Well, yesterday I was very honored to be asked to give the commencement address at San Domenico High School up in San Rafael, so I went yesterday and did that. It was a wonderful experience. I don't know if you know this high school, it's a girls' high school, and they had a graduating class of 38. So I gave a little speech, and I hope it wasn't too long, and I wanted to congratulate the girls on their graduation. And my main message to them was, with all these exciting changes and responsibilities

[01:04]

and all that you want to do and need to do for the world, don't forget your heart. Don't forget your deepest questions. So I stopped in the middle of my speech, and I said, why don't you take three breaths and just experience this moment? So everybody stopped and took three breaths, and there they were, all 38 of these young women. And they have a—last year I went to the graduation at Tam High School. It's quite a different affair. In this graduation, all 38 of the young women wore white dresses, and they each had a bouquet

[02:07]

of flowers. And it was a beautiful day. The campus is gorgeous there. It's at the end of a canyon, so there's no houses or anything around. The sun was shining, it was quite lovely. So I said, please don't forget to take the time in your lives to ask yourself the heart-stabbing, unanswerable questions. Don't forget about that. So one of my sons went with me to the graduation exercises. He had a friend who was graduating. And afterward, he said, you know, I think the thing about Zen is that modern people can really understand the message, he said.

[03:07]

It really seems to speak to how people actually are in these days. He said, it's not that the Zen message or teaching is any better or even any different from any other spiritual path, but it just seems to have a good way of expressing itself so that people can understand. And I thought that this was a very astute comment on the part of my son. So I want to read you a little tiny passage from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Suzuki Roshi. He says, I think some of you who practice Zazen here may believe in some other religion, but I do not mind. Our practice has nothing to do with some particular religious belief.

[04:14]

And for you, there is no need to hesitate to practice our way, because it has nothing to do with Christianity or Shintoism or Hinduism. Our practice is for everyone. Usually, when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. But our way is not like this. In our way, the point of the sharp angle is always towards ourself, not away from ourself. So there is no need to worry about the difference between Buddhism and the religion you may believe in. So, I think this is a beautiful saying of Suzuki Roshi. To practice Zen, it doesn't really matter what your religion is or what your belief

[05:21]

is. In Zen practice, as Suzuki Roshi says, the angle points directly at you, directly at us, directly at our own nature, directly at the fundamental root of our existence. It doesn't matter what you call it. The important thing is, do you see it? Do you appreciate it? And most importantly of all, do you live it? So, we do Zazen. We take three breaths, or three thousand breaths, right in the middle of this moment. We just let go of everything and see, what is it?

[06:27]

Here, at Green Gulch, we are right at the end of a seven-week retreat, a seven-week practice period. We'll have an important ceremony tomorrow night and then a closing ceremony Tuesday morning. And this last week, we were in session five days, from early morning till late evening, just doing meditation practice. And it was a wonderful, very low-key, peaceful time, just to sit and be present with our body and our breath and our mind. And, as the mind becomes more and more quiet in Zazen, it becomes possible to just let

[07:43]

go of the person we think we are, and to release ourselves into the bigger person. That comes and goes, inside us and outside us, moment after moment, the person that's right now, coming and going, inside and outside your face. This bigger person can't accomplish anything. She can't win or lose anything. We can't hold on to this person, and we can't escape from this person. We can only appreciate her in the stillness of our breathing, in the stillness of our

[08:55]

singing, in the singing of the birds, in the taste of our rice and tea. We have a ceremony that happens once in a while during the practice period called Shosan Ceremony. It's a very beautiful ceremony, I think. In this ceremony, each student comes forward in a formal way and asks a question, and the teacher has to give an answer right away to this question, without thinking about it. Just respond to the deep questions that the students bring up from their hearts.

[09:56]

This is a very, like I say, a wonderful thing to do together, and we had a couple of ceremonies like this during the practice period that were really nice, I thought. Someday, when you come for practice period, you'll experience this. Anyway, this is a really old ceremony. I think from the earliest days of Chan in China, they had this ceremony. And it seems very likely that a lot of the dialogues that you read about from the ancients collected from the 9th and 10th and 11th century in China, these dialogues probably came from Shosan Ceremonies. There's one famous dialogue that involves Master Dongshan.

[11:06]

A student came forward and asked Master Dongshan, what is Buddha? Master Dongshan said right away, three pounds of flax. This is a very famous answer to the question, what is Buddha? A question you could imagine that was asked many, many times, and there are many famous answers, but this is one of the most famous of all. What is Buddha? Three pounds of flax. As a person who sits in the teacher's seat sometimes doing Shosan Ceremonies and has to answer all these questions, sometimes 40 or 50 of them in a row, one after the other, I can really appreciate this marvelous answer of Master Dongshan.

[12:13]

Maybe it sounds like a silly answer, or a kind of non-sequitur, or maybe slightly reproachful. Some commentators think that maybe at the time he said this, it wasn't a ceremony like that. He was actually somewhere looking at three pounds of flax, or maybe he was in the storeroom weighing out flax. They think that. Maybe he was doing that at the time. And then they interpret the answer to me, now I'm weighing out three pounds of flax, what is Buddha, it's whatever you're doing, which is reasonable, I suppose, to think that. But I don't think so myself. I don't think that's how it was. I think just when someone came forward and asked the question, what is Buddha, Master Dongshan really thought, three pounds of flax, and said so without holding back.

