Happy Easter, Easter Sunday, and also I think the fourth day of Passover, is that right? The fourth day, so happy fourth day of Passover. It seems that these two great and also problematic celebrations by coincidence happen at the same time every year, but of course it's not a coincidence. Easter is Passover, as it was lived very profoundly by one person, and to me this seems like an example of what I would consider a very good theory of history, that history is a big pattern

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that keeps coming back, that the pattern of history repeats in all of our lives, and to me this would be the great way to live, to find a way to situate yourself within your life so that you could really feel that your own life was unfolding with the pattern of all of life and all of history. That would be, I think, a good way to live, and I realize that it might seem a little megalomaniacal to think of living your life in that way, but to me it's the opposite of that. To me it's something really humble to think that your life isn't yours, that somehow

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all of life is living itself through your life, and I think that if you could live your life with that spirit and in that way, then probably a lot of the stuff that bothers you, that seems so troublesome, wouldn't bother you anymore, and conversely, a lot of things that don't now bother you might bother you terribly, a lot of things that seem distant might seem quite personal. For me this is the virtue of meditation practice, that if you devote yourself to it in a really serious way, in other words, not making it just another item on your list, another way

[03:21]

to lower your cholesterol or something, then it really begins to settle your life somehow, and I mean this in a literal sense, to settle, to make your life subject to gravity so that it settles, like pulp in a glass of orange juice, when you put it down, it settles and everything comes down deep to the bottom and there's a feeling of being settled and clear. And then, everything that happens is useful, there aren't any setbacks, there's just, you know, now what, and then, now what, now what, and the wonder in looking back and seeing

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how it all takes shape. So since it's Passover, I decided to read the story of Exodus in the Bible, and I began to get the idea, as I looked carefully at the words of the text, or at least the English translation of the words, that probably anyway were changed many times by the time they got to us, anyway, I had the idea as I looked at the words of the text, it was somewhat uncomfortable, actually, as I read along, and began to realize that the biography of Moses sounded suspiciously like my own biography. And I have the feeling that it may sound like your biography, too.

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Now, think about it, saved from drowning by a woman, growing up in a foreign family, did you grow up in a foreign family, also, finally taking the first steps to figure out who you are, and then acting on that. It turns out to be a huge mistake. So you have to flee to the desert to dwell among strangers. And it's really amazing, in the Old Testament it says, Moses arrives in Midian, and it says,

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quite simply, he sat down by a well, he sat down by a well, and he didn't, he didn't have any idea, you know, what was going to happen or what he would do, he just went there and he sat down by a well. And then all these things came out of that. So, continuing with our biography, so there you are in the desert dwelling among strangers and one day you notice that something is on fire, somehow burning but not burning. And you find that it's impossible for you to go about your business, and somehow necessary that you would turn toward the fire. And then because you turn toward the fire, the world calls out to you, and you really

[07:55]

don't have any choice but to answer. And you get your marching orders for the rest of your life. And this is what it says in the Bible, literally, it says, very interesting how it's worded, Moses sees this burning bush and he finds it impossible to go on, he turns toward it, and says, God sees that he turns toward the bush, and because of this, God calls out to him, Moses. And Moses answers with a famous line that's repeated many times in the Bible, here I am, here I am, here I am. And those of you who are familiar with the Zen literature know that exactly this sort of thing is very common. Many Zen stories, you know, the Zen stories are pretty much recycled, there are many stories

[08:55]

that are the same. There's a number of stories in which the same thing happens, the teacher calls out and disciple says, here I am. And that's awakening, answering the call, being able to answer the call. So anyway, in our biography this happens, we are called and we answer sort of automatically, we answer, here I am. Something in us responds, but at the same time, you hate it. Like Moses, you say, no thank you, I'm sorry, I can't do it, I'm not worthy, I'm too busy, I don't have the capacity, I'm too old, too fat, too lazy, too thin, too timid, and besides,

