This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Wow. Wow, wow. Wow, wonderful. So many people. How many of you are here for the children's program? Oh, come on, everybody, everybody. Great. Welcome, welcome. Well, I have a story for you. I'm always looking for stories that I think you might like, and I found what I know you're going to like. So one of you who already knows how to read, what does this say? Huh? Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck is stuck. Stuck rhymes with stuck, that's true. No, stuck is stuck in a tree. Stuck is stuck.

[01:01]

That's right. And that's kind of a hint what's going to happen here. It all began when Floyd's kite became stuck in a tree. He tried pulling and swinging, but it wouldn't come unstuck. Oh, dear. OK, that's the beginning. Take this off. So the trouble really began when he threw his favorite shoe to knock the kite loose, and that got stuck too. See where this is going? So he threw up his other shoe to knock down his favorite one, and unbelievably, that got stuck as well. So in order to knock down his other shoe, Floyd fetched Mitch.

[02:01]

Who's Mitch? Uh-oh. Where's Mitch? That's Mitch. What's Mitch? He's a cat. Cats get stuck in trees all the time, but this was getting ridiculous. Floyd fetched a ladder. He was going to sort this out once and for all. And up he threw it. Floyd's a clever guy, isn't he? The ladder was borrowed from a neighbor and would definitely need to be put back before anyone noticed. And in order to do so, Floyd flung a bucket of paint at it. And wouldn't you know it, the bucket of paint got stuck. Then Floyd tried... A duck to knock down the bucket of paint. A chair to knock down the duck. His friend's bicycle to knock down the chair.

[03:03]

The kitchen sink to knock down his friend's bicycle. Floyd's front door to knock down the kitchen sink. He's kind of on a roll, isn't he? The family car to knock down their front door. The milkman to knock down the family car. and an orangutan to knock down the McMahon who surely had somewhere else to go. I'm not sure where Floyd lived, but amazing supply of things. A small boat to knock down the orangutan, and a big boat to knock down the small boat, a rhinoceros to knock down the big boat, a long distance truck to knock down the rhinoceros, the house across the street to knock down the long-distance truck. A lighthouse to knock down the house no longer across the street and a curious whale in the wrong place at the wrong time to knock down the lighthouse.

[04:11]

It's a very long story, by the way. And They all got stuck. Well, a fire engine was passing and heard all the commotion, so the firemen stopped to see if they could help at all. Can we help at all, said the firemen. And up they went, first the truck and then the firemen, one by one. And there they stayed, stuck between the orangutan and one of the boats. Now, firemen would definitely be noticed missing, and Floyd knew suddenly that he was going to be in big trouble. So then he had an idea, and he went to find a saw. What do you think his idea was? What do you think he was going to do? You think he was going to cut down the tree? Well, first he lined it up as best he could and then he threw it up in the tree.

[05:22]

He is very determined. However, that was it. There was no more room left in the tree and the kite came unstuck. Floyd was delighted. He had forgotten all about his kite, and he put it to use immediately, enjoying the rest of his day very, very much. Do you think that's a good ending? Maybe. Well, that night, Floyd fell asleep exhausted, though before he did, he could have sworn there was something he was forgetting. What did he forget? Everything. Everything he did. All the trouble he made. But meanwhile, up in the tree, one of the firemen is saying, hang on a minute, lads. I think I've got a great idea. So they're working on it.

[06:30]

OK. All right. That's his story. So you all can get unstuck right now and go outside. I think there's a nice program waiting for you, isn't there, Chelsea? Yeah. Great. So please. Go forth. We're stuck here. I'm sorry. Okay. What do you think? Yeah, he was just thinking he could have used the ladder to climb up. Well, he could have. I think we thought of that, but he didn't.

[07:33]

He was at a thrilling ladder. Good old Floyd. still feel the energy is like a swarm of bees, you know.

[09:21]

So I would imagine that the idea of getting stuck and the effort that we all make to get unstuck is familiar to all of us here in this room. But lucky for us, this is exactly what the Buddha understood about the human condition. We're stuck and unstuck. Stuck and unstuck. round and around again, with an occasional stretch of rest and relaxation in between. So in order to understand for ourselves how this somewhat exhausting process defines our lives, it's helpful to recognize a few basic facts about reality itself. First of all, everybody gets stuck. It's simply the human condition from which none of us has ever been exempt. And second of all, the Buddha's awakening was actually a big realization of unstuckness, of freedom, of spaciousness, or put most simply, of finding room to breathe.