[13:22]

That's what I think. Do you want to know what Buddha is? It's not something out there. It's not something in here. It's not some kind of faith, or some kind of special instructions, or a particular way of doing something. It's exactly three pounds of flax, that's what it is. It's not always three pounds of flax, but right now, that's what it is. Three pounds of flax. I am sure that if we were there when Master Dongshan said this, the way he said it, it would have been crystal clear to us that Master Dongshan was not joking, he wasn't

[14:41]

being cute, he wasn't being mean, he wasn't being obtuse. He was being absolutely honest, and accurate, and straightforward. Just three pounds of flax. And for over a thousand years, students of the way have been working on this three pounds of flax, trying to bring it alive. In their lives. Beyond doctrine, beyond concepts, beyond instrumentality, beyond identity. So I think that this is the way our practice

[15:49]

goes. It's not a doctrine, or a belief, or a particular way of looking at the world, or seeing things. It's a way of living, that is so radically simple that really no one could disagree with it, and there is nothing in this wide world in conflict with it. As an organized religion, I think Buddhism has been on the whole pretty tolerant of other traditions and other ways because of this. And down to the present day, our interest is not in protecting the truth of Buddhism, or the institution of Buddhism, but rather

[16:51]

in helping anyone who is sincerely interested in looking, to actually look into themselves and find their particular exact truth beyond concepts and identity. We do have a very old and a very particular, and I believe, very effective method of doing this, but this method doesn't depend on any special belief other than a belief in oneself and in the possibility that the method will help. Here at Green Gulch we have students from all sorts of religious traditions, students who think of themselves in one way or another as Buddhist students, but people who are Catholics

[17:52]

or Jews or atheists or Hindus or Muslims, or just think that they're scientifically minded. At the graduation exercises yesterday, Sister Gervaise, who's the head of the school at San Domenico, and I were recalling a mutual friend who is a member of the Order of the Sacred Heart, and she lived with us here at Green Gulch for a year practicing with us. I always find it so impressive how deep our language is in us. We all have, each one of us has, an identity

[19:01]

to which we very strongly adhere, and we can become quite happy or quite miserable, depending on how well we or others treat this identity. If someone praises us and thinks we're great, then we can become happy, but if someone criticizes us and doesn't like us, immediately we can become miserable. I find this a curious and marvelous fact, don't you think? It's amazing. It's also very consequential in our lives. It always reminds me of, I forget the character's name, but there's a character in the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and this character

[20:03]

sees everything in terms of whether it will be a feather in his cap, if it's something good it will be a feather in his cap, or not, if it's something bad it will be a black eye. So everything is either a feather in his cap or a black eye. And throughout the novel he's always worried about getting a black eye, and he's always trying to manipulate events so that he will get as many feathers in his cap as he can. And this, of course, sounds like a wild comic exaggeration, but like everything else in Catch-22 it's not an exaggeration at all, it's a fairly straightforward description of what really goes on in our life. So we're like this, you know, we want to get feathers in our caps and we want to avoid black eyes. But if you think about what our identity actually amounts to, it doesn't

[21:09]

really amount to all that much. It's more or less just the way that we conceptualize this nameless, constantly changing event that we think of as ourself. It's just really the way we speak about ourself to ourself or to anyone else. We like to think of ourself as being a good person, and if someone says or even seems to be implying that we're not, we're angry and hurt. We like to think of ourself as a worthwhile people. If someone suggests that we're not, of consequence we get extremely upset. And yet, no matter what we think or what anyone else thinks, we are still whatever we think

[22:23]

we are or are not, and nothing that anyone thinks or says changes this. And yet, we all know the tremendous hurt and pain we feel, and we all know the tremendous violence and hatred and warfare that goes on in this world, which results from this clash of identities very often. In one of the session talks, I told the story that attention often tells of Hakuin, a Zen

[23:27]

master from Japan in the 17th century, who was a village priest. And a young woman in the village became pregnant, and her parents said, who is responsible for this? And she said, it was that nasty old priest Hakuin. So when the baby was born, the parents marched right up to the temple, wrapped on the door and said, look, shame on you, here's what you've done, and handed Hakuin the baby. And Hakuin said, oh, is that so? And took the baby, and took care of the baby. And after a while, the young woman felt badly about this and said to her parents, it wasn't really him, I feel ashamed.

[24:28]

And so the parents, feeling very embarrassed, went back up to the temple, and wrapped on the door, probably a little less vehemently this time. And Hakuin came to the door with the baby, and the parents said, oh, so sorry, so sorry, how could we have been so foolish to believe, and please, we'll take the child back. Hakuin said, oh, is that so? And this is a famous story for us, because this is a story that Tenshin, our former abbot, heard or read many years ago, and caused him to begin practicing Zen. So Zen practice is not concerned with giving us a new and improved identity.

[25:33]

Now we're Zen. See? Rather, it's concerned with freeing us from identity, or freeing us within identity. This is, I think, what Suzuki Roshi means when he says, the sharp angle points at us, piercing right to our heart through identity. So a religion, or even a profession, or a relation, may be an identity, a way of thinking of ourselves, a belief system to identify with. But the sharp angle of our practice goes right through this,

[26:40]

right through our identity as men or women, black person or white person, rich person or poor person. Of course, we still have our various identities. We couldn't do without them. You know you can't buy a newspaper without at least some identity. But we can be free within identity, and this is the point of our practice. Somewhere in his writings Thich Nhat Hanh says that the point of Buddhism in the West may not be at all to get a lot of people to be identified as Buddhists and have, you know, swelling membership and so on. That may not be what it's all about.

[27:42]

The point might just be for Buddhism to act as a kind of catalyst, to bring out more strongly the powerful points in the traditions that already have been here for thousands of years. If you study culture, you find that no culture is ever an island. Even island cultures aren't islands. They encounter other peoples, and as a result of those encounters, cultures change. It's not necessarily that they borrow from the other peoples and become more like them, but it may be that the encounter causes a culture to be more like itself, to find aspects of itself that have been under-emphasized

[28:49]

or under-appreciated. So I think that perhaps in some ways something like this may be happening with the encounter between Buddhism and Western culture, particularly Judeo-Christian culture. I think Buddhism is changing as it encounters this culture, and I think Judeo-Christianity and our scientific culture also is changing as a result of its encounter with Buddhism. I enjoy very much studying almost anything, reading about science or reading about Judaism and Christianity, and I find great profound sayings everywhere. I think that in the case of Judeo-Christianity,

[29:54]

it's possible that the language of these great traditions has become encrusted over the many, many generations with outworn concepts, and that this language may need to be reworked and re-understood, and maybe the encounter with Buddhism will be beneficial and creative. I myself was raised in a fairly observant Jewish home. Back East, even though we never thought of ourselves as being so religious, when I meet other people with that background, especially who were raised in California, it seems like my background was incredibly traditional and religious. And I never renounced this or gave it up.