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I think you're making a mistake, you're after somebody else. But, no choice, no excuses, and with all your reluctance and resistance, you go forth on the noble journey. And of course, it doesn't turn out that well. Yes, there are great heights, moments of insight and wonderment, world-changing events happen and so forth, but basically when you come down to it, you're wandering around back in the desert for about 40 years, fighting with your family, people complaining, you're resisting their complaining, and finally at the end, you see the goal, and before you get there you die. So I'm only telling you, this is exactly, you know, this is exactly what it says in

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the Bible, I'm not making this up, I'm not even, you know, in my usual way exaggerating a bit or elaborating, this is exactly what it says, and this really sounds suspiciously like my life, and I'm sure like your life as well. So Passover, great holiday. And I'm sure that I've told many of you before, because I mention it a lot, about this meeting that I went to several years ago, which was a Buddhist-Christian dialogue meeting, where we, a bunch of Christian and Buddhist monastics gathered, including His Holiness Dalai Lama, at Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky, which was Thomas Merton's monastery.

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And I never, actually it was the first time I'd ever been inside of a Catholic monastery, and in every single room of the monastery, I think even including the bathroom, there was a realistic depiction of the crucifixion, with a realistic, very beleaguered, suffering figure of Christ on the cross, you know, in terrible agony. And some of these crucifixes were really beautiful pieces, very moving pieces, and as I kept looking at them everywhere I was in Gethsemane Monastery, I started to wonder, how could all the brothers, who must have such a tremendous love and personal relationship to Jesus,

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how could they stand eating, sleeping, going to the toilet, reading, praying in rooms with these figures everywhere? It seemed so sad to me. I wondered how they could bear it, year after year, decade after decade. So, when it was my turn to read my paper, I didn't really read my paper, I basically said, how could you bear this? Could you please explain to me how it is? And, it sort of changed the mood of the conference. And after that, a lot of Christian monastics got up and spoke beautifully and passionately to this point. And most of them said that it was true, that they did see, when they saw these crucifixes,

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they did see terrible suffering and it was sad. But they also said that more than the suffering, they saw things like love, they saw redemption, they saw freedom, they saw joy. So they said, the cross wasn't just sad, it was also much more than just sad. And so, I guess this is the theme of Easter Sunday. And I confess, of course, that I have very little knowledge and not so much personal feeling for what Easter is all about, but I remember as a boy that I was really fascinated with the strange idea of the crucifixion. And it seems, when you think about it, extremely upside down and counter-intuitive that the

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all-powerful, majestic God who created the world would be defeated in such a terrible way. And I remember reading histories of Central American tribes, native peoples, and when they were told, at first told the story of Christianity, they felt like that. They were baffled by the idea that God could be defeated and humiliated in exactly the same way that a human being is humiliated, and it made no sense to them. But later on, when at the hands of the white people, the Christians, they themselves, the native peoples were suffering so terribly, they began to see how much sense it made that

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in the midst of this kind of tremendous despair and suffering, there could be freedom and redemption. And so, a lot of native peoples, and later African American people as well, became very passionate and sincere Christians in their own way, you know, in a very different way in a sense than the people who brought Christianity to them. And I think if you ever go to an African American church, or if you go to Mexico and go inside a cathedral, you see the kind of profound sense of spirituality. Anyway, for me, growing up, being a curious person and someone who, you know, always doubts everything, very skeptical about everything, I thought that the most beautiful part of

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the story of Jesus, the most poignant part of the story, was found in one of the lines in one of the Gospels, I forget which one, where Jesus says, at the last moment of his life, this line, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And to me, this was the most beautiful, sad thing I could imagine, that after going through all of that, being willing even, you know, to give up your body and to die in that way for faith, you know, that at the last minute you would lose your faith. To me, this was the most beautiful and touching thing of all, as I understood it, you know, that's how I thought of it. And I thought, to me, that's what really made Jesus a hero, somehow.