[10:35]

So these are the two things that I'm going to talk about this morning, about stuck and unstuck, beginning with stuck. So that's the easy one because it's so natural for us to be stuck. It's the way we were raised and educated and fundamentally taught to believe. It's the way we see the world, it's the way we think, and it's the way we feel about how we think. For example, we see ourselves as separate individuals and we are encouraged from a very young age to choose what we want to be. when we grow up, perhaps to find a partner, for sure, to make some money, raise some kids, and then, well, we really don't know what's next. And yet that's the part of the story, of our story, the part that we don't know that led the Buddha, not only the Buddha, but a great many of us at some time in our lives to run away from home.

[11:43]

We got stuck in the ending of the human story, that part about aging and sickness and death and grief and lamentation and despair. And somewhat like the boy in the story, we may try every trick in the book to free the thing that we want most in all the world, to free ourselves from the overwhelming fear we have of our own and our loved one's mortality. And we will die, that's for sure. But in the meantime, there are so many lovely, interesting, and important things for us to do, many of which are as they were for the young prince who became a Buddha, locked up behind our fear. I think it's important to notice right here that it wasn't death itself that the Buddha overcame in his journey to freedom. It was his fear of death. Something we can also come to realize.

[12:48]

And how? How do we do that? By starting right here and right now with this very body and mind, which is the only place any of us will ever be. Right here and right now. The very site of our entrapment and therefore the only possible place from which we can ever be free. So by putting our attention on this very place where not only fear but lust and anger and ignorance also arise, we humans enter into what in Zen we call a life of practice. I think you might all know by now this famous saying by our founders and Master Dogen, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And that is to do our best to locate the self, to listen to the self, and ultimately, like we do with our own human children, to comfort the self.

[13:56]

It's okay. It's okay. You can rest now. Right where you are, as if there were no other place in the world that you would rather be, or even could. I used to think that fearlessness meant that there was no longer any fear. But now I think, and I want to offer that to you, that fearlessness means to have less fear, to fear less. And as far as I can tell in my own years of practicing, the basic teachings given by the Buddha are in fact medicine for lessening to the point of dissolving the underlying cause of that fear. that being the very self itself, the selfish self. The one who, like the young boy, having gotten his kite back, leaves all the consequences of his endeavors still stuck up in the tree while he heads on home for a restful night's sleep.

[15:01]

Our fear is, in fact, a kind of protective membrane that surrounds the belief we have and how things appear to be. that I'm over here, and that all of you are over there, and that I need to protect myself. And I need to manage, even to the point of hoarding, my own resources in order to feel safe and thereby to lessen my fear. Or so I've been taught. And yet the news is in, daily and weekly, season to season and year to year. that our very efforts at self-protection are causing ourselves and each other some incredible harm that no one on this precious planet will ever be able to fix. Certainly not us humans anyway. And at this point, I do know that I am in danger of preaching to the choir. Something that I, in fact, am loathe to do.

[16:05]

And yet what I do want to offer to you is a kind of medicine that can relieve the fear that leads us to our personal suffering, which in turn leads us to act in such ways that cause others grief and ultimately by the sheer weight of our numbers to the degradation of this entire planet. So there is an inextricable link from here to over there. where each of you are, from me to you, from all of us to every living being on the earth. And we may all know this intellectually, but I am pretty sure that we don't yet get it. I don't know how many of you were alive back in the early 50s, 60s, but there was a time in my childhood back then when I could see for myself that the roadways of the Bay Area mile after mile, were bordered by garbage of every kind.

[17:10]

And I thought, that's ugly. And I even wondered, who is doing this? Without noticing even for a moment that I had just tossed my candy wrapper out the window of the car. As did my parents with their trash and their cigarette butts as well. It was common practice. I don't think litter was even a word in our vocabulary. And as I recall, it wasn't until Lady Bird Johnson's anti-litter campaign that there was even a dent in our national pastime of treating the earth as a ready-made garbage dump. Who's doing this? Who's making this mess? And so what is it today that we're not noticing about our individual behavior that is resulting in the economic and environmental crisis that, like sea level rise, is moving ever closer to our homes and to our endeavors to live a happy and stress-free life.

[18:15]

No matter how much we talk about it and think about it, more and more of what we hold dear, like the boy's kite, seems to be getting stuck up in the tree, until even the tree itself is now in harm's way. In the past few years, as an appointee of the Marin Interfaith Council, I sat on the board of the Marin Community Foundation. And during my time on the board, I met a number of people who we board members referred to as high net worth individuals, a euphemism for what I used to call rich people. These are very nice people. that I met, not surprisingly, and deeply interested in the well-being of others. They are what we call philanthropists, meaning a love of humanity, philosophy, love of wisdom, philanthropy, love of humans. So I asked some of them to help me understand what is it that is powering the intractable extremes of poverty and environmental degradation in our country and in our world.