[31:01]

It just turned out that I kept spending more and more time studying Zen because Zazen practice really spoke to the concerns that I had. And throughout all my time of studying Zen, I always hoped that somehow, someway, there would be a way for me to give back to my root tradition what I had gained from studying Zen. So if I could get a little personal here, I'll tell you a little story about myself. About 25 years ago, I was a graduate student in the Midwest, and I made a good friend who's been my best friend ever since. And we moved to California at the same time, 25 years ago, and we began studying Zen together. And in 1976, we put all our belongings in a car

[32:06]

and went off to Tassajara Monastery, where we enrolled as monastic students. Eventually, through a series of quite extraordinary coincidences, which I won't go into because it takes too long, my friend left the monastery and eventually went to rabbinical school and became a rabbi. So I would go to New York sometimes to the seminary, and I would visit him. And I would go to classes at the seminary and go to the prayer services, and it was a wonderful re-entry for me into this tradition that I had grown up in. And my friend, whose name is Rabbi Alan Lu, said, You know, now that I've studied Zen all this time, I really can really pray now.

[33:07]

Before that, it didn't make any sense to me, but now I really can get into it. And I really understood what he meant, because I would be at the seminary myself, and I would be praying like anything. And I could pray with as much moxie as any of those rabbinical students. Even more than some of them, I'll tell you the truth. And I thought it was a great thing. So my friend is in New York for many years. He was a rabbinical student, which takes a long time. It's a very rigorous course of study. And then after that, he became a rabbi of a congregation in New York. In the meantime, I was here in San Francisco in the Bay Area, and I would always drive by this synagogue on 14th Avenue in Clement Street in the city. It would be on the route that I would take to go to Zen Center at Page and Laguna,

[34:11]

which I, over the years, have gone to many, many times for meetings and so on. And I would see this synagogue, and I would think, there's something about that synagogue. But I never went in, you know. Then, when my mother passed away, I thought, well, I'll go and say Kaddish, a prayer for the deceased, and I'll go to that synagogue. That's probably why I've been thinking about this synagogue all these years. But then, you know, it seemed impractical, so I just called up the local synagogue and went over there. And it turned out that the rabbi in that synagogue was the son of Saul White, who was the rabbi of that synagogue on 14th Avenue on Clement Street. And he had grown up in that synagogue. And I said, well, so that's why that synagogue

[35:14]

seemed to be so attractive to me all these years. And I did. I said the prayer for my mother. And then, about maybe four or five years ago, Rabbi Lew left his congregation in New York, and now he's the rabbi of that synagogue. On 14th and Clement. So I go over there once in a while to visit him. He gives great dharma talks. You should go and hear his dharma talks. And lately, we decided we would try to... You know, we've been talking about all these things for many years. We decided we would try to collaborate. So we've been doing some kind of retreats, Jewish-Buddhist retreats,

[36:14]

in which we do traditional Jewish prayer services, and also we do zazen. And we try to have some, you know, frank conversations about the practice of Judaism and the practice of Buddhism. We haven't done it very often. But so far, it's been quite an interesting experiment. And I've discovered that there are a lot of Jews who have problems with their religion. Many ways in which they don't really understand their religion or find it useful. Many ways in which they're even a little mad at it. So we are exploring this together and trying to see whether doing some zen practice has anything to do with or can in any way help us to see through that. Find a way to make Judaism be a sharp angle pointing toward the self.

[37:19]

Because I believe this is the original intention of all religious traditions. And that within each tradition, the possibility of this is present. So we've been having a good time exploring, you know, what is prayer? What is meditation? How do you pray? How do you understand the words? How do you stand in relation to them? How do you concentrate on them? And so on. And we've had, once in a while, some very beautiful moments together. And the reason I'm talking about all this today is because today, in the question and answer, I want to introduce you to a new book of mine. So that's why this is a kind of background for all that. Not that I was trying to trick you into

[38:22]

listening about my book, but I was hoping that this would be of use to you anyway. But the book is called Jerusalem Moonlight. And it was written, you know, it's a rather small, modest little book written in my spare time, you know. Spare time. After I went on a trip to Israel with my father and brother. So I wrote a little bit about that trip and some reflections about the things that I'm talking about this morning. And in the question and answer today, I'll read you a little bit from the book. And there'll be copies there if you want to buy some. And we don't have to limit ourselves to that,

[39:25]

we can talk about other things too, but I will do that. Well, one of the great things that happened in the session that we had was one day during a break, I went into my study and there's a window right next to my desk. And I've sat down at my desk and I've looked over to the window and the window is, you know, about maybe less than a foot from my face if I'm sitting at my desk. And there was a hummingbird at the window hovering right there, staring at me. So I turned and

[40:26]

looked at her. She was very beautiful, fluttering, hummingbird. Maybe she thought I was a flower. But quickly realized that I wasn't and flew away. But it was great to see this hummingbird. And then when I went to my interview room, Tori, one of our students here, had written out a poem called The Hummingbirds by Mary Oliver. A beautiful poem, maybe some of you know it. So I read the poem in the session and then when I went to San Domenico to give my speech, I read it there too. And then yesterday

[41:34]

a little baby hummingbird flew into our house. And it's very beautiful, a ruby-throated hummingbird, sometimes you can see. Sometimes you can't, but sometimes you can see the bright scarlet color under the throat. So we weren't sure, you know, the cat sort of got it a little bit. So we tried to... My wife, Kathy, is an animal lover and she spent a long time trying to rehabilitate the hummingbird and it was on my desk under a colander all night long. And when I got up this morning to go to Zazen, the hummingbird went... So I thought,

[42:35]

oh good, you know, it's in good shape. But then it fell into the sugar water that we gave it and it's all wet. But now it seems to be doing a little better. So it's still on my desk in the colander. But one hardly ever gets to see a hummingbird that close up. Extraordinary creature. Anyway, I thought it would be appropriate although it has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of my talk. Although one can't be too sure. I thought I would close this morning with this particularly beautiful Mary Oliver poem. We tried to get Mary Oliver to come here but we'd failed. But we won't give up.