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I mean, this goes to show you how I think, excuse me, but that's how I think. It was only much later that I realized that these words were actually not Jesus's words. Who knows if he said them? But anyway, these texts that we read, we have no idea, you know, the historical truth. In fact, probably we do. Probably we could say with absolute certainty that these texts are never accurate. That's the only thing we could be sure about. Even if they do say some realistic depiction of what occurred, it wouldn't be it, you know? Just like if you tell somebody what happened last week, it's never it. Anyway, whatever the status of it is, these words actually weren't Jesus's own words, they're quotations. I'm sure everybody knows this, but I'm pretty ignorant, and I didn't know this until recently,

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that these words are a quotation from one of the psalms, a psalm that clearly Jesus, being a rabbi, would have known the psalm by heart, would have been very much a part of his life, and so when he quoted this one line, of course, it evokes the entire psalm. So, I went and read the psalm, and I made a version of it of my own, and so in celebration of Easter time, and this amazing story, I will read you this, my version of Psalm number 22, warning you in advance that it's a little bit long, so relax, think of something else if you are displeased with, don't want to hear this. This is Psalm 22, in my version of it, which is pretty much how it says in the Hebrew, except

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I've tried to make it in language that I can understand. Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why so far from my delivery, so empty in the anguish of my words? I call to you in the daytime, but you don't answer, and all night long I plead restlessly, endlessly, uselessly. I know your holiness, find it in the memorized praises uttered by those who've questioned and struggled with you through all the generations. These, my forebears, trusted in you, and through their trusting, you touched them, held and

[22:07]

delivered them. Trusting, they cried out to you, and you met them face to face. Their confidence was strong, and they were not confounded. But I am not as they, utterly alone. I am cast out of the circle, a worm, a living reproach, scorned and despised, even less than despised, unheard, unseen, unacknowledged, denied. And all who encounter me, revile me with cynic laughter, shaking their heads, parting their nattering lips, mocking, let him throw himself at God for his deliverance, they say, since that is who he trusts. Let the Lord save him.

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And they are right. How not trust you, and what else to trust? You I entered on leaving the womb, you I drank at my mother's breast, I was cast upon you at birth, and even before birth, I swam in you, my heart's darkness. Be not far from me now, when suffering is very near, and there is no help, and I am all beset, and I am beset all round by threatening powers, the bulls of Bhasan gaping their dismal braying mouths, their ravenous roaring lion mouths. I am poured out like water, my bones' joints are snapped like twigs, my heart melts like

[24:16]

wax, flooding my bowels with searing, viscid emotion, my strength is dried up like a potsherd, my tongue cleaves woolly to the roof of my mouth, and I feel my body dissolving into death's dusts. For I am hounded by my isolation, and cast off, and encircled by the assembly of the violent, who like vicious dogs nip at my hands and feet, I count the bones of my naked body as the mongrels shift and stare and circle, they divide my clothes among themselves, casting lots for them. So now, in this very place, I call out to you, there is no one left. Do not be far from me, be the center of the center of the circle, be the strength of that

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center, the power of the absence that is the center, deliver my life from the killing sharpnesses, deliver my soul from the feverish dogs, save me from the lion mouths, answer me, with the voice of the ram's horn, and I will seek and form and repeat your name among my kinsmen, in the midst of everyone, I will compose praises with my lips, and those who enter your awesomeness through my words will also praise, all the seed of Jacob will glorify you and live in awe of you, all those who question and struggle will dawn with your light, for they will know you have not scorned the poor and despised, nor recoiled disgusted from their faces, from them your spark has never been hidden, and when they cried out in their misery, you heard and answered and ennobled them, and it is in the astonishment

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of this that I will praise you in the great assembly, making deep vows in the presence of those who know your heart, know that in you the meek eat and are satisfied, and all who seek and struggle find the tongue to praise, saying to you, may your heart live forever, may all the ends of the earth remember and return to you, and all the families of all the nations bow before you, for all that is, is your domain, your flame kindles all that lives and breathes, and you are the motive force of all activity, the yearning of the grasses, the lover's ardor, and they that rise up, live, and eat the fat of the earth will bow before you, before you will bow all those who lie down, find peace, and enter the dust, for none can keep alive by his own power, you alone light the soul, distant

