It's a beautiful spring morning at Green Gulch. And this morning when I was leading service, I noticed on the altar, there's a name on our altar and a little tree, a little redwood tree and some pine cones. When a name goes, can everybody hear me okay? No. Louder. When there's a name that's placed on the altar, it means that someone has died and the name is calligraphed and placed on a little placard on the altar. And this past week of a good friend of Zen Center's passed away in a tragic accident. A man by the name of

[01:06]

Ruck Rucker was killed while trimming trees. He is a tree trimmer while he was working near beach. And so on our altar today, we have his name and a little tree. And I don't want to eulogize Ruck. I'm not the one to do that. I didn't know him all that well, although I knew him over the years as he took care of the trees at both Tassajara and Green Gulch. And I think in the city also. And he was a wonderful, vigorous man. And many people at Green Gulch got to know him very well. And there'll be a service for him, a memorial service, funeral memorial service on Wednesday. And we don't know exactly the time yet. So if you would like to attend, please call the office

[02:06]

in the next couple days. And we'll know better what time that's going to be. When I first started practicing Zen, actually one of my first insights had to do with, I've told the story before, but it had to do with where to put down a teapot. I was talking with someone who had practiced Zen. I was very eager to hear about it and learn about this new special exotic religion. And we were making a cup of tea and I had the hot teapot and I kept trying to put it down on, you know, wooden surfaces that, on which it would leave a ring. And I kept saying, they said, no, don't put it there. Well, how about, because I wanted to start talking about Zen, you know, and then try to put it over there.

[03:11]

Don't put it there. Why don't you get a little coaster or something for it? And I realized I had leaped into the important business of talking about Zen and completely forgotten about taking care of what was in front of me, which is the real secret of Zen, where to put this teapot. So in many Zen stories and many Zen teachers will talk about and admonish you, one, to take care of the details of your life and pay attention. One Zen master would ask, what's the most important thing? He said, it was a he, he said, attention. Well, yes, we know, I know that, but you know, what's really important in Zen? Attention. Well, okay, I got that, but can you, attention. So three times, attention, attention, attention to the details of your life, to what is before you. Now that I, the word detail,

[04:24]

I looked up the word detail and it comes from the French, which means to cut, to thoroughly cut, the D-E is thoroughly and the tail is from to cut, to cut up. And the words, the word tailor is, which is a cutter, tailor means a cutter, one who cuts. And the Latin that the French comes from, talier, which means a twig or a cutting. Now, I'm not one of the people at Green Gulch that has been working in the garden or knows that much about horticulture. So I went to Wendy, who I don't know if she's in the assembly, our past head gardener and our, who's been working in the garden for years

[05:29]

and years, and I asked her, well, tell me about cuttings, because a detail is a cutting. I want to know what a cutting was. So a cutting, when you cut off something, what you got, the twig or this is, not everything can be cut like this, but it, a twig or a woody vegetation can be cut or it's a, you take a strike and that can reproduce the whole plant and it will reproduce the exact same plant that you started with. It's like a clone of the plant you began with. So within that cutting, within that twig, there's the possibility for an entire plant with roots and seeds and flowers and the whole thing is in that cutting that you've cut off and you have to put it in rooting material and take care of it and the roots will grow and pretty

[06:33]

soon you'll have a plant. And it's the same with the details of our life, I realized. The way our mind works and the way we have to act in the world is to take care of details. Now for some people, for many people, and for me included, we don't, the detail, come on, it's just a detail. We think of it as being something that can be dispensed with, because I've got bigger things on my mind. I'm going to talk about Zen or I'm going to develop organic gardens for hungry communities and I'm going to save the world. And so the details, yeah, okay, I hear what you're saying, but I've got things to do. But actually, the details of our life contain the whole plant, our whole endeavor is included in these

[07:39]

details. Within the details of our life, there are real consequences and real, the whole is included. Now there's two stories, and in Zen, as I said, we're constantly admonished to take care of the details. There's a story that I've written down in my notes for about the last four lectures to tell and I keep forgetting to tell it. And I thought, well, what is it about this story that I don't want to tell? And I realized that it makes me ashamed when I hear it, which is a very wholesome attitude, actually, in Buddhist thinking, to look at something and feel I want to try and do differently. So I'll tell this story, which is about details. There's several stories I'll tell. This is the one I keep forgetting to tell, so I'll tell it now. There were two monks who were on their way to a monastery to practice with a particular teacher. And they were, I always

[08:42]

pictured they were walking along a river, following the river up to where the monastery was located in the mountains. And I always picture it, for those of you who have been to Tassara, I picture that they're coming up from Arroyo Seco, coming up from the Narrows, walking up Tassara Creek. They're walking along and they see a lettuce leaf floating down the stream, down the creek. And they look at each other and they say, had I known that this would be the case, I would never have come. And they turned around and went some other place. So the taking care of each thing, that's every minute Zen, taking care of each thing of our lives, the lettuce, a lettuce leaf, a cup of water, our garbage, and the compost, and picking up our dirty socks and putting them in the hamper. Does it really matter? Are these details, does it really matter? Well, for these monks, they knew if, at that monastery, they had a sense of what was

[09:52]

going on there, if this lettuce leaf could go floating down. There's another story, which is a great rainy day story, but it's a sunny day, but I'll tell it anyway. The particular, these are all about men, these stories. A particular monk had practiced for about 10 years, had finished his apprenticeship and felt he was ready to teach, and supposedly he was because he had been with his teacher for 10 years. And he went and visited another teacher to kind of present himself, and he came, it was raining out very hard, and he came in to the kind of the doksan room, the little place where you meet the teacher one-on-one. And he came in to present himself, and the teacher said, did you put your umbrella on the right side of your sandals? And he didn't know, couldn't remember, and was speechless. Just a detail, doesn't matter where the umbrella goes, but he realized he was not, had not

[11:03]

brought Zen into every minute of his life yet, and so didn't teach then, and studied with this teacher for another six years or so. So the story goes. So I was wondering, right now, could you find your shoes on the shoe rack? Do you know where you put them? Which shoe rack, which, is it the first, second, or third shelf? And could you find them, you know, in a fire? Now, these details, as I say, have consequence, whether we know it or not, and the consequences may be unseen, you know, there may not be an instantaneous, like with where to put the teapot, you're going to burn the wood, you may not get that quick response to your inattention. But there are consequences to our actions, and I was recently, I'm working in the Zen Center fundraising department, have for the last two years, and I went to a conference for fundraisers about ethics and nonprofits to talk about ethical questions that are before the nonprofit world right now.