[43:35]

She'll come eventually. If any of you know her, let her know that she's coming eventually. She has to come. Everybody's always quoting her poems in the Dharma talks. Soon the Dharma talks will be nothing but Mary Oliver poems. Nobody will sit on the seat, we'll just put a book up here of Mary Oliver. That'll be that. So, maybe a letter-writing campaign to Mary Oliver would do it. Anyway, this is Hummingbirds by Mary Oliver. The female and the two chicks, each no bigger than my thumb, scattered, shimmering in their pale green dresses.

[44:37]

Then they rose, tiny fireworks, into the leaves and hovered. Then they sat on the grass, and they sat down, each one with dainty charcoal feet, each one on a slender branch and looked at me. I had meant no harm. I had simply climbed the tree for something to do on a summer day, not knowing they were there, ready to burst the ledges of their mossy nest and to fly for the first time in their sea-green helmets with brisk metallic tails, each tooled wing with every dollop of flight drawing a perfect wheel across the air. Then, with a series of jerks,

[45:39]

they paused in front of me and, dark-eyed, stared as though I were a flower. And then, like three tosses of silvery water, they were gone, alone in the crown of the tree. I went to China. I went to Prague. I died and was born in the spring. I found you and loved you again. Later, the darkness fell and the solid moon like a white pond rose. But I wasn't in any hurry. Likely, I visited all the shimmering, heart-stabbing questions without answers before I climbed down.

[46:42]

Thank you. We're just reading a few passages from the book, just for fun. And then after that, we can have a wide-ranging discussion. I don't want to monopolize. I was a little bit, you know, embarrassed in a way to, you know, I spent time in the Dharma talk talking about it, and I feel the same way here. So, just a little bit I'll read from the book, and if you want to raise questions relevant to the topic in the book, that's great. We don't have to be limited to that. If you want to talk about something else, please don't feel like you have to be limited to talking about this. But I selected a couple short passages that I thought would be fun

[47:48]

to read. It's a very odd book. For a while, I had an agent, you know. I'm a poet mostly, and so I had about six books of poetry out, which are highly obscure, published by very small presses, that you would have to, you know, go to a great deal of trouble to get a copy, you know, because they're hard to find. So this time I thought, well, this is the first prose book I wrote, and I thought, well, I'll get an agent and see, you know, if I can make, you know, a million dollars and give it to Green Gulch. But, so the agent, you know, was very nice and tried to, you know, peddle it to these publishers, and they all said, oh, this is a very interesting book, we really like this, but we're not sure what you're trying to say, or it doesn't quite go from A to B, or something like that. And it's true that it doesn't, you know. It's kind of, one publisher said, well, this book is constructed like a mosaic, which is exactly how it's constructed. There's little pieces, which may

[48:50]

or may not relate to one another, but actually they do relate to one another, and the way they relate to most of the burden of what I'm trying to say in the book is in the spaces between these little pieces. I never say what it is that I'm trying to say, because it's more fun for you to feel it, rather than for me to say it, so. But this is not good for publishers. It doesn't promote sales. So after a little while, I got frustrated with the whole process, and I just said to the agent, you're fired, you know. And I took the book back and just put it in my drawer, along with all my other unpublished books. And then sometime later, Michael Phillips, who's a friend, called up and said, I heard you have this book and I want to publish it. He has a little press, you know. And I said, well, geez, Michael, don't you think you should read it first? So I said, oh, yeah, right, right. That's Michael out there at the table. So he said, yeah, you're right, I should read it. So I mailed him a copy,

[49:53]

and he called me the next morning, he said, yes, I want to publish it. So it really was a labor of love. The book was typeset by Leila Bockhorst, who was a typesetter and a priest at Zen Center, one of my oldest friends. She did the typesetting. And the cover is done by Paul Kahn, who is also a very dear friend of mine from back east, who is a poet and is an expert on software. He figured out, this picture on the cover is actually something like, I don't know what century, but like a 13th or 14th century engraving by some eyewitness of what Jerusalem looked like at that time. And then he somehow managed to superimpose over that a picture of the moon from the Apollo moonshot. So that's the cover. So everybody involved in the book is a very close friend, and so I like that better anyway, even though I'm only going to make half a million dollars. Laughter So anyway, I would like to just read you

[50:54]

a few passages. This is from a chapter called Names. And it's, I have relatives, you know, in Israel. And while we were there, we were visiting my relatives. And lots of the book is about them and about their story, which is very interesting. And so here's, I'll just take a section from this chapter. This is what we were at the time, the scene is at Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Memorial outside of Jerusalem. Norman? Yeah. I'm sorry, before you start reading, maybe we can make room, there's a bunch of people standing. Yeah, is there room? Yeah, there's room up here, and there's room over here on the floor. Yeah, please, I think maybe somebody can squeeze on the couch, too. Yeah, somebody else

[52:04]

can sit, too. One more. Okay, so from there we go back into the fierce traffic, scooting around, zipping up and down, finally arriving at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, which is a big open barn-like building made of rough stones, very simple, with a platform inside overlooking a large railed-in area, completely empty except for names inscribed in the floor in Hebrew and Roman characters, the names of each of the concentration camps used by the Nazis during the war. My friend Del read, I gave a copy to Philip Whelan, who's a good friend of mine, and Philip can't see anymore to read. So Del read him the book, and

[53:04]