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ages to come shall serve you, shall be related to you in future times, those people not yet born will sing of your uprightness, your evenness, your brightness, to a people not yet born that is still to come, that this is how you are. So I spent a lot of time with this psalm, that's why I make these versions, because otherwise if I don't make my own versions I can't understand the psalm, I can't really pay attention to it, so in this way I make it my own. And I had many wonderful hours with this great piece of literature, this great poem, and we can say many things about it, but what I would like to point out is

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just how powerfully it shows the path of suffering to be. As you all know, Buddha spoke of suffering, his whole teaching comes down to suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering. But if you think carefully and subtly about Buddha's words, as Nagarjuna and other great sages did, it becomes clear that the Buddha was not saying that suffering is to be eliminated, removed, as you would remove a growth in surgery. He was saying that suffering, when it is appreciated and really understood

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and fully, radically accepted as it really is, as empty of any real nature of suffering, that that suffering is the shape of life itself. And when you realize this, then the suffering is transformed. So we could say it's not that there's freedom from suffering, but rather that there's freedom within suffering. And to me, what's astonishing about this psalm is that it says that when there's suffering, the whole universe responds to that suffering. Just as God responds to the suffering of Jesus, and to the suffering of each and every one of us. And just as in the Exodus story, it says God knew, felt the suffering of the people

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in bondage, and that is why, for the first time, God activates God's self in the world. And to me, this would seem to be the salient characteristic of whatever we would mean by that word, that human concept of God. That this would be ultimately the defining reflex or principle of God, that God is that which responds, comes forward when there is suffering. And the speaker of this psalm, number 22, we don't know who the speaker is, but the speaker is someone who is in the depths of suffering and despair. Someone who feels isolated and alone, faithless and desperate.

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But in the course of the psalm, there's a turning, and somehow through that very condition of isolation and desperation and despair, the speaker of the psalm finds some way to turn around, finds some serenity. And through that serenity, the speaker comes to see that others are suffering. That others also are suffering, and that these suffering beings are holy beings in our midst. And I think this is the origin of the concept of justice. The certain knowledge that those who suffer are the same as us, and so truly deserve to be treated in the same way that we would treat ourselves.

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Deserve whatever advantages and help that anyone else would receive. We may think that the idea of justice is something self-evident or obvious, but it's not self-evident and obvious. And there are people, many people, even now, who say, well, I don't have any sympathy for the poor. If they were more energetic, if they tried harder as I tried, they wouldn't be poor. Who say, I don't have any sympathy for the criminal. If they followed the law, if they didn't follow their evil impulses, they wouldn't be in the shape they're in. Why do they deserve any special treatment from me? And I think, you know, throughout history, people looked at it like that.

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If harm befell you, it was because you deserved it. Because of your own actions, or just because fate marked you for it, and it was just too bad. But the idea of justice means, quite the contrary, that people who suffer, regardless of why, deserve dignified treatment and sympathy. Because they are us, and we are them. And their hearts and our hearts are built in exactly the same way. And all of our hearts together are entwined with the heart of the world. The other day I was visiting over at the Hartford Street Zen Center, and in the Zen Dojo there, there's a beautiful picture on the wall of Issan Dorsey,

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who was the founder and the first abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center. He was a dear friend. He was a gay man. Who was gay at a time when it was extremely difficult, and totally dishonorable thing to be gay. Before anybody ever had the idea of coming out, before gay rights was even a phrase that anyone ever would speak. Because of his sexual preference, he was first kicked out of his family. He joined the Navy, and then he was kicked out of the Navy. He became an addict, and then a, as they say, terrific female impersonator in San Francisco, before he became a Zen priest in the 70s. And he's been dead almost 10 years now, from AIDS.