[12:25]

And one of the speakers talked about an experiment they did where they coached people who were going to the doctor, these were in a socioeconomic scale, these were lower socioeconomic level people who had various ailments and had to go to the doctor, and they coached them ahead of time on how to speak to the doctor, what to say, how to say it. And the people who were coached went in and were able, actually had a better prognosis when they followed them. And the people who were not coached of that same socioeconomic level, actually there were complications and various things happened. And now, what they found out was that when you're going to the doctor, usually the third thing you say is the real symptom. You might say, you know, I've been having headaches and my feet really hurt and I broke my back. So it's number three that you finally get around to really what's going on. And they also found that doctors interrupted their patients after 18 seconds.

[13:43]

So you put those two things together, just details, right, you happen to, the third thing is really what's going on, and after 18 seconds, doctor gets a little impatient, there's other people waiting, so you get interrupted. And what happens right there is that the person's ailments or sicknesses are not treated carefully, and there are, the question from the speaker was, is this an ethical issue here? There are real consequences for how these people are being taken care of. Now, the people who were coached were, you know, told how to, you know, cut to the quick and get out what you want to say and what's going on, speak clearly, and don't beat around, whatever, they were coached and they had a better outcome. So there are real consequences to our actions, even the tiniest of actions, and that we can't necessarily know the effects we're having.

[14:50]

So the way our mind works is to cut up our experience into these pieces. In fact, the name in Sanskrit for consciousness is vijnana, and the VI of that, vijnana, is like vivisection, it means to cut, we do cut things up into these pieces in order to take in information, so to speak. So there's some, although these cuttings, these twigs, contain, have vast consequences in all directions that we don't understand, and, you know, as I was writing notes on this talk, I was thinking of the consequences around details like the yellow line, you know, on Highway 1 that gets cut.

[16:02]

You know, that yellow line, and crossing the yellow line, or one drink too many, or the wrong tool, using the wrong tool, and these are life and death situations, actually. The old children's nursery, you know, nursery rhyme, for want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle was lost, the rider was lost in the battle, and the kingdom was lost, all for the want of a horseshoe nail, and that's what our life is like. And I think we're often interested in those, they're often very, we hear about these situations where it was just a hair's breadth difference, they took that plane and not another plane, and we all have stories like this about the details. And when you cut off, for horticulture purposes, that cutting will, as I said, produce the entire plant, and yet that plant will be weaker, and if you continue to cut from that plant, if it's a neat plant, often a gardener, when he was telling me,

[17:25]

they'll be kind of an aberration, like something will turn out yellow and it's usually gray-green, and then people want to reproduce that, it's so unusual, so they'll take cuttings from it, and more cuttings, and that plant, those subsequent plants will weaken, because the strongest and most vital way to bring forth a new plant is through the seeds. Wendy, are you here? No. And the seeds are like the source of the plant, going back to the source and the origins, but you can't clone necessarily, the plant won't necessarily turn out to be the exact same plant, you may get kind of an aberration, because the seeds are very mysterious, and they hearken back to time immemorial and carry within themselves all possibilities. And so you might get this odd yellow one, and if you, so if you want to plant a row, a hedge row of dark blue lavender, it's probably not a good idea to do it from a seed, because you might not get all dark blue, there might be some different colors, and you wanted it, you know, you're painting your garden, you want them dark blue.

[18:41]

So in those cases, you'd use, you'd want a cutting, so you could be sure, but what happens over time with cuttings is that you weaken the gene pool of the plant's stock, actually. So at Green Gulch, our teacher, Alan Chadwick, always said, go back to the origins, go back to the seed, and bring up from seed, which is much stronger and more vitality. And it's the same with our way of cutting, and cutting, and, you know, focusing on the details, you can fall into a kind of extreme of that, which happens, I mean, often a student of Zen will have heard this about details, you know, the shoes, you know, I place my shoes right here. And I remember where they are placed, and I do everything just so, and pay attention, and this is Zen, but what's missing from that kind of mind is an understanding of the source, and the origins, and the seed of what this is all about.

[19:58]

It's not just placing your shoes on the shoe rack is not, that's not it. It's the mind that places them that includes the source, that has in mind the source while you place them, that's the Zen mind. So often you'll see someone, I remember once when I was head, I've told this story too, but before, I was head cook at Tassajara, and we had applesauce to get out, to get cooked and ready for about 80 people. We had a big colander of apples, beautiful big colander, and I said to someone, wash these up, got to get them on the stove, you know, we're moving. And so this person was, brought them over to the spritzer sink and began, and I started doing other things, and I came back in about 15 minutes later and noticed he was still, it was a he, he was still over at the spritzer sink, picking one apple, spritz, [...] admiring red, green, placing down, picking up, spritz, spritz, spritz, spritz.

[21:11]

One at a time, this was Zen, you know, I felt he thought he was really doing Zen, consciousness of every movement, but he had forgotten kind of the whole context, applesauce, 80 people, lunch. So this is a kind of, this is a falling off into the extremes, this is not seeing the forest for the trees, right. And it's, this is a hard point, this understanding of how to work with details and paying attention, and yet keeping in mind the seeds of our life and the full expression of our life. Often also people, they'll learn the forms, you know, Shashu, how many of you have been to Zazen instruction today, where you learned about Shashu, and you'll see someone going to a party, you know, in Shashu, standing in the corner, very attentive, but rigid, you know.

[22:20]

Using these practices for, not for awakening, but for indulging one's own tendencies. So the mind of Zen, or the Zazen mind, we should say, now Zazen instruction, for example, talks about details quite a bit. You know, your hands are in Gassho, a fist with, your own fists with, away from your nose, and even with your nose, and the fingers are together, and there's no air between, it's completely pressed together, so you can feel the warmth of your hands. And, you know, your back is straight, and your eyes are cast down at 45 degree angle. Now, these are the details of Zazen instruction. These are the, the way that we enter our life, is through these details. But the details themselves are not it.