Del said, Oh, it's a very nice book, but you have these long sentences I couldn't keep track from one end to the other. That was another problem with the publishers, you know, some of the sentences are, I like to do things like that, make the sentence really long so that by the time you get to the end you forgot what happened at the beginning. Kind of like life, you know. But that was one of those. Yeah, that was one of those sentences, yeah. And a flame continuously burning at the end of the room in some kind of violently twisted iron vessel. The names. I had the impulse to pull out my notebook and very simply write down these names, but it, the notebook, was locked up in the trunk of Simon's car. There is something very eloquent in this simple inscription of just the names, as here in Israel, the names of places people will live and die for. Jerusalem, Hebron, Judea, Samaria. Is the name connected to a particular place or person? Or is the name rather not

[54:06]

a series of symbols, signs, that make a light in the human mind around which many emotions, thoughts, and impressions cluster? Am I my name? Am I something else? Or is someone else my name? Where are the places or the people connected to these names exactly? I have a strong sense of history and of time's passage, walking down the path in the martyr's forest that leads us out of Yad Vashem, lined with trees planted for and dedicated to individual non-Jews who helped save Jewish lives from Hitler's grip. Talking with Hilda, that's my relative. Simon and Hilda are a couple. They're my father's cousins, so they're in their 60s or 70s at this time, late 60s probably. Talking with Hilda about her family of several generations, the sense of the names, the past, almost independent of the people who bore them, the actual experiences,

[55:06]

but the names which shape events, named events, and the names, of course, go on. It is very strange to imagine all of this actually happened. Memorials like this are to make sure no one ever forgets it. Then a bird sang, some kind of bird I've never seen and don't know the name of. The whistle of the bird brings me up to the present, just the hearing of it, and beyond the present, onto an expanse of time in which names float and dissolve like clouds in the sky. Judaism is a religion of names. We receive our names from generations previous, and it is for our names that we work hard all our lives, pouring our hearts into our names which we pass on to our children, our most cherished heritage. I think there are many passages in the Bible and other Jewish wisdom books referring to the value of a good name, greater than riches, and so on. It must be because of names and emphasis on names, they almost become

[56:07]

gods in themselves, transcending the daily life. That the murder of so many Jews during the Second World War blazes so in history. Because of the names and the strong adherence to names over the centuries on the part of the people, God's name, the mysterious name, hardly ever uttered but constantly referred to, and so because of this we are separate, the people of the name, and because separate, and we need to face this perhaps aggressively separate, we are persecuted, not only by Hitler but for millennia before, our shiny name also serving as a symbol for the quote, them, it separates us from and it enrages them. Of course many other peoples have been decimated, have disappeared entirely during the course of human history. Gary Snyder told me yesterday as we were walking on the University of California at Davis campus, this is one of the things about the book is that it keeps messing up the idea of time. So like, you're not sure

[57:08]

like what day it is or whether it's the time of the writing of the book or the time of being in Israel so this yesterday is kind of a funny thing like yesterday I was walking around on the Davis campus with Gary Snyder and he said that the Davis campus had been in fact a sizable Indian village at one time. And he said that the native population of the Americas at its height was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million souls. But they couldn't write and without a great deal of attention paid to the written page could not emphasize the names and did not remember and could not let everyone else know to remember. Armenians were killed by the millions, Africans, Tibetans, Chinese, Russians but we do not remember even these as we remember the special circumstances of the Jews murders because of language and names. Today

[58:10]

at a retreat at Green Gulch someone asked the Tibetan Lama Tara Rinpoche how the law of karma of retribution applies to the Chinese invasion of Tibet. He said that clearly the Tibetans were invaded and 1.2 million Tibetans killed since 1959 because of their own past evil deeds in former lives and it was up to them, the Tibetans to use this invasion which of course they opposed and still do vigorously oppose to deepen their spiritual practice to purify themselves. This does not mean simple-mindedly that the invasion was their own fault that the Chinese had nothing to do with it but it prevents too much bitterness and it promotes clearer action. Can I think of a better way than this to deal with the outrageous persistence of human injustice and violence

[59:12]

not only against us Jews but rampant almost anywhere you look? If there are evil people independently, inherently evil and we have to be on the alert to watch out for them will our alertness our expectation, our projection not increase their evil? Are they not evil dependent upon conditions which can be addressed? And if we understand these conditions perhaps we can reduce the evil. A human mind must always be responsible for his or her own human life. This does not mean a stupidity or a failure to analyze situations for what in them is built in to make life difficult for some and easy for others. The depth of human confusion is very great but how else but through complete responsibility find peace which is not quietness but the active moving into and through

[60:13]

rather than around conflict. We ended our day at the office of Moshe Fischer, my cousin at the Hadassah Hospital. The five of us Simon, Hilda, my father my brother Jeff and me straggling along the long corridor to the door of his office. It was very strange to see the name Fischer transliterated into Hebrew characters on a plaque on his door. And I'll read you this other short chapter which is my favorite chapter in the book actually. It's quite extraordinary. I didn't write this. That's how I can brag about it. This is actually the title of the chapter is crazy and this is a UPI article which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 26 1987. And the headline is Bizarre

[61:13]

Mania Afflicts Tourists Who Visit the Holy Land. And the byline is David Mould M-O-U-L-D and that's dateline Jerusalem. Psychologists in Jerusalem are studying a rare and puzzling disorder that transforms seemingly normal people into lunatics after touring the Holy Land. Quote, most of the victims are Protestants from the United States said Dr. Carlos Bar-El Israel District Psychologist for Jerusalem and an expert on the condition. Bar-El said that after three days of visiting holy sites such as Christ's tomb or the Garden of Gethsemane quote, something very very strange suddenly comes over them. They don't eat. They don't drink. They don't sleep. They become manically psychotic. We really don't know what causes it but it only happens to about 15 or so people a year

[62:16]

and it only happens in Jerusalem nowhere else in the world. End quote. Bar-El, director of a clinic that treats the condition wrote his first research paper on the subject three years ago. He said there were various theories on what caused it but said they were all too new to discuss. Quote, it afflicts people who are otherwise perfectly normal. End quote, Bar-El said. The one thing they all seem to have in common is that they are deeply religious. One American woman, an elementary school teacher was brought to Bar-El's Kfar Shaul hospital when she bolted naked from her hotel room after a two hour hymn singing spree. And then this is Dr. Bar-El talking. She locked herself in the hotel room for two hours and she sang and sang in a very peculiar voice Bar-El said. She said she wanted to be in the street without clothes and made an attempt to get away from the hotel nude.