[19:29]

Just who is it that is responsible for all of this? In Buddha's day, it was Mara, the evil one, also known as the master of illusions, who tried to frighten the young prince away from the tree of enlightenment. Mara himself feared losing his domain over the humans who normally, being driven by greed, anger, and ignorance, had voted Mara into office. It took me a while, being not so familiar with the ways of modern economics, to hear the answer to my question about who is responsible for this big mess that we've gotten ourselves into. And it turns out that Mara's new name is Market Forces. It's nothing personal. There is no one to blame or to account for the dreadful imbalances of gains and losses, or so it seems.

[20:30]

And yet somehow being a person of deep faith in cause and effect, I keep believing that we humans can meet the monstrosity called market forces with the power of ethics, honesty, restraint, cooperation, law, and even love itself, if need be. And yet if all else fails, which it may well, do, we at least can offer to those we love, and that means basically everybody, consolation, as people of faith have always done. We are your foul-weather friends, after all. My mother had a wonderful little figure in her bathroom that I brought home with me after she had died. It's a small porcelain bodhisattva, the one that's called hote, literally meaning cloth sack. the sack in which he carried his few possessions, being both poor and content.

[21:32]

Hote is depicted with a large belly and a very sweet, faint smile. He loved to play with children and spent his days wandering aimlessly about. I once was told by a visiting monk from Japan that Hote's large belly is filled with sorrows. And that struck me in a very powerful way and helped me to understand the assignment of the bodhisattva, the one who has vowed to live for the well-being of the world, which is no small task for sure. And in fact, one that may endanger those who accept it by weighing them down with the enormity of it all. The danger being that they too would become casualties. joyless, frightened, and angry, victims of despair. So it's that faint smile on Hotei's face that gives me great hope for our ability as caregiving humans to do so without sacrificing our own exuberance for life, grounded as it must be in kindness, in generosity, and in wisdom.

[22:50]

We can't wait for the conditions in the world to improve, before committing ourselves and our families and our communities, our nation, to a balanced and ethical life. So back to how. You know, how do we do that? How do we fill up on sorrows while at the same time smiling kindly on the rapidly vanishing world around us? Well, for one thing, Buddha wasn't much of a materialist. And to the extreme. He walked barefoot. He wore simple clothing. He cut his own hair and nails. He ate what was offered, and he seemed utterly content with sharing the products of his own intellect and creative imagination. He enjoyed his life as a teacher of reality, and he helped many people, young and old, men and women, children and animals, to enter the path of liberation for the benefit of others. Though Buddhism...

[23:54]

Zen is not a personal project through which we as individuals will become happier and ultimately free. Unstuck, so to speak. Buddhism is an understanding that no one is truly happy or free unless we all are. That your sadness and illness, partialities and needs are no less essential to my well-being than to yours. I often tell the students here that Zen is a shift in your identity from me and mine to us and ours. You know, I listen to how the new students talk about themselves when they first arrive and on our communal shores. They talk about their families, their hometown, where they went to school, their work history and so on. And then after a while, a few weeks or a few months, they start talking about our farm and our garden, our tractor. our work practice.

[24:55]

They sound as though they belong to something which they care about, care for, and through which, if all goes well, they and everything they touch begins to thrive. We grow flowers, vegetables, and we cook nutritious food together for everyone. In fact, right now, the students are over there in the kitchen, busily making lunch for all of you. Zen is about no self, no me without you. Only we can untangle the tango that we have created on the land and in the water. This uprising of the wish to benefit others is the only way that any of us is literally going to survive. There's an old story that I once heard about the difference between heaven and hell. And after we die, apparently, there is a large banquet table spread out before us, along with an abundance of food, and we are each given a set of chopsticks that are way too long for us to eat with.

[26:03]

In hell, the beings are endlessly suffering from trying to feed themselves. In heaven, the people are quite well fed, having chosen to feed one another across the table. This is what the Buddha did. The Buddha ancestors and Suzuki Roshi surrounded by a multitude of men and women who came to them with their fear-filled stories of sickness, tragedy, and despair. They taught them how to feed one another, to share their resources, and how to share the teachings of selflessness. So having said all of that, I want to go back to the beginning of my talk and suggest that where the call to action is given is the same place that it's heard right here inside the workings of each of our own bodies and minds. I hear you and I see you and I have no life at all without you and neither do you without me.