[23:23]

45 degree angles of eyes is, is, is not the point. So you, you learn all these details, and you try them, and then through these details, you express who you are, and you express your understanding, when you do anything that you do. Making a cup of tea, putting the teapot down, expresses respect for wood, and the person who made that table, and the beauty of it, and your relationship with that person, and the timing. A mind that is thinking about before and after, and is strategizing, I hope they'll think I'm a good Zen student, or I hope I'll look snazzy in, you know, the way I'm moving around, because I know how it's supposed to look, because I've got the details right.

[24:30]

That kind of mind that's strategizing and thinking about before and after, is a mind that creates more karma for oneself. The mind of what's sometimes called not doing, is a mind that, if you look at, you still have to make the cup of tea, you can't get out of that, if you want to drink tea, or in our human life, we have to do the things of the day. That's what we've got, we've got these details, this is what our mind does, it cuts, and those cuttings make the whole, but to keep in mind the source and the origins, and one's Buddha nature, that you don't have to strategize in order to get, you already are that, you just have to express it. This is what's said over and over again. So, so Zazen mind, Zazen itself is a beautiful example of the details, thoroughly doing the details, and yet dropping, dropping the, you might say attachment to them, or strategizing and using them.

[25:43]

This cutting, the way we cut, there's also a way we cut ourselves off, and sometimes use spiritual practice also to cut ourselves off from other people, and isolate ourselves from other people. And I recently read, actually it was in a December New Yorker, maybe some of you read about this also, about a woman who's autistic, who has autism, and this is a woman, her name is Temple Grandin, I think, Gradin. And she's, she has this, she's a PhD in animal science, and she teaches at Colorado State University, and she's very, as they say, high-functioning autistic person, and has written a lot, and is able to express what is different about the way she sees the world and interacts,

[26:50]

and what she perceives other people might be experiencing. And one very interesting part of the article, which I recommend reading, she talked about being, she was kind of saved when she was very young, and about three years old, by her mother and her aunt, and a teacher helped her, and she began to speak, and was able to go into regular school, be mainlined, I guess they call it, into school. And in seventh grade, she wanted to have friends, and she felt she would be a loyal and true friend, she felt she really would be, but there was something about the way she was, and her actions, and her speech, and physical movements that alienated the other kids, the other kids in school, and they didn't want to have anything to do with her. And she watched them, and she did not know what was going on between these kids.

[27:59]

Whatever was happening was so swift, and so subtle, and so ever-changing, and so fast, the communication, that she thought they were actually telepathic. She, this particular autistic person, and others as well, from my understanding, are not able to catch things like irony, and humor, and presuppositions, and allusions, and all the things that go up to making a quick conversation on the playground, or at the tea area. All this stuff that passes between us, lightning fast, in tiny, infinitesimal detail, you know, a turn of the shoulder, and a blink of the eye, or a snatch from a song out of the 60s which calls up worlds. She was not able to partake of this at all, and felt very, extremely isolated.

[29:06]

Just as I was saying that, I was, in terms of consequences of details, I was reminded of speaking with a psychotherapist who was talking about when you work with violent people, it's extremely important, your body language, actually, you stand at a 45-degree angle, you don't have your hands in your pockets. There's certain things you do that have been proven to help the situation resolve without violence. 45-degree angle leaves room for the person, they don't feel like you're confronting them, they don't feel you're turning away. It's just right, this 45 degrees. Hands in the pockets, they don't know what's going to happen. This is working with psychotic people who are violent. Little details that have enormous consequences that say so much. This person is on the outside of that, and through enormous intellectual, I don't know what to call it, her vow to be in the world, she's worked on trying.

[30:20]

She doesn't do it the same way we all do it, but she can hang in there and have conversations and all, and is getting better and better at it. But she's outside of a whole range of worlds and worlds of communication, and she has her own communication with animals. We had a workshop here last Thursday with Gary Friedman, who does mediation law workshops, and we're working on communication skills, I guess you could say, the community, the residents. And this particular exercise had to do with talking about an issue, and at the same time realizing what was going on subjectively, what you were thinking about, at the exact same time as you're talking about, you know, content, what's happening. We were thinking of it as down below, and then we would let each other know what went on in our little groups.

[31:26]

Well, as you're talking, then we put the two together and moved from one to the other, talking about content, then talking about subjectively what was happening, then content and back and forth, which is a kind of flow that partakes of kind of the source. If you just talk about content and never bring up kind of what's happening between the two people, it's hard to resolve things sometimes. And someone talked about what went on in their group. She said she had been playing, kind of teasing and playing with the other people, and someone got hurt. They didn't say they got hurt. They instead kind of said something back, and then the person who had been playing, actually roughhousing, she said she got hurt. And then she slammed her door and they slammed her door, and they were all of a sudden on opposite camps, you know. This took about 15 seconds or less, maybe, these little exchanges. And their airing it together with us allowed them to let go of it, acknowledge it, let go of it and go on and feel closer, actually.

[32:39]

So, to bring into our everyday activities this mind that pays attention to a big mind, to the wider, it's not just, and tea ceremony is all about this, we say it's just making a bowl of tea and giving it to your guests. That's what tea ceremony is. You can't say it's, what more is it than that? But when you do that with the mind that includes the person and the day and your sadness that you carry in your heart, then you can truly offer someone a bowl of tea and drink together. When I came home on Wednesday, the bansho bell, the big bell out here was ringing.

[33:55]

I came home about five or quarter to five or so, and I thought, I wonder if someone's learning to be the shotan, that's the job that is the bell ringer. It's a rotation. Maybe someone's being trained to do that, but it seems a little late to be trained. And it kept hitting and hitting. And I thought, I know what this means. Someone's died. Someone we know has died because the bell is rung 108 times when someone has died. And so I began to call different, I couldn't get anyone. I called all these different, I got machines, and nobody was home. Finally, I got someone. And I said, I hear the bell. The bell's ringing. What is it? Who is it? And the person I reached said it's Ruck Rucker.