[63:16]

End quote. Another U.S. patient was a 40 year old college professor who came to Israel to conduct biblical research. Almost all of the victims recover in about a week. Afterward, most offer strikingly similar descriptions of their feelings. Bar-El again. Quote, they say it comes over them very quickly and hits them very hard he said. They say they feel somehow different. They feel excitation and get an urge to make some kind of change in the world. Isn't that amazing? Well, I don't know if it's true but it was an article in a newspaper. No, I mean I assume that it's true. Yeah, I mean I think it's true. This guy Bar-El really says this. I never met anybody who had that. But a lot of the book takes place in Jerusalem and Jerusalem, if you've ever been to Jerusalem

[64:18]

you can believe it. Because Jerusalem is you know like one point, there's one line in the book where I go on and on about the special quality of Jerusalem and I say something like this makes no sense in Cincinnati. But in Jerusalem you can really understand because it's a special quality to the place there because you can feel many many many generations, I mean thousands of years of people occupying and fighting over that square mile of land and there's something there that's very powerful and it does affect people. Of course you notice that all the people were religious people so that means they had a precondition in their minds they had been thinking about and concerned about Jerusalem. So maybe if somebody who had no thoughts about it showed up there they might not feel it. But anybody who has some religious feeling maybe is pre you know

[65:20]

pre-prepared to feel this. Anyway, it's quite a city and a pretty amazing feeling that you get from walking around there. So a lot of the book describes about that. So anyway, I appreciate Michael for, there he is, thank you Michael for publishing this new book. Which would still be in my drawer, you know, to the end of time or for disintegration of paper whichever came first. Otherwise, so it's fun. It's hard to write a book and you know like work it out and everything. In which I always write my books in my spare time, you know, little, tiny little snatches of time and then it's very hard to get them published. It's very difficult for me, you know, to have to struggle with that. That's my least favorite part. That's why after spending a certain amount of effort on that I just give up and put it in the drawer and go on to the next book. It rings so true to me

[66:23]

about having gone out and tried to publish with your intention and then finding that didn't work, put it away and then having the universe speak to you and say it's time to put this out and you just let it go out. Yeah, it was a nice way, yeah. It sort of leads to a question that came up while you were talking just about I've really been thinking intensely this last week about whether as a person of my culture it's like upon me to forge an identity in the world in a way and Buddhism or just this religious practice the practices here are sort of I get the feeling that you don't, you don't need to do that but there's something in me as a westerner that says maybe that's a really important thing to do with a western psyche and sort of

[67:23]

the traditions that I the depth of the western psyche there's a need to do that I'm just wondering as a westerner that practices this tradition how you might have wrestled with that this story singing somehow about the publishing of the book singing somehow to speak to that for me. Well as I said earlier in my talk you can't buy a newspaper in the morning without an identity and you can't get lunch or anything so practically speaking we do have to be somebody right you can't really be nobody even though the somebody that you are might not be who you really are you have to be somebody so we do have to do that I think all of us do but the question is how do you do it and how do you hold it do you are you caught by it does it

[68:25]

suck out the life of your life or does it make you more alive can you find some authentic life in you despite or because of this social identity that you have my situation is not too helpful in a way or exemplary because I basically didn't do that but that's just by circumstances just turned out that way before I got around to doing that it was too late and I was stuck you know somebody grabbed me and shaved my hair off laughter yeah put all these robes on me yeah then I was stuck you know and you know this is obviously not a what this is

[69:26]

obviously not a solution to our problems right cut your hair off and become a Zen monk and everything will be fine it's not going to work it just so happened that my life slipped through like a fish that slipped through the net you know so I can't you know my experience is not too relevant I think in a way but I think it is entirely possible to take up practice in a very serious way and spend time in one's life either taking time off I really think it's good for anybody to take some time off in their life one year two years five years ten years however long it seems right for you to take that time off to actually do spiritual practice as a full time or as much full time as possible occupation and let everything else more or less go I think that's possible to do that and it's worthwhile doing it but I think there's a very few people who for whom it's going to be a lifetime

[70:28]

thing so if you do that I think if you really give yourself to practice for a while then you get a real orientation in a sense of and even if you don't you don't have to do that to have an orientation about where you want your life to go and how you can find a social role for yourself that will be completely in accord with your practice these two things are not opposites are not intention against each other at all I mean if you make a commitment you know in the practice period I've been talking a lot about bodhicitta the mind of awakening the mind that isn't limited to our personal identity and that has a heart of compassion for all beings and that the process of our training in Zen practice or any spiritual tradition is to more and more identify with that mind and more and more say that's the commitment of my life not any narrow personal commitment that actually my personal needs and my personal life is most fulfilled and most awakened by giving myself to that commitment and then when you really feel like that's effective in your life that yes this

[71:30]

is really real for me I really am in this stream of this commitment then it's a matter of okay now what should I do not so complicated well okay you know I'm seven feet two I'll be a basketball player well but I'm not seven feet two maybe I won't be a basketball player what can I be what can I do given my talents and my abilities and my circumstances so then you well okay this works this works so let me just choose it's not so complicated just do it what does it take to do it oh I have to do this this and this okay well I guess I have to do that so then you do it and all of it can be done in accord with practicing the way and as part of our practice so the trouble is I think you know our society very often doesn't honor our inner life and only looks at us in terms of our external social role and then we struggle we suffer because we have to deal with society's view of