[27:07]

We are co-creating one another in each and every moment of our life. And this is not something that's so difficult for us to understand. What's difficult is for us to realize it, to experience it. So the Buddha gave us some very simple doorways for entering into the realization of interconnectedness. Doorways that begin with quieting the mind. Quieting or calming the mind is one of the two traditional methods for deepening our study of ourselves and of reality. It's called tranquility practice, shamatha. The second traditional method, once the mind is quiet, is called vipassana, insight meditation, calming the mind, discerning the real. So in order to have insight about the world, ourselves, and how we co-create each other, we need to be quiet and we need to listen.

[28:12]

Which is something that I think we could all experience for a few moments together right now. By simply noticing how it feels when we breathe. So I thought we could just do that for a minute. Just sit there and notice your breathing. Something I think we often forget to do. And if it helps you to close your eyes, you're welcome to do that. I'll let you know when time's up. Please enjoy a slight rest for a moment. The people that live here in Green Gulch are actually required to take time each day to just do that, to sit quietly here together and breathe, to inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale.

[30:16]

That's it. Which may seem kind of silly, given that we are doing that very thing all day long, every single day of our life, up until the very end. So why is it that we so rarely take the time to simply notice our breathing? To take a rest, as you all just did, in one of the most basic and omnipresent facts of our life. That we are alive. And for a moment or two, perhaps unstuck. Shamatha. Tranquility. The very opportunity we humans have to witness just where sticking comes from. the opportunity called insight, vipassana. Having realized the mechanism of stuckness for himself, the Buddha then taught that being stuck is a powerful and overriding aspect of our life, resulting from that other major human living process that we call thinking.

[31:25]

Anybody thinking? which is why I often insert into my talks this teaching of the Buddha that comes from an ancient set of verses called the Dhammapada, the pathway of truth. The opening lines of which are, what we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. Our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. Our life is a creation of our mind. So that's not something I was taught as a child or at the university. And yet as a grown-up, I am convinced that this teaching about our human life is both useful and true. Stuck, unstuck. Stuck, unstuck. What I really like about the story I shared with the children this morning is how familiar the problem seems to be.

[32:32]

You know, my kite is up the tree. I had a flat tire on my way home. You know, there's a funny rash suddenly appearing on my arm and so on and so on. Day after day, along with breathing, if I've even noticed it, come the enchanting stories that I tell about myself and the world around me. Some days I can't wait to find someone to tell my story to, and other days I would just assume that nobody finds out. And unlike the boy who happily goes to bed with his beloved kite wondering just what it is that he's forgotten. So stuck is a kind of story that doesn't end happily for us. When an outcome is pleasant for me, I don't call it stuck. Therein lies the rub. How do we humans go along endeavoring to create happy endings for ourselves while disregarding the well-being of others? And the answer is that we do, all the time.

[33:34]

And luckily for us, the Buddha had a lot to say about that as well. The other major part of his teaching is what he called karma. Karma, that old hippie term. that in the Buddha's day referred to the results of our intentional actions, things we know that we're doing. Good actions coming from good thinking lead to good results. And bad actions coming from faulty thinking lead to bad results. It sounds very simple. But as with our human life, it's not so easy. So here's a Zen story about not so easy. There was once a teacher by the name of Birdnest Roshi who got his name from the fact that he spent his life living high up in a tree. When a famous governor poet came to see him, he called up to the teacher, Isn't it dangerous up in a tree? Birdnest said, No, it's more dangerous down where you are.

[34:38]

The governor said, I'm the governor of this province, and I don't see any danger. The bird nest said, well, then, sir, you don't know yourself very well. When passions burn and the mind is unsteady, this is the greatest danger of them all. Then the governor asked, well, what is the teaching of the Buddha? And the teacher recited another stanza from the Dhammapada, not to commit wrong actions, but to do all good ones and to keep the heart pure. This is the teaching of all the Buddhas. But the governor said, well, any child of three knows that. And Birdnest replied, a child of three may know it, but even a person of 80 years will find it difficult to practice. So we live in a moral universe, whether we know it or not, or whether we like it or not. Our actions have consequences which are not so easy to see,

[35:43]

even if we're willing to look. The reward in the end, a belly full of sorrows. And yet when the Buddha held up a flower and twirled it slightly in his hand, the somber ascetic Mahakashapa faintly smiled. And what power on earth could be greater than that? Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:34]

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