[34:57]

He was killed instantly down at Muir Beach. And he was cutting a tree. And in hearing about the details of the story, he had finished his day's work and was done for the day. He was going to go home and look back up and saw one other branch that we really should have gotten that one. And he went back up. And the tool he used was steel, had a steel shaft. And that touched a teeny, barely see it. I didn't see it. Someone described it as a little tiny wire strung way up in the trees. That was a live wire. And he touched it with his tool, his saw, and was electrocuted instantly. And the bell was ringing. And I actually felt, hearing that bell and knowing, I felt like I was in some small village somewhere where you hear the bell ring and you know it's someone that you know.

[36:10]

And when the line was touched, or soon thereafter, all the lights went out at Green Gulch, at Muir Beach. And we were all, it wasn't, we were all in darkness or semi-darkness, twilight. And people gathered at the bell and took turns ringing the 108 times. So it reminded me of the old poem by John Donne, which many of you know, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I wanted to recite it. This poem was written centuries ago, and I realized upon looking at it that it's, you know, it doesn't wash gender-wise, but I'm not going to change it.

[37:25]

Well, believe it or not, I can't remember the first line, but I'll remember it in a minute, so it'll come. I wanted to say that if any of you would like to ring the bancho today, that's the name of the bell, as in memory of someone that's passed away, you're welcome to do so. I checked this out with the head of the meditation hall, and what you do before ringing it, and this will help you to get into the, to make a space, a kind of sacred space for yourself, to do this as a ritual. You can come over to the bell and bow, and then swing it, swing the log there that strikes the bell.

[38:35]

So any of you would like to do that up until about 5 o'clock when it begins to ring for real. I remembered the poem now, so I'm not, yeah. No man is an island entire unto himself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a cloud be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or thine own were. Every man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. Thank you very much.

[39:47]

Rick. Rick. Dolores. Oh. Did everybody hear the two names? Rick. Dolores. Bob. Bob. Priscilla. Priscilla. Claire. Claire. Joyce. Katie. Katie. Gloria. Gloria. Maren. Carolyn. Gina. Rianna. Scott. Alex. Lilith. May. Bert. I'm Bob. Trent. Catherine. May. Emmanuel. Sarah. Martha. Rhonda. Henry. Anne. Christine. Deirdre. Tara. Welcome, everybody. I've had one sort of question so far, but does anyone have any questions or anything they'd like to bring up, talk about?

[41:03]

What is the significance of 108? I've seen it for a couple of years. No one's ever really given me an explanation of the number. Yeah, 108, my understanding is it's some multiple of nine, yes? What is it? Nine times? Nine times 12. Nine times 12. It's one of those numbers that sort of reverberates. There's 108 dilutions, you know, they say there's 108 beads on the Buddhist mala. Does anybody have mala? 108. So what is the significance of it besides that it's, you know, it's one of those three times three is nine times 12. I don't know if it's, I think it's got that kind of magic, mysteriousness about it. But other than that, I don't know. I really liked your talk today. Thank you. And something that I'm working on, I might say a little bit differently, but having a very busy life, I don't know if it's different here at Green Gulch,

[42:16]

you know, to get to such a pitch in terms of how you're living your life is to compress it into the moment, moment by moment, and deal with, as you said, the details, and not be in the past or the future. And I find that it really is a lot, it's hard. Can you hear me? Should I say it again? Yeah, whatever you would like, would you like me to? I said that I don't know if it's different living here at Green Gulch, but I know in my own life, I really liked her talk because it's one of the issues that I'm working on is coming present into the moment and being with what's there and dealing with it versus like feeling kind of frantic. And since I get this done, so I can do that. And I know how important it is, but I think that finding balance in my life so that I can do that and reminding myself over and over and over. And I mean, I don't know if it's easier to live here at the monastery. Did everyone hear enough?

[43:19]

I think the question of whether it's, I think busyness crops into, you know, your life wherever you are, even the monastery or even at Tassar. I remember when I was director, I had this bag that a lot of papers and things that I ended up carrying around from place to place all over, like a purse, you know, and you wouldn't think you need a purse at Tassar, but it was just stuff and I had to talk with this person and that person. And so even though the whole setup is the whole monastic schedule is set up to help you find, you know, the present moment and mindfulness in the present moment, still this tendency of mine to go to busyness. And I think it's pervasive. So, you know, this workshop I was telling you about when we talked about what was going on right then between the people,

[44:20]

and it was so fast, you know, I often when people talk about mindfulness or paying attention right now, I always want to stop and kind of do a guided meditation. Like what is happening right now? You know, do you feel the bottoms of your legs on the chair or the cushion? Are you, what are your thoughts about the speaker? You know, I was at a talk once where the speaker said down boys, down girls, because everybody was kind of like little doggies kind of wanting information more and more. And she, the speaker was kind of in tune with it and she said back, back, you know, and everybody kind of settled down to their seat. Okay, listen, they had kind of gone outside of their, so I wonder with our projections and if we can just take a moment to just, to settle physically, you know, so much has to do with our physicality.

[45:23]

Staying in the body. In the body. So posture and all is emphasized for this very reason. I think it's an aid, you know, to bring you there. In what ways does meditation help in maintaining a perspective over many different things, see things from a broader perspective while being focused in here now? In what ways? Does Zen meditation help that? Well, I think one finds when they sit. Someone asked me earlier about big mind. Would you say a little bit more about big mind? I'm glad people are going to be ringing the bell.

[46:24]

I hadn't heard it yet and it looks like somebody's ringing the bell. Some people are going to be doing that somewhere. Are brought into relation with the way you are, you know, and not changing an iota of that by being brought into relation and having some awareness of that, well, things change, right? And your awareness is one more ingredient to the mix. So the meditation, although it feels, sometimes it feels like meditation goes on in that room over there and it's very, you know, it's this strange cross-legged thing and you sit there like this, has nothing to do with the rest of my life. One may feel that way, that it directly doesn't transfer something. And yet, by just sitting yourself down and adding that into your life,

[47:25]

actually everything begins to change. And you may not notice it at first, you know, it's kind of subtle, but you begin to have different relationships with people. You know, when did that change? When did I stop being angry at so-and-so? And you can't put your finger on it, but there's shifts that begin to change. So, it's actually extremely direct, but in a way that we're not used to, and you can't actually, you know, put your finger on it. So, did that answer your question? The question was whether, focused on maintaining right, being able to maintain things in perspective, focus on the immediate. So, if you think in a broader perspective, if you can handle those, not at the same time, but within the same day or within the same hours. There seems to be,