[72:31]

us you know that's why it's good for us to get together because we get together and we can tell each other yeah you know we share this and we can help each other to be strong you know and not be taken in by all of this anyway I don't know if that helps but that's what I'm thinking maybe other people have other things to say about that too yeah go ahead another level of this is that there's been a way in which I've used spiritual practice to avoid establishing an identity because I just felt so invested in dying what started coming to me while you were speaking was that the process of trying to forge something is important yes it builds some kind of muscle that actually then makes it so that when time comes to release the book

[73:33]

to the world you've done some very important work there and so just answering kind of for myself that process of trying to forge an identity even if I don't completely become the identity that I'm trying to forge it's the time isn't right or whatever that's somehow very important to exercise those muscles and build them and then they may be used in some other way I agree I think a good spiritual teacher will tell you forge an identity do it because you know the practice is not automatic right I mean sometimes we use the practice we can use I don't know about you but sometimes we can use the practice to not to grow could be that way yes do you want to yeah I like Star Trek and I was I didn't much like the movie

[74:35]

Star Trek Generations but there was one only one line in it that became memorable I wanted to ask you that there's this did you see that movie yeah and he's he's ready to sacrifice anything and anybody to achieve some bliss that he wants to experience and both Captain Kirk and Captain Carter in this movie he's about to blow up a planet I think the only one that I thought had some resonance was when he said to one of them you know why are you doing this why would you kill millions of people he said well everybody has to die sometime what difference does it make if they die sooner for some reason I really reflected on that and I I'm always trying to understand

[75:38]

how to explain the commitment to compassionate bodhicitta how to explain it I don't understand other than some gut compulsion that you feel so I wonder how you respond to that if you have to die sometime what difference does it make if they die sooner well I think bodhicitta is a gut feeling it isn't something you explain yes I mean you can explain it but there's all kinds of explanations there can be great arguments for wanting to kill everybody and all that but that doesn't make it a good idea so like when you walk I always use this one you know when you walk down the path and you step on a sharp thorn you don't need to discuss with yourself whether you should pull the thorn out

[76:39]

well you know my foot's going to die anyway why don't I just leave the thorn in there pain is inevitable why not just suffer it now well let me just finish with it so without making those arguments or even questioning it you know you reach down with your hand and pull the thorn out it's very natural and your hand doesn't say like you know well this is the hand I don't care about the foot why should I care about the foot it's down there I'm up here and it doesn't really matter the hand automatically pulls the thorn out of the foot because it wants to stop the pain of the foot and it understands that it's all the same body so it's very natural to want to take care of one's own body when there's a pain reaction you automatically do something to remove the pain so bodhicitta is like that we all understand that we're one creature and we want to

[77:40]

you know we want to reduce as much as possible the pain in this you know human and transhuman planetary interplanetary body right now the thing is that we also know that to be alive we kill things and if we are going to walk around we will step on an ant you know and if we eat food we will kill creatures so we acknowledge that and we have some awareness of that and some grief over that and we know that we have to use the energy of our eating and our the violence that we commit just by being alive for the benefit of others and we try to do that but if someone kills someone we understand you know we don't think it's good but we don't demonize that person because we understand that causes

[78:42]

and conditions cause that to happen and that person must be hurt already to do that and will be hurt more because they've done that so you know it's not a righteousness in a way I was listening to the radio once in a while I put on the radio to listen to the station that has the Giants baseball games because I love to listen to the Giants baseball games the same station also has so it's programmed into my car radio the same station also has Rush Limbaugh so every now and then I sort of check in on Rush Limbaugh see what Rush Limbaugh is saying today and once Rush Limbaugh was you know he'll read something or quote something and then he'll with this you know acid tones you know really say isn't this terrible you know

[79:43]

and so he was quoting I don't know who it was but it was an African American woman who was speaking at some kind of gathering for troubled African American youth and she was saying something like and now I'm quoting Rush Limbaugh quoting her but something like to these young I think it was young men young teenage boys who were troubled and had been in trouble a lot and so on and she said something like to them like we are your mothers and we are your aunts and your grandmothers and we know that you've done bad things but we will never abandon you and we know that you can change and we are going to help you change and Rush Limbaugh was quoting this as though this was the worst thing that he had ever heard isn't this awful no wonder our society is in such a wreck

[80:45]

you know what I mean he went on and on commenting on this saying and I thought to myself gee you know that's just how I feel what a wonderful saying this is you know so somebody could make an argument why they should kill somebody or do all those things and I mean I think that you know we could debate that and we have good arguments but in the end it's not the arguments that you know dictate our behavior it's our feeling our hearts I was thinking about your story about the monk and the baby and I myself have certainly my self esteem or my sense of well being is affected by what people look at me and wish to do

[81:45]

and it reminded me of this story that's been very helpful in my life the story about it seemed like a parallel I was wondering if you might comment on this to the story about it's a buddhist story about this man who has a horse the horse goes away runs away everyone says oh how terrible the horse comes back oh and then he says well maybe and then the horse comes back with his partner and then everyone goes oh how great and then he goes well maybe and then the son's riding the horse and he falls and breaks his leg oh how terrible and he goes well maybe and then the king's recruiters come to recruit all these people and they don't recruit the son and they go great so it seemed like in some ways it was a similar kind of way of perceiving things like I understand that I'm beginning to grasp

[82:47]

impermanence and how things change and you can't think everything in the moment how things are because they change and it seemed like the monk story was was kind of a tool for me in a way waking up to how people see me it's always going to be changing and if I'm just like that farmer if I get so attached to that I don't know, could you say a little more? I know that story too it's a wonderful story and it does seem similar to the story about Hakuin and that's like it reminds me of this story that I just read in a book about the Tibetans who say these events happen in Tibet because of our causes and conditions in our lives not so much that that's so but I mean it is so, but not that it's the only truth but the point is that practice is all about

