or whatever, and he immediately falls asleep. So that's the situation. It didn't get resolved, you know. It didn't get worked out. It didn't all turn out well. So she said to me, I felt terrible.

[30:30]

Why? Because I couldn't do anything. So from my perspective, I didn't go into a whole Dharma talk about it, but I said, uh-oh, I thought you were doing a lot. From my perspective, she was sitting close and doing nothing. She wasn't waking him up. come on, Bob, let's talk about your feelings of disappointment. And she also wasn't saying, well, you know, if you had worked harder doing such and such, it wouldn't have happened. And she also wasn't saying, if I would have worked harder and not let him eat an ice cube for dinner. Athletes, they do things like that. Wrestlers, they eat an ice cube for dinner because they have to make weight.

[31:35]

They have to get their weight very low. So they stress their bodies. But she wasn't doing any of those. She was doing nothing, but she was right there. She was completely there. I was moved by it, actually. But she felt, oh, I'm not doing anything. It's not helping. So my point is that we should try to make things better and we should try to do what we can do when we can do it. And when we can't do anything, we should do nothing. We should balance making things better and improving the world and improving our life and improving our birth and death with... with... sitting with the way things are, however they are right now.

[32:35]

If we get too out of balance, and we're always trying to make things better and [...] better, then, as you know, soon enough, things get much worse. You know, like our ecological... global warming crisis, we've been so busy for 500 years making things better and [...] better, now we're in big trouble and things are a lot worse than they were. We should have, we should cultivate some response to what it is we do when there's nothing to be done. In practice, in Zen practice, that response is called equanimity. Or it's called stability of mind. Or it's called settling the self on the self.

[33:47]

or Dogen called it the awesome presence of active Buddhas, gyobutsu igi, the dignified conduct of practice Buddha. That's what this response is called. Suzuki Roshi called it, excuse me a moment. Suzuki Roshi, there were certain English words and sometimes phrases that he would like to use kind of stock phrases, stock words that he used to use, like many of you know that phrase, things as it is, was one of his phrases.

[35:03]

He liked to use that a lot. And another one in this connection is, he would say, we should meet our life with composure. It's kind of a funny word, you know, for English speakers, you know, we don't usually think of it that way. Or if we think of it, I think, we think of it as more kind of an external, superficial kind of thing. To have composure means you look like you're not nervous or something like that. But he meant composure straight down to the bone. Composure deep. Composure coming from here. We should meet our life with composure. There's a wonderful clip, a video clip, of Suzuki Roshi giving a Dharma talk, giving a teshao.

[36:19]

And it's on that DVD. There's a DVD that has various little things of Suzuki Roshi. When he was alive, he died in 1971, so there was no video, right? There was no thing where you had this little camera thing, right? You'd have to have a camera, you know? And he didn't get filmed very much, but there are a couple of things, and they were compiled on this video disc that I think you can get in the office. I think that's where I saw this. It was a while ago. It might have been just on the Zen Center website, too. Anyway, it's a video clip of Suzuki Roshi giving a talk. And he's at Tassahara.

[37:19]

And it's the summer. You can tell. It's the summer at Tassahara. You can tell that's where he is, in the old zendo. He says, oh, you need to know this other fact about Tassajara, which is if you, at Tassajara in the summer, there are blue jays. Lots and lots of blue jays. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but either lots of blue jays or lots and lots of blue jays or lots and lots and lots of blue jays. And blue jays, from a human point of view, blue jays are very aggressive animals.

[38:24]

Like You're just having little snacks, you know, outside somewhere, you know. And as you lift this delicious piece of bread, you know, or pancake leftover from guest breakfast with jam on it to your mouth, the blue jay kind of, you know, swooping in. Usually accompanied by... Maybe it's his compadres that are doing this cheering on kind of thing. Anyway, from a human point of view, blue jays generally are extremely unpleasant, aggressive birds, and they make noise like an unpleasant, aggressive bird would make. Like what I just did. Let me see if I can do it better. It's got more of a crack to it. That's too gentle, what I just did.

[39:29]

So, anyway, what Suzuki Roshi said is, so he was taught, he was at Tassara, it was this summer, and he said, Blue Jay, he said, if you just listen to the Blue Jays, they just make noise. But, if you take the Blue Jay, the blue jay into your heart, then it's not noise anymore. So, he was expressing the mind of this boundless mind. A mind of stability that was open to the world based on security, one's own security.

[40:46]

The security of... It's odd because our security in practice, the security in practice is based on complete insecurity. The security in practice is completely based on everything changes. But within that, by applying, sitting close and doing nothing, we develop a security and a stability of mind. And in that stability of mind, that's why he was saying, if you take the blue jay into your heart, then it's not noise anymore. I guess my commentary on that would be, it's still noise. It's still noise. And I still think blue jays are aggressive birds.

[41:52]

And it's not noise. It's not that the noise goes away and becomes transformed into beautiful mandolin music. It's not like that. It's the exact same thing. It's noise. Like that. Shut up. It's noise and it's not noise. The not noise mind is the mind where This is the spirit, this is the feeling of practice. So making room in our heart for the world, for people and things, and our own experience. So we say in the morning,

[42:55]

In the mornings we say, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. I now fully avow is making room in my heart for my karma, for my life, for whatever has happened up until this point. I now fully avow is sitting close and doing nothing with the sentient beings of my own mind, as Alan Sanaki said a while ago. To sit close and do nothing with my own karma is called avowing it.

[44:03]

It's not going away. You don't ignore it. It's not ignoring it. That would be going away. It's not dominated by it. That's too close. That's getting involved in it. I now fully avow sits between ignoring and dominating. sits between absence and meddling, so to speak. This is saving all beings. This is the Bodhisattva vow. This is how we save our karma, beings save ourselves and save others by this way of cultivating the willingness to make room in our heart for everything.

[45:28]

Thank you.

[45:38]

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