[48:32]

there seems to be, there can be a conflict between getting focused on the immediate things as compared with things that have to be done at a longer range. Yes. Plans over a week. Yes. Year. Yes. Well, I think there's nothing in Zen that says, don't do your conventional life and plan for the future, get an IRA. Is that what they're called? No. An IRA? Yes. Get an IRA. You know, pay your mortgage payments, buy your Christmas presents, and there's nothing that says you can't plan in that way or have that broad thing. While you're doing that Christmas present buying or talking to the banker or whatever, you are completely with that situation as to the best of your ability. And sometimes, if you're very close to it, you see all this material coming up that in some way you have to censor a little bit,

[49:40]

like, that is the ugliest tie I've ever seen. You don't say that to the person, although that's there too. So there's nothing about Zen that goes against conventional understanding of stopping at traffic lights. And all of that can be... Oh, I still feel like I haven't answered the question. But anyway, all of that can be expressed... That's the only way you can express it. So you're saying that planning can be done with a presence. Exactly. And in fact, planning that's done that way is probably more careful and better for all those involved if it's done with that kind of mind, rather than a kind of panicky fear strategizing, but just completely looking at the information that you've gotten, figuring it out with calm. Anyway, it's a... This question about big mind, someone just said,

[50:44]

would you say a little bit more about big mind? And this is a coined... This phrase, big mind, is coined by Suzuki Roshi, and he talks about small mind and big mind. And I use it with all due respect. There was a quote from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher, that said, that someone had on their refrigerator, which said, to hold the sadness and love, your sadness and love in your heart, and at the same time, the power and the vision of the eastern sun, or big mind, you might say, only if you hold those two together can the warrior make a proper cup of tea. So big mind is, which I was trying to get at is, when you're doing your everyday activities,

[51:46]

to know that this cup is the entire world, always. Even though... And I could intellectually kind of analyze, I think I did this the last time I did a talk, why this cup is the entire world right now, not just an idea that it's the entire world, but actually is the entire world. And I can try it again. This glass, what is glass made out of? Sand, right? What else goes into glass? Sand and heat and all... What, what? Different chemicals and things. So all of that went into making this. And the sand was made by, what's the sand made by? The rocks that have gotten crunched and crumbled over millennia,

[52:52]

over millions, thousands of millions, hundreds of thousands of millions of years. And those, and the reason the waves are able to do that is because the temperature is such that we even have water here on our planet. And the atmosphere and the sun and... And pretty soon you've got the entire cosmos right here. You know, take one of those things away and the whole thing disappears. You know, it's all here. And then inside you have this tea, which is some herbal blend of interesting plants and things. And somebody picked that tea, right, some person somewhere, and dried it and the sun dried it and it was brought to market and someone bought it in bulk and then packaged it probably in a celestial seasons box that someone designed with really neat, you know, graphics. And whoever picked that tea's mother bore this person and her mother before her.

[53:57]

And it's like, it's just, everything is all there. And me too, all of us too. So that's emptiness, actually, that's a kind of description of emptiness where everything is totally and forevermore completely interconnected. And us too. And this tendency to cut off, you know, I'm over here, you're over there, this is a glass and it sort of exists by itself and it's got its own glassness. You know, it's a Marley mug and it's unbreakable, and practically we have this feeling that it exists all by itself, kind of somewhere from Marley mug side, that the Marley mug is its own little mug. But the Marley mug doesn't exist without, first of all, my seeing it, which is a visible and lifting it, making it a tangible, and then I get to taste the tea and it's a tasteable and it's a smellable. So it's got all these things that completely include me

[55:00]

or it wouldn't be a Marley mug filled with tea. So that's emptiness. That's what emptiness, some description of emptiness. So we can intellectually kind of get it, you know, you kind of feel it. And if you think if you had that in mind all the time, with whatever you're doing, whoever you're with, that there's a whole entire cosmos, this person in there, even though they look like a sort of limited person just sort of across from you at the baker's counter, they are the entire universe. And so that's a kind of big mind feeling, you know, to hold that and keep that in mind, bring that into your everyday activities. And then when you do things, then when you have the eastern sun and the sadness of our, don't forget all the suffering of the world,

[56:01]

and you bring that and you hold that, we have the capacity to hold all that. And with that mind, then you make your tea and you pour it and you offer it to somebody. I recently read this quote from Vaclav Havel. I don't know, maybe some of you saw it, it was in the paper or something, about making a cup of tea, maybe any of you seen this? It's an excerpt from a letter to his wife when he was in prison. You know, he was in prison for how many years? Years and years in Czechoslovakia. And the making of tea for him and for all the, there was like a cult around tea making in prison. It was the whole symbol of freedom. You got to, first of all, you got to make it yourself and you could make it any strength you wanted to, you know, it's up to you. And you could linger over it and it was, you could, he tried not to make it too often because that would take away from it,

[57:04]

it would get too, so he would, too routine. So there was only certain times of the day when he would make his tea. And this was, all freedom was in this preparation and steeping and drinking the tea within prison, which I was going to tell that in lecture, but I didn't get to it. But to me, that's, that kind of mind that knows what it is. And we make tea like, you know, throw on the, you know, throw and dunk it in. Many times during the day, right? But to actually know what tea drinking, tea making is and to enjoy it with sadness in your heart, you know, to, not to forget that bell that's going to go off all day long. So that's some way of kind of walking around big mind. Because big mind is actually inconceivable and unnameable, you know,

[58:05]

and you can't, it diminishes it to try and put it in words, but we can kind of walk around it, you know, and kind of get, get a kind of whiff, kind of a fragrance of it, what it might be like and move in that direction. Well, emptiness, the English of emptiness, the translation in English is of the word shunyata and shunyata is Sanskrit. And it means like swelled up, like a, something that's swelled up, but there's nothing inside of it. So you have these objects that kind of come to us in form, you know, form is emptiness in the heart sutra we say form is emptiness and emptiness is form. The way we experience emptiness is through these forms.