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And he was a wonderful person. And he had a very natural and easy sense of compassion. He didn't talk about compassion much. He just was compassion. And he was one of the first people who went around scraping up drunks and addicts off the street, and bringing them home. And just taking care of them, waiting on them hand and foot. Scurrilous creatures, you know, who were very difficult. He wouldn't face them a bit. And in those days, they were first beginning to be many people who were destitute because of the AIDS epidemic. And maybe you can remember, I certainly can, how much fear and paranoia there was. About AIDS then. It was so unknown. Everybody was totally terrified of it.

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But Isan would pick people up off the street, take them into his house, take care of them. Never worried about anything. Never worried about himself. The result of this, of course, was his life was totally chaotic. But within the chaos, he seemed to be very peaceful and very free. Because he had long ago given up anything to protect. He had lost everything long ago. Nothing left to protect. So he was free and peaceful. He had lived through so much. So much trouble and indignity in his life that there was nothing left for him to hold on to. And he was afraid of nothing. And I think that in the end, as I often say, you know, in the middle of the night.

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We're all like Isan and we're all like those people he picked up off the streets. All of us knowing in the center of our own hearts, our unworthiness, our foolishness, our ignorance, our sickness, our isolation, our destituteness. Just like the speaker in the psalm, we're all outcasts. We're all faithless and desperate. And our freedom isn't going to be found in correcting the problem and certainly not in avoiding it. It's our acceptance of it and seeing that in the midst of our condition, we are the same as anyone, the same as everyone.

[39:36]

And everyone, believe me, no matter how powerful or successful, no matter how degraded or debased, everyone is the same as you and I. And I think recognizing this deeply in our hearts, this is the source of real love. Seeing the identity of ourselves and all who suffer, which means everyone without exception. Recently, I've been doing Zazen by myself in the early mornings at home. And to tell you the truth, I'm surprised that I'm doing it. I never thought I would actually do it.

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I used to do it, you know, when I was young, sit by myself at home every day, very faithfully. I almost fanatically, for years. But that was a long time ago. And really, if you would have asked me, I would have thought that now, after sitting with others every single day for 25 years or so, that I'd probably be too lazy or think it was pointless to sit by myself. So I'm really surprised that I'm eager to get up in the morning and sit before dawn. No, I get up at least an hour later than I used to when I was at Green Gulch, coming to sit every day. So I feel it's quite a luxury to get up at 5.30, you know, it's like, wow, sleeping in, you know. But I'm eager to get up. Because when I'm sitting there all by myself,

[41:49]

it's really quiet. But I don't feel like I'm sitting there all by myself. I really feel like I'm sitting in the lap of the universe, sitting in the palm of Buddha's hand. Did you know there are 500 billion stars in our galaxy? 500 billion stars. The sun is usually referred to in the astronomy books as an average-sized star, an average star. There are 500 billion stars, most of them larger than the sun. And as far as people think and know now at this point, there are 50 billion other galaxies besides this one. And when I'm sitting in Zazen by myself in the morning, I feel like I'm right in the middle

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of all of that, held warmly, right in the middle of all of that. So from that perspective, you know, Buddha speaks of suffering. The Bible speaks of suffering. Today I've spoken of suffering. But who really knows what is suffering? I don't think any of us really know. How could we know what is suffering? What is the dimension of suffering? In our world, suffering appears as something tragic, something sad. And so it really is in our lives something tragic and sad. But I wonder what suffering feels like at the end of the known universe.

[44:01]

I'm really sure that there is suffering there and throughout the vast stretches of space and time there's nothing but suffering. But I have no idea, you know, how that suffering appears. Maybe at the end of this psalm, as it says, our job as human beings is to sing the suffering, to build monuments to it, to celebrate it. I think that's what human civilization is, you know, songs, monuments, and celebrating celebrations, and tears, about suffering. That's what history is, how suffering appears in our world.

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Once upon a time, in the deep mountains of China, at a Zen monastery, there was a quick, sudden, rustling sound. And the Zen master, Qing Jing, asked a monk, what is that sound outside? And the monk said, it's the sound of a snake eating a toad. And Qing Jing said, once you acknowledge suffering, there is no end to suffering. So, happy Easter, everybody. Thank you.

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