[83:49]

working with conditions as we find them it's not about we like these conditions and we don't like those well we may like these and not like those but the ones we have are the ones that arise in the present moment and that's got to be our materials for our practice you can't practice when you say this shouldn't have happened if you say this shouldn't have happened and you really believe that and you develop that thought then you're really stuck you can't really go forward so it can sound very Pollyanna like this was for the best not that it was for the best but it was, it is it's not a question of best or worst, it just is this is what it is this is my life right now and I have to fully move into that and take responsibility for that as long as I think it was a mistake or think it was somebody else's fault

[84:50]

now it may be somebody else's fault that's what I was trying to say we may have all kinds of analyses to realistically see that it's somebody else's fault however, if we ourselves don't move into that territory and empower ourselves to live our lives then we're stuck I don't know someone asked in this talk either you or Rev about destiny and whoever it was that was sitting there said well, it's our destiny to be sitting here right now together in that kind of context, it's like your destiny to be wherever you are and to deal with whatever it is that you're dealing with well, destiny if it's not we don't mean fatalism but we mean just yeah, this is my life right now and I have to work with it, then yeah, that's how I feel and I think that's what Hoffman was saying ok, these conditions came up I'll deal with this now it's different I'll deal with that tomorrow, maybe another person will come with a baby, who knows

[85:52]

so he gave the baby back? yeah, he gave the baby back he gave the baby back because they came to get it, wasn't it? yeah, they came to get the baby back and he gave the baby back but my question really is about when you kind of narrow that down about this one self concept then how do you get locked into you know, always being externally kind of the locus of control for my self concept is how people yes, yes right, well I mean, we have to be realistic I mean, actually it does affect us, how other people feel about us, we have to be honest, right I mean, if all of you walked in here took one look at me and said this guy doesn't know anything, I'm getting out of here I'd probably feel bad about it, you know I mean, I would but, so we have to be realistic you know, we all have that and that's our feeling but, is that limited to is that our whole life, are we limited to that or can we look at that and say, oh yes this is my human feeling caused by my attachment to my

[86:58]

self image I understand that why don't I, now that they all left it kind of hurts, but on the other hand, it's kind of nice not to have to work anymore maybe I can take a moment, you know, to breathe and see how it is with me with this attachment to my self concept can I look at that can I maybe even in breathing as I'm sitting here let go of it and can I walk out of here you know, feeling alright well, should you totally let go of it I mean, isn't there something instructional about it if everybody gets up and walks out then isn't there something instructional that maybe could be learned by yeah, that's the other side of it you don't just say, oh I'm still great right, that's the other side of it, of course and even if just like in the case of Hakuin even though it was completely a mistake

[88:01]

right he wasn't responsible for the baby he also said, well I should learn from this maybe I am in some way responsible maybe if I had been a better priest in this town there would have been a different atmosphere maybe this young girl wouldn't have lied maybe the young man would have taken responsibility, maybe I'm not doing my job maybe he thought it's true, I'm responsible for this so even when it's not our fault, right we may have something to learn from those kinds of negative maybe in that situation it was more of just the way he did it was a learning experience for the people without saying anything like, gee but we don't know what he felt though that's what I'm saying but no, I'm agreeing with you but the point is, can you receive some information like that about your self concept and learn from it, like you're saying and take it to heart and learn from it without getting depressed

[89:02]

well, and creating a balance it's not just all them, it's a balance between what you feel right, exactly I just think that being responsible doesn't mean you're the cause of something it means you're able to respond respond to it to what's happening yeah, Oceana if you see that this is a rising pandemic it could be ok and it also arises over here and it may not be ok and you see you constantly see yes, no yes, no, yes and how do you make choices where do choices come in so you're talking about in the case of making a decision about one thing or another well, mostly if you're centered with yourself and your practice and you know what your commitment is mostly it's clear what to do and in times when it's not clear well, talk it over

[90:04]

with somebody, think it over close your eyes point, I don't know you figure out a way to make a choice knowing that oh, it doesn't matter so much, whatever the consequences are, we'll work with it and knowing that it is important so we'll do our best to be serious about it and try to make a good choice so there are times when these things come up in our life and how does any of us know what to do in any given situation I mean there are some times when it's easy to know what to do because the choices are kind of obvious but we always face life is complicated, right and we face complicated choices and decisions and we just have to do the best we can and I believe if we are doing spiritual practice and we have the resources of the practice and so on we have some guidance system gee, that doesn't feel right ok, if I choose this, I can really feel like the reason why I want to choose that is because of my

[91:06]

self clinging now that's really if I look at it, that's why I want to do this so maybe I won't choose that way because that's not my commitment so I won't go that way so I think with practice and with over time a lot of what makes choices complicated falls away, but there are still difficult situations come up so we just do our best yes Oceana, go ahead two things first I wanted to comment on the Gary Snyder quote the what? the Gary Snyder quote I just wanted to acknowledge the value of all tradition of the peoples of this land and people of Africa in actuality in African culture the written word is not

[92:07]

a value as highly as the spoken word so the fact that the people of this land and my people have been wiped out in some places that reality is very real for us despite the fact that it is not written, those names those stories still are very much alive and the second thing is I wanted to with honor and acknowledge the work the book for so many very reasons mostly for saying so clearly that it's okay to be a person of Hebrew

[93:07]

tradition, of practice it's okay to be a person of African tradition and practice and be at home in this place that's one of the things I was hoping to say thank you I had to sit down the same line I just was kind of ironic because I don't read a lot of books and I've been reading my book and I read the exact same quote you read just two minutes ago and about the point, the inner point and talking about it, being okay to be of different religions and that was something I as a beginning student have been really struggling with wondering if I'm doing something wrong and finally like, oh Suzuki Roshi said it's okay thank God if he says it's okay then it must be right and he goes into talk about

[94:13]

doctrine locking your mind and if you hold on to doctrine then that's the whole grasping effect I was wondering if you could comment about if you've got the point facing towards you and the open point facing outward what does that involve happening in your life and what does that entail does that make any sense I think so if you don't have I think so

[94:50]

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