[59:09]

There's not some emptiness over there that's like blank or something. Form is emptiness. So, so you can pick this up and talk about emptiness and yet, but you drink that, it holds tea and you know, it'll keep it kind of hot and you can actually do things, you know, conventionally. But at the same time, it's empty of inherent existence is why we say it's, it doesn't have, it doesn't exist by itself. So, so these, they, they're doing this all the time. And form is also form and emptiness is emptiness, which is what the sutra says, the heart sutra is what I'm quoting from. So this, this feeling of it kind of being blown up as something, and yet it being empty inside, I mean, nothing there, but, and yet it appears in the world and yet you can't get ahold of it.

[60:12]

That's this thing of grasping that grasping things is basically delusion. Why? Because you can't get ahold of it. You can think you get ahold of the cup, but you actually picked up the entire cosmos. You know, so you can call it a cup, but that's what we do because we have to, we name these things because if you're ordering them, if you need a couple dozen of them, you've got to call them something, right? So they're called Marley Bugs. So that's how we get along. But, but if you keep in mind the sadness and the vision and power of the eastern sun while you're making your tea, then you're, you can walk closely around and around what the practice is. Oh. Yes. When you say sadness, what do you mean by that? Sadness? Well, I think one of the things we try to do, all of us, is get away from pain

[61:32]

and the bad things in our life or the suffering and go towards the pleasure and the good stuff. And, you know, kind of avoid one and go after the other. And that activity of avoiding pain leads actually to more pain. It's like going south when you want to go north. It's like the opposite of what you want to do. So we all, one of the Four Noble Truths is that life is suffering. Actually, it's clinging, the actual translation is clinging to the five skandhas is suffering. Clinging to this idea that you are a separate entity, cut off from everybody else and everything else. That belief in clinging is suffering, is in and of itself suffering. So to bring, and all of our, so much of society is bent on getting people to not, to choose something that will take away their suffering,

[62:37]

be it Motrin, Motrin, can you buy Motrin over the counter? Anvil, you know, rum and all sorts of things that will take the edge off, you know. Good food, drink Coca-Cola and all, we're just inundated with that ad nauseam all the time. As if that's going to help, you know. And we all get bamboozled into thinking that certain products are going to help, or if I only had a relationship, or all the things that we throw out. This goes back to what Don was saying, about the future and casting, if I get that, if only, if only I had that then. So if you actually are present with what's going on,

[63:39]

you find that there's an enormous amount of sadness right now over, you know, people say, oh, come on, I'm not so sad, you know, I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky person, but it doesn't take much, really, if you're true to yourself, if you're true to form, you know, to see where it is, even if it's, you know, I wish I hadn't said that to that person, you know, that day. Or there's some sadness that we carry, and some feeling of separation, and there's a lot of pain and sadness around that. So if you hold that, if you are true to that, and don't try to push it away, and don't try to avoid it and run away from it, then you're actually, it's like, it's like a balm of Gilead, what's the balm of Gilead that just sort of arose from the Bible, isn't it?

[64:42]

The balm of Gilead, B-A-L-M, you know, it's like some soothing, even though there's pain there, it actually takes care of it, to stay with it and not try to get away from it. So that's why I say it, you know, and like those bells that are going off, to feel that as someone's loss and one's own loss, you know, and like this accident that happened, someone who was almost hysterical about it, not hysterical, but in deep, sobbing grief, because it reminded her of an accident that a friend of hers had had when he was 15, and he was electrocuted while fixing his boat, you know, at the lake, and it brought it all up, you know, it's just, and everyone has their own story, and Thomas Merton, and it's all there, you know, in each thing.

[65:45]

So there is the sadness that's there, and if you bring it close, that's closer to, you know, it's like, then you can make a proper cup of tea, then you are really with who you are. And if you kid yourself about it, you will not, it's very hard to meet people, because you're keeping them and it, whatever's going on at bay all the time, and so you can't really meet, not only can you not really meet your teacup, but you can't meet, you know, your best friend even. So the thing about suffering and pleasure, or they kind of come up together, and there's suffering within pleasure, and there's pleasure within suffering.

[66:52]

Pleasure, not masochistically, but there's a comfort, you know, about just being with it. There's a workshop actually going on this weekend called Suffering and Delight, and it deals with this. One of the workshop leaders had rheumatoid arthritis, still has it, and at one point she was completely, just about completely paralyzed and in pain all throughout her body. She couldn't dress herself, she couldn't do anything, a young person, in her 30s, and she was given the instruction to find one place in your body that isn't in pain. Can you find one place? And she was able to find this one spot where her breath was kind of going up and down, and what she couldn't breathe from down here was here,

[67:54]

and she found it and she stayed there, you know, and it was like a... well, it basically turned her entire life around. She found the one spot that didn't hurt in this ocean of pain, and it was within the pain, though, it wasn't... it was in the ocean, was this one spot. So it's the same with pleasure, you know, within this pleasure there's often something that's very painful going on too, and if you find that you understand more deeply what's going on. Shhh. Shhh. You must be talking a lot. My mouth is dry. I was just thinking about what you said, that pleasure,

[69:01]

pleasure, that's all. Exactly. Exactly. It's like you've got your beautiful chocolate sundae, and you know it's going to melt, and I never understood that you can have your cake, you can't have your cake and eat it too. I said, yes you can, you have it and you eat it. And I finally got, oh, this is a very Buddhist thing. You can't have your cake and eat it too. It's like in the pleasure of it there's this pain of the fact that you're not going to have any cake anymore. And that's why it's so precious. That's why that beautiful Linzer torte, you know, it's just, ooh, every mouthful. Because if you had Linzer tortes that lasted forever, so what? So you maintain you can have your cake and eat it too. Well, that's what I thought. First you have it and then you eat it. First you have it, then you eat it. But then you don't have it anymore. But then you don't have it anymore. But that's why flowers and that's why life is so, that's the beauty of it, you know,

[70:10]

that it's constantly changing and fleeting, you know, and going through our fingers. I found, I realized in my gardening habits that I would read up about various flowers and plants and if they had a short blooming season, particularly beautiful, like just really spectacular flowers, but they had a short blooming season, I wouldn't plant them because I'd be too sad. And I just thought that's so stupid and backwards, you know, now I'm kind of loosening up about that. Yeah. Supposedly all Japanese poetry, and this is, I just heard this from another poet, is about this, this passing away always. Now, that's a pretty big thing to say, all Japanese poetry, but that's what they said. Yes?

[71:13]

I'm really stuck on the thing about form and emptiness. It's like my concept that I've developed up until now has been shattered. And now I don't know what to think about it, so it's like I've just gotten scratch. What was your concept? The concept was, and I think it was a concrete concept that form is defined by emptiness. It's the contrast, it's the opposites, kind of the concept of the opposites, that form, I understand the form because of the emptiness in a way that surrounds it. It's almost like a visual kind of an image that I have. And it's been really helpful because I could experience the emptiness of my mind as a contrast to the thoughts that would keep occurring. So in that way I would be able to enter into emptiness, and then again the forms, each of the pain and the whatever, the thinking,

[72:18]

and then I would go back in and out like that. And now I think that you're saying something very, very different. It's like multiple people have told me it. Maybe I've been thinking about it more like this or that. Do you know what I'm saying? And I don't think that's what you were talking about at all. You know, I was told an instruction once to look at the spaces between the leaves rather than the leaves themselves, like when you're looking at a tree, which reminds me of what you're saying. And of course each leaf is defined by the space between the leaves. That space. So I actually don't want you to throw it away totally. I can resonate with that space.

[73:18]

Yes. But the emptiness, the knowledge of what I was talking about, what I just described very analytically actually, a kind of analyzation of a form, we talk about the wisdom which has gone beyond, Prajnaparamita wisdom and the Heart Sutra or the Prajnaparamita literature, it's all about emptiness. These big, thick books, you know, it's all about emptiness. So the teaching of emptiness is to help you liberate yourself. That's why it's taught. So the Sutra starts out with Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, was practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita, the wisdom which has gone beyond,

[74:23]

and perceived that all five skandhas, which are these five heaps or aggregates that make up what we understand to be our body-mind, psychophysical vent. So Avalokiteshvara was practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita and perceived that all five skandhas were empty in their own being and were saved from all suffering and distress. That's the opening lines. So the teaching of emptiness is for liberation. It's to liberate you from basically self-clinging, clinging to these five skandhas. And the first of the five skandhas, which is why they say form all the time, is form. And under form there's various things. There's eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind sometimes comes in there in a certain way.

[75:28]

But anyway, of your body, that's just the form. The seeables, the knowables, the touchables, the smell. Not the knowables. The seeables, touchables, tasteables, hearables, feelables. And we cling to that with such strength. And that clinging with, you know, to sort of pry up the little fingers, that clinging is our suffering, that clinging itself. So to say form is no different from emptiness, this is, you know, to understand that thoroughly within your meditation, that your five skandhas are empty of om being, that they're not separated, that there is liberating. And so what you were just describing,

[76:29]

when I say I don't want you to give it up necessarily, is because it feels like there's some, and maybe you can say something else that will change my mind, but anyway, some sense of prying up the little fingers that are grasping around what you usually understand as who you are, that it kind of, it's like the knot becomes a little looser, you can see how it's tied, you know, it's loose, you could actually maybe start to undo it, you know. Do you think that's true? I think the clinging is lessened with that, yeah. Anyway, maybe just add in this, like, salt to the brew and see how it tastes, you know. Tastes better. Thank you. Linda, I was really taken with the applesauce story

[77:35]

because it's a real problem in my own life and in a lot of people's lives. I know this because I'm working right now, going in and organizing people, and the first thing I noticed when I started doing it was how totally disorganized I felt. So it's like the shoemaker whose child goes barefoot. And, you know, the thing about keeping in mind that, you know, 80 people and applesauce, in light of this beautiful apple and considering the red and the green and making sure each part of it is clean, is really the problem in some way. Because it reminds me of the Catholic idea of free will. We choose what, in some way, there's a choice of what's going to be the most important thing. Is it the 90 people and the applesauce, or is it my experience of this apple,

[78:38]

or is it sitting with my child, or is it answering the phone, or is it responding to these outer requests, or is it getting some exercise? And these choices don't seem to fall. It's often hard to have one kind of clear principle or one clear thing that you're living by. There's a person named Stephen Covey who is writing books now. He sort of comes out of a corporate world about time management. He wrote a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and he has a new book out called First Things First. And it's really about trying to not live in responding to all these urgent things, but live out of responding to what's important. He makes the distinction between urgent and important.

[79:40]

And I'm sort of going for a question, but I wanted to just say that there is a real tension between trying to see what it is that's important, and the eight people waiting for their applesauce, and respond to millions and millions of urgent, and I have to stop and get gas, and I have to go to the ATM, and I've got to pick up so-and-so at school, and I need to get the laundry. And meanwhile, you never do get the exercise, or you never do really have the conversation, or make the plan for your career change. Every day is about stopping at the ATM and getting the payment. This is familiar, right? And taking time to sit on the cushion when it gets chill. It's a real difficult question to choose what the relationship between details.

[80:49]

And maybe that's not, those aren't the details. Maybe that's not, I don't know, I have a lot of confusion. Yes, I think when you said there's no principle, there's no formulaic way to do it. And another story, which is kind of the opposite, which is a Zen story, which you probably all heard because it's a real classic, is the monk was asked to sweep the garden path, and he swept, and he swept, and he was getting, you know, get it all clean, get it, and then the teacher said, I thought I told you to sweep the garden path, and the teacher came and shook the trees, and all the fall leaves came down and decorated the whole place. So the, you know, some other story would have been right to spritz spritz, you know. It's like each story has its own beginning, middle, and end, or past, present, and future

[81:57]

that's completely unique, a unique breeze of reality, right? And so you can't apply any formula, like always wash apples fast, you know. Each situation, so how do you, that's your question, you know. Oh, is it your question? I think it is. How do you, each moment, how do you know what to do? Yes? Yeah. Now we're reading, to my daughter, we're reading Gone With the Wind out loud, and it reads very well out loud, although the last time I read it, I didn't realize all the racism, it has racism just completely laced within it, but we're kind of using that to talk about. But anyway, Scarlett, you know, she had the smallest waist in seven counties, 17.

[82:57]

And she wore, how many of you have seen the movie Gone With the Wind, right? You know, she got corseted in, and Mammy pulled and pulled until this, well, in the book, many different times, this is the first part of the book, she's, she talks about she can't breathe, she can't breathe, her stays are so tight, if I could, if only my stays were loose, she's going to faint, you know. Atlanta is burning, and she's got this corset on, and trying to save Melanie and the baby, and get out, and she cannot breathe. She travels in this wagon with the newborn and Melanie, who's practically died in childbirth, and with this corset, dies as it reaches Tara, her home, you know, and she gets home and her mother has died, and she often, now I never noticed this before, but she wishes she could take a breath to fill herself. Finally, Mammy and another one of the slaves, she finally gets into bed,

[84:06]

and they undo her stays, and take off her stockings, and she's lying in her nightie, and she's just breathing, and it's, oh, I could not believe that she went through that without being able to take a deep breath. Can you imagine, no wonder these women fainted, and they did all the time, they couldn't breathe, and things, emotional things would happen, and they would just keel over. Well, it's like that. Actually, you need to be able to breathe, you know, you have to be able to breathe, and you, and you, it may help you find out what is the next thing to do, you know. So, you know, make sure that you don't wear tight belts. Really, I think one of the worst things, now, you know, the fashion nowadays is these very baggy pants, like in junior high school, they're so baggy, they're so baggy. How baggy are they? They're so baggy. Have you seen these pants, they're really wide, and they wear them, the boys wear them really low,

[85:11]

and they had P.E., co-ed, so they had to run the mile, and all the boys, my daughter told me, they run, they have to run like this, holding their pants up, literally. I said, I, you mean they can't run like this? No, they have to hold up their pants, or they'll run them right off. I actually, I thought, actually, it's all right, because they can at least breathe. I thought it's a pretty good style, it's just completely loose, and your tummy has full room, so they're probably much happier, you know, than we all were, I mean, we were into tight jeans, raked, taped, and pegged, that's what I used to tell the tailor, to buy jeans, and then they'd be sort of made into this. Anyway, so breathing, posture, breath, all these, those details, you know, are very, very informative and helpful in finding your way, you know,

[86:12]

to have your spine upright, not just in Zazen, but while you're driving, and, you know, in school, or wherever, to just, whenever I say this, everybody starts to move their posture around. Anyway, you can stay any way you want, but it is, to have yourself upright, first of all, it's very noble, you always feel very noble, not, I don't mean that derogatory, I mean like you are of noble birth, which you are, you feel that when you're upright, and you can actually respond to the world more truly when you're true, when you're true in carpentry, to say a beam is true, it means it's in alignment, you know, so when you're true to form, you can respond in a way that's different, you know, so those things are very helpful, but nobody can tell you, it's got to, this way is going to be better,

[87:19]

and all the causes and conditions are there to, you know, to choose the right tool, you know, as I said. It's interesting how being upright, my wife and I had an argument last night. Yeah. Through coming here and doing yoga, I've been gradually being more upright, I was just sitting upright looking at her, she seemed very scary. Scary? Could you speak louder, please? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just saying I had an argument last night with my wife, and I was just sitting upright listening, being as present as I could, and her response to me was to say that I looked very scary. Yeah, I've heard that about some people. It's somehow, it may not be the social convention either, you know, so you look, you might look unusual, so then maybe you need to slouch a little bit in certain circumstances for the benefit of all beings, you know.

[88:25]

I had someone meet, a Zen friend of mine, my father met him and said, he looks crazy, but he was just very present and very intense, and my dad was not used to people like that, like, you know, you don't meet eyes too often, so you have to, that's part of taking care of your details, you know. If people are being scared, then, you know, maybe you do something a little different, lower your eyes, 45 degree angle. I was thinking about what she said, because I think you were able to say what I was trying to say earlier, and I have a quote in my bathroom from Thomas Merton, talking about how just that, like being so busy in his culture, so busy, he calls it the most common form of violence,

[89:30]

which I've never heard it in that context before, and then talks about doing peace work and how, like, the kind of activity of the peace worker and the franticness that one can get into really undermines the work for peace. It does really seem like it's a major problem. There's so much to do in our culture. It's burnout. You know, you have people who have a cause, and yet, before they can enact, they, you know, the people in the peace movement are very prone to burnout. Maybe some of you know this, and ecology movement also. And so there's these, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh does these workshops, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen master, and people are taught how to come back to their breath and revive, rejuvenate themselves with their own breath, you know, within their work, which is never-ending.

[90:31]

But your breath, which you have with you and will have until your dying day, right, is for you. That's why I'm serious about not wearing tight clothes. This is for you to be, this is to help you be liberated, you know, to be able to breathe and go back to your breath and find it. To be able to breathe deeply is a gift, is the highest gift, you know, we have that's our birthright. There was a question right there. Oh, no, darling, I just wanted to, it's about sitting up straight, and I just wanted to share the advice of a friend who, sometimes when people don't do certain things, come up with strong insights on those things, and she doesn't sleep, she's rather mad at all the things she does, she's in shock,

[91:39]

she's very clever and so on and so forth, she always looks a little bit like something's going to whack her, but, you know, I happen to go and sit, because we have somebody who kindly has a place to sit on her knees, and the only reason, I thought, shall I not do it, because she's there to sit down and practice, and obviously I can't go, but then I just played where I was before, and she just said, it's very simple, she said, I don't know why, she said, I think if I could sit up straight, my back would turn around, my leg would turn around, I think if I could sit up straight, and I was very struck, because, I was very struck, the way she said it, it was such a massage, it brought it back to you, but the mind has been sitting on and off for a long time, and it suddenly brought it back in this extraordinarily clear light. Yes, yes.

[92:39]

Being able to sit upright, and you could say that's a metaphor for living your life truly, and in Zazen instruction, you know, you say, neither lean to the left, nor the right, nor forward, nor backward, you know, you find that center, and it's the same with what life will bring you, you know, life pushes you over there, and you come back, I mean, it pushes you over there, and to be able to find your uprightness within suffering, you know, and sadness, within pleasure, because, you know, you can get taken way, way off and away, so to find this uprightness within whatever life is going to bring you, pleasure or pain, and to find your composure in uprightness,

[93:45]

this is your other gift, I mean, you've got a million of them, but this is another gift that's your birthright, even people who have problems where they can't sit upright, even the, there are people who cannot sit upright because of physicality, problems physically, but there are those who could, but the pain, you know, actually, you see in Zazen, when you see people's backs, you know,

[94:20]

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